Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Palmer, Lecturer in International Law, Griffith University

Just four months ago, Timor-Leste formally became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN).

This week, the tiny country took an unprecedented step: its judicial authorities appointed a prosecutor to examine the Myanmar military’s responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s believed to be the first time an ASEAN state has taken such an action against another member.

The case resulted from the persistence of a victims’ group, the Chin Human Rights Organisation, in pursuing justice for the Chin people, a minority group in Myanmar. In submitting the complaint, the head of the organisation expressed solidarity with Timor-Leste’s own historic efforts to secure justice and independence.

Timor-Leste authorities will now assess whether to bring charges against Myanmar’s military leaders, including junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Any prosecutions would be on the basis of “universal jurisdiction”. This is a legal principle that allows domestic courts to hear cases alleging international crimes, regardless of where the crimes occurred, or the nationality of the victims or perpetrators.

Limitations of international courts

This week, a major study of 23 conflicts around the globe said the international legal system designed to protect civilians is at a “breaking point”. Observers are also asking whether the United Nations has any future at all.

It has long been clear that international courts have limited efficacy in prosecuting cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Critics argue the International Criminal Court (ICC) has engaged in selective prosecutions, is too slow and has weak enforcement powers. In the past 20 years, the court has heard 34 cases and issued just 13 convictions.

However, proponents of the court say it has been unfairly maligned and targeted, including by the Trump administration, which imposed sanctions on it last year.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), meanwhile, can hold states accountable for crimes, but not individuals.

Both the ICC and ICJ have investigations underway on Myanmar, but they deal with crimes allegedly committed against the Rohingya minority group before the coup. The ICC case covers incidents committed partly in Bangladesh.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor asked the court’s judges to issue an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlang in November 2024. More than a year later, a decision has yet to be made.

Challenges for domestic courts

In this environment, universal jurisdiction could play a more important role. The United Nations has implicitly recognised this by establishing investigative mechanisms for Syria and Myanmar that gather evidence for future prosecutions in domestic, regional or international courts.

Many states have laws that allow them to prosecute international crimes like torture, genocide or war crimes. What is lacking are resources to fund investigations and transparent criteria or guidelines for how to undertake them.

There are other challenges once cases are underway, too. For one, domestic courts have limited reach. Arrests are difficult, as high-level officials can rely on diplomatic immunity or just avoid the countries where they believe they could face prosecution or extradition.

Prosecuting even lower-level or mid-level perpetrators can be politically awkward. Cases can be expensive and practically difficult, especially when witnesses and evidence are mostly overseas.

The scale and complex nature of these crimes can also be challenging for domestic criminal courts that have limited experience with them.

And if trials go ahead, victims can still find justice elusive, even if the cases have broader strategic or symbolic aims.

Still, there have been successes. Nearly 10 years ago, the former president of Chad, Hissène Habré, was convicted of international crimes in Senegal. The case was tried using universal jurisdiction, driven by civil society networks.

More countries need to step up

This latest initiative in Timor-Leste comes after victim groups have tried many different countries to seek justice for the people of Myanmar. This includes Argentina, where arrest warrants were issued for Myanmar’s leaders, Turkey, and Germany.

In the Asia-Pacific, lawyers have also attempted to bring cases in Indonesia and the Philippines.

While European countries are increasingly using universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes, other countries have been less keen to take these cases on. For instance, some suggest Canada and Australia could do more to investigate war crimes cases, even though they both have the laws in place to do so.

This just leaves the heavy lifting of prosecutions to others, possibly in courts with more limited resources.

With atrocities continuing to be committed around the world, it’s become more vital than ever for governments to not just back international justice with strong words, but show a real commitment to investigating them at home.

Associate Professor Emma Palmer is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Australian Discovery Early Career Award (project number DE250100597) funded by the Australian Government. The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or Australian Research Council. She is also affiliated with the Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars.

– ref. With international law at a ‘breaking point’, a tiny country goes after Myanmar’s junta on its own – https://theconversation.com/with-international-law-at-a-breaking-point-a-tiny-country-goes-after-myanmars-junta-on-its-own-275089

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eve Vincent, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Macquarie University

Teeth are one of the most visible markers of poverty: structural circumstances that are individually borne.

In an essay for Aeon, US journalist Sarah Smarsh calls them “poor teeth”. She writes:

Often, bad teeth are blamed solely on the habits and choices of their owners, and for the poor therein lies an undue shaming […] Poor teeth […] beget not just shame but more poorness: people with bad teeth have a harder time getting jobs and other opportunities.

In the age of “whitened, straightened, veneered smiles”, the distance between ruined poor teeth and healthy, wealthy teeth is growing.

In 1970s Australia, when Medicare’s predecessor was designed, dental care was left out. Since 2014, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule has enabled children up to 17 years of age to access free dental care at most private clinics if they’re eligible for Medicare and part of a family that receives certain Australian Government payments.

“Dental into Medicare” was a key Greens policy in the 2025 federal election campaign. While this commitment to expanded coverage has stimulated public attention to the question of teeth and poverty in recent years, Grattan Institute researchers stated in late 2024 that “more than two million Australians avoid dental care because of the cost” and that “more than four in ten adults usually wait more than a year before seeing a dental professional”.

Peter Breadon, the institute’s health program director, argues that Australia’s public dental system is “underfunded” and “overwhelmed”.

Read more:
Why isn’t dental included in Medicare? It’s time to change this – here’s how

In July 2025, the ABC reported that around a third of Australians are eligible for free or low-cost public dental services.

These services receive some Commonwealth funding but are provided by state and territory governments. The ABC obtained data showing that while average wait time varies across states and territories, in some cases people have waited years to access dental care.

Left untreated, dental emergencies can result in hospital visits. Or worse.

The United Kingdom’s intensely conditional welfare system imposes a strict “work capability assessment” in a bid to limit access to disability benefits, as does Australia’s through a similar assessment tool.

A recent book memorialising the victims of the UK system includes details of a 57-year-old man found dead in his flat. His relatives discovered the lid of a shoebox in his cupboard holding two large molars and a pair of pliers.

Published in 2014, Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth documents her experiences of being poor, working low-wage, unstable jobs and raising her two children with her husband, who shares her precarious position in the US labour market.

In a voice that is direct, sassy, frustrated and funny, Tirado writes about the sex lives of poor people, the costly burdens of poverty (such as late payment fees), her coping mechanisms, the enjoyment she derives from smoking – and about teeth.

The book’s title has a clever double meaning: it’s about how fragile day-by-day existence is but also speaks to the shame surrounding poor teeth, which a hand shielding the mouth attempts to hide.

Tirado’s book began life as a post on an online forum she was reading to unwind after a “particularly gruelling shift” at one of her two jobs. Someone posted the question: “Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive?” Tirado’s extended response went viral; eventually, she was approached to write a book.

The late Barbara Ehrenreich supplied a short, generous foreword. She declared herself “waiting for this book” since the publication of her 2001 classic, Nickel and Dimed.

Ehrenreich contrasted her “brief attempt” to subsist on low-wage service and retail jobs with Tirado’s authentic dispatches from impoverished America, lending weight to the valorisation of experiential accounts of poverty over journalistic or scholarly perspectives.

Increasingly, people in poverty have challenged the presumption of academics and community sector advocates to mediate their perspectives, using digital platforms, social media accounts and publishing ventures to communicate their direct experiences, embedded knowledges and political demands directly to audiences. The persistent ethical dilemmas anthropologists and journalists must wrestle with, in terms of representing others’ lives, have become more heightened still.

Ehrenreich declared herself an outsider to the topic of contemporary poverty, Tirado the “real thing”. She concluded in her foreword, “But let me get out of the way now. She can tell this story better than I can.”

This is also the premise of the 2024 Australian collection Povo.

The storytellers in this book found their voices in workshops run across Western Sydney by Sweatshop Literacy Movement, and they write from direct experience.

Teeth are central to one especially compelling contribution.

“Plot twist!”, Victor Guan Yi Zhou’s story, revolves around the narrator’s tooth
gems, which he takes every opportunity to flash.

Got them at a salon… right after Mum and Dad kicked me out. Four of them. Two on the top canines. Two on each incisor. Crystal Swarovski. $150 all up. Each gem will help me manifest my dreams.

In the lead-up to the 2023 Budget, I attended a protest at Albanese’s electoral office. I went in solidarity: the protest was organised by the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union.

Speakers addressing the protest were on JobSeeker and the Disability Support Pension. They described their struggles to exist on miserly income support payments and shared their frustration about the hope Albanese’s election seemed at first to represent – hope that was by then fading.

Despite some marginal improvements to the JobSeeker payment over the past few years, Australia’s payment levels still remain below the poverty line.

At this protest, I met a JobSeeker recipient who was probably in her late fifties or early sixties. Fraser-era hostility to “dole bludgers” in Australia revolved around a masculine image of workshy youth. Today, researchers describe a JobSeeker recipient as “likely to be older, to be a woman and importantly to have […] a chronic illness or disabilities”.

I chatted with this woman about the two days a week she spends kneeling in the bush, tugging out weeds to fulfil her “mutual obligations”, the signature measure of the conditional welfare state.

I liked her hand-painted sign, “welfare not warefare”, and took a photo.

In the picture, her mouth is clamped tight. I admit I had noticed her chipped teeth.

* This is an edited extract, republished with permission, from Griffith Review 91: On the Money, edited by Carody Culver.

Eve Vincent 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. What our teeth reveal about the growing gap between rich and poor – https://theconversation.com/what-our-teeth-reveal-about-the-growing-gap-between-rich-and-poor-274519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher and Sustainable Future Lead, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

Australia is in a deep housing crisis.

The latest National Housing Supply and Affordability Council analysis shows the country is likely to fall more than a quarter-of-a-million homes short of the federal government’s target to build 1.2 million homes by 2029. Its data shows only around 938,000 dwellings are expected to be built in the five-year period, leaving a shortfall of about 262,000.

Another economic estimate suggests demand exceeds supply by 200,000 to 300,000 homes, pushing prices and rents higher as Australians compete for a limited stock of houses.

This gap between demand and supply is why many voices in policy and industry argue traditional ways of building houses are too slow and too expensive.

As Bunnings, Australia’s biggest hardware retailer starts selling tiny homes, it feels like a turning point.

But are backyard pods the answer to a national housing crisis?

Prefab and modular homes in Australia

In response to slow and costly traditional building, many in industry and government have pointed to modern solutions such as modular, prefab or even 3D-printed homes as a key part of the solution.

The idea is to make components or whole sections of homes in dedicated facilities and then assemble them quickly on site.

Recent government analysis shows some of these factory-based homes can be built up to 50% faster than conventional construction, helping speed housing delivery.

The market for prefab and modular buildings is growing in Australia and globally.

The Australian prefab construction sector is valued at A$12.91 billion and is forecast to grow by about 7.88% a year.

However, these methods account for less than 8% of the construction sector.

This is far below countries such as Sweden, where prefab makes up a majority of detached housing.

Read more:
A prefab building revolution can help resolve both the climate and housing crises

Bunnings’ pods: novel but not the solution

Bunnings has recently started selling flat-pack backyard pods that have captured attention.

The pods, small modular units costing from about $26,000, can be assembled in days.

At first glance, this looks like an affordable housing innovation. But the reality is more nuanced.

These pods are fundamentally temporary. Their size, layout and fit-out reflect short-term or secondary use rather than long-term residential living.

Beside this, many pods avoid full planning or building approval in some locations, which is a strong signal they are being treated, legally, as ancillary structures.

They are most useful as offices, studios, guest rooms or extra space but unlikely to be suitable as permanent homes for families.

While the price is eye-catching, it does not include site preparation, ground works, connections for power and water, or any compliance costs, all of which can add substantially to the final price.

Buyers would also need somewhere to put the pod – either owning land, or being able to use someone else’s.

Permits and approvals may be required depending on the location and intended use, further complicating the picture.

Bunnings has not said it is entering the housing market to help solve the national crisis. But its decision to partner with prefab manufacturers comes as major lenders and builders are embracing factory-built housing as part of broader affordability responses, and as analysts note growing consumer interest in faster, lower-cost housing options amid soaring property prices.

Why scale matters

The key to reducing housing costs through industrialised construction is scale.

When production levels are small, factories cannot spread fixed costs over many units.

This results in high prices, even if units can be completed quickly.

In countries where factory-built housing works at scale, companies build the same homes repeatedly. That allows workers to get faster and factories to spread the cost of specialised equipment across many homes. They also have strong supply chains for components and labour.

By comparison, Australia’s sector is still small and most manufacturers produce only a handful of units each year.

Without big volumes and steady demand, off-site building can’t unlock real cost reductions.

That said, Bunnings’ entry is noteworthy.

It shows mainstream retail channels see a business opportunity in modular building products. It may help raise public awareness of alternative construction methods in everyday Australian life.

What are the long-term fixes?

The housing challenge will not be solved by pods.

What is needed is much larger investment into these alternative methods of construction, from both state and federal governments, aligned with international partnerships that bring technology, expertise and industrial scale.

Countries that have succeeded in using factory-built homes at scale have done so through coordinated policy support, strong industrial strategies, workforce training and investment in manufacturing facilities.

Some also combine this with land reform, faster approvals and direct procurement of homes for public needs.

A way forward

Bunnings’ backyard pods may be an interesting new product line.

They can provide extra space and appeal to certain buyers but they are not a long-term housing solution for most Australians.

Bunnings is riding the shift toward factory-built housing but the real shift is bigger: Australia needs to build high-quality homes at scale, not just sell small pods.

Australia needs a dramatic expansion of factory-based building capacity, supported by policy, investment and a clear pathway from small prototypes to large-volume, high-quality homes for communities in need.

Dr Ehsan Noroozinejad has received competitive funding from both national and international organisations. His most recent funding, focused on integrated housing and climate policy, was awarded by the Australian Public Policy Institute (APPI). He is also a member of Standards Australia and ISO committees on prefabricated buildings.

– ref. Bunnings’ backyard pods won’t fix the housing crisis, but they signal a shift – https://theconversation.com/bunnings-backyard-pods-wont-fix-the-housing-crisis-but-they-signal-a-shift-275210

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celeste Rodriguez Louro, Associate Professor, Chair of Linguistics and Director of Language Lab, The University of Western Australia

Claims that artificial intelligence (AI) is on the verge of surpassing human intelligence have become commonplace. According to some commentators, rapid advances in large language models signal an imminent tipping point – often framed as “superintelligence” – that will fundamentally reshape society.

But comparing AI to individual intelligence misses something essential about what human intelligence is. Our intelligence doesn’t operate primarily at the level of isolated individuals. It is social, embodied and collective. Once this is taken seriously, the claim that AI is set to surpass human intelligence becomes far less convincing.

These claims rest on a particular comparison: AI systems are measured against individual human cognitive performance. Can a machine write an essay, pass an exam, diagnose disease, or compose music as well as a person? On these narrow benchmarks, AI appears impressive.

Yet this framing mirrors the limitations of traditional intelligence testing itself: cultural bias, and a reward for familiarity and practice. The rise of AI should therefore prompt more thought about what we mean by intelligence, pushing us to move beyond narrow cognitive metrics, and even beyond popular expansions such as emotional intelligence, toward richer, more contextual definitions.

Intelligence is not individual brilliance

Human cognitive achievements are often attributed to exceptional individuals, but this is misleading. Research in cognitive science and anthropology shows that even our most advanced ideas emerge from collective processes: shared language, cultural transmission, cooperation and cumulative learning across generations.

No scientist, engineer or artist works alone. Scientific discovery depends on shared methods, peer review and institutions. Language itself – arguably humanity’s most powerful cognitive technology – is a collective achievement, refined and modified over thousands of years through social interaction.

Studies of “collective intelligence” consistently show that groups can outperform even their most capable members when diversity of perspectives, communication and coordination are present. This collective capacity is not an optional add-on to human intelligence; it is its foundation.

AI systems, by contrast, do not cooperate, negotiate meaning, form social bonds or engage in shared moral reasoning. They process information in isolation, responding to prompts without awareness, intention or accountability.

Embodiment and social understanding matter

Human intelligence is also embodied. Our thinking is shaped by physical experience, emotion and social interaction. Developmental psychology shows that learning begins in infancy through touch, movement, imitation and shared attention with others. These embodied experiences ground abstract reasoning later in life.

AI lacks this grounding. Language models learn statistical patterns from text, not meaning from lived experience. They do not understand concepts in the way humans do; they approximate linguistic responses based on correlations in data.

This limitation becomes clear in social and ethical contexts. Humans navigate norms, values and emotional cues through interaction and shared cultural understandings we are socialised into. Machines do not.

A narrow slice of humanity

Proponents of AI progress often point to the vast amounts of data used to train modern systems. Yet this data represents a remarkably narrow slice of humanity.

Around 80% of online content is produced in just ten languages. Although more than 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, only a few hundred are consistently represented on the internet – and far fewer in high-quality, machine-readable form.

This matters because language carries culture, values and ways of thinking. Training AI on a largely homogenised data set means embedding the perspectives, assumptions and biases of a relatively small portion of the world’s population.

Human intelligence, by contrast, is defined by diversity. Eight billion people, living in different environments and social systems, contribute to a shared but plural cognitive landscape.

AI does not have access to this richness, nor can it generate it independently. The data on which it is trained stems from a highly biased sample, representing only a percentage of world knowledge.

The limits of scaling

Another issue rarely addressed in claims about “superhuman” AI is data scarcity. Large models improve by ingesting more high-quality data, but this is a finite resource. Researchers have already warned that models are approaching the limits of available human-generated text suitable for training.

One proposed solution is to train AI on data generated by other AI systems. But this risks creating a feedback loop in which errors, biases and simplifications are amplified rather than corrected. Instead of learning from the world, models learn from distorted reflections of themselves.

This is not a path to deeper understanding. It is closer to an echo chamber.

Useful tools, not superior minds

None of this is to deny that AI systems are powerful tools. They can increase efficiency, assist research, support decision-making and expand access to information. Used carefully and with oversight, they can be socially beneficial.

But usefulness is not the same as intelligence in the human sense. AI remains narrow, derivative and dependent on human input, evaluation and correction. It does not form intentions, participate in collective reasoning or contribute to the cultural processes that make human intelligence what it is.

The rapid progress of AI has generated excitement – and, in some quarters, exaggerated expectations. The danger is not that machines will out-think us tomorrow, but that inflated narratives distract from real issues: bias, governance, labour impacts and the responsible integration of these tools into society.

A category error

Comparing AI to human intelligence as though they are competing on the same terms is ultimately a category error. Humans are not isolated information processors. We are social beings whose intelligence emerges from cooperation, diversity and shared meaning.

Until machines can participate in that collective, embodied and ethical dimension of cognition – and there is no evidence they can – the idea that AI will surpass human intelligence remains more hype than insight.

Celeste Rodriguez Louro receives funding from Google.

Jennifer Rodger 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. Why comparisons between AI and human intelligence miss the point – https://theconversation.com/why-comparisons-between-ai-and-human-intelligence-miss-the-point-274621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Symons, Director of Research and Innovation, School of International Studies, Macquarie University

In the 1960s, major oil-producing nations formed a cartel to drive up the price of oil. It worked. For decades, nations in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have agreed to manage supply and raise prices.

Economists have long recognised cartel market power can bring accidental environmental benefits. By driving up prices, demand for polluting products drops. One recent analysis found OPEC’s actions had avoided 67 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between 1971 and 2021 – equivalent to around three years of global oil consumption.

There’s no OPEC for thermal coal. However, Australia and Indonesia together account for around two thirds of seaborne thermal coal exports. If these two nations began acting in tandem to end the approval of new mines, falling future supply would gradually increase prices.

Our recent research points out that a formal treaty to phase out new thermal coal mine approvals would not only bring climate benefits, but could also benefit national budgets, state royalties and regional jobs.

What we’re proposing blends climate action and self-interest. If restricting coal supply boosted prices, producer states would benefit from increased royalties. Owners and workers at existing mines would benefit from stabilising prices. Finally, the green energy transition would be protected from being undermined by a race to consume ultra-cheap coal.

In the 1970s, OPEC’s engineering of higher oil prices drove a shift to more fuel-efficient cars and triggered intense interest in alternative energy sources such as solar. In our time, solar, wind and energy storage have come of age. A treaty to end new coal mines would make the shift even more appealing.

What would this look like?

If Australia, Indonesia and others formed a new “Organisation for Coal Transition”, the environmental motivation wouldn’t be the only difference with OPEC. For a start, a much high share of oil is traded internationally than coal, as more countries have their own coal supplies.

But major coal importers such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan now depend on seaborne coal. These nations are committed to accelerating climate action overall and have shown signs of structural demand decline already. Stronger coal prices would spur on the change.

The limited number of major coal exporters also creates potential for cooperation. In 2024, Indonesia controlled almost half of global exports, while Australia’s share was nearly 20%. Projections. If South Africa and Colombia joined a treaty alongside Australia and Indonesia, they would together account for 80% of seaborne exports.

What’s more, a thermal coal export treaty would not be easy to undermine. It takes years to get new mines producing, and deepwater ports able to take coal carriers are limited.

Coal importers could reinforce this treaty, pledging to buy from treaty members alone. Japan and South Korea (which account for 20% of global coal imports) are both seeking a predictable energy transition. These countries have shown willingness to pay a green premium and are investors in existing mines.

Australia has no exit strategy

Despite efforts to close domestic coal plants, Australian policymakers have done nothing to limit coal mining and exports.

New South Wales and Queensland state governments still benefit significantly through royalties and regional jobs. Australia’s coal exports, mine expansion approvals and new applications show little sign of slowing.

This is an increasingly risky strategy. With profit margins falling from recent highs and shifting demand in key markets, the thermal coal industry risks a chaotic future for mining towns.

While policymakers are beginning to focus on transition challenges for a small number of coal mines slated to close, they have largely avoided active intervention. After the NSW Productivity Commission and Net Zero Commission recommended limiting new coal mine approvals, Premier Chris Minns described the idea as “irresponsible”.

A ban backed by industry?

For operators of existing mines, agreeing to limit expansion opportunities is a challenging proposition. But the longer-term benefits would be much clearer if it was coordinated with international competitors and supported by buyers.

The coal export sector is showing signs of shifting to a buyers’ market, as long-term demand plateaus and then declines. This puts exporters such as Australia, Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa at a clear disadvantage.

We’ve already seen the fallout of coal’s market-driven decline in the United States’ Appalachian region Repeating the same mistake would undermine regional communities.

If, however, the shift was well managed, it would be a crucial step towards a coordinated just transition.

Japanese, Chinese, South Korean, Indian and Singaporean firms hold major stakes in Australian and Indonesian coal projects. These investors would benefit if existing assets are safeguarded from oversupply. These same investors would likely rally against more forceful interventions to close existing mines or raise mining taxes.

Climate action for pragmatists

Thermal coal is still mined in almost 60 countries. But only 11 have new mines seeking approval. At the same time, key international importers such as China, India, the European Union, Japan and South Korea are actively aiming to cut coal imports. A no-new-mines treaty would meet countries where they are.

What we are proposing is a pragmatic way to advance climate action. Rather than shuttering existing mines and risking blowback, the treaty and its cartel logic would align Australia’s economic self-interest and its climate goals.

At the United Nations climate talks last year, federal Minister for Climate and Energy Chris Bowen supported efforts to map a fossil fuel phase-out. To date, there’s no clarity on how Australia, a fossil fuel export giant, could do that.

Firmly closing the door to new mines alongside other exporters could offer a way to do this while giving policymakers agency.

The approach we’re proposing wouldn’t end coal use. But it would solve several problems at a stroke – and take a big step forward in the energy transition.

Jonathan Symons is an ordinary member of WePlanet NGO.

Chris Wright is the Principal Analyst at CarbonBridge, a small consulting group aiming to bridge critical decarbonisation challenges. He has been involved in work around the UN climate negotiations for over a decade.

– ref. If Australia and Indonesia agreed to end new thermal coal mines, it could drive the green transition. – https://theconversation.com/if-australia-and-indonesia-agreed-to-end-new-thermal-coal-mines-it-could-drive-the-green-transition-271309

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney

Thriving Kids is back in the spotlight, after the states and territories agreed last week to match the federal government’s A$2 billion dollar investment.

The new national program is targeted at children aged 0-8 with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs. Under the proposal, many children currently supported through the NDIS would instead access assistance through this new “foundational supports” program.

But Thriving Kids has been clouded by uncertainty since its surprise announcement last August.

Nearly 500 submissions to a senate inquiry showed many families, advocates and service providers are anxious about the lack of clarity and fear kids could miss out on essential support.

On Tuesday, the government released a report that finally provides more detail.

This is welcome news. But important questions remain about how Thriving Kids will be rolled out, who for, and how the government will measure whether it’s working.

The new detail we have about Thriving Kids

In last week’s deal, the Commonwealth agreed to a delay, pushing back the start date to October.

Changes to NDIS access will not take effect until January 2028, allowing more time for service transition, workforce development and quality assurance.

The long-awaited report from the Thriving Kids Advisory Group has also set out guiding principles and key design features.

Thriving Kids will deliver a mix of universal supports – such as advice and skill-building for families – and targeted supports, “delivered where children live, learn and play”.

Precisely how these will be rolled out depends on each state and territory’s approach and will vary, building on existing services.

Targeted supports could involve group or one-on-one sessions with a specialist to work on particular skills (such as language or social interaction) and take place online or at home, school or childcare, depending on what the child and family needs.

There will be multiple pathways to get onto the program, such as referral from teachers, early childhood educators, and GPs. There will also be formal intake mechanisms but these are up to the states and territories to design.

Significantly, children will not need a formal diagnosis to receive support, removing a process that can be time-consuming, costly and inequitable.

Some children will likely still need a functional analysis of their support needs to access allied health professionals, such as occupational therapists, speech pathologists and physiotherapists.

Butler also indicated these targeted allied health supports would not involve gap fees – an issue that had raised concerns about access and equity.

Read more:
Occupational therapists tackle obstacles in the home, from support to cook a meal, to navigating public transport

Thriving Kids will include greater supports for parents. These aim to build self-advocacy skills, help them support their child’s development and navigate complex service systems.

The report also commits to evaluating the program. This means making sure public investment leads to meaningful improvements in children’s lives.

Importantly, children with significant and permanent disability will remain eligible for the NDIS, including those with developmental delay or autism.

What we still don’t know

Despite the additional information released this week, there are outstanding questions.

On Tuesday, Butler commented that “there was a life before the NDIS”, indicating a return to state-run service models for children.

Under Thriving Kids, families will not receive individualised budgets as they did under the NDIS, to purchase supports. Instead, children will access services commissioned and delivered by states and territories.

But this prospect may concern families who recall limited choice, long waiting lists and uneven quality prior to the establishment of the NDIS.

The report does not yet explain how Thriving Kids will avoid replicating these problems, particularly in areas where services are thin on the ground.

It does identify workplace development as critical, and there will be a focus on building disability capability across health services, early childhood education and care, and schools.

However, research consistently shows that workforce capability depends on more than individual skills. So training – while necessary – will not be enough by itself.

School leadership, staffing levels, time, resources and families’ capacity to navigate complex systems all shape whether inclusive practices are possible in practice.

Without addressing these factors, there is a risk responsibility will be shifted onto front-line workers without the conditions they need to succeed. These challenges are likely to be particularly acute in regional and rural areas.

What would make Thriving Kids successful?

In late 2025, we helped convene a policy forum involving 35 stakeholders from across education, health, early childhood and disability sectors to consider what would enable Thriving Kids to succeed.

This forum agreed that Thriving Kids must be holistic and universal, meaning it’s properly embedded wherever children live, play and learn. From the GP office to their school and beyond, there should be as few barriers to entry as possible.

It should be locally led, free of charge and neuro-affirming. This means there is recognition and support for the diverse ways people’s brains function – and this is valued as a strength, not a deficit.

Beyond these principles – which are shared by the Thriving Kids Advisory Group – success will depend on several practical commitments, ensuring:

• families, advocates and workers are involved in its design

• those working with children with disability are well-resourced and have the right skills, abilities and supports

• Thriving Kids and the NDIS work together, rather than operating as separate systems

• there are clear pathways for children to transition between services within Thriving Kids and, at age 9, into other supports or the NDIS, and

• funding is sustained to prevent geographic inequities.

Supports must be delivered in genuinely inclusive, mainstream settings. Otherwise, routinely withdrawing children from the places they live, play and learn for therapy risks reinforcing their exclusion, rather than participation.

The report’s guiding principles are encouraging. But whether Thriving Kids delivers meaningful change will hinge on the detail of its implementation.

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC, MRFF and Australian governments.

Molly Saunders 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. No diagnoses and no gap fees for physios and speechies. What else do we know about Thriving Kids? – https://theconversation.com/no-diagnoses-and-no-gap-fees-for-physios-and-speechies-what-else-do-we-know-about-thriving-kids-274951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Petousis-Harris, Associate Professor in Vaccinology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

When NZ First leader Winston Peters responded to the recent US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) by questioning whether New Zealand should continue funding it, he employed a familiar narrative.

Peters was not speaking in his capacity as foreign minister, but describing the WHO as an organisation full of “unelected globalist bureaucrats” nonetheless plays into fears that New Zealand’s membership is a risk to national sovereignty.

The rhetoric mirrors wider international narratives that frame global health cooperation as a threat to national interests.

But such fears are misplaced.

The WHO is a global advisory body and cannot override New Zealand law. No WHO instrument has any legal force in New Zealand unless it passes through a domestic implementation process like any other international treaty.

In practice, that means decisions are made in Wellington, through Cabinet and Parliament – not in Geneva.

The most recent amendments to the WHO’s international health regulations explicitly preserve national decision-making flexibility. The pandemic agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly last year, does the same.

Even during the COVID pandemic, WHO guidance remained advisory. Countries deviated constantly. New Zealand adopted measures stricter than WHO baselines in its elimination strategy by choice. Sovereignty was not lost in 2020. It was exercised.

Why the WHO is easy to attack

Part of the problem for the WHO is not that it is too powerful, but that it is oddly invisible.

As the scientific journal Nature recently noted, the WHO struggles to succinctly explain what it does, not because it does little, but because it does everything only a global public health authority can do. It is the sole body mandated to coordinate international public health action across borders, systems and income levels.

For low-income countries, the WHO is a lifeline providing access to affordable medicines and vaccines, quality and safety standards, laboratory capacity and expertise during disease outbreaks.

For high-income countries like New Zealand, the benefit is less visible but no less real. We rely on the WHO to limit the international spread of infectious diseases before they reach our borders through surveillance, data sharing and coordination that no single country can run alone.

The WHO’s signature achievement was the eradication of smallpox in 1980. It is often invoked nostalgically, as if it were a relic of a more cooperative era. In reality, that success defined the WHO’s modern role, shifting from time-limited eradication campaigns to permanent global surveillance and coordination.

During the COVID pandemic, the WHO provided early alerts, technical guidance and global intelligence, but it did not dictate New Zealand’s response. New Zealand’s elimination strategy was only possible because global information flowed early.

In recent years, the organisation has also strengthened its scientific backbone by embedding evidence review more deeply in decision making, including through its chief scientist’s office. This development rarely features in political attacks on the WHO, which tend to portray it as ideological rather than technical.

The irony is that the WHO is most effective when it is least visible. When surveillance works, outbreaks are smaller. When standards hold, medicines are safe. When coordination succeeds, crises are quieter.

That makes the WHO easy to caricature and to dismantle rhetorically.

What New Zealand gets from the WHO

Lost in this debate is a more important question. What would New Zealand lose by stepping back?

New Zealand benefits from global disease surveillance systems we could not replicate independently. For example, the global influenza surveillance and response system provides early warning, viral strain characterisation and vaccine reference data that feed directly into Medsafe decisions and national preparedness.

The WHO also sets international reference standards for vaccines, blood products and diagnostics that small regulators rely on to function efficiently and safely. Without that shared scientific baseline, New Zealand would have to either duplicate global work at extraordinary cost or accept greater uncertainty in regulatory decisions.

Then there is the Pacific. New Zealand’s role as a regional partner is amplified, not diluted, through the WHO.

During recent health emergencies in the Pacific, the WHO provided the coordination framework that allowed New Zealand and Australia to act quickly, coherently and legitimately.

Walking away would not make New Zealand more independent, but rather less effective at detecting, preparing for and responding to health threats.

The current resurgence of WHO hostility is not happening in isolation. It closely tracks developments in the United States, where public health institutions have become ideological targets.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, sovereignty has always been exercised through negotiated authority and collective responsibility, not isolation. Sovereignty is not the ability to opt out of reality. It is the ability to choose how you engage with it.

Information sharing, early warning and coordination are not signs of weakness. They are tools that allow national governments to act decisively in their own interests. In practice, sovereignty has never meant standing alone.

New Zealand’s COVID response was successful not because it ignored the WHO, but because it used global intelligence and then made its own choices – sometimes stricter, sometimes different – based on local conditions and values. That is a model to be defended, not caricatured.

Helen Petousis-Harris has recieved funding from GSK for expert advice. Her organisation receives research grants from industry. She is a member of the Aotearoa New Zealand National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NITAG). Helen does not work for, consult for, or receive funding from the World Health Organization. She is a former Chair of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) and has provided unpaid expert input to vaccine research initiatives, including work related to gonorrhoea vaccines.

– ref. WHO membership doesn’t threaten NZ’s sovereignty – walking away from it would – https://theconversation.com/who-membership-doesnt-threaten-nzs-sovereignty-walking-away-from-it-would-274844

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Farley, Assistant Lecturer, History, The University of Melbourne

In early January, authorities from South Australia’s Department of Primary Industries took to the streets of Adelaide on the hunt for a suspicious individual.

This individual had been spotted several times in the preceding weeks: they had red cheeks, brown wings and a black crest. It was a red-whiskered bulbul — a non-native bird, often seen around Sydney and Wollongong but not normally present in SA. Most Australians have likely never heard of a red-whiskered bulbul, much less seen one. But these birds have been living here since the First World War.

A spokesperson for the state explained why one little bird was causing such a fuss:

the red-whiskered bulbul is a high-risk pest bird that can damage SA’s vineyards and orchards by eating soft fruit, flower buds and insects, potentially reducing yields or causing crop failure

Is this bulbul really a harbinger of catastrophe for SA’s fruitgrowers? As a historian who researches introduced species in Australia, I suspect there is more at stake here than a few grapes and cherries.

Australia is a country forged through suspicion and fear of outsiders – a theme still prevalent in politics today. The bulbul first arrived here in the heyday of the White Australia Policy, and at the time, its Asian origin influenced the way Australians reacted to it. Could this history still influence attitudes towards it today?

First bulbuls were likely escapees

The red-whiskered bulbul’s “natural range” — where it lived before humans transported it elsewhere — includes much of India, southern China and Southeast Asia. But humans have brought it to places as far apart as Mauritius, Hawaii and Florida, as well as Australia.

Many of the birds Australians see every day have been introduced since the beginning of colonisation. This is true of domesticated birds such as chickens and pigeons, brought here on the First Fleet in 1788. In the 19th century, “acclimatisers” — naturalists who made it their mission to move species of animal and plant across the globe — successfully introduced several species of wild bird, such as blackbirds and common (or “Indian”) mynas.

Bulbul populations appeared almost simultaneously in both Sydney and Melbourne in the late 1910s. The bulbul was a popular pet at the time, and it’s probable these populations arose from aviary escapees. (This seems to be how the bird became established in the wild in other regions such as Florida.)

At first, the bird prompted not much more than curiosity. Some warned its penchant for fruit would lead it to becoming a pest; others praised it for eating troublesome insects such as aphids.

Bulbul scrutinised in era of xenophobia

The bulbul arrived during the zenith of the White Australia Policy, and its Asian origin meant it received extra scrutiny. As early as 1922, commentators wrote about the bird under headlines like “Another Asiatic Menace”, “Asiatic Settler” and “Immigrant Bird”. A 1926 headline in the Melbourne Herald was even more explicit: “Mr. Bulbul: Asiatic Bird That Has Beaten the Migration Laws”. Farmers and gardeners wrote to newspapers to complain of bulbuls eating their fruit, calling the birds “undesirables” and “foreigners in feathers”.

Some people thought these responses were prejudiced, and said so. One correspondent of Sydney’s Evening News called on readers to give “the bul-bul a fair go”. There was no denying that the bird was charming and had a beautiful song, even if it did eat fruit and flowers. Some commentators argued the bulbul had become “naturalised” – that it had earned a right to belong in Australia, regardless of origin.

There is something hopeful in all this. Even at a time of intense and wide-ranging racism and xenophobia, an Asian bird could still “become Australian”.

But these voices were always a minority. As the species was never protected by law, orchardists and gardeners encouraged each other to shoot and trap bulbuls whenever possible. By 1935, an employee of the Sydney Botanic Gardens was shooting up to six bulbuls a day.

Much ado about nothing?

Today, bulbuls still thrive around Greater Sydney, their range stretching north to Newcastle and south to Nowra. But Melburnians rarely see them, according to publicly accessible data on the Birdata and Ebird platforms. Perhaps they have been muscled out by growing numbers of aggressive and adaptable native birds such as noisy miners and pied currawongs.

Like the recent visitor to Adelaide, bulbuls have been spotted occasionally in SA since the 1940s, but decades can pass without a single bulbul being seen in the state. Whether or not bulbuls someday form a viable population in SA remains to be seen. But if they did, would it really be so bad?

We know that some non-native birds, like starlings, cause immense problems for farmers and do compete with native birds for nesting sites. However, there is very little peer-reviewed research on the red-whiskered bulbul in Australia. In 2014, ecologist Matthew Mo wrote there was no evidence that competition between bulbuls and native birds is “ecologically significant”. Even the evidence for its impact on fruit crops and role in spreading weeds remains scant. At best, we have a deficiency of research. At worst, we’re getting worked up about a relatively harmless bird, just because it’s not native.

White Australians of the interwar period let their xenophobic attitudes towards Asian humans distort their view of an Asian bird. I’m not arguing those worried about the bulbul today are doing so because they are personally racist. But today’s anxieties about the bulbul do seem acute, given the lack of any hard evidence. After all, native birds can do enormous damage to fruit crops, too.

In many cases, we’re right to be concerned about the ecological and agricultural impacts of non-native wildlife — I’m not here to defend rabbits, brumbies or feral cats. But that doesn’t mean every introduced species is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The story of the bulbul in Australia should give us pause. During more than a century on this continent it has been, at worst, a minor nuisance. When the intensity of our emotions does not match the evidence, we need to ask ourselves why.

Simon Farley 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. Can a bird be an illegal immigrant? How the White Australia era influenced attitudes to the bulbul – https://theconversation.com/can-a-bird-be-an-illegal-immigrant-how-the-white-australia-era-influenced-attitudes-to-the-bulbul-273347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

There has been a spate of articles and commentary in recent days calling on the Australian government to reduce spending.

Those calling for government cuts – mostly long-time advocates of smaller government – claim this would lower inflation, and as a consequence reduce interest rates.

In fact, claims that government spending is now a very large share of the economy are exaggerated.

So, what’s actually going on with government spending?

Federal government spending has fluctuated between 23% and 27% of the economy (gross domestic product or GDP) since the mid-1970s. The exception was a spike during the COVID pandemic. Its current level is not particularly unusual.

Straight talking from the RBA

The latest Reserve Bank forecasts estimate that “public demand” (spending by all governments, federal, state and local) expanded by 2.2% during the course of 2025. This was less than the growth in consumer spending (3.1%), home building (5.5%) and business investment (2.5%).

Nor has increased government spending on services led to a wage explosion in the public sector, which was a significant contributor to inflation in the 1970s.

Both public and private sector wages have been growing around an average of 3.5% in recent years.

Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank governor, does not try to direct the government on fiscal policy. Likewise, the government does not tell her what to do with interest rates.

The RBA prides itself on independence. Bullock is an independent agent and a direct speaker. If she thought government spending was the main force driving up inflation, she would say so.

Asked directly at her press conference this week, she instead cited other factors driving the pick-up in inflation:

• supply constraints in some sectors
• private demand being stronger than forecast
• greater-than-expected resilience in the global economy
• and easier financial conditions.

Under questioning in parliament, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has also said government spending has not contributed to the latest rate rise decision.

How do we want our taxes to be spent?

An increase in government spending without a matching increase in taxes would, in theory, fuel higher inflation. However, it would depend on the type and location of the spending.

Spending on foreign aid in other countries (or for that matter on US submarine shipyards) pushes up domestic demand by workers and companies in those locations – not in Australia.

It is entirely reasonable for the community to decide it wants a greater share of its resources to be spent collectively. It may want better health and child care or support for the disabled, for example. This is not inflationary if funded from taxes, as the taxes reduce other areas of demand.

The government budget has moved back into deficit this financial year, after two years in surplus. But the current position, and projections over the next decade, are for relatively small deficits by historical standards.

The projected deficits are also lower than in many comparable countries.

There is no correlation between high government spending and high inflation. Nordic countries with much larger governments than Australia, such as Norway and Sweden, have inflation rates of 3.2% and 0.3%, respectively. Turkey, with some of the lowest government spending and debt among advanced countries, has an inflation rate persistently higher than 30%.

Where government spending can lift prices

It could be argued that it would be better for Australia to return to budget balance more quickly. This would make us better placed to respond to a future recession.

But the current fiscal settings are not the primary cause of the uptick in inflation.

They are, at best, a contributor in some areas of the economy. For example, infrastructure spending during COVID caused prices to rise in construction, more generally.

Other things being equal, cutting government spending, while leaving taxes unchanged, could in theory help reduce inflation. It is incumbent on those arguing for this to specify precisely what they would cut.

To make a difference to inflation, cuts would need to be large, targeting areas where spending is growing the fastest, such as health, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, defence and natural disasters.

Trimming at the margins — for example, cutting public service budgets — would not help much. In any case, the federal government has reportedly already asked public service department heads to suggest where 5% could be cut.

In health, costs are rising mainly due to advances in medical technology, which then leads to government spending. This pressure is hard for government to push back on. Voters tend to prefer a longer and healthier life over helping the government reduce inflation.

Another way government can help inflation is on the supply side, by improving productivity. That is a long, hard journey, but one that offers more promise in the long term.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with the Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Stephen Bartos 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. Is federal government spending really to blame for higher inflation? It’s not clear cut – https://theconversation.com/is-federal-government-spending-really-to-blame-for-higher-inflation-its-not-clear-cut-274961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver turns 50 this month. Nominated for four Oscars and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Festival, Scorsese’s searing, hallucinatory portrait of urban alienation is widely regarded as one of the most important American films of all time.

It is also unquestionably one of the most troubling.

Taxi Driver channels the anger, paranoia and alienation of an American decade shaped by economic decline, imperialist violence and political scandal. Set in the dilapidated squalor of a rapidly deindustrialising New York, the film proffers a forlorn portrait of a society coming apart at the seams.

At its heart sits a deeply unsettling vision of masculinity, bound up in racism and misogyny.

The social and psychological forces Taxi Driver brought into focus have not disappeared. If anything, they have simply migrated – finding new expression in digital cultures shaped by the platforming of grievance, aesthetised resentment and the monetisation of male rage.

American existentialism

Travis Bickle (portrayed with unnerving intensity by Robert De Niro) was the creation of screenwriter Paul Schrader, who drew heavily on his own experiences of isolation and emotional crisis. Schrader also looked to literature for inspiration, citing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s misanthropic Underground Man as a formative influence.

In placing the European existential hero in an American context, said Schrader:

you find that he becomes more ignorant, ignorant of the nature of his problem. Travis’ problem is the same as the existential hero’s, that is, should I exist? But Travis doesn’t understand that this is his problem, so he focuses it elsewhere: and I think that is a mark of the immaturity and the youngness of our country.

Schrader also drew on contemporary events, including the attempted assassination of right-wing politician George Wallace by Arthur Bremer. The result was a character who crystallised the violent confusions of the era.

Like Bremer, Travis keeps a diary. We see him writing in it at various points in the film and we hear excerpts from it in voiceover:

All the animals come out at night. Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain’ll come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Travis, a decidedly unreliable narrator who claims to have served in Vietnam, takes a job as a taxi driver because he has trouble sleeping. Working almost exclusively at night and wound impossibly tight, he rides through the city in a state of heightened unease.

One morning, after clocking off from a long shift, he notices a young woman through the window of a midtown Manhattan office. This is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), an ambitious campaign worker employed by a presidential hopeful Charles Palentine (Leonard Harris).

Betsy quickly becomes the object of Travis’s fixation. He begins loitering in his cab outside her workplace, watching her from a distance. Eventually, he somehow persuades her to go on a date with him. It does not go well.

Socially inept, Travis’ idea of a good time is a trip to a Times Square porno theatre. He appears genuinely baffled when Betsy decides she has had enough and storms out, cutting off all contact with him. This only deepens Travis’ indignation and culminates in an angry confrontation at Betsy’s office, where he berates her in front of her coworkers.

Travis starts to spiral, confessing to a fellow cabbie that he’s got “some bad ideas” in his head. He settles on a plan of action. His diary entries become even more ominous.

He starts working out obsessively, loads up on guns and plots the public assassination of Betsy’s boss. Political violence becomes a way of giving shape to his discontent, transforming indignation into a pipe dream of historical consequence. He practices shooting in front of the mirror in his dingy apartment.

De Niro’s improvised line, “You talkin’ to me”, became (to borrow from film scholar Amy Taubin) “arguably the most quoted scene in movie history”.

When his plan to murder Palantine collapses, Travis redirects his attention to Iris, a 12-year-old sex worker played by Jodie Foster. He decides he must “help” her get away from her pimp, believing himself morally just. Carnage ensues – so ferocious that it initially led to the film being refused a commercial rating.

It ends on a bleakly ironic, ambiguous note.

A dark afterlife

Taxi Driver divided critics but proved an immediate hit with viewers.

Its disquieting power did not diminish with time; if anything, the film’s afterlife has been almost as troublesome as the work itself.

In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. – who had become obsessed with the film – attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in an effort to impress Jodie Foster. This incident shook Scorsese, who briefly considered giving up filmmaking altogether.

Travis Bickle has been repeatedly elevated to the status of anti-hero. The character has cast a long cultural shadow, most obviously in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019).

A 2025 documentary series reflecting on Scorsese’s career returns to this question of legacy. Director Rebecca Williams puts it to Schrader that she gets the impression that “there are a lot of Travis Bickles, especially right now.” Schrader’s reply is blunt:

They’re all talking to each other on the internet. When I first wrote about him, he was talking to nobody. He really was, at that point, the Underground Man. Now he’s the Internet Man.

It is a sobering thought.

Alexander Howard 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. Taxi Driver at 50: Martin Scorsese’s film remains a troubling reflection of our times – https://theconversation.com/taxi-driver-at-50-martin-scorseses-film-remains-a-troubling-reflection-of-our-times-261662