Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney

The New South Wales government this week announced reforms that will allow some GPs to treat and potentially diagnose attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

This aims to make ADHD care more accessible and less expensive and follows changes in Western Australia and Queensland, which have increased GPs’ role in diagnosing and prescribing for ADHD.

Previously, only specialists (usually paediatricians and psychiatrists) could diagnose ADHD and prescribe the most commonly used ADHD stimulant medications.

This reform comes on the back of evidence of extensive wait times for ADHD care and costs too high for many people.

But while up-skilling GPs to treat ADHD will benefit many patients, some people with more complex cases will still need to see a specialist.

What’s planned for NSW?

Under this new framework, the NSW government proposes a two-stage plan.

In phase one, around 1,000 GPs will be trained to support the ongoing prescribing of ADHD medications.

In phase two a smaller number, about 100 GPs, will receive more intensive training to conduct ADHD assessments, make diagnoses and initiate ADHD medications.

For phase two the initial focus will be on children and adolescents and then the trial will extend to adults.

Why a diagnosis is crucial for people with ADHD

The recent Senate inquiry into ADHD highlighted growing awareness about the daily struggles of people with ADHD across Australia.

People with ADHD have serious difficulties with attention, impulsivity and hyperactivity, which impact across the lifespan and many settings where people live, learn, work and play.

ADHD is linked to many poor outcomes and is even associated with higher rates of accidental injury and death.

ADHD treatments, such as stimulant medication, has been shown be safe, effective and to substantially lower risks of negative outcomes. But to receive these treatments, a person needs to first receive a diagnosis.

GPs can play an important role managing ADHD

There is also no question that GPs are more accessible than specialists, both in terms of availability and cost.

They already provide ongoing management for a wide range of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. They are highly skilled in monitoring outcomes and adjusting treatments.

With the right training, they bring many transferable skills to ADHD care. Increasing their ability to take over ongoing prescribing for people diagnosed and stabilised on treatment is low risk and has shown to be effective in a range of studies.

However, although the proposal to increase the role of GPs in ADHD care is a step in the right direction, it is not without challenges.

GPs may struggle to assess complex patients

Collaborative care involves general practitioners working with specialists and specialist teams to provide care. If GPs don’t have specialists to rely on for expert advice about ongoing management, many will choose not to provide ADHD care. Ongoing support and strong links between specialist and primary care services will be essential.

GPs may also struggle to assess and diagnose complex cases.

The vast majority of people with ADHD will have other mental health conditions, but some of these other conditions (such as anxiety conditions) can also result in symptoms that appear like ADHD.

For these complex situations, specialist services with multidisciplinary teams of doctors and allied health providers (such as psychologists and occupational therapists) will still be needed.

Read more:
Wondering about ADHD, autism and your child’s development? What to know about getting a neurodevelopmental assessment

To ensure high-quality care and reduce the potential for misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment, it will be even more important that specialists are available to provide additional services when required.

There is little detail currently in the NSW proposal about how specialist multidisciplinary services will be supported to ensure this happens. And funding models for this will need to be established to support existing guidelines.

Bringing GPs into the assessment and diagnosis to initiate treatment is positive but comes with added pressures to manage assessment and treatment.

There are many cases in the media of poor diagnostic process, where patients were misdiagnosed with conditions such as ADHD after inadequate assessments. These practices may be driven by financial rewards and a poor application of evidence-based guidelines.

Could this lead to over-diagnosis? Or correct under-diagnosis?

In Australia, the debate about whether ADHD is under- or over-diagnosed is ongoing. There reality is that there is almost certainly a mixture of both.

The real rates of ADHD are estimated at around 7% in Australian children and 2.5% in adults. While these rates have remained stable for many years, the rates of clinical diagnosis and treatment have increased dramatically, particularly in young women.

Around 6% of children and adolescents currently receive ADHD medications, similar to the actual rates of ADHD in the population. For adults, the rates of ADHD medication use remain low for those over 45 years. For those between 18 and 44 years, rates now sit at around 2%.

One interpretation of these figures is that most children, adolescents and adults with ADHD are now getting the support they need.

However, if we remember the strong evidence that many Australians are struggling to access ADHD care, particularly in under-resourced, regional and remote areas, the more likely answer is that a combination of “misdiagnosis” and “missed diagnosis” means that sometimes diagnoses are not done correctly.

This highlights the importance of focusing on the need for accurate assessment as the cornerstone of high quality ADHD care. In its answer to the question of who should assess and diagnose ADHD, the Australian ADHD guideline focuses on training and skills rather than which profession conducts the assessment.

There is no reason that GPs cannot develop these skills, but they will require adequate training and ongoing support to do so, and they will need time to commit to these assessments.

Finally, we need to make sure medication is not the only option available. Research shows ADHD medications provide effective treatment. But they should never be the only form of treatment offered.

Sadly, reports show medical treatments are relied upon more frequently in more disadvantaged communities where access to other supports can be difficult.

These reforms will do little to increase access to psychological and allied health supports to ensure the right care can be provided to people with ADHD.

Read more:
GPs could improve access to ADHD treatment. But we still need specialists to diagnose and start medication

Adam Guastella receives funding from the NSW Government for the evaluation of mental health supports provided to children and families in health services. He has received funding from research agencies (ARC, NHMRC, MRFF) for the evaluation of assessment and supports related to neurodevelopmental conditions and for independent and sponsored clinical trials for the evaluation medical and psychological therapies. He is affiliated with Neurodevelopment Australia.

David Coghill has been a consultant for with Takeda, Medice, Servier, Novartis. He receives research funding from the NHMRC and royalties from Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. He is the president of Australasian ADHD Professional Association.

– ref. GPs will be a great help for managing ADHD medications. But many patients will still need specialists – https://theconversation.com/gps-will-be-a-great-help-for-managing-adhd-medications-but-many-patients-will-still-need-specialists-257610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong

On Sunday, Mexico will hold an unprecedented election, becoming the first country in the world to allow voters to elect judges at every level.

Voters will elect approximately half the judges in the country on June 1 – from the nine members of the Supreme Court down to 850 federal judges and thousands more at lower levels. In 2027, a second vote will see the rest of Mexico’s judiciary elected.

As part of the overhaul, the country’s merit-based, career judiciary system will be abolished. Instead, all judges will serve nine-year terms, renewable by popular vote.

The election had been championed by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and embraced by his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October.

Sheinbaum has proclaimed Mexico will be “the most democratic country in the world” because the people will now choose all three branches of government.

Critics are not so sure. Some are calling the process a cynical farce. Others warn it will concentrate power in Morena, the ruling party, and its political allies, dismantling the country’s system of checks and balances.

Critics also warn that inexperienced judges could be elected, or those who could be influenced by organised crime. Some candidates themselves have been investigated for crimes, and at least two are former defence attorneys for drug cartels.

Former president Ernesto Zedillo, currently director at the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, has gone so far as to declare that democracy itself “has come to an end” in Mexico.

Why reform the judiciary?

During his time in office from 2018–2024, López Obrador waged a rhetorical battle with Mexico’s courts, accusing judges of serving the elites and blocking his agenda.

In truth, what irked López Obrador was the fact the courts wielded the power to review and restrain his actions through constitutional oversight.

Sheinbaum seems to share his hostility towards the judiciary. Arturo Zaldívar, a former Supreme Court chief justice who designed the judicial reform system and later joined Sheinbaum’s cabinet, has accused the outgoing chief justice, Norma Piña, of being “a force of opposition allied with the oligarchy”.

In September 2024, Morena used its congressional super-majority to ram through a series of constitutional amendments to enact the judicial reform.

In response, judges walked off the job. Court staff, lawyers and law students took to the streets in support of their strike, some carrying banners reading “justice is not a popularity contest”.

Experts note the reform does nothing to fix Mexico’s real justice problems – the rampant corruption and abuse that plagues the system. The institutions that allow criminals to act with impunity are not the courts, but the prosecutors and police.

Human Rights Watch reports that nearly half of Mexicans have “little or very little confidence” in the country’s justice authorities. Nine in ten Mexicans don’t even bother to report crimes.

The perils of judicial elections

Electing judges is an idea fraught with peril. International human rights law treats an independent judiciary as a basic human right. Article 8 of the 1978 American Convention on Human Rights – an international treaty for North, Central and South America – guarantees every person “a hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal.”

Popular elections invite precisely the opposite. As UN experts caution, election campaigns will inevitably inject “political loyalty or alignment with party interests” into judge selection, rather than competence and impartiality.

In addition, leading legal theorists have long warned that politicising the judiciary undermines the rule of law.

US jurist Ronald Dworkin argued judges must decide according to principles – not political winds. Italian jurist Luigi Ferrajoli’s notion of a “guarantee-based” democracy – which is hugely influential in Latin America – likewise insists judges be insulated from party bargaining.

Even in the United States, where some states hold judicial elections, scholars lament their corrosive effects.

As one study notes:

Wealthy people and corporations can pump lots of money […] to elect and reelect judges who decide cases the way they want.

Opponents of billionaire Elon Musk critiqued his decision this year to pour US$21 million (A$33 million) into the campaign of a conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In a comment he posted on X, Musk said he didn’t expect to win but “there is value to losing a piece for positional gain.”

Bolivia offers another cautionary tale. Beginning in 2011, Bolivia has held elections for the judges on its top courts in an effort to “decolonise” the justice system and fight corruption.

In practice, though, only judges pre-approved by the ruling party’s congressional majority make the ballot. Voters, too, know little about the candidates. Turnout is very low.

Courts increasingly under attack

Mexico’s justice system, indeed, needs reform. But its multiple problems will not be solved with the wholesale politicisation of the courts.

As Argentine scholar Roberto Gargarella bluntly observes, electing judges in this way is “one of the greatest institutional tragedies of our time.”

Mexico’s reform effort threatens to turn the courts into just another party apparatus. In that sense, Mexico joins a disturbing global trend. From Washington to Brasília, populist leaders are increasingly attacking the courts as the enemies of the people.

With courts in Mexico potentially beholden to the government or influenced by organised crime, neutral judges may become much harder to find. If history teaches anything, it’s that the night of authoritarianism grows darker when the last judges are gone.

Luis Gómez Romero 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.

– ref. Will elections for judges make Mexico the ‘most democratic country in the world’? Critics fear the opposite – https://theconversation.com/will-elections-for-judges-make-mexico-the-most-democratic-country-in-the-world-critics-fear-the-opposite-257730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zena Assaad, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering, Australian National University

Google recently unveiled the next phase of its artificial intelligence (AI) journey: “AI mode”.

This new feature will soon be released as a new option to users of Google’s search engine in the United States, with no timeline yet for the rest of the world. The company says it will be akin to having a conversation with an expert well versed on a wide range of topics.

This is just one of many steps Google is taking in pursuit of its “all-in” approach to AI.

The “all-in” approach extends beyond just integrating the technology into different applications. Google is providing products all along the AI supply chain – a process known as “vertical integration” – housing everything from AI computer chips through to the user interfaces we interact with on a daily basis, such as Google maps or Gmail.

Google isn’t the only AI company with ambitions of vertical integration. For example, OpenAI recently acquired a hardware startup co-founded by Apple’s Jony Ive, which will centralise hardware development within the company. Amazon is taking similar steps. It owns cloud computing platforms, custom chips, device plans and is incorporating more AI services into products.

This may be the beginning of a trend of vertical integration across big tech. And it could have significant implications for users and companies alike.

The AI ‘tech stack’

Hardware, software, data sources, databases and servers are some of the layers that make up what is commonly referred to as the “AI tech stack”.

There are four main layers to Google’s evolving vertical tech stack:

1. Hardware layer. Google develops its own AI chips, known as tensor processing units (TPUs). The company claims these chips provide superior performance and efficiency compared to general purpose processors.

2. Infrastructure layer. The company uses its own cloud infrastructure to source its computing power, networking and storage requirements. This infrastructure is the foundation for running and scaling AI capabilities.

3. Model development layer. In-house research capabilities are used to drive the development of their products and services. This includes research around machine learning, robotics, language models and computer vision.

4. Data layer. Data is constantly sourced from users across all Google platforms, including its search engine, maps and email. Data collection is a condition of using any Google application.

Some argue vertical integration is an optimal and cost-effective business strategy in many industries, not just tech. However, the realities of this set-up prove otherwise.

Fuelling power imbalances

Google and OpenAI are two of just a handful of companies which dominate the global technology market.

Thanks to this market dominance, these companies can charge higher markups for their goods and services and abuse practices in online advertising.

Vertical integration further skews this power imbalance by centralising the layers of the AI tech stack to one company. A distribution of hardware, infrastructure, research and development and data across multiple industries helps support a more equitable playing field across the industry.

The loss of this equity creates greater barriers to entry for smaller companies as the larger conglomerates keep everything in-house.

It also reduces incentives to innovate in ways that benefit consumers because it eliminates the business competition that usually drives innovation.

Data is often described as the new gold. This is especially true in the case of AI, which is heavily reliant on data. Through its many platforms, Google has access to a continuous stream of data. In turn, this gives the company even more power in the industry.

The vulnerabilities of vertical integration

The success of a company that is vertically integrated relies on housing the best knowledge and expertise in-house. Retaining this level of resourcing within a small handful of companies can lead to knowledge and expertise hoarding.

Research shows knowledge and expertise hoarding reduces social learning and increases disparities between “winners” and “losers” in a given market. This creates an overall vulnerable industry, because net gains are lost in the pursuit of exclusivity.

Exclusivity also breeds a lack of resilience. That’s because the points of failure are centralised.

Risk is better managed with additional oversight, transparency and accountability. Collaborations across industry rely on these processes to work together effectively.

Centralising the AI tech stack within one organisation eliminates external scrutiny, because it reduces interactions with external providers of products and services. In turn this can lead to a company behaving in a more risky manner.

Regulatory bodies can also provide external scrutiny.

However, the current push to deregulate AI is widening the gap between technology development and regulation.

It is also allowing for big tech companies to become increasingly opaque. A lack of transparency raises issues about organisational practices; in the context of AI, practices around data are of particular concern.

The trend towards vertical integration in the AI sector will further increase this opacity and heighten existing issues around transparency.

Zena Assaad 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.

– ref. Google is going ‘all in’ on AI. It’s part of a troubling trend in big tech – https://theconversation.com/google-is-going-all-in-on-ai-its-part-of-a-troubling-trend-in-big-tech-257563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yi Yang, Research Fellow, Social Epidemiology, Melbourne Disability Institute, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

People with disability are missing out on screening programs that could help detect cancer early, and after diagnosis, are less likely to survive, our study shows.

Overall, this means people with disability are more likely to die from cancer than people without disability.

We draw together evidence showing the striking inequity at the heart of current approaches to controlling cancer.

But there are ways to improve access to the types of screening programs and cancer services many people without disability use routinely.

What we did and what we found

We reviewed evidence from 73 studies from around the world. These studies compared cancer outcomes in people with disability to those without.

Let’s start with cancer screening, one way to prevent deaths from cancer. Screening picks up early signs of cancer or can prevent it from developing into a problem if found early enough. Early detection usually means more treatment options and higher chances of a good outcome.

However, our review found people with disability are missing out on these life-saving screening programs all around the world, including for breast, cervical and bowel cancer.

In fact, some studies in our review showed these cancers are more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage in people with disability.

Once diagnosed, people with disability are still at a disadvantage. We found lower survival rates than cancer patients without disability.

This could be because of delayed diagnosis and inaccessible treatment, and we’d need further research to be sure. But we do have relevant evidence from some studies.

A UK study of cancer deaths in people with intellectual disability found more than a third had their cancer diagnosed after going to the emergency department. Almost half of the cancers in the study were already at an advanced stage when diagnosed.

Another review of global evidence found cancer patients with disability receive poorer quality cancer care. This included delays in treatment, being undertreated or having excessively invasive treatment. People with disability also had less access to in-hospital services and pain medication.

From diagnosis to treatment, global evidence shows people with disability are being excluded from health services that many people without disability routinely access and benefit from.

The situation is no different in Australia and it is costing lives.

In previous work, we found cancer is a leading cause of earlier deaths among Australians with disability. It’s the cause of about 20% of the extra deaths we see in people with disability compared to people without.

Why is this happening?

We clearly need to do more to improve health care for people with disability. But we also need to take action in other areas to address underlying issues.

People with disability are more likely to be poor and live in disadvantaged circumstances than the rest of the Australian population, which may put them at higher risk of cancer.

Many factors that cause cancer – for example, smoking, unaffordable healthy food, and drinking high levels of alcohol – disproportionately impact disadvantaged groups, including people with disability.

Many people with disability live with additional health conditions, which can lead to a lack of attention to routine issues. This can result in cancer screening and routine care becoming less of a priority.

Buildings where services are provided and medical diagnostic equipment is located are not always accessible for people with disability.

The health system itself can be inaccessible, with little support to help people with disability access services. For instance, navigating cancer care can be overwhelming, especially for people who need support for daily activities, transport or communication.

People with disability, especially with intellectual disability, need extra time and support to give informed consent to screening, treatment or procedures – resources and time particularly overstretched in public health systems.

People with disability can also experience both direct and indirect discrimination in health care, which lead to poorer outcomes. This includes discriminatory attitudes towards people with disability and their carers, and making assumptions about a patient based on their disability.

What can we do about it?

For cancer control to be inclusive and work for people with disability, we need to look at:

• prevention – public health interventions, such as quit smoking or healthy lifestyle programs, need to be co-designed with and tailored to people with disability

• early detection – national screening programs must develop strategies and take active steps to include people with disability. Clinics need to be physically accessible, information needs to be available in a range of accessible formats, and extra time needs to be allocated to get genuine informed consent

• ensuring people with disability have a voice – cancer care needs to be tailored to an individual person, as everyone’s needs are different. We need to support and include people with disability in conversations about their care so they can make informed decisions. This means providing information in ways that work for them, and allowing time to understand and ask questions

• training health professionals to understand and respond to the needs of people with disability and make the adjustments required for optimal cancer care, particularly for people with an intellectual disability.

Yi Yang’s research is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Melbourne Disability Institute and an Early Career Researcher Grant from the University of Melbourne. Yi Yang has conducted commissioned work for the Australian Department of Social Services (inequalities in NDIS), the Victorian Department of Families Fairness and Housing (NDIS service use in Victoria), and the Queensland Department of Seniors, Disability Services, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships (inequalities in NDIS service use in regional and remote Queensland).

George Disney receives funding from the NHMRC and has conducted commissioned work for the Australian Department of Social Services (NDIS service use), the Victorian Department of Families Fairness and Housing (inequalities in NDIS service use), and the Queensland Department of Seniors, Disability Services, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships (NDIS service use in regional and remote Queensland).

Kirsten Deane is a member of the consortium receiving funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health for the Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health. Melbourne Disability Institute also receives funding from the Department of Social Services for the Australian Disability Dialogue and for the Centre for Inclusive Employment. MDi also received funding from the Commonwealth, Victorian and Queensland governments to conduct research into inequities in NDIS funding and services.

– ref. People with disability are dying from cancers we can actually prevent, our study shows – https://theconversation.com/people-with-disability-are-dying-from-cancers-we-can-actually-prevent-our-study-shows-257456

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Armin Alimardani, Senior Lecturer in Law and Emerging Technologies, University of Wollongong

“AI tutors” have been hyped as a way to revolutionise education.

The idea is generative artificial intelligence tools (such as ChatGPT) could adapt to any teaching style set by a teacher. The AI could guide students step-by-step through problems and offer hints without giving away answers. It could then deliver precise, immediate feedback tailored to the student’s individual learning gaps.

Despite the enthusiasm, there is limited research testing how well AI performs in teaching environments, especially within structured university courses.

In our new study, we developed our own AI tool for a university law class. We wanted to know, can it genuinely support personalised learning or are we expecting too much?

Our study

In 2022, we developed SmartTest, a customisable educational chatbot, as part of a broader project to democratise access to AI tools in education.

Unlike generic chatbots, SmartTest is purpose-built for educators, allowing them to embed questions, model answers and prompts. This means the chatbot can ask relevant questions, deliver accurate and consistent feedback and minimise hallucinations (or mistakes). SmartTest is also instructed to use the Socratic method, encouraging students to think, rather than spoon-feeding them answers.

We trialled SmartTest over five test cycles in a criminal law course (which one of us was coordinating) at the University of Wollongong in 2023.

Each cycle introduced varying degrees of complexity. The first three cycles used short hypothetical criminal law scenarios (for example, is the accused guilty of theft in this scenario?). The last two cycles used simple short-answer questions (for example, what’s the maximum sentencing discount for a guilty plea?).

An average of 35 students interacted with SmartTest in each cycle across several criminal law tutorials. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, with students interacting with SmartTest on their own devices for up to ten minutes per session. Students’ conversations with SmartTest – their attempts at answering the question, and the immediate feedback they received from the chatbot – were recorded in our database.

After the final test cycle, we surveyed students about their experience.

• You can test the chatbot here and see what students experienced. The password is 101.

What we found

SmartTest showed promise in guiding students and helping them identify gaps in their understanding.

However, in the first three cycles (the problem-scenario questions), between 40% and 54% of conversations had at least one example of inaccurate, misleading, or incorrect feedback.

When we shifted to much simpler short-answer format in cycles four and five, the error rate dropped significantly to between 6% and 27%. However, even in these best-performing cycles, some errors persisted. For example, sometimes SmartTest would affirm an incorrect answer before providing the correct one, which risks confusing students.

A significant revelation was the sheer effort required to get the chatbot working effectively in our tests. Far from a time-saving silver bullet, integrating SmartTest involved painstaking prompt engineering and rigorous manual assessments from educators (in this case, us). This paradox – where a tool promoted as labour-saving demands significant labour – calls into question its practical benefits for already time-poor educators.

Inconsistency is a core issue

SmartTest’s behaviour was also unpredictable. Under identical conditions, it sometimes offered excellent feedback and at other times provided incorrect, confusing or misleading information.

For an educational tool tasked with supporting student learning, this raises serious concerns about reliability and trustworthiness.

To assess if newer models improved performance, we replaced the underlying generative AI powering SmartTest (ChatGPT-4) with newer models, such as ChatGPT-4.5, which was released in 2025.

We tested these models by replicating instances where SmartTest provided poor feedback to students in our study. The newer models did not consistently outperform older ones. Sometimes, their responses were even less accurate or useful from a teaching perspective. As such, newer more advanced AI models do not automatically translate to better educational outcomes.

What does this mean for students and teachers?

The implications for students and university staff are mixed.

Generative AI may support low-stakes, formative learning activities. But in our study, it could not provide the reliability, nuance and subject-matter depth needed for many educational contexts.

On the plus side, our survey results indicated students appreciated the immediate feedback and conversational tone of SmartTest. Some mentioned it reduced anxiety and made them more comfortable expressing uncertainty. However, this benefit came with a catch: incorrect or misleading answers could just as easily reinforce misunderstandings as clarify them.

Most students (76%) preferred having access to SmartTest rather than no opportunity to practise questions. However, when given the choice between receiving immediate feedback from AI or waiting one or more days for feedback from human tutors, only 27% preferred AI. Nearly half preferred human feedback with a delay and the rest were indifferent.

This suggests a critical challenge. Students enjoy the convenience of AI tools, but they still place higher trust in human educators.

A need for caution

Our findings suggest generative AI should still be treated as an experimental educational aid.

The potential is real – but so are the limitations. Relying too heavily on AI without rigorous evaluation risks compromising the very educational outcomes we are aiming to enhance.

Armin Alimardani previously had a short-term, part-time contract with OpenAI as a consultant. The organisation had no input into the study featured in this article. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors.

This work was supported by the Early-Mid-Career Researcher Enabling Grants Scheme, University of Wollongong (2022, Project ID: R5829).

This work was supported by the School Research Grant, School of the Arts and Media (SAM), UNSW Sydney (2023, Project ID: PS68922); the Research Infrastructure Scheme, Faculty of Arts, Design, and Architecture, UNSW Sydney (2023, Project ID: PS68745); and the School Research Grant, SAM, UNSW Sydney (2022, Project ID: PS66264).

– ref. Researchers created a chatbot to help teach a university law class – but the AI kept messing up – https://theconversation.com/researchers-created-a-chatbot-to-help-teach-a-university-law-class-but-the-ai-kept-messing-up-257551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Booth, Associate Professor of Human Geography, University of Tasmania

Once again, large parts of New South Wales have been devastated by floods. It’s estimated 10,000 homes and businesses may have been damaged or destroyed and the Insurance Council of Australia reports more than 6,000 insurance claims have been received for the Mid North Coast and Hunter region.

Hundreds of families are displaced. With many homes now uninhabitable, they face a uncertain future.

As the mop-up begins, stories are emerging of households and businesses not covered by insurance, with some residents saying insurance companies were asking up to A$30,000 annually for cover.

There are many others who are underinsured, with insurance payouts not meeting the full costs of rebuild, repair and replacement. The Insurance Council of Australia has declared the event an “insurance catastrophe”.

The impacts of these floods reflect global trends. In 2024, there were around 60 natural disaster events that each exceeded A$1.5 billion in economic losses. Total losses worldwide reached A$650 billion.

As one of the most disaster-prone countries in the Western world, is Australia the canary in the coalmine for a global collapse of insurance? With these types of disasters escalating in a changing climate, it is reasonable to feel – and fear – this is the case.

An uninsurable future?

In 1992, sociologist Ulrich Beck argued unpredictable global risks, such as climate change, would bring an end to the private insurance market, with profound effects on the modern world.

The idea of an uninsurable future stirs up imaginings of apocalyptic landscapes – crumbling buildings, streets strewn with refuse and people eking out a living amid the rubble and ruins.

But the reality is, as we are seeing in central NSW, it is not a future event that demands attention. Many individuals and communities are already living with an unfolding collapse of insurance affordability and availability.

The consequences can be dire, especially for those already struggling to make ends meet.

How are governments responding?

Speaking on ABC radio on Thursday morning, NSW Premier Chris Minns said he would be “putting the heat” on insurance companies:

Everyone’s going to have to do their part […] and that means insurance companies will have to step up and pay out claims quickly.

In the lead-up to the federal election, both major parties made clear they believed insurers were “ripping off” Australians. The Coalition even proposed new emergency divestiture powers that would allow the government to break up major insurers in the case of market failure.

But this is no solution at all, given insurance pricing and coverage is largely set by global “reinsurers”. Reinsurance is a kind of insurance coverage for insurance companies themselves – that is, policies to cover the cost of paying out claims after major disasters.

Just ten multi-billion dollar companies control 70% of the reinsurance market.

Who should bear rising costs?

Insurers, led by the Insurance Council of Australia, are pushing for a Flood Defence Fund and retrofitting homes for disaster resilience, paid for by governments and households.

These ideas might seem logical. But they draw attention away from a thriving industry and regulations and policies aimed at making insurance more affordable and effective for ordinary people.

In places like Australia, the increasing cost of insurance cuts across all types, with the largest rises coming in home, vehicle, and employers’ liability insurance.

Many insurers are reporting healthy profits. Globally, the sector is experiencing “exceptionally strong growth”.

Over the three years to 2024, revenue from premiums in the insurance sector increased by over 21% globally – a “whopping” rise, according to the finance corporation Allianz.

Where to from here?

The insurance sector will continue to grow – and profit – until it no longer can due to climate change and other pressures.

But it is not a future crash of insurers that should be of primary concern. It is the real-time collapse of insurance for households, businesses and communities.

As this collapse of insurance unfolds, it is largely left to households and communities to take action and build resilience.

Examples include squatters taking possession of flood-damaged vacant homes in Lismore and, when combined with the housing crisis, the growth in informal housing and settlements on the fringes of major population centres.

These are desperate responses. But they are also realistic, given governments and insurers are failing to reverse this trending collapse.

What else we could do

After each major disaster event comes a rise in insurance costs and a withdrawal of insurance coverage. To avoid being a canary in the coalmine, Australia urgently needs government intervention in the insurance industry – an industry very resistant to such intervention.

To ensure everyone is adequately covered when disaster strikes, this could come in the form of an equitable and affordable public insurance scheme.

As more Australians lose the ability to insure themselves, governments must also address growing structural inequality that is undermining social cohesion and our capacity for collective resilience.

Read more:
Underinsurance is entrenching poverty as the vulnerable are hit hardest by disasters

Kate Booth receives funding from the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet – Grant-Disaster Ready Fund. She is affiliated with Just Collapse – an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in unfolding, irreversible global collapse.

– ref. NSW is again cleaning up after major floods. Are we veering towards the collapse of insurability? – https://theconversation.com/nsw-is-again-cleaning-up-after-major-floods-are-we-veering-towards-the-collapse-of-insurability-257715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Associate Professor in Media, RMIT University

They may have only made two feature films so far, but Danny and Michael Philippou are already being hailed as Australia’s premiere horror auteurs.

Their 2023 debut Talk To Me sparked a bidding war between distributors upon its premiere at Sundance.

It went on to become prestige indie studio A24’s highest grossing horror release ever at the United States box office. That’s an impressive feat, given A24 is behind some of the most revered horror films of the 21st century, including Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), and Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015).

This context helps explain the sky-high expectations around the release of the Philippous’ newest horror film, Bring Her Back. The brothers even expressed their nerves around the film’s release during a preview screening introduction.

But I’d suggest they breathe a sigh of relief. Bring Her Back trades the chaotic thrills of Talk To Me for a slow-burning, sensory-driven exploration of grief that’s as engrossing as it is unbearable.

Same universe, but not a sequel

Bring Her Back is very tonally distinct from and not explicitly narratively linked to Talk To Me. However, the directors have explained it exists in the same fictional universe as their original smash hit.

This explains why, despite the stark difference in tone – Bring Her Back is a much more sombre watch – there are many thematic and stylistic parallels. These similarities are visible from the films’ marketing materials, through to individual frames.

Bring Her Back’s sombre notes

Talk To Me is a riotous, bloody and loud racket of teen supernatural possession horror.

Like Richard Carter’s song Le Monde, a viral hit from the movie’s soundtrack, the film rises and falls cacophonously. It follows a group of teens at a party as they decide to commune with the dead through an occult party prop: a cursed hand.

Trauma, grief, gore and comedy strike discordantly at the piano keys as the body count piles up.

In contrast to Talk To Me’s tonal and sonic mayhem, Bring Her Back heavily pounds at the same two notes throughout: grief and trauma.

Set in the horror staple of a mysterious, suffocating house, the film follows step-siblings Piper (Sora Wong) and Andy (Billy Barratt) as they adjust to life with their new foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), after their father’s sudden death. The teen’s sense of vulnerability in the strange new environment is heightened by the fact Piper is blind.

Bring Her Back builds on a trend of sensory-driven horror films – including the Quiet Place franchise, Bird Box (2018), and The Silence (2019) – that impel viewers to navigate threatening environments through the main character’s sensory loss or impairment.

Uncomfortable on the ear

In Bring Her Back, the viewer inhabits the destabilising environment of the house through layered sensory textures that feel increasingly claustrophobic and threatening.

Case in point is the harsh rush of water in the running shower where the teens find their father’s gruesome dead body in the opening moments. As the film progresses, this sound manifests as a genuine threat to Piper’s life, in the form of relentlessly pouring (and potentially occult) rain.

The oppressive rain gradually fills up the house’s desolate, unfenced swimming pool, which is the site of previous trauma for foster mother Laura.

Simply traversing the house’s backyard becomes increasingly perilous for Piper as she becomes accustomed to her environment, a process the audience shares through the audio-visuals of her hands gliding across walls, counter tops and corners.

The immersive sound design is dense with hands scraping, sliding and slapping – as well as some truly hideous teeth gnashing. These tactile sounds integrate chillingly with the otherwordly soundtrack composed by Cornel Wilczek, who also composed the score for Talk to Me.

Haunting performances

The teens soon learn that another foster child, the mute and mysterious Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), also inhabits the house. The strange relationship between Laura and Oliver couldn’t be more ominous.

Sally Hawkins is captivatingly monstrous as the outwardly warm but increasingly overbearing and unhinged mother figure (particularly for those of us with a fresh memory of Hawkins’ loveably zany mum, Mrs Brown, from the Paddington films).

Piper is tempted to sink into the warm embrace Laura offers. The viewer, however, is privy to Laura’s vicious streak – evident in her rough, uncaring gestures, harsh glares and sinister flashes of cunning.

Young Jonah Wren Phillips is transfixing as the creepy Oliver, delivering a performance through piercing stares and tortured bodily contortions rather than dialogue.

Unbearably grim

Bring Her Back exhibits a dense film literacy. The Philippous have discussed the influence of classic “psycho biddy” films such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and foundational ghost films such as The Innocents (1961).

But for me, Bring Her Back chimes most evocatively with the trauma- and grief-soaked Japanese horror wave of the early 2000s, and particularly with Hideo Nakata’s J-Horror masterpiece Dark Water (2002).

This tragic ghost story similarly deploys the rippling, rushing and dripping of water as an agent of death and decay within fractured mother-daughter relationships.

Inhabiting the world of Bring Her Back ends up feeling like an unbearably grim and claustrophobic endurance effort – which is exactly what the Philippous intended.

While this is not the exhilarating rollercoaster of Talk To Me, the shift in tonal gears showcases the Philippous’ impressive range within the horror genre’s rich emotional terrain.

Bring Her Back is in cinemas from today.

Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Talk to Me was a rollercoaster, but the Philippou brothers’ Bring Her Back will trap you in a house of horrors – https://theconversation.com/talk-to-me-was-a-rollercoaster-but-the-philippou-brothers-bring-her-back-will-trap-you-in-a-house-of-horrors-257631

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Australia these days receives invitations to big-league international conferences. And so Anthony Albanese will be off soon to the G7 meeting in Alberta, Canada, on June 15-17.

For the prime minister, what’s most important about this trip is not so much the conference itself, but his expected first meeting with US President Donald Trump, either on the sidelines of the G7 or in a visit to Washington while he’s in North America.

Nothing is locked in. But it’s impossible to think such a meeting won’t take place. The Australian PM certainly needs to have his first face-to-face talks with the US president sooner rather than later.

During the election, there was much argument over whether Albanese or Peter Dutton would be better at dealing with the difficult and unpredictable Trump, in particular, in trying to extract some concessions on his tariffs

Australia has been hit by Trump’s 25% tariff on aluminium and steel, as well as by his general 10% tariff.

The Trump tariff regime has been a chaotic story of decisions, pauses and changes of mind. In the latest drama, the United States Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs (as far as Australia goes, this relates to the 10% general tariff but not that on aluminium and steel). The court found the president had exceeded his powers. The administration immediately appealed the decision.

We can’t know how this imbroglio will play out. But assuming Australia will still be confronting some tariffs, Albanese’s pitch for special treatment will be made around what we can do for the Americans with our large deposits of critical minerals and rare earths. These are vital for the production of a huge range of items, including for defence purposes.

Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, speaking at a conference in Detroit this week, pointed out that the two countries already had a draft accord on these minerals.

“What we need to work out […] is how do we collaborate both on the mining, the extraction, the transportation and the processing and the stockpiling to make our economies resilient, including what you’ll need for future battery manufacture,” Rudd said.

When Albanese does get together with Trump, he will have the advantage of meeting him as the big winner of the recent election. Trump said of him post-election, “He’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me”.

But that’s no iron-clad guarantee of success. With the US president, there are always multiple “known unknowns”.

For Albanese, success on the tariff front would be important, but not, of course, as important politically as it would have been pre-election.

A range of other issues will also be on the agenda when the two meet: including progress on AUKUS.

The president would no doubt be pleased the government is in the process of booting the Chinese lessee out of the Port of Darwin (with American investment firm Cerberus expressing an interest in taking over, although the government’s preference is for the port to be in Australian hands).

Trump might not think, however, that the government’s commitment to defence spending, due to reach 2.3% of gross domestic product by 2033-34, is enough. The Americans would prefer a level of 3% of GDP.

No doubt the Middle East would also be canvassed in such talks. While Middle East policy is not a frontline issue in the Australian-American relationship, the Albanese government struggles at home to strike the right stance.

Since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Australia has seen a deterioration in local social cohesion. Antisemitism spiked to a degree not anticipated; pro-Palestinian demonstrations became a regular and controversial feature. The government found itself under political fire from the Jewish community and pro-Palestinian critics alike.

With the Israeli government disregarding international criticism, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza growing more dire, Albanese this week toughened his rhetoric.

On Monday he said: “It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food and supplies to people who are in need in Gaza. We have made that very clear by signing up to international statements”. He described Israel’s actions as “completely unacceptable”.

Within Labor, the pressure to go further has been mounting. It is on two fronts. Some want sanctions against Israel (beyond the existing sanctions in relation to settlers on the West Bank). There is also the issue of whether Australia should recognise a Palestinian state ahead of a two-state solution.

Ed Husic, a Muslim, was relatively outspoken even while he was in cabinet. Since being dumped from the ministry, he is much freer to put forth his view.

This week, he was calling for imposing sanctions if other nations were to do so. “I think we should be actively considering […] drawing up a list of targeted sanctions where we can join with others”.

Significantly, former Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was another advocate, saying sanctions “would send a powerful message”.

Read more:
Gareth Evans: the case for recognising Palestine

But when the question of sanctions was put to Albanese, he was dismissive, raising the issue of substantive outcomes.

At the Labor party’s grassroots level, there is strong pressure for a more pro-Palestinian approach.

It is not unreasonable to think that would strike a sympathetic chord with both Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, but they are very cognisant of the politics – both international and local.

Wong a year ago raised the possibility of recognising Palestine statehood as a step along a peace process, ahead of a two-state solution.

Australia’s ambassador to the United Nations, James Larson, last week delivered an Australian statement to a preparatory meeting for a June conference in New York on “the question of Palestine and the implementation of the two-state solution”.

Echoing Wong’s earlier position, he said: “A two-state solution – a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel – is the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, and the only hope of a just and enduring peace, for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

“Like other partners, Australia no longer sees recognition of a Palestinian state as only occurring at the end of negotiations, but rather as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution.”

Evans, in an article for Pearls and Irritations this week, says the “strongest and most constructive contribution” Australia could make on the issue would be to announce at the conference “that we are immediately recognising Palestinian statehood: not just as the final outcome of a political settlement but as a way of kickstarting it”.

The government is tight-lipped about what stand it will take for the June 17-20 conference, saying it doesn’t have details yet and is unable to say who will attend for Australia. It says it is not being framed as a conference where countries are expected to make pledges.

Nevertheless, many within Labor will be watching closely whether the coming weeks will see any change in Australia’s Middle East policy. But that, in turn, would depend on whether others make any moves, because Australia wants to have company from like-minded countries.

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.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Trump, tariffs and the Middle East are looming challenges for Albanese – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-trump-tariffs-and-the-middle-east-are-looming-challenges-for-albanese-257333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon C. Day, Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has again raised grave fears for the future of the Great Barrier Reef, highlighting the problems of water pollution, climate change and unsustainable fishing.

The committee this week released draft decisions regarding the conservation of 62 World Heritage properties. This included the Great Barrier Reef, for which it noted:

Overall, while progress has been made, significant challenges remain in achieving water quality targets, managing extreme climate impacts, and ensuring the long-term resilience of the property.

The comments confirm what experts already know too well: despite substantial investments from successive Australian governments, threats to the Great Barrier Reef remain.

Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs around the world. But water pollution is the most significant local threat. That issue, along with unsustainable fishing, is entirely within Australia’s control.

The World Heritage Committee will consider the draft decision at its next meeting in Paris in July. It may amend the decision, but the concerns are now on the public record.

What’s all this about?

The Great Barrier Reef has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage list for more than 40 years. The listing recognises outstanding natural and cultural places around the world.

The reef is jointly managed by the Australian and Queensland governments. UNESCO’s draft decision expressed “utmost concern” at the findings of last year’s outlook report, published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. It noted:

the overall outlook for the property remains one of continued deterioration due largely to climate change, while the long-term outlook for the ecosystem of the property also remains ‘very poor’.

Poor water quality persists

Poor water quality is a major issue on the Great Barrier Reef. It is caused when sediment, nutrients, pesticides and pollution from land-based activities, such as land clearing, farming and coastal development, are carried into the ocean.

In its draft decision, UNESCO noted with “regrets” that the latest water quality targets for sediment and nitrogen – a key component of fertilisers – were not achieved. UNESCO said the updated water quality plan should ensure targets and actions “are sufficiently ambitious and funded”.

As the below graph shows, actions from 2009 to now have reduced pollution only by about half the desired amounts. At the existing rate of progress and funding commitments, the targets will not be met until 2047 (for sediment) and 2114 (for dissolved inorganic nitrogen).

Huge gaps exist between current pollutants levels and the water quality targets. These and some other targets are well out of reach under existing funding levels.

The draft decision also requests a halt to illegal land clearing while strengthening vegetation laws – both fundamental to reducing water pollution.

Severe weather events exacerbate the water quality problem. In February this year, for example, floodwaters from ten major rivers merged to form extensive flood plumes along 700 kilometres of coastline from Cairns to Mackay, and up to 100 kilometres offshore.

Such plumes can remain present for months after a flood. They can smother seagrass and corals, and cause damaging algal growth.

The wicked problem of climate change

UNESCO’s draft decision noted “the overall outlook for the property remains one of continued deterioration due largely to climate change”.

Ocean heatwaves can lead to coral bleaching and potentially death. Mass bleaching occurred again this year on the Great Barrier Reef – the sixth such event since 2016.

UNESCO described as “deeply concerning” preliminary results showing heat stress was the highest on record during the 2023–24 mass bleaching event.

Climate change is also expected to produce more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, which can damage reefs and island ecosystems.

UNESCO called on Australia to align its policies with the global goal of “limiting global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”, and to take steps to mitigate negative impacts from extreme weather events.

The challenges of fishing

Unsustainable fishing practices damage the Great Barrier Reef. UNESCO’s draft decision noted progress in eliminating gillnet fishing, which is on track for the target of 2027.

The fishing method involves mesh nets which can accidentally kill other wildlife, including threatened species such as dugongs, turtles, dolphins and sawfish.

But smaller nets can still be used throughout much of the World Heritage area, so some threats to threatened species remain.

UNESCO also urged Australia to expand electronic monitoring of commercial fishing vessels, and to ensure the targets in its Sustainable Fisheries Strategy are met. It also called for a comprehensive review of coral harvesting, which primarily supplies the global aquarium trade.

What next?

Despite the significant resources and management efforts Australia expends on the Great Barrier Reef, serious threats remain.

The Great Barrier Reef is struggling under the cumulative impacts of a multitude of threats. The problems outlined above are not isolated challenges.

Both the Queensland and Australian governments could do far more to boost the health of the reef. Clearly, more funding is needed. Without it, the future of the Great Barrier Reef is in jeopardy, and so too its tourism and fishing economies, and thousands of jobs.

UNESCO has now asked Australia to provide more comprehensive results from the recent mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, along with an updated plan to improve water quality. Its draft decision maintains the spotlight on conservation concerns for this precious natural asset.

Jon Day previously worked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority between 1986 and 2014, and was one of the Directors at GBRMPA between 1998 and 2014. He also represented Australia as one of the formal delegates to the World Heritage Committee between 2007-2011.

Scott F. Heron is the co-developer of the Climate Vulnerability Index; he receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. UNESCO expresses ‘utmost concern’ at the state of the Great Barrier Reef – https://theconversation.com/unesco-expresses-utmost-concern-at-the-state-of-the-great-barrier-reef-257638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Stone, Credit Union SA Chair of Economics, University of South Australia

A US court has blocked the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs that US President Donald Trump imposed on imported goods from around 90 nations. This puts implementation of Trump’s current trade policy in disarray.

The Court of International Trade ruled the emergency authority Trump used to impose the tariffs could not override the role of Congress, which has the right to regulate commerce with other countries.

Tariffs imposed via other legislative processes such as those dealing with cars, steel and aluminium continue to stand. But the broad-based “reciprocal” tariffs will need to be removed within 10 days of the court’s ruling. Trump administration officials have already filed plans to appeal.

The ruling calls into question trade negotiations underway with more than 18 different nations that are trying to lower these tariffs. Do these countries continue to negotiate or do they wait for the judicial process to play out?

The Trump administration still has other mechanisms through which it can impose tariffs, but these have limits on the amount that can be imposed, or entail processes which can take months or years. This undermines Trump’s preferred method of negotiation: throwing out large threats and backing down once a concession is reached.

Emergency powers were a step too far

The lawsuits were filed by United States importers of foreign products and some US states, challenging Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

The lawsuits argued the national emergencies cited in imposing the tariffs – the trade deficit and the fentanyl crisis – were not an emergency and not directly addressed by the tariff remedy. The court agreed, and said by imposing tariffs Trump had overstepped his authority.

The ruling said the executive orders used were “declared to be invalid as contrary to law”.

The act states the president is entitled to take economic action in the face of “an unusual and extraordinary threat”. It’s mainly been used to impose sanctions on terrorist groups or freeze assets from Russia. There’s nothing in the act that refers to tariffs.

The decision means all the reciprocal tariffs – including the 10% tariffs on most countries, the 50% tariffs Trump was talking about putting on the EU, and some of the Chinese tariffs – are ruled by the court to be illegal. They must be removed within 10 days.

The ruling was based on two separate lawsuits. One was brought by a group of small businesses that argued tariffs materially hurt their business. The other was brought by 12 individual states that argued the tariffs would materially impact their ability to provide public goods.

Some industry tariffs will remain in place

The ruling does not apply to tariffs applied under Section 201, known as safeguard tariffs. They are intended to protect industries from imports allegedly being sold in the US market at unfair prices or through unfair means. Tariffs on solar panels and washing machines were brought under this regulation.

Also excluded are Section 232 tariffs, which are applied for national security reasons. Those are the steel and aluminium tariffs, the automobile and auto parts tariffs. Trump has declared all those as national security issues, so those tariffs will remain.

Most of the tariffs against China are also excluded under Section 301. Those are put in place for unfair trade practices, such as intellectual property theft or forced technology transfer. They are meant to pressure countries to change their policies.

Other trade investigations are still underway

In addition, there are current investigations related to copper and the pharmaceuticals sector, which will continue. These investigations are part of a more traditional trade process and may lead to future tariffs, including on Australia.

Now for the appeals

The Trump administration has already filed its intention to appeal to the federal appeals court. This process will take some time. In the meantime, there are at least five other legal challenges to tariffs pending in the courts.

If the appeals court provides a ruling the Trump administration or opponents don’t like, they can appeal to the Supreme Court.

Alternatively, the White House could direct customs officials to ignore the court and continue to collect tariffs.

The Trump administration has ignored court orders in the past, particularly on immigration rulings. So it remains to be seen if customs officials will release goods without the tariffs being paid in 10 days’ time.

The administration is unlikely to lay down on this. In addition to its appeal process, officials complained about “unelected judges” and “judicial overreach” and may contest the whole process. The only thing that continues to be a certainty is that uncertainty will drive global markets for the foreseeable future.

Susan Stone 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.

– ref. Trump’s global trade plans are in disarray, after a US court ruling on ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs – https://theconversation.com/trumps-global-trade-plans-are-in-disarray-after-a-us-court-ruling-on-liberation-day-tariffs-257812

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Maree Payne, Senior Research Fellow, Indigenous Land & Justice Research Group, UNSW Sydney

May 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the national inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

Conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the inquiry’s final report was called Bringing Them Home. It demonstrated the extent and trauma of First Nations child removal practices across Australia over more than a century.

Our archival research paints a dramatic picture of how the Howard government set out to minimise the impact of the report, despite the genuine outpouring of national grief.

National reckoning

The 1990s in Australia was marked by an unprecedented national focus on the impact of colonisation on Indigenous Australians. This was part of a global trend using truth-seeking models to examine contemporary and historical injustices.

The decade included a number of landmark events:

• the formation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation
• the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
• the High Court Mabo decision
• Paul Keating’s Redfern Speech.

The establishment of a human rights inquiry investigating the Stolen Generations in 1995 promised a reckoning with this largely unknown history.

Government resistance

However, the election of the Howard government in 1996 had an immediate effect on the nation’s trajectory towards “coming to terms” with its past.

After some early resistance, cabinet eventually agreed to make a whole-of-government submission, broadly outlining its Indigenous affairs priority:

to address current disadvantage in health, housing, employment and education.

It stressed compensation for Indigenous child removal was

inappropriate and unacceptable.

The Bringing Them Home report contained stories and a history that shocked many Australians. Nonetheless, then Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, John Herron argued in 2000 the inquiry was deeply flawed, and

there was never a ‘generation’ of stolen children.

No apology

The government tried to discredit the final 1997 report, including its core finding the removal of Aboriginal children constituted genocide.

Its formal response rejected the key recommendations of a commonwealth apology and compensation for members of the Stolen Generations.

However, the government was willing to act on three areas that presented “opportunities for a positive response”:

• access to records
• reunion assistance
• mental health strategies.

Several of the report’s recommendations were designed to promote self-determination and establish minimum national standards in Indigenous child welfare, adoption and juvenile justice.

One tactic employed by the Howard government was to push responsibility for implementing the recommendations onto the states and non-government organisations, such as churches, which had been involved in child removal.

Therefore, a national legislative response was not forthcoming, with the government arguing this would represent a

significant intrusion by the Commonwealth in state and territory responsibilities.

Family reunion

Herron had ministerial oversight of the government’s response to the report. The prime minister set the tone, saying it would be done in a “practical and realistic way”.

Herron recommended to cabinet family reunion and counselling services should form the overarching theme of the government’s response. This focus left the broader systemic issues identified in Bringing Them Home unaddressed.

While acknowledging “some of the disadvantages suffered by Indigenous people can be attributed to policies of child removal”, the background paper accompanying Herron’s cabinet submission also outlined some of the government’s early criticisms of the report, describing it as

very emotive, and focused only on one view of the separation process.

Partial response

The government’s response package was initially costed at A$54 million over four years. It included:

• an oral history project to provide some form of acknowledgement
• funding for indexing of archival records
• enhanced family reunion services
• Indigenous mental health workers.

These measures undoubtedly addressed real needs identified in Bringing Them Home. However, they were a partial response to the broad-ranging findings of the report.

Herron argued facilitating family reunion was the “most pressing” issue identified by the inquiry, which had indeed noted that

assisting family reunions is the most significant and urgent need of separated families.

But it is an oversimplification to single out this issue as “the most pressing”.

ATSIC was unequivocal in its feedback, saying the response would “severely disappoint Indigenous people”. It accused the government of not giving the report “serious attention”.

Herron insisted the government had “listened to Indigenous people”. However, we were unable to identify any archival evidence of consultation with Indigenous communities in formulating the response package.

Legacy

The Healing Foundation commissioned a recent report on the unfinished business of Bringing Them Home. It identified the lack of a whole-of-government policy response that centred on the needs and rights of Stolen Generations survivors and descendants, as a key failing.

This is unsurprising given the approach by the Howard government was carefully designed to limit the impact of Bringing Them Home.

Despite this, the inquiry achieved a significant legacy. This includes greater public awareness of the Stolen Generations, apologies from all Australian parliaments, and the establishment of compensation schemes, now in place in most Australian states and territories.

This was despite the Howard government’s sustained rejection of such measures 30 years ago when the nation was first seeking to come to terms with the wrongs of the past.

.

Anne Maree Payne received seed funding from the School of Humanities & Languages, UNSW Sydney, to undertake the archival research on which this article is based.

Heidi Norman receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. 30 years ago Australia confronted its Stolen Generation past – then the Howard government blew it – https://theconversation.com/30-years-ago-australia-confronted-its-stolen-generation-past-then-the-howard-government-blew-it-257447

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Woodley, Lecturer and Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University

Last week, organisations from Australia’s online industries submitted a final draft of new industry codes aimed at protecting children from “age-inappropriate content” to the eSafety commissioner.

The commissioner will now decide if the codes are appropriate to be implemented under the Online Safety Act.

The codes aim to address young people’s access to pornography, high-impact violence, and material relating to self-harm, suicide and disordered eating.

However, the draft codes may have unintended consequences. There is a real risk they may further restrict access to materials about sex education, sexual health information, harm reduction and health promotion.

Social media can operate as a powerful medium to teach teens and young people sexual information.

Social media campaigns (some government funded) target rising rates of sexual violence. They also disseminate important sexual health information.

What are the industry codes?

The eSafety commissioner is in the process of introducing codes of practice for the online industry “to protect Australians from illegal and restricted online content”. The Phase 1 codes, aimed at illegal content such as child sexual exploitation material, came into effect last year.

Now the commissioner is looking at Phase 2. These are designed to prevent young people from accessing “inappropriate” but not illegal content. They will do this via age-assurance mechanisms and by filtering, de-prioritising, downranking and suppressing content.

The codes will apply to operating systems, various internet services, search engines and hardware, such as smartphones and tablets.

Tech companies will have more power (and responsibility) to remove content and suspend users. Companies that don’t follow the codes risk fines of up to US$49.5 million (around A$77 million).

Suppression of sexual health content

The idea of using technology to restrict online content by age is problematic. The Australian government itself has deemed that age-assurance technologies are not ready to be used. State-of-the-art software has shown racial and gendered bias.

And digital platforms have a poor track record of governing sexual media.

International human rights organisations, including the United Nations, have warned that automated content moderation is being used to censor sex education and consensual sexual expression.

Research shows many platforms tend to remove or suppress content about drag queens, trans rights, sexual racism, body positivity and sex worker safety.

At the same time, they allow health misinformation and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ people.

Sexual health organisations and educators already face challenges using social media to communicate with key audiences, including LGBTQ+ communities. These include having their content made less visible (“shadowbanning”) or outright removed.

Unintended consequences

Content moderation policies are already very restrictive. To enforce them, platforms use nudity and pornography detection software that is often biased toward heteronormative standards.

For example, Google’s computer vision software has previously relied on word databases that link “bisexuality” with “pornography”, “sodomy” with “bestiality”, and “masturbation” with “self-abuse”.

Many users currently use “algospeak”. This is language designed to avoid the notice of the algorithms that may flag content as inappropriate, often involving tweaks such as using emojis or “seggs” or “s&x” instead of “sex”.

The government recognises the power of social media. It has committed more than A$100 million towards Our Watch (a leading organisation advocating against violence against women) and its teen-focused social media initiative The Line.

Another A$3.5 million has gone to the Teach Us Consent organisation. This group creates social media content for teens and young people about consent, healthy relationships, pornography and sex.

Like the looming youth social media ban, the proposed industry codes may undermine the government’s own efforts to reduce gender-based violence.

Sex education and health promotion

Social media platforms try to separate health information from general sexual content. For example, they may aim to allow nudity in cases like childbirth, breastfeeding, medical care or protests.

However, evidence suggests these exceptions are currently almost impossible to moderate accurately. They rely on a distinction between sex education and sexual media that is blurry at best.

In reality, sexuality education is not simply technical information about infections, sexual dysfunction or medical care. Sexual imagery plays an important role in sexual health promotion. Young people respond well to visual methods of communication and learning.

Likewise, the importance of pleasure has been long recognised in HIV prevention, safer sex and violence prevention efforts. Industry codes should recognise sexual media as a potential medium for conducting sex education and promoting sexual and reproductive rights.

Governments in many countries are moving to restrict sexual information and health services. This includes efforts to criminalise abortion, limit access to trans health care and prevent comprehensive sex education.

In this context, access to online health promotion and sex education content is even more vital.

Ensuring access to sexual health material

The industry codes are intended to protect. However, they risk endangering the ability of Australians to access essential information.

This is especially important for the many young people who do not have access to comprehensive sexuality and reproductive health information at home or school.

To uphold sexual rights to information, privacy and expression, the codes must shift away from simply giving platforms an incentive to detect and suppress all sexual content.

Instead, the codes should ensure non-discriminatory access and require platforms to promote material that supports sexual health, rights and justice. In practice, this necessitates careful consideration of content in context.

This task might seem time consuming, resource heavy and difficult for regulators and platforms alike. But the implications of content suppression are too dire to overlook.

In our view, the codes should be paused until they are able to balance protection with rights to information.

Giselle Woodley has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council via Discovery Project DP190102435 ‘Adolescents’ perceptions of harm from accessing online sexual content’ and the ARC’s Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. She currently receives funding under Discovery Project ID: DP250102379: Teen-informed strategies to counter sexual image abuse and sextortion. She is a co-founder of Bloom-Ed, a Relationships and Sexuality Education advocacy group, whose views are not expressed here. Giselle would like to thank Dr Elena Jeffreys and Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland for their contributions to this article.

Kath Albury receives funding from the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship scheme, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society; and FORTE, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare. She has previously received funding from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. She is a current member of pro-bono advisory groups for ASHM, Scarlet Alliance and UNESCO.

Zahra Stardust has previously received funding from the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (for a project on Rainbow Capitalism, Pinkwashing and Targeted Advertising); FORTE, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (for a project on LGBTQ Digital Sexual Health); from Google Asia Pacific (for a project on AI-related Image-Based Abuse); and from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society (for projects on Alternative Sexual Content Moderation, Sexual Surveillance and the Political Economy of Sextech). She previously worked as a policy advisor for ACON (NSW’s leading HIV and LGBTI health organisation) and Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association.

– ref. Sexual health info online is crucial for teens. Australia’s new tech codes may threaten their access – https://theconversation.com/sexual-health-info-online-is-crucial-for-teens-australias-new-tech-codes-may-threaten-their-access-257645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The Liberals, still reeling from their crushing 2025 election defeat and following with brief split in the Coalition, have a new frontbench and their eyes turning to the long road of rebuilding.

New leader Sussan Ley stresses the importance of the Liberals “meeting people where they are” and the party represents modern Australia.

But what that will actually look like for the party is still an open question. To talk about this uncertain future we’re joined by the newly-minted Shadow Assistant Minister for Education, Early Learning and Mental Health, Zoe McKenzie.

McKenzie was elected to the Melbourne electorate of Flinders in 2022. Her seat encompasses the Mornington Peninsula, mixing urban and rural areas. At the May election she held off a Climate 200-funded teal challenger.

On the Liberal Party’s commitment to net-zero by 2050 – which is likely to come up for debate this term – McKenzie says she thinks net-zero is “a given”.

It’s where the markets are heading. It’s our responsibility as a developed economy to contribute to the decarbonisation of the planet. I went to COP-27 a few years back, and you can see that the world’s markets, investment markets, research and development markets have all moved into preparing for a net-zero environment and Australia will be part of that. I do think, though, people are right to say, please don’t take away our manufacturing base.

I am confident that net zero is here to stay. But you cannot disconnect it from what it says about the energy market, energy security, and the future of Australian industry. We’ve got to keep this as an investment rich country.

On the party’s issues with the women’s vote, while McKenzie says the Liberals should look at “all options” she still has some concerns with the idea of quota’s,

I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that we must look at all options. I am fearful for what happens if a woman is selected by the operation of a quota and whether she will feel she has deserved her place there and or whether it will be asserted that she only got there because of a quota.

Asked if Labor’s introduction of quotas is proof they can work, McKenzie says,

Labor sacrificed a generation of talented Labor men to get to 50-50.

That sacrificed generation coincided with our many years of successful leadership of this nation. They are now though, because of that decision and because of the sacrifice that was made, and because of the way they went about it, they are in the enviable position of attracting talented, capable women for election, routinely, for each and every seat.

The Liberal Party, it tends, by its very nature, to preference people who have been able to devote a significant amount of time, often while in your 20s or 30s, to both party and community events. […] It will favour men. It will favour women who don’t have their own biological children, or it will favour women who can afford high quality in-home help. So we are not getting the breadth of women we need presenting for pre-selection and we are going to have to think out of the box.

On the rise of the teals, McKenzie’s looks to global examples to explain why two-party systems are changing,

I’m not sure yet whether teal is here to stay but what I do know is that we have moved well beyond the paradigm when I was a kid, which is when it was a 40-40-20 voting bloc. We all fought over that 20 in the middle. It now looks like the 30-30-40 pattern is here to stay.

That’s a message for all of us, in fact, to do better. So I should say, though, this is not unique to Australia. The demise of the two-party system can be observed worldwide.

If you look at the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats remain, but some would say they remain in name only. They have both morphed significantly as political movements. The Labour and Tory parties in the UK have both evolved over time.

On the Liberal’s lack of appeal to younger Australians McKenzie highlights what went wrong and why the party must do better with those voters,

We hadn’t explained to them the basics of home ownership, let alone what a tax deduction on your interest payments on your first mortgage might look and feel like. If you’re 18, 19, 20, your first mortgage still feels 10 to 15 years away.

We didn’t do enough, I think, to talk about their lives, to understand their lives and their aspirations and how Liberal policy was going to make their life easier. We must do a better job of that […] because the average voter now is either Gen Z or a millennial, no longer Gen X, which is my generation, or boomers above.

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.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Zoe McKenzie on everything that went wrong and whether a gender quota could help the Liberals – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-zoe-mckenzie-on-everything-that-went-wrong-and-whether-a-gender-quota-could-help-the-liberals-257729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander M. Hynd, Lecturer, Korean Politics/International Relations, The University of Melbourne

On June 3, South Koreans will head to the polls to choose the country’s new president. The election may draw to a close one of the most chaotic and contentious periods in the country’s post-1987 democratic era.

South Korea has been embroiled in a political crisis since December, when former President Yoon Suk Yeol disastrously declared martial law.

Yoon ordered security forces to block lawmakers from entering the National Assembly, leading to a dramatic late night confrontation. His unconstitutional decree was overturned after just six hours.

The fall-out was equally dramatic: Yoon was impeached and removed from office in a drawn-out process that was not finally resolved until April.

This period coincided with massive street demonstrations both opposing and supporting Yoon, a far-right assault on a courthouse and a physical stand-off between investigators and Yoon’s personal security team.

The country, meanwhile, has cycled through three short-lived caretaker leaders.

With weak economic growth and high costs of living, in addition to an equally challenging security environment, South Korea is in desperate need of bold and effective leadership.

Who are the candidates?

The Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung is the clear frontrunner to be the next president, after finishing a close second in the previous 2022 election.

Recent polling put the veteran left-leaning politician at around 49% support as the race entered the final week.

This is a double-digit lead over his main conservative opponent, Kim Moon-soo, polling at 35%. Another conservative candidate, Lee Jun-seok, is polling at 11%. Notably, for the first time since 2007, there are no female candidates standing to be president.

The high levels of support for Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire among the public to repudiate Yoon’s martial law declaration.

Kim, the labour minister in Yoon’s administration, has apologised for December’s declaration. But his opponents have continued to question him about it.

Kim’s challenge has been to build a coalition of moderates and mainstream conservatives who firmly opposed the martial law declaration, while also winning support from those who believe far-right conspiracy theories around election fraud. Yoon, the former president, is continuing to promote these narratives.

Lee’s compelling background

Lee Jae-myung’s personal story has uplifting parallels with South Korea’s own history of economic and political development.

Lee was born into poverty; the exact date of his birth is not known. He worked in factories from a very young age and permanently injured his left arm in an industrial accident when he was still a child.

Lee went on to earn a scholarship to study law and, by the late 1980s, had established himself as a labour lawyer and activist.

This activist image was highlighted when he live-streamed himself dramatically scaling a fence to enter the National Assembly and vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration in December. He has previously compared himself to populist, progressive US Senator Bernie Sanders.

More recently, however, he has moderated his political rhetoric and policy platform to appeal to centrists and even some conservative voters.

This shift may also help shield Lee from the “red-baiting” claims left-leaning South Korean candidates typically face from conservative opponents that they are “communists”, “pro-China”, or “pro-North Korea”.

But Lee is also plagued by legal troubles, including corruption charges linked to a land development project. These charges, frequently highlighted by his opponents, risk derailing his administration if he wins the election.

What are the main issues?

Some international commentators have focused on how the next president will handle North Korea. South Koreans, however, are more interested in the candidates’ plans to fix the country’s troubled economy.

Lee Jae-myung has pledged to immediately establish an emergency economic taskforce if he takes office.

There has also been a vigorous debate over South Korea’s future energy policy. Kim favours expanding nuclear energy production to around 60% of the country’s energy mix. Lee has voiced safety concerns about nuclear power, arguing “the era of building more reactors should come to an end”.

Additionally, questions remain over potential constitutional reform to end South Korea’s so-called “imperial presidency” system, which has been blamed for centralising too much power in the hands of the president.

The system dates back to the rewriting of the constitution following mass protests in 1987. This established direct presidential elections and a single, five-year term.

Both Lee and Kim support changing this to a four-year, two-term presidential system, similar to the United States.

Big challenges lie ahead

On the international stage, the new leader will face an uphill battle negotiating with US President Donald Trump over his punitive tariffs. Trump imposed 25% tariffs on South Korean goods in April, but lowered them temporarily to 10% until early July.

Before his impeachment, Yoon was widely reported to be practising his golf skills to attempt to find common ground with Trump, much as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did.

The new leader will also face massive challenges bringing South Korean society together in the current climate. Political polarisation and the spread of disinformation worsened under Yoon’s presidency – and these trends will be hard to reverse.

Alexander M. Hynd 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.

– ref. After a chaotic 6 months, South Koreans will elect a new president – and hope for bold leadership – https://theconversation.com/after-a-chaotic-6-months-south-koreans-will-elect-a-new-president-and-hope-for-bold-leadership-257348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua McLeod, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University

Few sports have witnessed a transformation as dramatic as darts in recent years.

From its origins as a pub game stereotypically played with cigarette and beer in hand, darts is now serious business.

With surging television ratings and huge demand for live events, the growth of darts continues to leave many sports looking on in envy.

There has been a combination of factors at play – not least one exceptionally prodigious teenager. Before discussing those factors, it’s worth taking a closer look at the numbers.

Becoming big business

Darts sits alongside a select few sports to have achieved significant commercial growth over the past decade.

While not at the scale of sports such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Formula 1, the rise of darts has been prolific.

In the United Kingdom, a record-breaking peak of 3.7 million viewers watched the 2024 Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Championship final. It was Sky Sports’ highest-ever non-soccer broadcast.

In addition to the PDC World Championship – the sport’s premier knockout event – viewership records were also broken across the 2024 Premier League Darts season, a league-format competition featuring weekly fixtures between top-ranked players.

On the UK’s Sky Sports, the 15 most-watched nights in the competition’s history all occurred that year.

The PDC World Championship and Premier League Darts sit alongside the World Matchplay as the “Triple Crown” of most important darts events.

Outside the UK, darts viewership also continues to grow.

The Netherlands remains a strong and expanding heartland, while in Germany, viewership for the World Championship final has increased eightfold since 2008.

In Australia, precise viewing figures are not widely available, but the Foxtel Group’s landmark four-year deal with the PDC in 2023 suggests rising demand.

Surging audiences are translating into significantly larger broadcast deals.

In 2025, Sky Sports reportedly outbid Netflix to secure a new £125 million (A$260.3 million) deal for exclusive UK coverage of the PDC for 2026–30. That was double the size of the previous deal.

In contrast, many other sports face stagnation or even sharp declines in media rights value.

For instance, the UK Super League rugby’s rights on Sky Sports fell from £40 million (A$83.3 million) per season in 2021 to £21.5 million (A$44.5 million) in 2024.

Similarly, in soccer, the French Ligue 1’s TV deal with DAZN collapsed due to underwhelming subscriber numbers. Meanwhile, ESPN walked away from its long-standing agreement with Major League Baseball after unsuccessfully trying to cut its US$550 million (A$848 million) annual payment down to $200 million (A$309 million).

Prize money in darts has also exploded.

Next year, the winner of the two-week long World Championship will bank £1 million (A$2.08 million) – doubling this year’s purse.

The prize money was £60,000 (A$124,960) in 2005, representing a 1,567% increase over 20 years.

Tickets are also hot property. Premier League and World Championship sessions often sell out within minutes worldwide: the UK, Bahrain, New York and even Wollongong have become key stops in darts’ international calendar.

The recipe for success

Like Formula 1 and the UFC, darts benefits from being privately operated.

Without the typical bureaucracy and conflicting interests seen in many traditional sport governing bodies, the PDC can respond more quickly to audience preferences and market opportunities.

This streamlined, commercially driven approach has been key to darts’ growth.

The sport has been expertly tailored to modern audiences.

One of darts’ best-known selling points is the live event experience. The entertainment-first approach is known for loud music, the showmanship of player walk-ons, fancy dress from the crowd and yes, often plenty of alcohol.

The lines are blurred between sport and party and fans love it.

Culturally, darts is seen by many as fun, relatable, and rooted in working-class culture. After all, its heritage is in the pub.

Darts is ideally suited to modern sport media consumption habits: PLD matches last only 20–30 minutes and the up-close TV product works perfectly for social media highlight clips.

It is also one of the few sports where women compete directly against men.

This adds another layer of interest for fans and has helped elevate stars such as Fallon Sherrock, who made headlines in 2019 by becoming the first woman to win a match at the PDC World Championship, eventually reaching the final 32.

A prodigy emerges

The so-called “Littler Effect” has given darts’ profile a significant boost.

The emergence of talented teenager Luke Littler has broken new ground for the sport and drawn global interest.

The English prodigy, who has quickly risen to fame, is by far the sport’s biggest star, but it would be unfair to say darts is a one-man band.

Luke Humphries and Michael van Gerwen enjoy significant profiles while Phil Taylor is regarded as the sport’s greatest player. Australia’s Simon “The Wizard” Whitlock also forged a successful career.

There is also colourful two-time world champion Peter Wright.

Where to from here?

The success of darts reveals much about modern sports audiences and their preferences.

Darts does not rely on traditional ideas of athletic excellence, nor does it fit the Olympic ideal.

Yet, darts is thriving while many traditional sports are stagnating.

Darts’ success stems from remaining authentic to its working-class roots while evolving into an engaging commercial product suited for television, short-form content and digital media.

For darts to fully achieve its global potential, the next step has to be continued international growth. Although it has grown steadily in markets like Australia and throughout Asia, the UK remains darts’ dominant base.

As the global sports marketplace becomes more fragmented and competitive, darts is well positioned to continue growing.

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.

– ref. From working class pubs to sold-out stadiums: how darts has become a major international sport – https://theconversation.com/from-working-class-pubs-to-sold-out-stadiums-how-darts-has-become-a-major-international-sport-254807

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vinuli Withanarachchie, PhD candidate, College of Health, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then expectant mothers don’t quite make it to the delivery suite on time – requiring specialised care from emergency medical services (EMS).

This can happen when babies come early, when the mother-to-be is in denial, or when they simply don’t know they are pregnant. These out-of-hospital births can increase the risks for both mother and child.

While there haven’t been any New Zealand-specific studies, data from Norway and Ireland show infant mortality rates are two to three times higher for unplanned out-of-hospital births compared to those in medical facilities.

In 2024, Hato Hone St John, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest ambulance service, responded to 2,745 obstetric emergencies. This accounted for 0.9% of all ambulance patients – similar to comparable countries such as Australia and the United States.

In our new research, we surveyed Hato Hone St John ambulance personnel to better understand their experiences attending unplanned out-of-hospital births. Although such events are rare, personnel must be prepared to provide care for mothers and newborns during any clinical shift.

The 147 responses we received highlighted the need for ongoing and targeted training for staff as they balance supporting the safe arrival of a newborn with patient and whānau-centered care.

Navigating the unknown

EMS personnel reported being dispatched for reports of abdominal or back pain in female patients, only to encounter an unanticipated imminent birth upon arrival.

In many of these cases, patients were unaware of their pregnancies and had received no prior antenatal care. This left EMS personnel to lead labour and birth care without crucial information about gestational age or potential complications. As one paramedic explained:

The call was for non-traumatic back pain. The patient had a cryptic pregnancy and was not aware she was pregnant until I informed her that she was in labour. I was the senior clinician in attendance, we were 25 minutes to a maternity unit that didn’t have surgical facilities and a [neonatal unit].

In some situations, EMS personnel attended teenage patients who were in denial of their pregnancies or fearful it would be discovered by their families.

Attending to the mother’s emotional needs, respecting her dignity and navigating family dynamics compounded existing challenges to providing care. Another paramedic explained:

Attended an 18-year-old that did not know or was in denial that she was pregnant. She had the baby on her own in the bathroom. The parents came home during the birth, and she was too scared to tell them and kept the baby quiet by nursing her. She called an ambulance from the bathroom and told them she didn’t want the parents to know.

Practical challenges

Complex births, medical emergencies and limited specialised neonatal equipment required EMS to improvise in such cases. While some focused on skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby, others prepared makeshift blankets using things such as plastic clingfilm to keep their newborn patients warm. An intensive care paramedic said:

I needed to “chew” through the cord with the scissors provided, which was frustrating given the patient was under CPR. Also, I wanted to keep the patient warm as the house was cold and it was winter, so I used the Gladwrap in the ambulance. The roll I had was a new one and very difficult to start up as it shredded. I ended up using the patient’s industrial size wrap with a plastic blade attached.

The distance to a specialised newborn care facility, as well as rules around who could be transported and when, meant mothers and babies sometimes needed separate transport. This distressed mothers and added pressure to already stressful situations. One North Island-based paramedic explained:

The baby was flown to [a tertiary hospital] – great for the baby but very distressing for mum as she had to be transported by road.

Detailed accounts emerged of EMS providing labour and birth care in remote and poorer areas, such as homes with no electricity or heating, far away from hospital facilities and with no back up readily available. Another South Island-based paramedic said:

It was 2 degrees outside and the front door was open. The house was cold, and the mother was standing in the bathroom with the [newborn] lying on the cold floor. I called for backup as the mother had a severe postpartum haemorrhage, and the [newborn] required resuscitation. I was not sent assistance and had to manage the mother and [newborn] by myself during a 15-minute drive to the birth suite at hospital.

The stories shared by New Zealand ambulance personnel not only described their critical role in providing care during labour and birth, but also highlighted a gap in care for women not accessing routine antenatal and birth services.

Training and support needed

Studies from Norway, Australia, the US and the United Kingdom have previously highlighted the need for dedicated EMS training and equipment to support out-of-hospital births.

Change is happening in New Zealand. Recent updates to Hato Hone St John guidelines, resources and training, including education on cultural considerations related to birth, aim to prepare EMS personnel for these unpredictable and high-risk scenarios.

Ongoing training and education will be critical to support clinicians to confidently address birth emergencies while continuing to deliver patient and whānau-centered care.

Vinuli Withanarachchie works for Hato Hone St John.

Bridget Dicker is an employee of Hato Hone St John.

Sarah Maessen works for Hato Hone St John.

Verity Todd receives funding from the Heart Foundation NZ and Health Research Council NZ. She is affiliated with Hato Hone St John.

– ref. Sudden arrivals: NZ ambulance crews describe what it’s like when babies are born out of the blue – https://theconversation.com/sudden-arrivals-nz-ambulance-crews-describe-what-its-like-when-babies-are-born-out-of-the-blue-255965