US President Donald Trump has agreed to “consider” exempting Australia from the 25% tariff he has imposed on imports of steel and aluminium to the US.
Trump gave the undertaking during a wide-ranging 40-minute conversation with Anthony Albanese early Tuesday morning (Australian time). The prime minister, speaking to a news conference soon afterwards, stressed that Trump had agreed on the precise words to be used to describe the outcome.
“I presented Australia’s case for an exemption and we agreed on wording to say publicly, which is that the US president agreed that an exemption was under consideration in the interests of both of our countries.”
Albanese gave no indication of when he expects a decision.
Meanwhile, Trump has signed the executive orders for the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium without exemptions.
The Australian government might be able to take heart from Trump’s later comments on the discussion.
The president described Albanese as a “very fine man”.
“We have a surplus with Australia, one of the few, and the reason is they buy a lot of airplanes. They’re rather far away and they need lots of airplanes. We actually have a surplus. It’s one of the only countries which we do. I told him that that’s something that we’ll give great consideration to,” he told the media.
Pressed on whether he was confident of an exemption, Albanese would not speculate beyond the agreed words. “The words that I’ve used are the words that I’ll stick to,” he said.
“It’s appropriate when you’re dealing with the president of the United States to not speak on his behalf. And those are the words that were agreed.”
“We’ll continue to engage diplomatically.” Albanese said, “Australia will always stand up for Australia’s interests […] We’ll continue to put the case.”
The prime minister described the call as “constructive and warm” and posted on social media that it was a “great conversation”.
Outlining Australia’s argument for an exemption Albanese said the US had a trade surplus with Australia of about two to one, and steel supplier BlueScope had extensive production in the US.
“When you look at the imports of these products into the US, it’s about 1% of imports of steel, 2% of aluminium,” he told his news conference.
“Our steel is an important input to US manufacturing. BlueScope is the US’s fifth largest steelmaker. They’ve invested $5 billion in the US across a range of states. I think there’s more than 30 different investments there.
“Of course the major export is Colorbond there, for roofs in California on the west coast. And it plays an important role.
“Aluminium is a critical input for manufacturing in the United States and our steel and aluminium are both key inputs for the US-Australian defence industries. in both of our countries.”
Albanese said that in the conversation, “We spoke about a range of other things as well, including the fact that Jordan Mailata is a Super Bowl champion and I did point out that he was a South Sydney junior”.
The call, which was in train before the tariff announcement, also canvassed critical minerals and AUKUS.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton again criticised Albanese over his past comments about Trump. But the opposition leader told a news conference: “What’s important now is the Trump administration hears there is a bipartisan position in Australia to stand up for our national interest and that national interest is best served by a removal of the tariff as it applies to Australia.”
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Whyte, Deputy Director – Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology (BEST) Research Group. Chief-Investigator – ARC ITTC Centre for Behavioural Inisghts for Technology Adoption (BITA).), Queensland University of Technology
Typically, you don’t have to write a cover letter before attending a candlelit dinner. But there are some eerie emotional parallels between finding a job and finding a date.
Both can require you to put yourself “out there” in uncomfortable ways, brace yourself for repeated rejection and grapple with heartache.
On the flip side, success in either pursuit can significantly boost your confidence and sense of wellbeing – especially if it feels like a good fit.
This raises the question: do Australians really believe they have equal access to the labour and dating markets?
Our study, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, examined this question in depth, shining a light on how these beliefs are linked, and where they differ.
Whether Australians’ perceptions of job and dating market access are completely accurate or not, they can certainly have a big impact on the choices we make and the way we behave in both our personal and professional lives.
Finding a job versus finding a date
We surveyed more than 1,000 online daters aged between 18 and 81. Our sample only included participants who described their sexual orientation as heterosexual and who identified as either male or female.
Our study looked at people’s beliefs about how easy it was to find a job or find a date. Arthur Bargan/Shutterstock
It’s important to understand that we were looking specifically at people’s perceptions of their access to these markets.
That is, we looked at what men and women believed about their own (and the opposite sex’s) ability to find a job or find a date.
We also examined what both sexes believed about women’s economic dependence on men.
On average, we found women think it’s easier for men to find a decently paying job. Women also think they’re less economically dependent on male partners than men think women are.
Both sexes agree it’s easier for women to find a date than men. But men think they have it much worse off on this metric than women think they do.
Where beliefs diverge
These perceptions begin to vary significantly with factors such as age, education, number of children and political orientation.
There are some big differences in how women perceive women’s economic dependence and ease of dating access at different stages of life.
Middle-aged men and women (aged 35 to 55 years) share similar perspectives on women’s economic dependence. This contrasts with younger and older women, who believe women are significantly less economically dependent on men.
Women believe they have an easier time finding a date as they age from 18 to 35 years old. This perception then declines sharply from 40 to 75 years or older.
These patterns align with evolutionary theories, suggesting that access to resources and shifting household dynamics at different life stages influence how men and women view the labour and dating markets.
Shifting beliefs about access at different age levels may reflect changing household dynamics. aijiro/Shutterstock
Intertwined ‘markets’
Importantly, we found that perceptions of labour and dating market access are intrinsically linked, and they tend to reflect broader economic conditions.
For instance, men in high-income areas think they have better job and dating opportunities, while those in areas with greater gender income disparities see women as more economically dependent.
On the flipside, women in higher-income areas think they are less economically dependent. And those in areas with lower gender gaps in income perceive women’s dating access to be greater.
This interplay of beliefs is also reflected in participants’ own dating preferences. Women who believe they are more economically dependent on men tend to seek a long-term male partner with greater earning potential than them.
On the other hand, men who expect to earn more than their ideal partner think it’s easier for men to find a date.
Economic growth is the way economists and politicians measure increases in our standard of living. It is primarily driven by consumption.
That’s everyday Australians buying their morning coffees at work, leg hams at Christmas time or splurging on a new cabana for the beach.
Historically, more consumers meant more consumption, which meant higher economic growth and an increased standard of living.
Many governments have recognised and acted on this link, encouraging Australians to have more children. Back in the early 2000s, for instance, the Howard government implemented the so-called “baby bonus”.
Then-Treasurer Peter Costello famously asked the nation to “Have one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country”.
It worked, sort of. Australia’s birth rates increased modestly.
Fast forward to today, and these issues are just as relevant. Dating and job market choices still have a significant impact on Australian society, both economically and socially.
Khandis R Blake receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE210100800 and DP220101023).
Benno Torgler, Ho Fai Chan, Rachel Hall, and Stephen Whyte 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.
Israeli police have confiscated hundreds of books with Palestinian titles or flags without understanding their contents in a draconian raid on a Palestinian educational bookshop in occupied East Jerusalem, say eyewitnesses.
More details have emerged on the Israeli police raid on a popular bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem.
The owners were arrested but police reportedly dropped charges of incitement while still detaining them for “disturbing the public order”.
The bookstore’s owners, Ahmed and Mahmoud Muna, were detained, and hundreds of titles related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict confiscated, before police ordered the store’s closure, according to May Muna, Mahmoud’s wife, reports Al Jazeera.
She said the soldiers picked out books with Palestinian titles or flags, “without knowing what any of them meant”.
She said they used Google Translate on some of the Arabic titles to see what they meant before carting them away in plastic bags.
Another police bookshop raid Police raided another Palestinian-owned bookstore in the Old City in East Jerusalem last week. In a statement, the police said the two owners were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism”.
As an example, the police referred to an English-language children’s colouring book titled From the River to the Sea — a reference to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that today includes Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The bookshop raids have been widely condemned as a “war on knowledge and literature”.
The Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is full with shoppers in solidarity a day after the Israel Police raided the Palestinian store, arrested its owners and confiscated books. They dropped the charges of incitement but still detain them for ‘disturbing the public order’ pic.twitter.com/ZfnkBttfY3
China and the Cook Islands’ relationship “should not be disrupted or restrained by any third party”, says Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, as opposition leaders in Rarotonga express a loss of confidence in Prime Minister Mark Brown.
In response to questions from the Associated Press about New Zealand government’s concerns regarding Brown’s visit to Beijing this week, Guo said Cook Islands was an important partner of China in the South Pacific.
“Since establishing diplomatic relations in 1997, our two countries have respected each other, treated each other as equals, and sought common development, achieving fruitful outcomes in exchanges and cooperation in various areas,” he said.
“China stands ready to work with the Cook Islands for new progress in bilateral relations.”
Guo said China viewed both New Zealand and the Cook Islands as important cooperation partners.
“China stands ready to grow ties and carry out cooperation with Pacific Island countries, including the Cook Islands,” he said.
“The relationship between China and the Cook Islands does not target any third party, and should not be disrupted or restrained by any third party.”
Information ‘in due course’ Guo added that Beijing would release information about the visit and the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement “in due course”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun . . . “China stands ready to grow ties and carry out cooperation with Pacific Island countries.” Image: China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs/RNZ
However, Cook Islanders, as well as the New Zealand government, have been left frustrated with the lack of clarity over what is in the deal which is expected to be penned this week.
United Party leader Teariki Heather is planning a protest on February 17 against Brown’s leadership.
He previously told RNZ that it seemed like Brown was “dictating to the people of the Cook Islands, that I’m the leader of this country and I do whatever I like”.
Another opposition MP with the Democratic Party, Tina Browne, is planning to attend the protest.
She said Brown “doesn’t understand the word transparent”.
“He is saying once we sign up we’ll provide copies [of the deal],” Browne said.
“Well, what’s the point? The agreement has been signed by the government so what’s the point in providing copies.
“If there is anything in the agreement that people do not agree with, what do we do then?”
Repeated attempts by Peters New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs office said Winston Peters had made repeated attempts for the government of the Cook Islands to share the details of the proposed agreement, which they had not done.
Peters’ spokesperson, like Browne, said consultation was only meaningful if it happened before an agreement was reached, not after.
“We therefore view the Cook Islands as having failed to properly consult New Zealand with respect to any agreements it plans to sign this coming week in China,” the spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Brown told RNZ Pacific that he did not think New Zealand needed to see the level of detail they are after, despite being a constitutional partner.
Ocean Ancestors, an ocean advocacy group, said Brown’s decision had taken people by surprise, despite the Cook Islands having had a long-term relationship with the Asia superpower.
“We are in the dark about what could be signed and so for us our concerns are that we are committing ourselves to something that could be very long term and it’s an agreement that we haven’t had consensus over,” the organisation’s spokesperson Louisa Castledine said.
The details that Brown has shared are that he would be seeking areas of cooperation, including help with a new inter-island vessel to replace the existing ageing ship and for controversial deep-sea mining research.
Castledine hopes that no promises have been made to China regarding seabed minerals.
“As far as we are concerned, we have not completed our research phase and we are still yet to make an informed decision about how we progress [on deep-sea mining],” she said.
“I would like to think that deep-sea mining is not a point of discussion, even though I am not delusional to the idea that it would be very attractive to any agreement.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Donald Trump is moving rapidly to change the contours of contemporary international affairs, with the old US-dominated world order breaking down into a multipolar one with many centres of power.
Such a new geopolitical age also involves an assertion of raw power, with Trump using the threat of tariffs to assert global authority and negotiating positions.
While the US is not significantly less powerful, this new era may see it wield that power in more openly self-interested and isolationist ways. As new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it in January, “the post-war global order is not just obsolete – it is now a weapon being used against us”.
With global democracy in retreat, the emerging international order looks to be moving in an authoritarian direction. As it does, the position of New Zealand’s vibrant democracy will come under mounting pressure.
But world orders have come and gone for millennia, reflecting the ebb and flow of global economic, political and military power. Looking back to previous eras, and how countries and cultures responded to shifting geopolitical realities, can help us understand what is happening more clearly.
Periods of single-power dominance (or hegemony) are referred to as a “pax”, from the Latin for “peace”. We have seen the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire (27 BCE to 180 AD), multiple Pax Sinicas around China (most recently the Qing Dynasty 1644 to 1912), Pax Mongolica (the Mongol Empire from 1271 to 1368) and Pax Britannica (the British Empire from 1815 to 1924).
It is the Pax Americana of the US, from 1945 to the present, that Trump seems bent on dismantling. We now live in an international order that is visibly in flux. With autocracy on the rise and the US at is vanguard, a “Pax Autocratica” is emerging.
The simultaneous rise of multiple power centres was already challenging the Pax Americana. Now, a new international order appears to be a certainty, with Trump openly adapting to multipolarity. Several major powers now compete for global influence, rather than any one country dominating.
China’s preference for a multipolar international order is shared by India and Russia. Without one dominant entity, it will be the political and social basis of this order, as determined by its major actors, that matters most – not who leads it.
Pax Democratica
The current (now waning) international order has been underpinned by specific social, political and economic values stemming from the national identity and historical experience of the US.
According to US political expert G. John Ikenberry, former president Woodrow Wilson’s agenda for peace after the first world war sought to “reflect distinctive American ideas and ideals”.
Woodrow imagined an order based on collective security and shared sovereignty, liberal principles of democracy and universal human rights, free trade and international law.
As its dominance and military strength increased in the 20th century, the US also provided security to other countries. Such power enabled Washington to create open global trade markets, as well as build core global institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, United Nations and NATO.
For Ikenberry, this Pax Americana (we might call it a Pax Democratica) rested on consent to the US’s “provision of security, wealth creation, and social advancement”. This was aided by the its more than 800 military bases in over 80 countries.
This democratic retreat leaves a country such as New Zealand in a global minority. If Trump targets the region or country with economic tariffs, that precariousness might increase.
On the other hand, previous world orders have not been truly hegemonic. Pax Britannica did not encompass the entire world. Nor did Pax Americana, which didn’t include China, India, the former Soviet bloc, much of the Islamic world and many developing countries.
This suggests pockets of democracy can survive within a Pax Autocratica, especially in a multipolar world which is more tolerant of political independence.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2023 Democracy Index ranked New Zealand, the Nordic countries, Switzerland, Iceland and Ireland highest because their citizens
choose their political leaders in free and fair elections, enjoy civil liberties, prefer democracy over other political systems, can and do participate in politics, and have a functioning government that acts on their behalf.
It is these countries that can be at the vanguard of democratic resilience.
Chris Ogden is a Senior Research Fellow with The Foreign Policy Centre, London.
In the recent Border-Gavaskar series against India, Steve Smith agonisingly missed out reaching 10,000 Test runs in front of his home crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground, falling short by just one run.
However he entered the “10K club” in style after hitting his 35th century against Sri Lanka in the series won by Australia, 2-0.
Smith is now the 15th batsman to join the exclusive club and the fourth Australian to do so, after Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting.
The illustrious group of players who have reached 10,000 is headed by Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar (15,921 runs) with Ponting (13,378) second and South African Jacques Kallis (13,289) third.
Among this group, Tendulkar, the West Indies’ Brian Lara and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara were fastest to 10,000 in terms of innings batted (195), just ahead of Ponting (196). Smith was fifth fastest (205 innings).
But where does Smith sit among this group of truly elite batsmen? How does he compare to his fellow Australians? And can he eventually reach the pinnacle and overtake Tendulkar at the top of the mountain?
The physical demands, coupled with fixture congestion, make it tough on athletes’ bodies. Research also suggests psychological pressures have a heightened impact on players’ thinking, feeling and overall performances.
The evolution of lucrative Twenty20 games has also meant cricketers often play in these shorter-format leagues instead of resting between Test series.
Together (at the time of writing) the players in the 10K club have scored 181,947 runs, with 541 centuries and 818 half centuries.
The highest individual score belongs to Lara, who scored 400 (not out) against England in 2004.
Lara also maintained a very high strike rate (60.51) throughout his career.
A strike rate is a batsman’s run scoring efficiency per 100 balls – the higher the strike rate, the faster the batter scores. A higher strike rate puts more pressure on opposition bowlers and when a batter scores quickly, it allows more time for their team’s bowlers to take the 20 wickets required for a Test victory.
Only Ponting (a strike rate of 58.72 per 100 balls) closely matches Lara’s calibre, but England’s Joe Root (57.47) is enjoying a late-career renaissance and is closing the gap.
Compare that to the Border and Sunil Gavaskar era (late 1970s–early 1990s) when runs were not as easy to come by – these two ended their career with low (41.09 and 43.35 respectively) strike rates.
What about Smith?
In his second match, his strike rate was an exceptionally high 75.75 but, since then it has dipped to 53.58 as Smith has become a more balanced batsman.
Another way to judge a batter’s impact is their centuries per innings rate.
Smith has the highest century per innings rate (17.48%) among the 10K club.
He recently scored his 36th century, matching his modern-day peer, Root. But Root has played 72 additional innings.
In terms of overall centuries, Tendulkar leads the way having scored a staggering 51 centuries during his Test career (six more than Kallis, in second). However, Tendulkar did it over a mammoth 329 innings – 38 more than anyone else on the list.
How the Australians compare
Across generations, the four Australians have shown different styles of play in achieving the landmark.
Data shows Border was the most consistent player among them, with his average remaining relatively steady through his career, while Waugh improved his performance after a lacklustre start to his career.
Smith hit his peak at around his 75th match and Ponting around his 115th match, before their run scoring dropped.
In terms of batting positions, data suggests Smith has scored most of his runs coming in at number four. Border was most dominant coming in at four and five.
Ponting dominated as a number three batsman, while Waugh was very consistent at number five.
How far can Smith go?
Considering Smith’s age (35), current form and the physical demands of modern cricket, our findings suggest it will take him at least another three to four years to surpass Ponting.
That may be achievable but Smith’s year-long ban after the 2018 “sandpapergate saga” makes reaching Tendulkar’s mark extremely unlikely.
However, there is a chance Smith ends up with the best average in the club.
His batting average currently sits at 56.74, with only Sangakkara (57.4) higher.
Considering his current form, with four centuries in his past five Test matches, there’s every chance this modern-day great retires atop the tree in that metric at least.
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.
Last week, Google quietly abandoned a long-standing commitment to not use artificial intelligence (AI) technology in weapons or surveillance. In an update to its AI principles, which were first published in 2018, the tech giant removed statements promising not to pursue:
technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm
weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people
technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms
technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.
The Google decision follows a recent trend of big tech entering the national security arena and accommodating more military applications of AI. So why is this happening now? And what will be the impact of more military use of AI?
The growing trend of militarised AI
In September, senior officials from the Biden government met with bosses of leading AI companies, such as OpenAI, to discuss AI development. The government then announced a taskforce to coordinate the development of data centres, while weighing economic, national security and environmental goals.
The following month, the Biden government published a memo that in part dealt with “harnessing AI to fulfil national security objectives”.
Big tech companies quickly heeded the message.
In November 2024, tech giant Meta announced it would make its “Llama” AI models available to government agencies and private companies involved in defence and national security.
This was despite Meta’s own policy which prohibits the use of Llama for “[m]ilitary, warfare, nuclear industries or applications”.
Around the same time, AI company Anthropic also announced it was teaming up with data analytics firm Palantir and Amazon Web Services to provide US intelligence and defence agencies access to its AI models.
The following month, OpenAI announced it had partnered with defence startup Anduril Industries to develop AI for the US Department of Defence.
The companies claim they will combine OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 models with Anduril’s systems and software to improve US military’s defences against drone attacks.
Defending national security
The three companies defended the changes to their policies on the basis of US national security interests.
Take Google. In a blog post published earlier this month, the company cited global AI competition, complex geopolitical landscapes and national security interests as reasons for changing its AI principles.
In October 2022, the US issued export controls restricting China’s access to particular kinds of high-end computer chips used for AI research. In response, China issued their own export control measures on high-tech metals, which are crucial for the AI chip industry.
It has not been made clear how the militarisation of commercial AI would protect US national interests. But there are clear indications tensions with the US’s biggest geopolitical rival, China, are influencing the decisions being made.
A large toll on human life
What is already clear is that the use of AI in military contexts has a demonstrated toll on human life.
For example, in the war in Gaza, the Israeli military has been relying heavily on advanced AI tools. These tools require huge volumes of data and greater computing and storage services, which is being provided by Microsoft and Google. These AI tools are used to identify potential targets but are often inaccurate.
Google removing the “harm” clause from their AI principles contravenes the international law on human rights. This identifies “security of person” as a key measure.
It is concerning to consider why a commercial tech company would need to remove a clause around harm.
Avoiding the risks of AI-enabled warfare
In its updated principles, Google does say its products will still align with “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights”.
Despite this, Human Rights Watch has criticised the removal of the more explicit statements regarding weapons development in the original principles.
The organisation also points out that Google has not explained exactly how its products will align with human rights.
This is something Joe Biden’s revoked executive order about AI was also concerned with.
Such guardrails are needed now more than ever as big tech becomes more enmeshed with military organisations – and the risk that come with AI-enabled warfare and the breach of human rights increases.
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.
About 400 kilometres northwest of Sydney, just south of Dubbo, lies a large and interesting body of rock formed around 215 million years ago by erupting volcanoes.
Known as the Toongi deposit, this site is rich in so-called rare earths: a collection of 16 metallic elements essential for modern technologies from electric cars to solar panels and mobile phones.
Efforts are under way to mine this deposit, but the demand for rare earths in the coming decades is likely to be enormous.
To find more, we need to understand how and why these deposits form. Our latest research on Australian volcanoes, published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, shows how tiny crystals formed inside volcanoes offer clues about the formation of rare earth deposits – and how we can find more of them.
Rare earths and the melting mantle
The formation of rare earth element deposits begins with partial melting of Earth’s mantle which lies deep below the crust.
Earth’s mantle is dominated by minerals that are rich in iron and magnesium. These minerals also contain small amounts of other elements, including the rare earth elements.
When the mantle melts to form magma, the rare earth elements move easily into the magma. If the amount of melting is small, the magma has a higher proportion of rare earth elements than if the amount of melting is large – for example, at a mid-ocean ridge where vast amounts of magma rush to the surface and form new oceanic crust.
As this magma migrates towards Earth’s surface, it cools down and new minerals begin to form. These minerals are mostly composed of oxygen, silicon, calcium, aluminium, magnesium and iron.
This means the leftover magma contains a higher concentration of rare earth elements. This residual liquid will continue to ascend through the crust until it solidifies or erupts at the surface.
From Greenland to central New South Wales
If the magma cools and crystallises in the crust, it can form rocks containing high levels of critical metals. One place where this has happened is the Gardar Igneous Complex in Southern Greenland, which contains several rare earth element deposits.
In central New South Wales in Australia, magmas enriched in rare earth elements erupted at the surface. They are collectively given the geological name Benolong Volcanic Suite.
The Toongi deposit was formed hundreds of millions of years ago. ASM
Within this suite is the Toongi deposit – a part of the ancient volcanic plumbing system. This is an “intrusion” of congealed magma containing very high levels of critical metals.
Magmas enriched in rare earth elements are uncommon, and those that are enriched enough to be productively mined are rarer still, with only a few known examples worldwide. Even with all we know about how magmas form, there is much more work to be done to better understand and predict where magmas enriched in critical metals can be found.
Crystals record volcanic history
You may have wondered how scientists know so much about what happens kilometres (sometimes tens of kilometres) below our feet. We learn a lot about the interior of the Earth from studying rocks which make their way to the surface.
The processes that occur in a magma as it rises from Earth’s interior leave clues in the chemical composition of minerals which crystallise along the way. One mineral in particular – clinopyroxene – is particularly effective at preserving these clues, like a tiny crystal ball.
Fortunately, there are crystals of clinopyroxene within many of the rocks in the Benolong Volcanic Suite. This allowed us to examine the history of the non-mineralised rocks and compare it with the mineralised Toongi intrusion.
What’s different about the rocks at Toongi
We found that the Toongi rocks have two important differences.
First, the clinopyroxenes in the non-mineralised volcanic suite contain a lot of rare earth elements. This tells us that for most rocks in the volcanic suite, critical metals were “locked up” within clinopyroxene, rather than remaining in the residual melt.
In contrast, clinopyroxene crystals from Toongi show low levels of rare earth elements. Here, these elements are contained in a different mineral, eudialyte, which can be mined for rare earth elements.
Second, and most interesting, the clinopyroxenes from Toongi have an internal crystal structure that resembles an hourglass shape. This is caused by different elements residing in some parts of the crystal. It’s an exciting observation because it suggests rapid crystallisation occurred due the release of gas while the crystals were forming.
In contrast, we found no evidence of rapid crystallisation in the rocks without high levels of rare earths.
Our work means we can now track the composition and zoning of clinopyroxene in other extinct volcanoes in Australia and beyond to find out which ones may accumulate relevant rare earth element deposits.
This study adds another piece of the puzzle for understanding how critical metals accumulate, and how we can find them to power green, renewable energy sources for a sustainable future.
Brenainn Simpson works for the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Geological Survey of New South Wales and publishes with the permission of the Chief Geoscientist and Head of the Geological Survey of New South Wales.
Carl Spandler receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Teresa Ubide works for The University of Queensland. She receives research funding from the Australian Research Council, and infrastructure funding from NCRIS AuScope.
The dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents has dominated headlines in Australia in recent months, with calls for urgent action to address what many are calling a crisis.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry tallied more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents in 2024, including physical assaults, attacks on synagogues, vandalism and graffiti. This is a 316% increase over the previous year.
These alarming events have sparked a heated political debate, with the opposition accusing the federal government of not taking the issue seriously enough.
However, focusing only on overt acts of antisemitism risks seeing it as an exceptional phenomenon or a problem limited to fringe extremist groups. This can obscure the more subtle and structural forms of antisemitism that perpetuate stereotypes about Jews and entrench discrimination in society.
How laws ingrain structural antisemitism
In my research, I examine how certain forms of antisemitism persist in Western societies with a Christian tradition.
While laws explicitly targeting Jews are largely a relic of the past, subtler forms of exclusion and discrimination remain. These often stem from perceptions that Jews deviate from dominant cultural norms.
For instance, Jewish communities frequently encounter resistance to the building of an eruv. This is a symbolic demarcation of a public space that enables Jews to observe Shabbat, a day when work is prohibited. It can sometimes involve stringing a wire between poles to create a boundary where people can do things they aren’t normally able to do, such as push a pram or carry shopping bags.
When an Orthodox Jewish community in Sydney sought permission to construct an eruv in the 2010s, local residents opposed it. Many arguments invoked stereotypes of Jews as clannish, intrusive and conspiratorial.
There have been similar disputes over eruvs in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. In many cases, local councils have sided with opponents, meaning Orthodox Jewish communities have had to go to court to seek approval.
In Europe, bans on religious slaughter have also singled out Jews and Muslims as cruel and fundamentalist, despite the widespread use of factory farming in Western societies.
There have also been calls to outlaw infant male circumcision in the name of children’s rights in many European countries and parts of the US.
These campaigns have, at times, tapped into longstanding antisemitic ideas about Jews as barbaric, bloodthirsty and backward.
These legal conflicts or campaigns reveal the structural dimensions of antisemitism. Similar to other forms of structural racism, structural antisemitism normalises majoritarian norms, perceptions and practices.
In turn, it marginalises and denigrates Jews as foreign, threatening and a problematic “other”.
Institutions, including schools, workplaces and local councils, can perpetuate these biases when they legitimise such exclusionary norms without critical reflection.
Understanding structural antisemitism also requires examining the Christian heritage of Western societies. In particular, there is a need to reflect on the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism.
Historically, the Christian belief in “supersessionism” referred to idea that Christianity has superseded Judaism and that Christians have replaced Jews as the people of God. Alongside the stereotype of Jews as the killers of Christ, this belief has contributed to stereotypes of Jews as inferior to Christians and being archaic, unenlightened, exclusive and ritualistic.
As the legal conflicts over eruvs, religious slaughter and circumcision suggest, such views continue to subtly influence attitudes towards Jews, even in modern secular societies.
For example, popular references to Judeo-Christian values signal the equality of Jews and Christians in society. However, this glosses over the fact that the acceptance of Jews can be contingent on conforming with majority norms.
This legacy also normalises Christian privilege. While Christians may face discrimination in certain contexts, they also enjoy inherent advantages in societies shaped by Christian traditions.
National calendars, weekly rhythms and public holidays align with Christian practices, while minorities need to seek accommodations to observe their own traditions.
For example, Western cities are filled with Christian symbols, such as churches and annual Christmas decorations. Several Australian parliaments and local councils also still begin meetings with Christian prayers.
What might seem like benign cultural traditions can signal exclusion to minority communities, including Jews. Implicit Christian norms can also create pressure to assimilate, especially given the long history of Christian societies’ attempts to convert or assimilate Jews.
However, these dynamics are rarely acknowledged in public debates about the discrimination of Jews and can also fly under the radar of the law.
In 1998, for instance, a Jewish father in New South Wales brought racial discrimination complaints against the education department over Christian activities at his children’s public school. These included nativity plays, Christmas carols and exchanging Easter eggs. The complaints were dismissed because they did not constitute discrimination on the basis of race.
The law in NSW does not prohibit religious discrimination (although the state now has religious vilification laws).
This gap exists in federal discrimination law, as well. It leaves minority religious groups with limited legal options to challenge the dominance of Christian norms. The NSW example demonstrates this and suggests there may be a case for a new federal religious discrimination law.
The question of what constitutes antisemitism remains a vexed question, including among Jews. Violent antisemitic attacks demand urgent attention. Yet, public discussions of antisemitism must also address these subtler forms of exclusion and the structural dimensions of antisemitism.
Mareike Riedel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney
For a long time, it seemed refugee law had little relevance to people fleeing the impacts of climate change and disasters.
Nearly 30 years ago, the High Court of Australia, for instance, remarked that people fleeing a “natural disaster” or “natural catastrophes” could not be refugees.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada had said “victims of natural disasters” couldn’t be refugees “even when the home state is unable to provide assistance”.
It was back in 2007 that I first started considering whether international refugee law could apply to people escaping the impacts of drought, floods or sea-level rise. At the time, I also thought refugee law had limited application. For a start, most people seeking to escape natural hazards move within their own country and don’t cross an international border. That fact alone makes refugee law inapplicable.
Refugee law defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.
So one challenge was in classifying supposedly “natural” events as “persecution”, which requires an identifiable human actor.
It was also widely thought such events were indiscriminate and couldn’t target people on account of their race, religion or one of the other five grounds. This is partly why some advocates called for an overhaul of the Refugee Convention to protect so-called “climate refugees”.
However, we have learned a lot in the intervening years.
A new approach
It’s become clear the impacts of climate change and disasters interact with other social, economic and political drivers of displacement to create risks for people.
This is what some legal experts have called the “hazard-scape”.
And the impacts of climate change and disasters are not indiscriminate – they affect people in different ways. Factors such as age, gender, disability and health can intersect to create particular risk of persecution for particular individuals or communities.
For example, a person who is a member of a minority may find their government is withholding disaster relief from them. Or, climate or disaster impacts may end up exacerbating inter-communal conflicts, putting certain people at heightened risk of persecution.
Now, we have a much more nuanced understanding of things. Refugee law (and complementary protection under human rights law) do have a role to play in assessing the claims of people affected by climate change.
No such thing as a ‘climate refugee’ under the law
There isn’t a legal category of “climate refugee” – a popular label that has caused confusion. However, there are certainly people facing heightened risks because of the impacts of climate change or disasters. These impacts can generate or exacerbate a risk of persecution or other serious harm.
This means that when it comes to the law, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, by applying existing legal principles and approaches, it’s clear some people impacted by climate change already qualify for refugee status or complementary protection (under human rights law).
One instructive case, heard in New Zealand, involved a deaf and mute man from Tuvalu who was seeking to avoid deportation on humanitarian grounds. He was found to be at heightened risk if a disaster struck because he could not hear evacuation or other warnings. He also didn’t have anyone who could sign for him or ensure his safety.
In another case, an older couple from Eritrea were found to be especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of “their elderly status and lack of family support”, in circumstances where they would be exposed to “conditions of abject poverty, underdevelopment and likely displacement”. This, in addition to other conditions in Eritrea, meant that there was “a real chance they would suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by way of starvation and destitution”. They were granted complementary protection.
A practical way forward
New Zealand has led the way on showing how existing international refugee and human rights law can provide protection in the context of climate change and disasters. It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up.
With colleagues from Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, I’ve helped create a practical toolkit on international protection for people displaced across borders in the context of climate change and disasters.
This is a detailed resource for legal practitioners and decision-makers tasked with assessing international protection claims involving the impacts of climate change and disasters.
It shows when, why and how existing law can apply to claims where climate change or disasters play a role.
Inaccurate but popular labels aren’t helpful
Inaccurate but popular labels – such as “climate refugee” – have caused confusion and arguably hampered a consistent, principled approach.
Some judges and decision-makers assessing refugee claims may be spooked by “climate change”. They may think they need specialist scientific expertise to grapple with it.
The new toolkit shows why international protection claims arising in the context of climate change and disasters should be assessed in the same way as all other international protection claims. That is, by applying conventional legal principles and considering the facts of each case.
The toolkit stresses that it’s important to assess the impacts of climate change and disasters within a broader social context.
That includes examining underlying systemic issues of discrimination or inequity that may impact on how particular people experience harm.
The toolkit also shows why a cumulative assessment of risk is necessary, especially since risks may emerge over time, rather than as the result of a single, extreme event.
And it emphasises the need to look at the “hazard-scape” as a whole in assessing the future risk of harm to a person.
We hope the toolkit helps to debunk some common misunderstandings and charts a clear way forward. Our ultimate ambition is that people seeking international protection in the context of climate change and disasters will have their claims assessed in a consistent, fair and principled way.
Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the expert sub-committee of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration. She thanks the Open Society Foundations (OSF) for its generous support of this project and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for its endorsement.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Kirkman, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
You’ve heard of the gender pay gap. What about the gap in medical care?
Cardiovascular diseases – which can lead to heart attack and stroke – are one of the leading causes of death for women in Australia.
But women are less likely than men to receive preventive care for heart disease, such as appropriate medication. One study in New South Wales showed women admitted to hospital for a stroke were more likely to be first told by paramedics it was a migraine, headache, anxiety or nausea.
Despite these differences, official guidelines in Australia too often ignore the impact of sex and gender on health care. For example, a guideline on atrial fibrillation (irregular and often fast heartbeat) has limited information on sex and nothing on gender.
“Sex” refers to various biological characteristics by which at birth we are identified as female, male or intersex. “Gender” is a social and cultural concept in which people understand themselves to be a woman, a man or non-binary.
Our recent study reviewed 80 clinical guidelines. We found very few define sex and gender and the majority don’t mention gender at all. This has serious consequences for everyone, but especially for women, girls and gender-diverse people.
What are clinical guidelines for?
Clinical guidelines are recommendations about how to diagnose and treat a medical condition, based on research and usually developed by a team of specialists. Clinicians and other health workers are expected to use them to guide day-to-day health care.
A health practitioner’s sensitivity about gender and sex can profoundly affect the mental health of gender-diverse patients. Media_Photos/Shutterstock
Because clinical guidelines are based on research, they can report only what has been studied and published in peer-reviewed journals. This means where there are gaps in research, clinical guidelines are usually silent.
What we did
As part of a larger project, the federal government asked our team to examine whether there are still clinical guidelines that do not take into account sex and gender differences.
There is no central database of Australia’s clinical guidelines. But in a comprehensive search, we found 80 published from January 2014 to April 2024.
These encompassed guidelines for conditions including various cancers, diabetes and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, designed for a range of health professionals such as general practitioners, medical specialists, physiotherapists and paramedics.
We searched every document for the following words:
sex
gender
female
male
women
men
girl
boy
If none of these words were found, we looked for “psychosocial” and “cultural”, to see if gender was considered without being named directly. We also read the text around each relevant word to understand its context and meaning.
What we found
Clinical guidelines in Australia too often do not offer guidance on incorporating sex and (especially) gender into health care.
We found:
15% of guidelines didn’t mention sex or gender at all. This includes recommendations about acute coronary syndrome from the National Heart Foundation and on e-mental health by the peak body for GPs. These guidelines did not even give the most basic information on sex differences in occurrence (of heart disease or mental health problems)
only four guidelines (5%) defined the terms “sex” and “gender”
19% made no reference to clinical practice concerning sex. That is, there was no information on how symptoms and treatments might vary among biologically female, male and intersex bodies
the majority (58%) ignored the role gender can play in clinical practice and how it might shape what treatment is most effective. For example, some women may be more comfortable being seen by a female doctor, for a range of personal or cultural reasons
most (81%) did acknowledge biological sex in some way. But among those 65 guidelines there was great variation, ranging from a single statement about whether a condition (such as lung cancer) occurred more often in women or men, to detailed risk factors, prevalence, treatment and management, such as for advanced life support by paramedics.
Why does this matter?
The male body has historically been considered the “standard” human. With hormonal changes and pregnancies, women’s bodies have been seen as too complicated to be included in clinical research.
This means research has been conducted on men and then applied to women, ignoring the differences that excluded them from the research in the first place.
Women have long been excluded from clinical trials, while male bodies have been considered the standard. Inside Creative House/Shutterstock
If the standard body is implicitly that of a (white) male, discrimination against all other bodies is inevitable.
The Australian Institute of Sport’s guideline on concussion and brain health is one of just four guidelines that define sex and gender.
This is crucial, given growing evidence women footballers are at greater risk of concussion than men. But their approach is far from mainstream.
Gender-diverse people also require distinct health care and support, based on inclusive and non-discriminatory practice and policy. There is clear evidence the mental health of gender-diverse people is profoundly affected by how sensitive – or discriminatory – their health care is.
Eliminating discrimination
Discrimination can be explicit and overt.
But it can also simply come from a lack of imagination, based on the assumption some kinds of health care are sex- and gender-neutral.
For example, the treatment of skin – dermatology – could appear neutral, as everyone has skin. Yet social expectations about clothing, make-up and appearance are highly gendered, and these can influence how skin conditions develop and are treated.
Guidelines that offer detailed information on sex- and gender-aware practice, such as those by GP Supervisor Australia, can contribute to challenging both explicit and implicit discrimination.
Ultimately, we hope this leads to equitable health care for people of all sexes and genders.
We recommend all developers of clinical guidelines look for evidence concerning sex and gender and, when they find none, say so. Funding bodies should also demand inclusion of sex and gender as a criterion to award money for medical research.
Silence on sex or gender implies that the topics aren’t important. This is far from the truth.
We acknowledge the contribution of the other members of our research team: Tomoko Honda, Steve McDonald, Sally Green, Karen Walker-Bone, and Ingrid Winship.
Maggie Kirkman received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care to conduct this research.
Jane Fisher receives funding from:
The National Health and Medical Research Council, The Australian Research Council, The Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, VicHealth, The Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation, The Paul Ramsay Foundation, The Human Safety Net, The LEGO Foundation, The Jasper Foundation, The National Center for Healthy Ageing
Urban planning has a long history of promoting visionary ideas that advocate for particular futures. The most recent is the concept of the 15-minute city, which has gained traction globally.
But empirical evidence on public preference for what people want is surprisingly thin on the ground.
To help address this gap, we conducted a national survey (1,491 responses) in Aotearoa New Zealand to find out what amenities people want to have easy access to, how much time they prefer to spend getting there, and how this differs between different groups in the population.
Our recently published research provides more depth. The headline messages have significant implications for politicians, policy-makers and others interested in planning cities to better meet the needs of citizens.
People want green space and local shops
The first message is that visions such as 15-minute cities tend to promote the idea of livability connected to easy access to multiple amenities – from education to employment and culture.
However, when we asked what amenities people prefer the most, two things came out far above others: local nature and local shops.
This finding is important as it allows cash-strapped local authorities to prioritise and sequence spending. It also supports the agenda of those who are advocating for an increase in urban green space or local living.
A complete shift to a 15-minute city can be daunting, but investment in these two specific areas could be an excellent first step in improving livability in a way that reflects what citizens want from planning.
We also asked people for their preferred maximum travel time to their most preferred amenity for a one-way trip, using different modes. Nationally, the data were consistent, identifying around 20 minutes as a good rule of thumb for maximum preferred travel time.
Importantly, this time was broadly similar regardless of the transport mode chosen. Whether walking, cycling or travelling by micro-mobility modes such as e-scooters, people wanted to spend no more than 20 minutes doing so – even though the distances vary.
It is important to acknowledge this time is a maximum, not a preference. It is better understood as a threshold or decision point after which people are much more likely to drive or choose not to travel.
This evidence has a wider resonance.
First, it strongly reinforces the 15-minute city or 20-minute neighbourhood as accurately reflecting public preferences for travel time to reach destinations, especially as this figure was consistent regardless of the travel mode.
Second, people are willing to walk further than we typically plan for.
For example, planners may typically apply a walkable catchment of an 800-metre radius around the central business district or transit nodes to allow for higher-density zoning. This distance is a walk of about ten minutes. Our data suggest this area could be expanded and more opportunities created to increase housing volume and diversity.
One size does not fit all
One crucial aspect for improving livability is recognising differences in people’s ability or willingness to walk, cycle or use micro mobility. To explore this, our survey asked people how comfortable they were using each active travel mode after dark.
We reveal a strong gender difference. For example, 41% of people said they were uncomfortable walking after dark. Of this group, 86% were female.
For all travel modes, there was a similar story with females more likely to change travel behaviour, mostly due to safety concerns. The survey also revealed that people with a disability are significantly less comfortable travelling after dark than those without.
This finding is useful for those concerned with equity. Citizen movement is typically modelled on the idea of an able-bodied person who feels equally comfortable in all urban spaces at all times of day or night.
Without considering difference across populations, advocates may promote an equitable 15-minute city during the day and an inequitable car-dependent one after dark.
This also highlights that any new urban strategy or investment needs to understand existing behaviour and the risks of making current disadvantages worse.
Agendas such as 15-minute cities hold significant value in planning for wellbeing and health, economic activity or decarbonisation. They also hold potential for planners to engage with communities to explain the value of planning, the kind of lifestyle citizens can expect in the future, and why authorities are spending public money.
But urban researchers also need urban concepts to be grounded in evidence to avoid becoming the next urban imaginary accused of failing to be transformative.
Our research helps provide some clarity. The general message is that people want easy access to green spaces and local shops more than anything else and they want to spend no more than 20 minutes getting there.
It also highlights context and differences between groups. We need to marry promising urban concepts to empirical research designed to support people’s preferences and encourage movement and equity.
Iain White receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund and from the Natural Hazards Commission. He is New Zealand’s national contact point for the Horizon Europe program for the climate, energy and mobility research cluster.
Silvia Serrao-Neumann receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund and from the Natural Hazards Commission.
Xinyu Fu receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund and from the Natural Hazards Commission.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne
Earth is crossing the threshold of 1.5°C of global warming, according to two major global studies which together suggest the planet’s climate has likely entered a frightening new phase.
Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, humanity is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep planetary heating to no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. In 2024, temperatures on Earth surpassed that limit.
This was not enough to declare the Paris threshold had been crossed, because the temperature goals under the agreement are measured over several decades, rather than short excursions over the 1.5°C mark.
But the two papers just released use a different measure. Both examined historical climate data to determine whether very hot years in the recent past were a sign that a future, long-term warming threshold would be breached.
The answer, alarmingly, was yes. The researchers say the record-hot 2024 indicates Earth is passing the 1.5°C limit, beyond which scientists predict catastrophic harm to the natural systems that support life on Earth.
2024: the first year of many above 1.5°C
Climate organisations around the world agree last year was the hottest on record. The global average temperature in 2024 was about 1.6°C above the average temperatures in the late-19th century, before humans started burning fossil fuels at large scale.
Earth has also recently experienced individual days and months above the 1.5°C warming mark.
But the global temperature varies from one year to the next. For example, the 2024 temperature spike, while in large part due to climate change, was also driven by a natural El Niño pattern early in the year. That pattern has dissipated for now, and 2025 is forecast to be a little cooler.
These year-to-year fluctuations mean climate scientists don’t view a single year exceeding the 1.5°C mark as a failure to meet the Paris Agreement.
However, the new studies published today in Nature Climate Change suggest even a single month or year at 1.5°C global warming may signify Earth is entering a long-term breach of that vital threshold.
What the studies found
The studies were conducted independently by researchers in Europe and Canada. They tackled the same basic question: is a year above 1.5°C global warming a warning sign that we’re already crossing the Paris Agreement threshold?
Both studies used observations and climate model simulations to address this question, with slightly different approaches.
In the European paper, the researchers looked at historical warming trends. They found when Earth’s average temperature reached a certain threshold, the following 20-year period also reached that threshold.
This pattern suggests that, given Earth reached 1.5°C warming last year, we may have entered a 20-year warming period when average temperatures will also reach 1.5°C.
The Canadian paper involved month-to-month data. June last year was the 12th consecutive month of temperatures above the 1.5°C warming level. The researcher found 12 consecutive months above a climate threshold indicates the threshold will be reached over the long term.
Both studies also demonstrate that even if stringent emissions reduction begins now, Earth is still likely to be crossing the 1.5°C threshold.
Heading in the wrong direction
Given these findings, what humanity does next is crucial.
For decades, climate scientists have warned burning fossil fuels for energy releases carbon dioxide and other gases that are warming the planet.
But humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase. Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report in 1990, the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 50%.
Put simply, we are not even moving in the right direction, let alone at the required pace.
The science shows greenhouse gas emissions must reach net-zero to end global warming. Even then, some aspects of the climate will continue to change for many centuries, because some regional warming, especially in the oceans, is already locked in and irreversible.
If Earth has indeed already crossed the 1.5°C mark, and humanity wants to get below the threshold again, we will need to cool the planet by reaching “net-negative emissions” – removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we emit. This would be a highly challenging task.
Feeling the heat
The damaging effects of climate change are already being felt across the globe. The harm will be even worse for future generations.
Australia has already experienced 1.5°C of warming, on average, since 1910.
Our unique ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, are already suffering because of this warming. Our oceans are hotter and seas are rising, hammering our coastlines and threatening marine life.
These studies are a sobering reminder of how far short humanity is falling in tackling climate change.
They show we must urgently adapt to further global warming. Among the suite of changes needed, richer nations must support the poorer countries set to bear the most severe climate harms. While some progress has been made in this regard, far more is needed.
A major shift is also needed to decarbonise our societies and economies. There is still room for hope, but we must not delay action. Otherwise, humanity will keep warming the planet and causing further damage.
Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather and the National Environmental Science Program.
Liam Cassidy 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.
Yasser Abdulaal, who has lived in Ōtautahi Christchurch for five years, said his two sisters had lost their homes in the 15-month-long war.
“Toxic wasteland” . . . Palestinians take shelter in tents set up amid heavily damaged buildings in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR
Abdulaal said they and their husbands — all teachers — could have left at the start of the bombing but refused to abandon their land — and they would not be leaving now.
“After the ceasefire and with Trump’s statements, they are definitely not going to leave Gaza, regardless of what he says and what [the US] does. It’s their land.”
He said New Zealand should recognise Palestine as a state and sanction Israel in accordance with international law.
It should also call for more funding for international aid to Gaza, he added.
‘Two-state solution’ “New Zealand voted for a two-state solution and we have been asking the government to enforce that. Many countries during the genocide already recognise Palestine as a state but our government sees it as ‘not the right time’.
“I think it is the right time, and New Zealand should recognise Palestine immediately.”
Abdulaal said he reached a moment during the war where he could not bring himself to call his sisters.
“I didn’t know what to say, remotely, from New Zealand.
“It’s a really hard time for everyone, they’ve been in tents for more than eight months, both [my sisters’] houses have gone, they are completely rubble.
“They are still in tents despite the ceasefire because they have no other place to go to.”
Israeli tanks in area “One of my sisters can’t even go and see her house as there is still Israeli tanks in that area [the Philadelphia corridor]. But we know from footage — as she says — the height of my house now is half a metre, it was two levels but now it’s half a metre.
“It’s mixed emotions. The killing and bloodshed has stopped, but I have lost 55 [relatives] in the airstrikes, most of them women and children.
“They haven’t even had a proper funeral . . . it’s really hard, people are just trying to get food for their kids, those basic human rights for people which they don’t have.
“They are happy with the ceasefire, and we hope it will be a permanent ceasefire, but we have also lost lots of people . . . [the rest] have lost their houses, their jobs, everything.
Families returning to northern #Gaza are shocked by the scale of destruction.
UNICEF’s Tess Ingram shares the reality on the ground and the immense challenges people are facing. pic.twitter.com/IRYrN9AsNM
— UNICEF MENA – يونيسف الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا (@UNICEFmena) February 9, 2025
“When I close my eyes and I think about losing 55 people, and that’s just the ones we know about. It’s horrific, I can’t believe it . . . they’re all relatives: cousins, uncles, extended family.”
Trump’s proposal was a “dangerous statement and outrageous”, Abdulaal said, likening it to “a reward to Netanyahu and the Israeli government who have been bombing everything in Gaza, killing everyone, committing genocide”.
“[President Trump] says he wants to drive the people out of Gaza, meaning he wants to ethnically cleanse the people from Gaza, which is another war crime,” said Abdulaal.
Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson says US President Donald Trump’s decision on aid “is an opening for anybody else who wants to fill the gap” in the Pacific.
Trump froze all USAID for 90 days on his first day in office and is now looking to significantly reduce the size of the multi-billion dollar agency.
The Pacific is the world’s most aid dependent region, and Terence Wood from the Australian National University Development Policy Centre told RNZ Pacific this move would hit hard.
“The US is the Pacific’s largest aid donor and what is happening there is completely unprecedented . . . there’s also a cruel irony that Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and right now he seems to be calling the shots with decisions that are literally going to be life or death for the world’s poorest people . . . it’s hard to wrap one’s head around,” he said.
Marshall Islands Journal owner and editor Giff Johnson on the USAID crisis. Video: RNZ Pacific
Wood was concerned about how the dismantling of USAID would impact the Pacific.
“It’s not a good time to be in the world’s most aid dependent region . . . indeed Sāmoa PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has already expressed concern about what might happen to funding for organisations like the World Health Organisation . . . so everyone is watching this with considerable alarm”.
‘It’s hard to believe that Trump has changedhis sense’ Editor Johnson said said in an interview with RNZ Pacific last week that Trump’s shutdown of USAID was at odds with the increased engagement in the Pacific.
He said the move did not line up with the President’s rhetoric on China, and the fact the new US compact agreements were instigated by his administration the last time he was in power.
“So it’s hard to believe that Trump has changed his sense and I mean, he’s putting tariffs in on China, right? . . . So that’s still very much in play,” Johnson said.
“It’s just like amazing to me that that they’re willing to undermine relationships in the Pacific that they claim to be a very important region for them.
“And you know, this is, I mean, certainly it’s an opening for anybody else who wants to fill the gap, I suppose, until Washington decides what it is doing.”
USAID shutdown bug thing for Pacific Meanwhile, in the Cook Islands, the vice-chairperson of the Pacific energy regulators Alliance said Trump’s shutdown of USAID was a big deal for the region.
Dean Yarrall said his organisation was planning a multi-day training course on best practices in electricity regulation, funded by the US, which had now been called off.
He said the cancelling of the training course caught his organisation off guard.
“We’re seeing a lot of competition between parties, the Chinese are looking to increase the influence Australia as well and the US through USAID are big supporters of the Pacific so seeing USA sort of drop away, I think that will be a big thing,” Yarrall said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Mazza, Director, SPHERE NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health in Primary Care and Professor and Head of the Department of General Practice, Monash University
Ahead of the government’s response this week to a Senate inquiry into access to reproductive health care in Australia, the government has announced new measures to make it easier to get an intrauterine device, or IUD.
Payments to doctors and nurse practitioners to insert and remove these devices will increase. The government will also set up eight centres to train health-care professionals in IUD insertion, and ensure they are skilled and confident.
So what are IUDs? And how might these changes impact Australian women?
‘Set and forget’ contraception
IUDs are small devices that are implanted in the uterus to prevent pregnancy. There are two types: “hormonal IUDs”, which contain the hormone levonorgestrel, and “copper IUDs”.
Another long-acting reversible contraceptive, the contraceptive implant, is about 4cm long, made of plastic and inserted just under the skin in the arm.
Hormonal IUDs (known by brand names Mirena and Kyleena in Australia) and the contraceptive implant are subsidised under the PBS, costing A$31.60 ($7.70 concession). However copper IUDs aren’t, and cost around $100.
However, women may face significant out-of-pocket costs to have IUDs and implants inserted.
IUDs are types of long-acting reversible contraception. They are often called “set and forget” because once inserted, nothing more needs to be done. Long-acting reversible contraceptives are the most effective way to prevent pregnancy (over 99%).
This compares with the commonly used contraceptive pills containing estrogen and progestogen, which need to be taken every day. These have a failure rate of 8-9% with typical use.
The hormonal IUDs’ contraceptive effect lasts for eight years, while a copper IUD can last up to ten years, depending on the type. The contraceptive implant protects against pregnancy for three years.
The levonorgestrel in hormonal IUDs acts locally inside the uterus to thin the lining of the womb, so much so that after about six months of use, many women experience very little, if any, bleeding.
This reduction in menstruation can prevent or reduce conditions such as heavy menstrual bleeding, iron deficiency and period pain.
Like all contraceptives, there are potential side effects. IUD insertion is painful, there is a small risk of expulsion of IUDs and they may not be positioned correctly at the time of insertion.
Copper IUDs may cause heavier bleeding than usual.
And the contraceptive implant is associated with unpredictable (although mostly tolerable) bleeding patterns.
This compares with Sweden, where 30.9% use a long-acting reversible contraceptive, and in England, it’s over 30%.
Part of the reason is many women don’t know much about these contraceptive options, especially about IUDs.
But our research found that women were more likely to choose an IUD when their doctor incorporated information about how much more effective long-acting reversible contraceptives were during contraceptive consultations, and could refer women to get an insertion done quickly if they didn’t provide insertions themselves.
Some women rely on the pill because they don’t know they have other options. Layue/Shutterstock
Women often struggle to find a GP who can insert an IUD and face long waiting times to get one inserted.
Despite a small increase to the Medicare rebate in 2022, the current rebate doesn’t reflect the costs or time needed by GPs to conduct the insertion. This has put a lot of GPs off from providing this service.
It can also be difficult for GPs to take time off from their clinical work to do the training, with courses costing around $1,500 and GPs not earning any income while attending.
appropriate remuneration and reimbursement for GPs providing IUD and implant insertion and removal services, including through increased Medicare rebates
increasing the clinician rebate for inserting and removing IUDs and implants
providing Medicare rebates for nurse practitioner insertions
providing GPs with an incentive to bulk bill insertions so women will not face any out-of-pocket costs
funding eight centres across Australia to train clinicians to ensure they’re trained, skilled and confident in IUD insertion.
These measures complement announcements made last year to provide training scholarships for GPs and nurses to train in IUD insertion and to fund an online “community of practice” to support practitioners to provide these services.
With the increased rebates rolling out from November 1, and the training centres in the next year or two, we should see many more GPs skilled up and providing IUDs in the next few years.
This should make it more affordable and much easier for women to find a clinician to insert it.
Another reproductive health issue remains unaddressed
The government is expected to table its response in parliament this week to the reproductive health care access Senate inquiry.
While there have been many improvements in access to medical abortion, particularly the ability for women to receive a medical abortion via telehealth through Medicare, key challenges remain in ensuring all Australian women can access surgical abortion.
Policymakers will need to focus attention on training a new generation of clinicians to undertake surgical abortions, and developing transparent local pathways for women to access care.
Danielle Mazza has received funding for research and conference attendance and served on advisory boards for Bayer, Organon, MSD and Gedeon Rechter. SPHERE and the ACCORd trial mentioned in the article were funded by the NHMRC and the Extend Prefer study by the Australian Department of Health. The roundtable on barriers to LARC was funded by Bayer.
It generally ends badly. An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps.
They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience. Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.
To see Trump through this lens, let’s look at a group of men who tested their cartographic skills and failed: King Lear and, of course, Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, and latterly, George W Bush and Saddam Hussein.
I even throw in a Pope. But let’s start first with Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself.
Benjamin Netanyahu and a map of a ‘New Middle East’ — without Palestine In September 2023, a month before the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to an almost-empty UN General Assembly. Few wanted to share the same air as the man.
In his speech, he presented a map of a “New Middle East” — one that contained a Greater Israel but no Palestine.
In a piece in The Jordan Times titled: “Cartography of genocide”, Ramzy Baroud explained why Netanyahu erased Palestine from the map figuratively. Hamas leaders also understood the message all too well.
“Generally, there was a consensus in the political bureau: We have to move, we have to take action. If we don’t do it, Palestine will be forgotten — totally deleted from the international map,” Dr Bassem Naim, a leading Hamas official said in the outstanding Al Jazeera documentary October 7.
Hearing Trump and Netanyahu last week, the Hamas assessment was clear-eyed and prescient.
Donald Trump In defiance of UN resolutions and international law, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, and now wants to turn Gaza into a US real estate development, reconquer Panama, turn Canada into the 51st State of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico and seize Greenland, if necessary by force.
And it’s only February. The US spent blood, treasure and decades building the Rules-Based International Order. Biden and Trump have left it in tatters.
Trump is a fitting avatar for the American state: morally corrupt, narcissistic, burning down all the temples to international law, and generally causing chaos as he flames his way into ignominy.
The past week — where “Bonkers is the New Normal” — reminded me of a famous Onion headline: “FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States”.
The Iranians made a brilliant counter-offer to the US plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and create a US statelet next to Israel — send the Israelis to Greenland! Unlike the genocidal US and Israeli leadership, the Iranians were kidding.
Point taken, though.
King Lear: ‘Meantime we will express our darker purpose. Give me the map there.’
Lear makes the list because of Shakespeare’s understanding of tyrants and those who oppose them.
Trump, like Lear, surrounds himself with a college of schemers, deviants and psychopaths. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Kent: My life I never held but as a pawn to wage against thy enemies.
Lear: Out of my sight!
Kent and all those who sought to steer the King towards a more prudent course were treated as enemies and traitors. I think of Ambassador Chas Freeman, John Mearsheimer, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, George Beebe and all the other wiser heads who have been pushed to the periphery in much the same way.
Trump, like Lear, surrounds himself with a college of schemers, deviants and psychopaths.
Napoleon Bonaparte I was fortunate to study “France on the Eve of Revolution” with the great French historian Antoine Casanova. His fellow Corsican caused a fair bit of mayhem with his intention to redraw the map of Europe.
British statesman William Pitt the Younger reeled in horror as Napoleon got to work, “Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these 10 years,” he presciently said.
Bonaparte was an important historical figure who left a mixed and contested legacy.
Before effective resistance could be organised, he abolished the Holy Roman Empire (good job), created the Confederation of the Rhine, invaded Russia and, albeit sometimes for the better, torched many of the traditional power structures.
Millions died in his wars.
We appear to be back to all that: a leader who tears up all rule books. Trump endorses the US-Israeli right of conquest, sanctions the International Criminal Court (ICC) for trying to hold Israel and the US to the same standard as others, and hands out the highest offices to his family and confidantes.
Hitler “Lebensraum” (Living space) was the Nazi concept that propelled the German war machine to seize new territories, redraw maps. As they marched, the soldiers often sang “Deutschland über alles”(Germany above all), their ultra-nationalist anthem that expressed a desire to create a Greater Germany — to Make Germany Great Again.
All sounds a bit similar to this discussion of Trump and Netanyahu, doesn’t it? Again: whose side should we be on?
Saddam Hussein and George W Bush When it comes to doomed bids to remake the Middle East by launching illegal wars, these are two buttocks of the same bum. Now we have the Trump-Netanyahu pair.
Will countries like Australia, New Zealand and the UK really sign up for the current US-Israeli land grab? Will they all continue to yawn and look away as massive crimes against humanity are committed? I fear so, and in so doing, they rob their side of all legitimacy.
Pope Alexander VI There is a smack of the Borgias about the Trumps. They share values — libertinism and nepotism, to name two — and both, through cunning rather than aptitude, managed to achieve great power.
Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, father to Lucretia and Cesare, was Pope in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
1494. The Treaty of Tordesillas hands the New World over to the Spanish and Portuguese. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
He was responsible for the greatest reworking of the map of the world: the Treaty of Tordesillas which divided the “New World” between the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Millions died; trillions were stolen.
We still live with the depravities the Europeans and their heritors unleashed upon the world.
I’m sure the Greenlanders, the Canadians, the Panamanians and whoever else the United States sets their sights on will resist the unwelcome attempt to colour the map of their country in stars & stripes.
History is littered with blind map re-makers, foolish old men who draw new maps on old lands.
Like Sykes, Picot, Balfour and others, Trump thinks with a flourish of his pen he can whisk away identity and deep roots. Love of country and long-suffering mean Palestinians will never accept a handful of coins and parcels of land spread across West Asia or Africa as compensation for a stolen homeland.
They have earned the right to Palestine not least because of the blood-spattered identity that they have carved out of every inch of land through their immense courage and steadfastness. We should stand with them.
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.
The proportion of young people who drink infrequently is growing in the long term. In 2001, 13.6% of Australians aged 18–24 drank less than once a month. That’s since increased to 20%, or one in five.
The proportion of young people who’ve never consumed a full glass of alcohol has also more than doubled since 2001, from 7.5% to 16.3%.
But for many, abstinence is not necessarily the goal. An interest in mindful drinking means trends that encourage moderation – including “zebra striping” and “damp drinking” – have taken off on social media.
So, what are these strategies for cutting down? And are they really something new?
What is ‘zebra striping’?
“Zebra striping” means alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. It effectively halves alcohol consumption for most people. This reduces the risk of intoxication because it gives your body time to process the alcohol.
The term is new but the concept of alternating drinks has long been a cornerstone of harm-reduction strategies.
A UK study commissioned by a zero-alcohol beer brand found that 25% of pub goers alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer. While commercial research like this requires cautious interpretation, it does highlight a growing appetite for moderation.
Is it different to ‘damp drinking’?
The rise of “damp drinking” is another shift from all-or-nothing approaches to alcohol. In a recent survey, close to 40% of drinkers want to drink less compared to 6.5% who say they want to quit altogether.
Going “damp” – rather than completely “dry” – means reducing alcohol without cutting it out altogether.
Having a drink is reserved for special occasions, but generally doesn’t feature in everyday life. This is also known as being “99% sober”.
It’s an approach that resonates with many young people who are “sober curious”, but do not want to completely abstain from alcohol.
Moderation can be a sustainable strategy for people who are not dependent on alcohol. Sometimes even people who were dependent can achieve moderation, usually after a period of abstinence. In the past, the consensus was that people who were dependent on alcohol should only aim for complete abstinence.
Strict sobriety goals can increase risk of relapse. This is referred to as the abstinence violation effect, which can sometimes lead to a cycle of binge drinking and guilt when people feel they’ve failed.
Moderation strategies, such as damp drinking or zebra striping, are more likely to foster self-compassion and gradual change.
So what’s behind this cultural shift?
In part, popular wellness trends have promoted alcohol-free living as a positive and aspirational lifestyle.
Studies show many view excessive drinking – and accompanying anxiety and hangovers – as incompatible with their ambitions and desire to stay in control.
Adding to this, social media can make what you do more visible to others – and serve as a permanent record. So some young people are more careful with behaviours that might lead to regret.
Zero-alcohol beer and wine, and mocktails, offer a way to participate socially without the drawbacks of alcohol consumption. These alternatives have reduced the stigma once associated with abstaining or drinking less in social settings.
This shift is also underpinned by a changing narrative around alcohol. Unlike older generations who often associated drinking with celebration and bonding, younger people are more likely to question the role of alcohol in their lives.
Binge drinking, once seen as a rite of passage, simply may not be as “cool” anymore.
Finding support for change
Given the health risks associated with drinking, such as cancer, liver disease and mental health issues, it’s great news more young people are reducing their drinking.
The Australian national alcohol guidelines try to balance the social benefits and the health risks of drinking.
If you drink within the guidelines – no more than ten drinks a week and no more than four in any one day – you have a one in 100 chance of dying from an alcohol- related illness like cancer or heart disease.
If you drink above those guidelines the risk of these issues exponentially increases.
If you are looking to change your relationship with alcohol, self-reflection is a vital first step. Key questions to consider include:
• is alcohol negatively impacting my health, relationships or work?
• do I struggle to enjoy social occasions without drinking?
Alcohol and other drug support organisations such as Hello Sunday Morning and Smart Recovery offer free, evidence-based, digital support and resources for people looking to change their drinking.
These services emphasise harm reduction and self-compassion, encouraging individuals to set realistic goals and achieve lasting change.
Dr Katinka van de Ven is the Research Manager of Hello Sunday Morning. She also works as a paid evaluation and training consultant in alcohol and other drugs. Katinka has previously been awarded grants by state governments and public funding bodies for alcohol and other drug research.
Nicole Lee works as a paid evaluation and training consultant in alcohol and other drugs. She has previously been awarded grants by state and federal governments, NHMRC and other public funding bodies for alcohol and other drug research. She is CEO of Hello Sunday Morning.
Coles is reducing its product range by at least 10%, a move that has sparked public backlash and renewed discussions about the role of supermarkets in the cost-of-living crisis.
The goal is to boost profitability by reducing costs, increasing sales, and increasing control over the supply chain.
Coles is unlikely to cut traditional brands, especially those from companies with significant market power like Coca-Cola or Nestle. In a battle between giants, the status quo is likely to prevail.
Smaller suppliers are likely to bear the load as they struggle to renew contracts and face increased competition from home brands.
To fully understand the reasons behind this move and its impact on the cost of living, insights from psychology, finance, and supply chain management come in handy.
Why cut back on brands?
The Coles move is all about profitability.
Over the past decade, competition in the Australian supermarket sector has intensified. Coles’ market share declined from 31% to 25% between 2013 and 2023, while Woolworths’ share fell from 41% to 37%.
This shift reflects the rise of Aldi, which now holds approximately 10% of the market, and its strong position in the home brand space.
To boost profitability with a smaller customer base, Coles needs to find ways to enhance its earnings. This can be achieved by raising prices, cutting costs, or increasing the market share of its home brands.
Raising prices vs cutting costs
Raising prices is not a viable option, as consumers are already struggling with high food prices inflation and the rising cost-of-living. However, there is room to cut costs.
One approach is to squeeze suppliers, but again this is unlikely to be effective. The consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), is holding an inquiry into concerns that the supermarkets are using their market power to the disadvantage of their suppliers and consumers.
Additionally, as producers exit unprofitable businesses, supermarkets risk supply chain disruptions due to increased market concentration among surviving suppliers.
Another strategy is to reduce complexity. The more product variety there is, the more complicated and expensive it becomes to manage. Tasks such as stocking shelves, adjusting prices, maintaining inventory, managing delivery schedules, and disposing of expired products all contribute to higher costs.
Simplifying the product range can also boost sales. When faced with too many options, consumers can experience “choice overload”. A widely recognised study in psychology found that people are more likely to make a purchase when presented with a limited selection rather than an extensive array of choices.
Coles has pointed to shampoo and salt as two potential product ranges that can be simplified. I.K.Media/Shutterstock
Shifting to home brands
Simplifying the range will likely focus on items where Coles has a home brand. Home brands now account for 33.5% of Coles’ sales, with 6,000 products. About 1,100 were added over the past year.
This move is a response to competitors like Aldi and Costco. While Coles and Woolworths manage over 25,000 items in their stores, Aldi limits its offering to about 1,800 products.
Coles is focusing on its home brands to better compete with non-branded offerings from Aldi. In its report to the ACCC, the supermarket highlights its investment in expanding its own-brand range to provide more affordable prices, up to 40% cheaper than similar proprietary brands.
While consumers may have fewer choices, it is expected that they will benefit from better prices.
This shift towards home brands is not exclusive to Australia. In the United States, private label sales hit a record in 2023 across a range of items from beauty products to general merchandise. In the United Kingdom, home brand products now account for over half of supermarket sales.
Have we been here before?
Almost 10 years ago, Woolworths and Coles started a significant move to adjust their price positioning in response to the competition. Along with Metcash (IGA), they reduced product ranges in 2015–16 by 10% to 15% to simplify the weekly grocery shop for consumers.
At that time, the culling of products put suppliers under pressure (as now) while consumers were ambivalent: some wanted more brand variety and others preferred less.
As history repeats itself, it will be interesting to see if Woolworths and Metcash will follow the latest move from Coles and how customers, suppliers, and the ACCC will react this time.
A/Prof Flavio Macau is affiliated with the Project Management Institute (PMI)
Golf courses are sometimes seen as harmful to the environment. According to the popular notion, the grass soaks up too much water, is cut too short and sprayed with dangerous chemicals. But in reality, golf courses can act as safe havens for native wildlife, especially in cities.
Cities are home to a wide range of plants and animals, including 30% of Australia’s threatened species. But ongoing population growth and urban development threatens this biodiversity. We’re still losing green space and tree cover, leaving less habitat and resources for native birds, bats, possums, lizards, frogs, beetles and butterflies.
This is where golf courses can play a role. Australia is one of the golfing capitals of the world, with more than 1,800 active courses. These courses represent large, continuous green spaces often with native vegetation, mature trees, lakes and wetlands. Given their ubiquity, golf courses could help conserve urban biodiversity.
This week, the annual LIV Golf tournament returns to Grange Golf Club in South Australia. Grange is one of 30 Australian golf courses certified for its commitment to sustainability, partly due to its extensive woodland, natural habitats and wildlife. So what makes a golf course good or bad for biodiversity?
Grange Golf Club has a Biodiversity Manager.
The gold in the rough
From a biodiversity perspective, the most valuable part of a golf course is the area all golfers seek to avoid: the “rough”. These spaces between the green, manicured fairways can include remnant or restored bushland with dense leaf litter, long grass, thick shrubs, and both living and dead trees. This vegetation is often native and features a diversity of plant species.
Collectively, this can provide a range of resources for native wildlife including food, shelter and tree hollows for nesting. In Melbourne, research found golf courses provided better habitat for wildlife than nearby suburban streets and parklands. They were also home to a greater diversity of birds and bats.
Golf courses also have relatively little human activity. Golfers are only allowed on the course during certain hours of the day. Courses usually do not allow dogs. And there are few cars and roads, so there’s less noise and light pollution than in other urban areas. This makes golf courses pretty attractive to native animals looking for somewhere to live.
Many golf courses are heavily irrigated to ensure high-quality playing surfaces. This ample water supply (typically from recycled sources) is fantastic for wildlife, especially in warmer and drier climates. Birds are known to flock to water resources during drought – a behaviour likely to become more common under future climate change.
Much-feared water hazards for golfers, such as lakes and ponds, actually provide valuable habitat for aquatic birds, frogs, fish and insects. These water bodies are particularly important in cities where wetlands are regularly cleared to make way for new houses, shops and roads.
Importantly, once constructed, golf courses are rarely threatened by clearing or development. In Perth, research found golf courses helped protect native vegetation as development spread through surrounding suburbs. The mere existence of a golf course can help secure a home for native species for many decades to come.
Frequent lawn mowing can reduce insect diversity, particularly among bugs, bees, wasps and ants. This is likely to have flow-on effects for animals that feed on insects, and for flowering plants that depend on insects for pollination and seed dispersal.
Some urban golf courses may also be physically isolated from other suitable habitats, making it hard for wildlife to safely move around to find food, water and a mate. To get in and out, animals may need to cross busy roads or move through dangerous areas where they are exposed to predators such as cats and foxes.
Four golf courses in Adelaide are working together to improve and connect habitat. Glenelg Golf Club
So, how can we best manage golf courses for biodiversity?
In an ideal world, golf courses should only be constructed in developed areas. That’s because constructing courses in natural, undisturbed areas is likely to involve clearing vegetation for fairways, greens, car parks and club houses.
Existing golf courses can help protect biodiversity by retaining and restoring diverse bushland patches in the rough. Important conservation areas can also be fenced off and deemed “out of bounds” to golfers.
The use of harsh chemicals should be reduced to minimise risks to soil, water and wildlife. “Organic golf courses” overseas are already making progress in this space, but they are far from mainstream.
Finally, efforts must be made to connect golf courses to nearby parks and reserves through wildlife corridors, road underpasses, and special crossing structures such as rope bridges. This will enable animals to safely move around the urban landscape.
Many golf courses now have biodiversity management plans and are working hard to make their practices more sustainable. In other cases, disused golf courses are even being converted into conservation reserves, such as the Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve in Elsternwick, Melbourne.
While golf courses cannot replace natural habitats, they can provide a useful alternative for many species that call our cities home.
Jacinta Humphrey receives funding from the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment, the Ecological Society of Australia, BirdLife Australia, Australian Wildlife Society, and the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria.
Assuming Trump follows through on the move, it will put major pressure on the prime minister to match the success of the Turnbull government in 2018 when Trump put a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium in his first administration.
Speaking to reporters travelling on Air Force One, Trump flagged he would make the tariff announcement on Monday (Washington time). He said the tariffs would start “almost immedciately” on all foreign steel and aluminium imports.
The Australian government on Monday was scrambling to put together its response, although government sources insisted it was not surprised and was well prepared.
Cabinet met on Monday morning where the Trump comments were presumably discussed.
Trade Minister Don Farrell said on Monday:
We have consistently made the case for free and fair trade, including access into the US market for Australian steel and aluminium.
Our bilateral economic relationship is mutually beneficial – Australian steel and aluminium is creating thousands of good paying American jobs, and are key for our shared defence interests too.
Sources said the government had been making representations on steel and aluminium for months.
Last week, Farrell said he was seeking talks with incoming US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, but that would have to wait until he was confirmed.
In the lobbying for special treatment, the government will stress that the US has a trade surplus with Australia.
In 2023-24, the US imported about 240,000 tonnes of steel products from Australia, valued at US$250 million (A$400 million).
US imports of Australian aluminium peaked in 2019 at about 270,000 tonnes and declined to around 83,000 in 2024. The three-year average imports from Australia were 167,000 tonnes per year, valued at US$496 million (A$791 million).
Nationals leader David Littleproud said the issue was a test for Anthony Albanese and Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd.
When you make disparaging comments about leaders in other parts of the world sometimes it comes back to bite you.
And unfortunately it could be the Australian economy that gets the bite.
This is a test to see whether Anthony Albanese’s previous remarks and Kevin Rudd’s previous remarks about President Trump has done this nation harm.
Littleproud said if Rudd was “not the right person to have these discussions, then we should be mature enough as a country to send someone who can have those discussions to get that carveout”.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has just returned from Washington.
At a news conference there, he was asked whether Australia was concerned about direct reciprocal tariffs or a flow-on effect from them.
Marles said:
We obviously are engaging with the United States in respect of our bilateral relationship in respect to tariffs.
We’ll obviously press Australia’s interest in our case in respect of that. But none of this is a surprise. We know what President Trump’s platform was as he went into the American election.
He’s been very clear about his policy direction. And so I think we all understand that is going to see changes in American policy in relation to this. From an Australian point of view, we will continue to press the Australian case around the question of trade.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina McFerran, Professor and Head of Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit; Director of Researcher Development Unit, The University of Melbourne
Many of us take pleasure in listening to music. Music accompanies important life events and lubricates social encounters. It represents aspects of our existing identity, as well as our hopes and dreams. It expresses emotions that cannot be explained with words. Music also distracts us from boredom and difficulty and helps us escape into another world.
Music seems to have a magical power: a wand to be waved that makes life feel better. But what if the power was not in the music itself? In fact, the power of music comes from our choices in what to listen to and the human agency we express in this act.
It can be seen as a placebo effect where the music is endowed with special powers by our minds. The qualities of the music are important. But as with all art, it is how we uniquely perceive the song that makes our experience powerful.
My research has shown most of us operate on autopilot when it comes to choosing music, often assuming previous music selections will have the same effect even under very different circumstances.
Stepping out of autopilot and being more intentional in the songs we chose can move from hoping the music will make you feel good, to knowing it will and seeing how it does.
Choose the right music for you
The way we experience music is personal. There is no one song that is going to make everyone feel the same.
Think about trying to pick a song to make you feel happy, or to listen to when you’re happy. If the power was in the musical qualities of the song itself, Pharrell Williams’ Happy might work. The song has several uplifting musical features: a simple but catchy melody; an energising rhythm emphasised by the singer clicking along; a lively tempo; and words that repeat the key idea.
It’s similar to Psy’s Gangnam Style, Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine or ABBA’s Waterloo.
But just because these songs sound happy, do they make you feel happy? Would they make it into your personal top five pleasure-inducing tracks?
Your song selections are different to your friends because of the personal associations you have with them, including your personal taste. That’s why AI can’t generate the right songs for you if you ask it for “happy songs”.
You would be better off to start by looking at your own playlists and frequently played tracks to identify which ones actually make you feel good, personally.
Understanding meaning
It’s important to distinguish between pleasure-inducing tracks and meaningful songs.
Meaningful songs are linked to a range of emotions, identities, histories and social connections – but only some of those are pleasure inducing. Others connect to poignant and beautiful feelings such as grief and loss, whether that is missing home or missing people and creatures we love. This poignancy is distinct from hedonism, which is happiness without negative affect.
If you’re experiencing grief, for example, there may be a beauty in remembering your loved one, but it is connected to the pain of their absence. Choosing pleasure-inducing songs operates as an aesthetic distraction to take our mind away from the pain, which is a different (not necessarily worse or better) choice.
Listening to sad songs when you feel low may help with emotional processing – but not always. Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock
Sometimes meaning doesn’t come with a beautiful purpose. Like the love song that becomes the breakup song. Or the favourite artist whose death renders a song poignant rather than uplifting. Then the song may help with emotional processing, or it may not, it can just fulfil a desire for rumination – a thought we keep circling around without discharging the intensity or our perspective on it.
It might seem obvious that these events will change the way we feel when we listen to a song. But it can be surprisingly difficult to let go of music we love.
Sad songs can be enjoyable and/or a beautiful way of connecting to emotional experiences. But they can also intensify our negative emotions, which doesn’t always lead to resolution.
Being conscious and intentional in music choices is important, especially if you’re tending to ruminate. During down times in life, it is worth checking in after listening to make sure the song is helping you process and resolve, and not just intensify and maintain a negative state you would rather leave behind.
Finding what you love
But most days you are safe to let your instincts guide you. After all, there’s nothing more pleasurable than spending time listening to a banger.
In technical speak, we call these “preferred songs” – songs that might not be personally meaningful, or fill you with joy exactly, but they are just great tracks. Music you love, appreciate and rate.
But even identifying preferred songs is still personal. Despite what many people think, it’s very difficult to get agreement about what makes a good song. But it’s not difficult to identify the songs that you think are great. In fact, it’s a super fun thing to do.
Katrina McFerran has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne to investigate this topic. She is a registered music therapist with the Australian Music Therapy Association.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina McFerran, Professor and Head of Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit; Director of Researcher Development Unit, The University of Melbourne
Many of us take pleasure in listening to music. Music accompanies important life events and lubricates social encounters. It represents aspects of our existing identity, as well as our hopes and dreams. It expresses emotions that cannot be explained with words. Music also distracts us from boredom and difficulty and helps us escape into another world.
Music seems to have a magical power: a wand to be waved that makes life feel better. But what if the power was not in the music itself? In fact, the power of music comes from our choices in what to listen to and the human agency we express in this act.
It can be seen as a placebo effect where the music is endowed with special powers by our minds. The qualities of the music are important. But as with all art, it is how we uniquely perceive the song that makes our experience powerful.
My research has shown most of us operate on autopilot when it comes to choosing music, often assuming previous music selections will have the same effect even under very different circumstances.
Stepping out of autopilot and being more intentional in the songs we chose can move from hoping the music will make you feel good, to knowing it will and seeing how it does.
Choose the right music for you
The way we experience music is personal. There is no one song that is going to make everyone feel the same.
Think about trying to pick a song to make you feel happy, or to listen to when you’re happy. If the power was in the musical qualities of the song itself, Pharrell Williams’ Happy might work. The song has several uplifting musical features: a simple but catchy melody; an energising rhythm emphasised by the singer clicking along; a lively tempo; and words that repeat the key idea.
It’s similar to Psy’s Gangnam Style, Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine or ABBA’s Waterloo.
But just because these songs sound happy, do they make you feel happy? Would they make it into your personal top five pleasure-inducing tracks?
Your song selections are different to your friends because of the personal associations you have with them, including your personal taste. That’s why AI can’t generate the right songs for you if you ask it for “happy songs”.
You would be better off to start by looking at your own playlists and frequently played tracks to identify which ones actually make you feel good, personally.
Understanding meaning
It’s important to distinguish between pleasure-inducing tracks and meaningful songs.
Meaningful songs are linked to a range of emotions, identities, histories and social connections – but only some of those are pleasure inducing. Others connect to poignant and beautiful feelings such as grief and loss, whether that is missing home or missing people and creatures we love. This poignancy is distinct from hedonism, which is happiness without negative affect.
If you’re experiencing grief, for example, there may be a beauty in remembering your loved one, but it is connected to the pain of their absence. Choosing pleasure-inducing songs operates as an aesthetic distraction to take our mind away from the pain, which is a different (not necessarily worse or better) choice.
Listening to sad songs when you feel low may help with emotional processing – but not always. Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock
Sometimes meaning doesn’t come with a beautiful purpose. Like the love song that becomes the breakup song. Or the favourite artist whose death renders a song poignant rather than uplifting. Then the song may help with emotional processing, or it may not, it can just fulfil a desire for rumination – a thought we keep circling around without discharging the intensity or our perspective on it.
It might seem obvious that these events will change the way we feel when we listen to a song. But it can be surprisingly difficult to let go of music we love.
Sad songs can be enjoyable and/or a beautiful way of connecting to emotional experiences. But they can also intensify our negative emotions, which doesn’t always lead to resolution.
Being conscious and intentional in music choices is important, especially if you’re tending to ruminate. During down times in life, it is worth checking in after listening to make sure the song is helping you process and resolve, and not just intensify and maintain a negative state you would rather leave behind.
Finding what you love
But most days you are safe to let your instincts guide you. After all, there’s nothing more pleasurable than spending time listening to a banger.
In technical speak, we call these “preferred songs” – songs that might not be personally meaningful, or fill you with joy exactly, but they are just great tracks. Music you love, appreciate and rate.
But even identifying preferred songs is still personal. Despite what many people think, it’s very difficult to get agreement about what makes a good song. But it’s not difficult to identify the songs that you think are great. In fact, it’s a super fun thing to do.
Katrina McFerran has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Melbourne to investigate this topic. She is a registered music therapist with the Australian Music Therapy Association.
The Cook Islands finds itself in a precarious dance — one between the promises of foreign investments and the integrity of our own sovereignty. As the country sways between partners China and Aotearoa New Zealand, the Cook Islands News asks: “Do we continue to haka with the Taniwha, our constitutional partner, or do we dance with the dragon?”
EDITORIAL:By Thomas Tarurongo Wynne, Cook Islands News
Our relationship with China, forged through over two decades of diplomatic agreements, infrastructure projects and economic cooperation, demands further scrutiny. Do we continue to embrace the dragon with open arms, or do we stand wary?
And what of the Taniwha, a relationship now bruised by the ego of the few but standing the test of time?
If our relationship with China were a building, it would be crumbling like the very structures they have built for us. The Cook Islands Police Headquarters (2005) was meant to stand as a testament to our growing diplomatic and financial ties, but its foundations — both literal and metaphorical — have been called into question as its structure deteriorated.
Then, in 2009, the Cook Islands Courthouse followed, plagued by maintenance issues almost immediately after its completion. Our National Stadium, also built in 2009 for the Pacific Mini Games, was heralded as a great achievement, yet signs of premature wear and tear began surfacing far earlier than expected.
Still, we continue this dance, entranced by the allure of foreign investment and large-scale projects, even as history and our fellow Pacific partners across the moana warn us of the risks.
These structures, now symbols of our fragile dependence, stand as a metaphor for our relationship with the dragon: built with promises of strength, only to falter under closer scrutiny. And yet, we keep returning to the dance floor. These projects, rather than standing as enduring monuments to our relationship with China, serve as cautionary tales.
And then came Te Mato Vai.
What began as a bold and necessary vision to modernise Rarotonga’s water infrastructure became a slow and painful lesson in accountability. The involvement of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) saw the project mired in substandard work, legal disputes and cost overruns.
By the time McConnell Dowell, a New Zealand firm, was brought in to fix the defects, the damage — financial and reputational — was done.
Prime Minister Mark Brown, both as Finance Minister and now as leader, has walked an interesting line between criticism and praise.
In 2017, he voiced concerns about the poor workmanship and assured the nation that the government would seek accountability, stating, “We are deeply concerned about the quality of work delivered by CCECC. Our people deserve better, and we will pursue all avenues to ensure accountability.”
In 2022, he acknowledged the cost overruns but framed them as necessary lessons in securing a reliable water supply. And yet, most recently, during the December 2024 visit of China’s Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, he declared Te Mato Vai a “commitment to a stronger, healthier, and more resilient nation. Together, we’ve delivered a project that not only meets the needs of today but safeguards the future of Rarotonga’s water supply.”
The Cook Islands’ relationship with New Zealand has long been one of deep familial, historical and political ties — a dance with the taniwha, if you will. As a nation with free association status, we have relied on New Zealand for economic support, governance frameworks and our shared citizenship ties.
And they have relied on our labour and expertise, which adds over a billion dollars to their economy each year. We have well-earned our discussion around citizenship and statehood, but that must come from the ground up, not from the top down.
China has signed similar agreements across the Pacific, most notably with the Solomon Islands, weaving itself into the region’s economic and political fabric. Yet, while these partnerships promise opportunity, they also raise concerns about sovereignty, dependency and the price of such alignments, as well as the geopolitical and strategic footprint of the dragon.
But as we reflect on the shortcomings of these partnerships, the question remains: Do we continue to place our trust in foreign powers, or do we reinvest in our own community and governance systems?
At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves: How do we sign bold agreements on the world stage without consultation, while struggling to resolve fundamental issues at home?
Healthcare, education, the rise in crime, mental health, disability, poverty — the list goes on and on, while our leaders are wined and dined on state visits around the globe.
Dance with the dragon, if you so choose, but save the last dance for the voting public in 2026. In 2026, the voters will decide who leads this dance and who gets left behind.
Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.
Late last year, ChatGPT was used by a Victorian child protection worker to draft documents. In a glaring error, ChatGPT referred to a “doll” used for sexual purposes as an “age-appropriate toy”. Following this, the Victorian information commissioner banned the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in child protection.
Unfortunately, many harmful AI systems will not garner such public visibility. It’s crucial that people who use social services – such as employment, homelessness or domestic violence services – are aware they may be subject to AI. Additionally, service providers should be well informed about how to use AI safely.
Fortunately, emerging regulations and tools, such as our trauma-informed AI toolkit, can help to reduce AI harm.
How do social services use AI?
AI has captured global attention with promises of better service delivery. In a strained social services sector, AI promises to reduce backlogs, lower administrative burdens and allocate resources more effectively while enhancing services. It’s no surprise a range of social service providers are using AI in various ways.
Chatbots simulate human conversation with the use of voice, text or images. These programs are increasingly used for a range of tasks. For instance, they can provide mental health support or offer employment advice. They can also speed up data processing or help quickly create reports.
However, chatbots can easily produce harmful or inaccurate responses. For instance, the United States National Eating Disorders Association deployed the chatbot Tessa to support clients experiencing eating disorders. But it was quickly pulled offline when advocates flagged Tessa was providing harmful weight loss advice.
Recommender systems use AI to make personalised suggestions or options. These could include targeting job or rental ads, or educational material based on data available to service providers.
Recognition systems classify data such as images or text to compare one dataset to another. These systems can complete many tasks, such as face matching to verify identity or transcribing voice to text.
Such systems can raise surveillance, privacy, inaccuracy and discrimination concerns. A homeless shelter in Canada stopped using facial recognition cameras because they risked privacy breaches – it’s difficult to obtain informed consent from mentally unwell or intoxicated people using the shelter.
Risk-assessment systems use AI to predict the likelihood of a specific outcome occurring. Many systems have been used to calculate the risk of child abuse, long-term unemployment, or tax and welfare fraud.
Often data used in these systems can recreate societal inequalities, causing harm to already-marginalised peoples. In one such case, a tool in the US used for identifying risk of child mistreatment unfairly targeted poor, black and biracial families and families with disabilities.
Many social service providers have long adopted a trauma-informed approach. It prioritises trust, safety, choice, empowerment, transparency, and cultural, historical and gender-based considerations. A trauma-informed service provider understands the impact of trauma and recognises signs of trauma in users.
Service providers should be wary of abandoning these core principles despite the allure of the often hyped capabilities of AI.
Can social services use AI responsibly?
To reduce the risk of causing or perpetuating trauma, social service providers should carefully evaluate any AI system before using it.
For AI systems already in place, evaluation can help monitor their impact and ensure they are operating safely.
We have developed a trauma-informed AI assessment toolkit that helps service providers to assess the safety of their planned or current use of AI. The toolkit is based on the principles of trauma-informed care, case studies of AI harms, and design workshops with service providers. An online version of the toolkit is about to be piloted within organisations.
By posing a series of questions, the toolkit enables service providers to consider whether risks outweigh the benefits. For instance, is the AI system co-designed with users? Can users opt out of being subject to the AI system?
It guides service providers through a series of practical considerations to enhance the safe use of AI.
Social services do not have to avoid AI altogether. But social service providers and users should be aware of the risks of harm from AI – so they can intentionally shape AI for good.
The project was funded by the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab.
Suvradip Maitra is funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Domestic Scholarship.
Lyndal Sleep was funded by the University of Notre Dame for this research. She is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.
Paul Henman receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). He is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.
Suzanna Fay received funding from the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab for this project.
Donald Trump has already made good on his threat to impose an additional 10% tax on Chinese goods, and is due to announce a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports into the United States.
While he has paused proposed 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports for the time being, a trade war between the US and the rest of the world remains a real possibility.
They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they take almost nothing and we take everything from them. Millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm products.
While it’s true the EU exports more to the US than it imports, it’s simplistic to use bilateral trade balances as a gauge of the overall economic benefits. International trade allows countries to concentrate on producing the goods and services they do well, and to exchange them for ones more costly to produce domestically.
Ultimately, trade allows everyone to consume more. A trade war therefore makes nations worse off: tariffs divert trade flows and reduce the exchange of goods. And, of course, this filters down to affect ordinary household incomes.
Households worse off
The impact of a trade war on any given country will depend on several factors, including the share of a nation’s exports exposed to new tariffs, and the importance of trade to each economy.
Small countries tend to trade more than large ones because they specialise in producing a relatively small number of goods, and rely on trade to consume a variety of products.
To quantify the impacts of a trade war, I consider a scenario where the US imposes additional tariffs of 25% on all merchandise imports (the figure Trump has consistently used), and all other countries respond with similar tariffs on US goods.
I simulate the tariffs in a global model of production, trade and consumption similar to that used by the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s inquiry into improving economic resilience. The model uses input-output tables that describe production of 32 commodities in each country, and data on bilateral trade in each commodity between nations.
National-level impacts are measured by calculating the equivalent impact on aggregate household income. This metric converts the effects from the tariffs – including changes in product prices, wages and business profits – into changes in household income.
In New Zealand, the trade war decreases aggregate household income by 0.1% or NZ$322 million per year. Divided among the country’s nearly two million households, this means each household is worse off by NZ$163 per year.
Global income declines
The impacts of the simulated trade war are larger in North America. It decreases US annual aggregate household income by 1.5%, which equates to US$262 billion, or US$2,963 per household.
In Canada and Mexico, for which the US is both a major export market and source of imports, average household income decreases by 3.6% (US$2,963) and 4.6% (US$1,192), respectively, each year.
Across all nations, the tariff war results in an equivalent decrease in aggregate household income of 0.7% (US$414 billion) per year.
The simulated tariff war also results in a reshuffling of trade. New Zealand merchandise exports to the US decrease by NZ$4.4 billion, but exports to other nations increase by a similar amount (due to their price advantage relative to US goods).
Likewise, New Zealand merchandise imports from the US decrease by NZ$4.7 billion and imports from other nations increase by about the same amount. As a result, the trade war has little impact on New Zealand’s total exports and imports.
Aggregate trade changes are largest in the US, which imposes new tariffs on all its imports and faces new tariffs in all export markets. US merchandise exports and imports both decrease by around US$565 billion (NZ$1 trillion).
Overall, the modelling confirms the well known result that trade wars decrease global economic activity and routinely make all nations worse off.
Niven Winchester has previously received funding from the Productivity Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to estimate the impacts of potential trade policies. He is affiliated with Motu Economic & Public Policy Research.
On the vast expanse of the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia, two very different creatures live side by side – but not always peacefully.
One is the southern hairy-nosed wombat, a slow-moving nocturnal digger that loves its underground burrows. The other is the European rabbit: a small and speedy invader that has spread across the continent, often wreaking environmental havoc and creating its own networks of tunnels.
How do we know where these semi-subterranean creatures live, and how many there are? The answer is from the sky.
In new research published in Australian Mammalogy, we show a way to detect wombats and rabbits using satellites that take pictures of our planet from space. By studying high-resolution images from the likes of Google Earth and Bing Maps, we can spot the telltale signs of the burrows and warrens these creatures dig into the ground.
Why is it any of our business where wombats and rabbits live?
Knowing where wombats and rabbits live is important for conservation.
Wombats are unique Australian marsupials that need protection. Rabbits are an invasive species that often damage the land, eating too much vegetation and eroding soil.
Finding their warrens can help scientists and wildlife managers to understand where they live. This in turn helps to make better decisions about protecting native species and controlling pests.
How do you spot a warren?
Imagine looking down at the world from the window of an aeroplane. You might easily see rivers and roads, and even buildings.
But would you spot a hole in the ground? That’s the challenge we faced in our study of satellite images.
As it turns out, wombat warrens are relatively easy to spot. They are quite large and have clear trails leading in and out. The digging leaves mounds of lighter-coloured soil.
Rabbit warrens are trickier to find. They are smaller, lack trails, and can blend in with bare patches of dirt.
How well did we do?
By comparing satellite images with surveys conducted on the ground, we figured out we could accurately detect about 82% of wombat warrens from the photos. We weren’t quite as good at rabbit warrens: we could only spot 49%. Small rabbit warrens were particularly easy to miss.
One complicating issue was the fact that wombats and rabbits sometimes share the same burrow. Usually it’s the smaller, sneakier rabbits taking advantage of the large and sturdy tunnels dug by wombats.
This makes it even harder to figure out exactly who is living where. We could recognise shared warrens when we inspected them on the ground, but so far we can’t distinguish them from satellite photos.
What’s next?
Our research shows we can use satellites to map burrowing animal populations without ever setting foot in the outback. This saves time and money, and also reduces the the risk of disturbing wildlife while conducting research.
In the future, with higher-resolution satellite images and better software – using tools like machine learning – we may be able to detect and count burrows and warrens automatically. This could be a big change for wildlife conservation and pest control.
So next time you look up at the sky, remember that somewhere out there a satellite might be taking a picture of a sleepy wombat’s home – or a rabbit plotting its next move.
Natarsha McPherson received funding from the Australian Wildlife Society’s University Research Grant.
People looking for a sperm donor can go to a fertility clinic, ask a friend to donate or look for a donor online, including on an app or via social media.
Women in same-sex relationships, single women and others are choosing the online option for a number of reasons.
But this brings with it various challenges and risks. Here’s what to know first.
It’s a popular choice
Up to 4,000 children are estimated to have been born over the past ten years via one Australian sperm donation website alone.
Some donors and recipients choose to use online platforms because they want to form connections and friendships with the other party early on. In some cases, donors choose to remain in the lives of the recipient and any child born from their donation.
Some people might use online sperm donation because the cost of accessing donor sperm at fertility clinics is too high in Australia. Some clinics charge a sperm donation management fee of about A$2,000. This allows people to access information about the donors they can choose from. Then there is the cost of insemination and of the sperm itself, which is about $2,500 out-of-pocket per cycle. Online sperm donation in Australia tends to be altruistic and does not cost anything.
People in rural or regional areas may live far from fertility clinics, making access challenging.
Whatever the reason for seeking sperm online, here are some issues to consider first.
1. Medical unknowns
Sperm donors at fertility clinics undergo medical, physical and psychological screening to reduce the risk of transmitting disease to a child.
However, online sperm donors may provide people with unscreened sperm that might be carrying sexually transmitted infections or inheritable genetic conditions.
This puts the recipient and the potential child at risk because of the lack of medical information about the donor.
People might be placed at risk when they agree to meet a potential online sperm donor in person. There have been reported cases where potential donors have pressured people into natural insemination (sexual intercourse) once they meet. This is despite donors initially agreeing to provide sperm for home insemination (using a syringe to inject the donor sperm into the vagina).
These safety and exploitation concerns are especially pertinent in cases of same-sex female couples and people who are same-sex attracted who might feel coerced or compelled to have sexual intercourse with a man to try to conceive a child.
In fertility clinics, state laws limit the number of individuals or families that can use a single donor’s sperm (from five to ten families depending on the state).
The nature of online sperm donation means there are no records kept about the number of children a donor contributes to conceiving. With no formal record keeping, one donor could potentially provide sperm to hundreds of people. This increases the chances of donor-conceived siblings unknowingly having children together later in life.
There might be cases where donors do not tell the truth about their identity or background, as happened in a case in Japan when a donor allegedly lied about his identity and education.
There might also be psychological harm when an agreement has been made about contact between the parties and that agreement is later disputed or disregarded.
3. Legally, it’s a grey area
A man who donates sperm to a fertility clinic has no legal rights or obligations to a child born as a result of this donation in Australia.
However, conceiving a child using informally donated sperm can be legally precarious. We are not aware of any reported cases in Australia of legal disputes about parentage that have involved online sperm donation. However, if the practice continues to grow, the courts may need to intervene if a donor is seeking to exercise some rights relating to the donor-conceived child against the mother’s wishes.
There was, however, a 2019 case that relates to sperm donation by a friend. Here, the High Court ruled a man who donated sperm informally to his friend was deemed the legal parent of a child. This resulted in the mother and her same-sex partner being prevented from relocating to New Zealand with the child and their sibling.
As each potential case will depend on its own set of unique circumstances, it’s best to take legal advice first.
4. What’s best for the child?
Many donor-conceived people want information about, and contact with, their donor. A lack of information, including medical information, can contribute to psychological, medical and social harms.
So people should carefully consider how this arrangement might impact any child conceived. This includes their potential desire to meet any siblings conceived using the same donor’s sperm.
A child may want to meet any siblings conceived using the same donor’s sperm. fizkes/Shutterstock
Where to from here?
The decision to have a child using donor sperm is complex. When deciding how to access donor sperm, people may benefit from speaking to an accredited fertility counsellor about their options.
While accessing donor sperm through a regulated fertility clinic may be more costly and time-consuming, it is also markedly safer than online sperm donation.
However, some people may not want to access donor sperm through a fertility clinic, or this might not meet their needs. We need to understand why so we can try to do something about it.
If a person decides to access donor sperm online, they should have open and honest discussions with the potential donor about:
their medical history
what role they envisage in the future life of a child born using their sperm
how all parties can keep records and contact information.
Before seeing a potential donor in person, they should also tell a family member, close friend or someone they can confide in about the meeting to ensure they are safe.
Taking these measures may help make accessing donor sperm online a positive experience for all involved.
Neera Bhatia receives funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for an unrelated project.
Catherine Mills has received industry research funding from Monash IVF, Ferring Pharmaceutical and Illumina. She is a bioethics consultant for VitroLife. She has received Australian government research funding from the ARC, NHMRC and MRFF. She does not receive private remuneration from any industry body.
Giselle Newton is a donor-conceived woman and is a member of Donor Conceived Australia.
Molly Johnston has received research funding from Monash IVF Group and Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and honoraria and travel fees from Gedeon Richter.
Karin Hammarberg 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.
Fire broke out in the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd) in December and raged for weeks. Then lightning strikes ignited fresh blazes late last month, which merged to form a mega-fire that’s not out yet.
This 168,000-hectare reserve, about 200km west of Melbourne, is a significant ecological and cultural landscape. Its ancient sandstone mountains and valleys maintain eucalypt woodlands and heathlands that support a rich diversity of plants and animals, making it a key conservation asset in Victoria.
Since 2008, our team has been monitoring mammal species annually in the Grampians. This long-term effort has allowed us to learn how species respond to wildfires, droughts and floods.
We commenced our research just two years after big fires swept through the park in 2006. We also witnessed the changes following more fires in 2013 and 2014.
So while many animals have lost much of their habitat to fire this summer, we know recovery is possible. But some may need help to cope with challenges ahead.
A terrible summer as multiple fires rage
The massive December wildfire in the park’s east burned for weeks, forcing evacuations in towns such as Halls Gap, and upending Christmas for many residents. By early January, that fire was contained – but only after burning about 76,000 hectares of the park and surrounding areas.
Then, on January 27, lightning strikes in the west ignited four fires that eventually merged, burning through the entire Victoria Range and some rural properties.
The full extent of damage is not yet known. But it’s already clear the fires have been devastating. They burned much of the same areas affected by the 2006 wildfires in the east and 2013 fires in the west, as well as long-unburned areas.
Combined, fires this big have not been observed in this landscape in the past 50 years.
The extent of this summer’s wildfires in the Grampians is almost as big as fires in 2006 and 2013 put together. John White, using data from Luke Lupone at Dekain University and VicEmergency
What is the extent of the damage to the environment?
It’s difficult to determine how much of the park has burned so far this summer, because the shaded area on the state emergency map extends beyond the park’s borders. But a rough, conservative estimate suggests at least 110,000 hectares of the 168,000 hectare park has burned since December. This is a deeply troubling scenario.
The Grampians is an isolated landscape – an “island” of native vegetation surrounded by a sea of agricultural land. So animals can’t easily migrate from other parts of Victoria to repopulate the area. Recovery largely depends on the landscape’s own ability to regenerate after fire.
Populations of small carnivorous marsupials often peak in areas that haven’t burned for 10–20 years.
So for many species, most of their habitat has been lost to fire. This includes endangered mammals such as the smoky mouse, heath mouse, brush-tailed rock wallaby, southern brown bandicoot and long-nosed potoroo. These species in particular will need considerable help for the next few years.
Some of the native small mammals from the Grampians landscape. Clockwise from top left: yellow-footed antechinus, southern brown bandicoot, agile antechinus (male), swamp rat, long-nosed potoroo, heath mouse. John White
Recovery will happen over time
Many animals likely perished in the blaze and more will die in coming months.
Unfortunately, most native small mammals struggle to survive in freshly burned habitats. Fire depletes their food sources and strips away the vegetation that provides cover and protection from predators.
But there is hope. Our previous research shows some animals do survive. These survivors can eventually breed, sparking the slow recovery of the landscape and helping reestablish populations over the next decade or two.
The rate of recovery will be driven by rainfall. So if drought hits, recovery will be slow. But if we have wet years, recovery will accelerate.
Many native plants in the national park are more resilient to fire than the animals, so recover faster. Native heathland plants such as Australian grass trees have evolved in the presence of fire and often reshoot pretty quickly. Seeds also germinate after fires. But it takes a few years after the plants come back before many native animal species fully recover.
So the first few years after fire are usually tough for native species. From a conservation perspective this is manageable in a patchy landscape — where some areas burned recently and others haven’t burned in decades. However, the current situation is different. This year, most of the landscape burned and almost no long-unburned habitat remains.
A native grass tree reshoots after wildfire. John White
What are the threats?
The main challenge to recovery in the coming months and years is introduced species, especially foxes and cats. Foxes are particularly problematic, because they are drawn to recently burned areas where hunting is much easier.
To give native mammals a fighting chance, it is essential to ramp up fox management efforts for at least the next year. This will allow surviving native mammals time to recover and for vegetation to regrow, providing necessary cover.
In addition, Parks Victoria and the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action are erecting artificial shelters in ecologically sensitive areas. These provide temporary refuge for animals, giving them a better chance to evade predators.
What about the role of climate change?
In recent decades, the Grampians have experienced a general decline in rainfall, coupled with a significant increase in wildfires since the early 2000s.
We’re now witnessing a cycle where large fires are followed by droughts, and then wet periods such as the recent La Niña years.
During these wetter periods, vegetation flourishes. But when the inevitable dry spells return, that vegetation dries out, creating ideal conditions for wildfires. So the good years, while offering relief to the landscape, are setting the stage for the next fire. This leaves the landscape constantly vulnerable.
What can people do to help?
Fire is a natural process – albeit one increasingly driven by climate change. As climate change worsens, landscapes like the Grampians will face more frequent, large wildfires.
We should approach our natural landscapes with care, acknowledging climate change is fundamentally altering how these ecosystems function.
The best action we can take is to pressure governments to seriously address climate change and implement meaningful solutions.
John White receives funding from Parks Victoria to support his long-term mammal research in the Grampians,
If you are a parent of a school student, you may have received a form seeking permission to use your child’s image on school social media accounts.
It’s very common for schools to share photos of smiling students on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. This may be to celebrate the start of term, student achievements, or performances and events at the school.
Schools need permission from parents to publish or disclose students’ personal information, including photos and videos, on any online platform.
But research suggests families can lack support and information to provide fully informed consent.
Our recent study showed one of main reasons schools post on social media is they believe it is what parents want. This is part of marketing their school as a positive place to learn.
But some parents take a more cautious approach to social media and don’t necessarily want photos of their children made public online.
There is significant community concern about children’s online privacy and their digital footprint or the information trail about them.
Last month, the Australian Federal Police warned parents about sharing images of their children online, especially back-to-school photos. It recommended parents blur or obscure the logo of the child’s school. Police also noted how background features can identify a school or child’s location.
The AFP has seen non-explicit pictures of children and young people become the target of highly sexualised and inappropriate comments or role play.
The risks also go beyond other people identifying your child online. Photos of children shared online can be used to train AI models or create deepfakes that are increasingly being used in cases of cyber bullying and cyber abuse.
School social media accounts are a way of marketing to families and the community. SpeedKingz/Shutterstock
What are the rules in Australia?
The Australian Privacy Act and related Australian Privacy Principles, say consent to share personal information should be current, clearly explained and specific.
This is why schools need to ask parents at the start of each year, but how they do this will depend on the state education department or individual school.
Here are three questions to consider before you sign.
1. What is the school asking you for?
While approaches vary, it is common for schools to ask for several types of permission in one bundle.
For example, they may ask if they can use photos and videos of your child in the school newsletter, school website, annual report, online learning platforms, traditional news media as well as social media.
So the locations where your child’s information and photo may be shared are quite different in terms of privacy and your child’s digital footprint.
For example, this could involve a photo of your child doing a class activity shared on a secure education app, or a video of your child on a public Facebook page.
Parents have the right to consent and/or decline the use of their children’s information for specific purposes. If you can’t do this on the form, you can contact the school.
2. What does the school post?
Before providing or declining consent, you may want to take a closer look at the kinds of posts the school shares. This includes:
the quantity of information shared (number of photos or videos shared, and how often)
strategies used to protect children’s privacy (no names or locations, or photos in which children are not clearly identifiable or faces are obscured)
the purpose of the posts (can you see the value and benefit of sharing information?).
Think about whether the school’s approach fits with your family’s approach to social media and what you share.
3. How does your child feel?
Research shows children as young as eight are developing an understanding of the risks of sharing personal information online.
Understanding how your child feels about their school’s social media is important in making an informed decision about consent. It also helps teach them about making decisions about their digital footprint.
You could ask your child:
are they aware of the school social media sites?
how does having their photo taken, or not, at school make them feel?
are they asked when their photo is taken, and are they told where it will be used or shared?
These forms can seem routine or presented as if it’s not a big deal. But if you have any questions or concerns you should talk to your school. Schools can help you with more information and can also forward feedback to education departments. This is particularly important as we navigate the changing nature of social media and the potential impacts on children.
Karley Beckman is an Associate Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.
Tiffani Apps is an Associate Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child
President Trump’s reasoning for the tariffs included revitalising the American economy by bringing manufacturing and business back within US borders. Essentially, pushing the country towards greater self-sufficiency.
Considering the cost of the tariffs, a number of countries have begun to question their dependence on foreign trade. But there are very clear hurdles including access to precious metals and raw materials.
In a global market that relies on international trade, is it possible to be totally self-sufficient?
The history of self-seficiency
The economic term for self-sufficiency is “autarky”, borrowed from the ancient Greek word autarkeia, meaning “to suffice”. Ideally, this meant that a state could supply the needs of its people without foreign trade. Autarky, in its purest form, isolates the state from foreign economic, political and cultural influence.
There are numerous historical examples of attempts to achieve complete economic autonomy.
In 17th century Japan the Tokugawa Shogunate closed the borders to foreigners and prohibited Japanese from travelling abroad.
There was limited private trade with China through Nagasaki and with Europe through Dutch merchants. They were confined to an artificial island, Deshima, off Nagasaki, to ensure their isolation. These restrictions remained for 265 years, until the threat of US gunboats forced Japan to sign a trade treaty in 1854.
Self-sufficiency was also a goal of Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship, aiming to lift Italy’s post-war economy in the 1920s. One initiative was the “Battle for Wheat”, an attempt to produce enough wheat to meet domestic demand and “free the Italian people from the slavery of foreign bread”.
Italy imported more than one third of the flour needed to make bread and pasta, the two main foodstuffs. Pasta was targeted as a “backwards” food to promote consumption of local rice and reduce agricultural imports.
Tariffs were levied on all imported goods in 1931. These were raised again in 1935 after sanctions were imposed on Italy following the invasion of Ethiopia. Mussolini declared in 1935 that Italy “would manage alone”.
While imports of food, machinery and raw materials dropped, oil imports increased. Mussolini recognised the limits of autarky in 1934:
Let us not delude ourselves about autarky. All the modern nations, thanks to the prodigious development of the sciences, can move towards a partial autarky. But we, until the contrary is proven, will have to import liquid combustibles.
In response to Donald Trump’s America First policy, countries increasingly have to consider certain levels of self-sufficiency. Sven Hansche/Shutterstock
A modern push to self-sufficiency
Even with reduced reliance on fossil fuels, the scarcity of some natural resources, such as rare earth minerals, still poses a challenge to achieving autarky.
Even the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), a centrally planned economy subject to United Nations Security Council sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile testing since 2006, is not completely self-sufficient.
China is North Korea’s largest trading partner, with plastics, tobacco, soybean oil, rubber tires and packaged medicines as the top imports. The economic isolation of North Korea also makes it more vulnerable to global price fluctuations, as the movements are magnified due to the limited number of trading partners.
Supply chain disruptions were highlighted during the pandemic, continued in 2021 with shortages in microchips, followed by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Some nations, such as the US and the United Kingdom, have responded to this logistical risk by shifting to local production, or reshoring, of certain critical industries, such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
This inward turn requires significant investment and lead time and may involve higher local energy and labour costs, or additional environmental restrictions. For industries that involve national security or essential goods, reducing dependence on potential adversaries may be necessary. But for other sectors the higher costs will create inflationary pressure.
There are also implicit costs in cutting economic ties with the outside world. Foreign investment is reduced and innovation lags as there are fewer incentives for the cross-border flow of ideas.
Embracing friendshoring
As the push for self-reliance increases, vulnerable countries will need new strategies to remain resilient.
Identifying alternative supply chain relationships and increasing inventory stockpiles in advance will minimise disruptions.
Another tactic is “friendshoring” – relocating supply chains to countries where the risk of disruption from political chaos is low.
It is likely that geopolitical instability will increase and global fragmentation will continue. While straightforward autarky may not be possible, countries will need to consider how to survive the political and economic volatility of the next four years – and beyond.
Garritt C. Van Dyk 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.
Coincidentally, this recognition comes in what is already an historic year for stop motion. A century ago, on February 8 1925, The Lost World hit cinemas. This film is widely considered the first feature-length stop-motion production, as well as the first “creature feature”.
Audiences were captivated as they watched animated dinosaurs share the screen with live actors. The animators positioned and photographed miniature dinosaurs made of rubber, one frame at a time, to create moving sequences that accompanied full-scale shots with human actors.
This method drew from earlier works such as Georges Méliès’s 1902 short film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune).
Guillermo del Toro won the 2023 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film with Pinocchio. Netflix
Dynamation: the beginnings
After animating on The Lost World, stop-motion pioneer Willis O’Brien went on to animate King Kong (1933) and the lesser-known Mighty Joe Young (1949), where he mentored Ray Harryhausen.
Harryhausen himself would later design and animate some of the most celebrated stop-motion sequences of all time, including the famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and the fictional Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).
The blend of animated miniatures and live actors become known as Dynamation, as Harryhausen pushed to create ever-more integrated and dynamic sequences in which animated puppets “interacted” with real actors.
Back then it wasn’t possible to review animation as it was being shot; you could only see the puppet as it was in the moment. Sequences were shot on celluloid film, and animators had to wait for the film to develop before they could see the results.
The famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts required Harryhausen to remember the movements of seven skeletons and line up a fight sequence with two pre-recorded actors, one frame at a time. He would often work for months before being able to review his work.
In Eastern Europe, filmmakers such as Karel Zeman were also combining live action with miniature special effects and stop motion – extending a long history of Eastern European puppet theatre into cinema.
In 1958, Zeman brought Jules Vernes’ whimsical vehicles and underwater worlds to the screen in his feature film Invention for Destruction (Vynález zkázy).
Invention for Destruction was later named The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. Zeman used a combination of puppetry, stop motion and live action effects for the film. IMDB
Technology advances
In the 1970s, Phil Tippet and others working at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) – a studio founded by George Lucas – pushed the medium further through the development of “go-motion”.
This invention used a custom-made control rig that precisely moved a puppet while it was being photographed – resulting in a subtle motion blur that emulated live-action movement.
This technique allowed for more realistic animation and was used in productions such as Dragon Slayer (1981) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
In the 1980s, however, Star Wars began a trend towards photorealism and audiences became more scrutinising of visual effects. Harryhausen’s creatures in Clash of the Titans (1981) appeared especially hammy and outdated even for the time.
The CGI scare
In the early 90s, Phil Tippet and colleagues at ILM, in the pursuit of perfecting the craft, developed test dinosaur sequences for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Tippet animated the original test sequences in stop motion.
Also at ILM, Dennis Muren was experimenting with a new kind of animation for creatures made entirely using computer software. These were the early days of computer-generated imagery (CGI).
When Tippet saw an early Jurassic Park test of CGI dinosaur footage, he said to Steven Spielberg “I’m extinct”.
Nonetheless, once it was decided the dinosaurs would be created with CGI, Tippet continued working on the film. He used a dinosaur-shaped physical rig, which allowed changes to the rig’s position to translate to CGI movements onscreen. Stop-motion animators were helpful in this process because “CGI animators” as we know them didn’t yet exist.
Amid a CGI-induced scare, Tim Burton and Henry Selicks’ The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) became the first fully stop-motion animated feature to be produced by a major studio. This film proved stop motion could be achieved at a Hollywood scale.
Stop motion took a backseat to CGI in the years that followed. Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), the world’s first fully CGI animated feature, cemented CGI as the way of the future.
The only other noteworthy stop-motion cinematic release came at the turn of the century, when DreamWorks teamed up with Aardman Animations to produce Chicken Run (2000), following a number of successful stop motion shorts, starting with Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out in 1989.
The comeback
Eventually, innovations in digital cameras and motion control paved the way back to stop motion, giving us films such as Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and The Corpse Bride (2005).
Working on Coraline (2008), Laika studios introduced 3D printing technology for a sophisticated form of replacement animation, in which different body and facial pieces are swapped to create character movements and expressions.
Traditionally, this technique was achieved by carving individual wooden models and swapping them out between capturing frames. This is how filmmaker George Pal made his Puppetoons films in the 1930s.
Embracing new tech brought stop motion back onto the world stage, with studios such as Laika leading the charge. Since then, we’ve seen the release of features including ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), Missing Link (2019) and Guillermo del Toro’s Academy Award-wining Pinnoccio (2022).
A new era of stop-motion features
Despite huge developments in CGI, audiences still appreciate the painstaking work of bringing inanimate objects to life frame by frame.
There are more stop motion films being made than ever before, with independent filmmakers and students creating quality sequences for a fraction of what it cost 30 years ago.
Some directors use the medium for its connection with real materials, and out of respect for the art form. Phil Tippet spent more than 30 years on his stop motion feature Mad God (2021) – an experimental and intense horror magnum opus that embodies the materiality of stop motion.
Wes Anderson says his approach to stop motion in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) was “very much about bringing to life the [characters’] performance.”
In Pinocchio (2022), Guillermo del Toro tells the touching story of a puppet, using real puppets, in which imperfection and human frailty are emphasised.
We’re also seeing the return of stop-motion creature effects, such as with Disney’s Star Wars series Skeleton Crew (2024–25), in which live action is once again integrated with stop-motion puppets.
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is now pushing audiences and creators to question what they value in animation, cinema and art more generally.
If AI could generate high-quality films with a stop-motion aesthetic, would we value them as much as those productions that were laboured over for years on end? The recent Oscar nominees may hold the answer.
Jack McGrath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia’s LGBTIQA+SB* communities have long been overlooked in discussions about the prevention of and responses to sexual violence, despite evidence they are at increased risk.
The National Survey on LGBTIQA+SB Experiences of Sexual Violence, which we carried out, is the first survey of its kind. It is designed to fill a glaring gap in national and global research by focusing on the experiences of sexual violence among LGBTIQA+SB Australians.
The lack of data on sexual violence affecting sexual and gender minority communities reflects the low priority given to LGBTIQA+SB individuals in national data collection. For example, the absence of questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the national census means we do not have a representative sample of LGBTIQA+SB people.
As a result, the findings of the national survey can’t be generalised to all LGBTIQA+SB Australians. But they do give us important insights into experiences in these communities.
Many LGBTIQA+SB Australians have experienced sexual violence
With responses from almost 3,200 participants, including 416 First Nations Australians, the survey reveals harrowing truths about sexual violence against LGBTIQA+SB people.
More than three-quarters (76%) reported experiencing sexual victimisation at some point in their life. More than half of respondents (52%) said they had experienced both child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault.
Moreover,7% reported only child sexual abuse, while 17% experienced sexual violence solely in adulthood. Notably, those who faced sexual violence in both childhood and adulthood reported the worst outcomes for their health and economic security. This highlights the urgent need for targeted support and intervention.
Many people carried the burden of sexual violence for a long time. The majority of survivors said they had been most deeply affected by an incident that took place more than five years ago, or in childhood.
More than 80% of identified perpetrators in adulthood or childhood were cisgender men. Nearly one-third of perpetrators came from within the LGBTIQA+SB community.
The setting in which sexual violence occurred varied significantly based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Cisgender men were more likely to report that sexual violence took place in public venues such as bars and clubs.
In contrast, cisgender women, trans men, and non-binary people primarily reported experiences of sexual victimisation in private homes and intimate relationships.
Additionally, First Nations participants, particularly trans women and trans men, experienced higher rates of recent and severe victimisation.
Across the sample, key barriers to seeking help included feelings of shame, fear of blame. Many also had doubts about whether their experience met the threshold of assault or violence.
More support to speak up
When victims did choose to speak up, their experiences varied widely. Supportive and validating responses were appreciated, but many participants reported unhelpful responses such as disbelief, victim-blaming, and dismissiveness. These responses worsened their trauma.
The disclosure rates highlighted the stigma surrounding the acknowledgement of sexual victimisation. For example, less than 40% of all cisgender men reported their experiences, while First Nations cisgender men were the least likely to report sexual violence.
When they disclosed, LGBTIQA+SB survivors were most likely to speak to friends and family. Fewer than half of survivors reached out to support services, and those that did most often sought help from mental health professionals. While satisfaction with these services varied, participants consistently valued professionals who listened, supported, and believed them. They appreciated tailored care and therapy specifically designed for sexual violence survivors.
However, many trans men, trans women, and non-binary people reported encountering alienating responses from professionals. This finding clearly underscores the urgent need for trauma-informed training that is sensitive to LGBTIQA+SB issues and identities.
A hopeful finding was the high rate of bystander intervention among LGBTIQA+SB people. Nearly three-quarters of respondents stepped in to help when they saw people at risk of sexual violence. Motivated by ethics and personal experiences, bystander actions ranged from safeguarding friends at parties to directly confronting perpetrators. However, fear, safety concerns, and lack of knowledge could deter potential allies.
The survey found more than three-quarters of respondents had intervened when they saw people at risk of sexual violence.
These findings have significant implications for addressing sexual violence. To enhance sexual violence prevention, it is crucial to integrate LGBTIQA+SB perspectives into school curriculum, focusing on respectful relationships and sexual consent.
The LGBTIQA+SB community plays a vital role in supporting and protecting individuals from sexual violence. By providing additional resources, we can empower community members with the skills necessary to assist survivors and intervene effectively in risky or dangerous situations.
Health professionals need to be better informed
Given the high proportion of LGBTIQA+SB survivors who seek help from mental health professionals, improved access to affordable and inclusive mental health care in the aftermath of sexual violence would be of enormous benefit.
However, many participants reported that counsellors and therapists sometimes struggled to understand how sexual violence affected LGBTIQA+SB identities and individuals.
Comprehensive care, including from First Nations community-controlled services and organisations, can be strengthened by increasing cooperation and dialogue between sexual violence services and LGBTIQA+SB organisations.
Despite these alarming findings, the survey also emphasises the resilience of LGBTIQA+SB communities. The responses showed that members support, educate and advocate for one another.
By addressing the systemic gaps highlighted by this research, Australia has an opportunity to leverage this collective strength to prevent sexual violence before it happens, while also promoting healing and recovery for survivors, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
Michael Salter received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for this study.
Andy Kaladelfos received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for this study. Andy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is Vice-President of Trans Pride Australia.
Jan Breckenridge received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for this project.
Vanessa Lee-Ah Mat received funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for this project.
Most Australians can look forward to a comfortable retirement. More than three in four retirees own their own home, most report feeling comfortable financially, and few suffer financial stress.
But our new Grattan Institute report paints a sobering picture for one group: retirees who rent in the private market. Two-thirds of this group live in poverty, including more than three in four single women who live alone.
Retirees who rent often have little in the way of retirement savings: more than half have less than A$25,000 stashed away. And a growing number of older Australians are at risk of becoming homeless.
But our research also shows just how much we’d need to boost Commonwealth Rent Assistance to make housing more affordable and ensure all renters are able to retire with dignity.
Today’s renters, tomorrow’s renting retirees
Home ownership is falling among poorer Australians who are approaching retirement.
Between 1981 and 2021, home ownership rates among the poorest 40% of 45–54-year-olds fell from 68% to just 54%. Today’s low-income renters are tomorrow’s renting retirees.
Age pensioners need at least $40,000 in savings to afford to spend $350 a week in rent, together with the Age Pension and Rent Assistance. That’s enough to afford the cheapest 25% of one-bedroom homes in capital cities.
But Australians who are renting as they approach retirement tend to have little in the way of retirement savings. 40% of renting households aged 55-64 have net financial wealth less than $40,000.
Rent assistance is too low
Our research shows that Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which supplements the Age Pension for poorer retirees who rent, is inadequate.
A single retiree needs at least $379 per week to afford non-housing essentials. marikun/Shutterstock
A typical single retiree needs at least $379 per week to afford essential non-housing costs such as food, transport and energy.
But we found a single pensioner who relies solely on income support can afford to rent just 4% of one-bedroom homes in Sydney, 13% in Brisbane, and 14% in Melbourne, after covering these basic living expenses.
With Rent Assistance indexed to inflation, rather than low-income earners’ housing costs, the maximum rate of the payment has increased by 136% since 2001, while the rents paid by recipients have increased by 193%.
A boost is needed
Our analysis suggests that to solve this problem, the federal government should increase the maximum rate of Rent Assistance by 50% for singles and 40% for couples.
The payment should also be indexed to changes in rents for the cheapest 25% of homes in our capital cities.
These increases would boost the maximum rate of Rent Assistance by $53 a week ($2,750 a year) for singles, and $40 a week ($2,080 a year) for couples.
This would ensure single retirees could afford to spend $350 a week on rent, enough to rent the cheapest 25% of one-bedroom homes across Australian capital cities, while still affording other essentials.
Similarly, retired couples would be able to afford to spend $390 a week on rent, enough to rent the cheapest 25% of all one- and two-bedroom homes.
Unlikely to push up rents
One common concern is that increasing Rent Assistance will just lead landlords to hike rents. But we find little evidence that this is the case.
International studies suggest that more than five in six dollars of any extra Rent Assistance paid would benefit renters, rather than landlords.
In Australia, there’s little evidence that recent increases in Rent Assistance have pushed up rents.
Our analysis of NSW rental bond lodgement data suggests areas with higher concentrations of Rent Assistance recipients did not see larger rent increases in the year after the payment was boosted.
That’s not surprising. Rent Assistance is paid to tenants, not landlords, which means tenants are likely to spend only a small portion of any extra income on housing.
Since rates of financial stress are even higher among younger renters, we propose that any increase to Rent Assistance should also apply to working-age households.
Boosting Rent Assistance for all recipients would cost about $2 billion a year, with about $500 million of this going to retirees.
Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the federal and Victorian governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute’s activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities, as disclosed on its website.
The weekend byelection in the outer suburban seat of Werribee saw the widely-anticipated slap-in-the-face to Victorian Labor, which is absolutely on the nose. The question is: to what degree were electors venting against federal Labor too?
With an abundance of caution, the Albanese government would do best to assume it was being given a substantial kick.
Even if the largest slice of the about 10% two-party swing was prompted by state factors, including the sheer arrogance of the byelection (a state treasurer departing mid-term), we know federal Labor is doing badly in Victoria.
There is certainly enough of a message in the result in Werribee (which on present numbers Labor is expected to just retain) to flag a potential serious erosion of federal seats come the national election.
One challenge for federal Labor is to turn Victorian voters’ attention away from state matters, to focus squarely on the choice between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.
Labor needs to minimise the extent to which Victorians use the federal election to take out their anger towards the Allan government. So far, only the Werribee voters have had the chance to get some of that frustration out of their systems. The federal opposition will seek to milk feelings about the Allan government.
Regardless of that, we know Dutton has become more acceptable in Victoria than he was a couple of years ago.
As things stand, Labor is set to lose federal seats in this state where the Liberals have struggled, and the state Liberal organisation has been a shambles. It is a matter of how many.
While the Liberals will be delighted with the Werribee result, the hardheads will note that although the Labor primary vote fell nearly 17% the Liberal vote only rose 3.7%. Partly this might reflect the fact that in Labor heartland, the disillusioned voters wanted to protest but not jump the aisle to the Liberals. Nevertheless, there is the message, applicable federally, that the Liberals need to be attracting more primary votes, not just relying on Labor losing them to independents and small parties.
Once again, we see reflected in this byelection the relative collapse of the two party system. Labor polled 28.7% of the primary vote; the Liberals 29%. fewer than six in ten voters supported one of the major parties.
Depending on your viewpoint, you can see the decline of the two party system as a portend of future instability in our politics, or the continued indication of a fresh new direction. Federally, the present money is on minority government.
In Saturday’s other Victorian byelection, the Liberals wrested the inner city seat of Prahran from the Greens. There was no Labor candidate.
The Greens, on 36.2% of the vote, attempt to take comfort that the swing against them on primary votes was only 0.6%. But a loss is a loss, whatever the margin, and this setback, on top of those in the recent ACT and Queensland elections, must put fears into the party about the fate of the three Queensland federal seats it won in 2022.
With some Labor supporters deeply pessimistic and some Liberals wildly optimistic, both sides are trying to manage expectations about where the election battle stands nationally.
Labor finds some heart from comparing Newspoll’s now and at comparable points before changes of government.
The Dutton opposition in the first Newspoll of 2025 was on 51% of the two-party vote.
By contrast, in the first Newspoll of 1996, the Howard opposition had a two-party vote of 54%.
Newspoll in August 2007 (about 100 days before the election) saw the Rudd opposition on 56%. In May 2013, with about 100 days to voting, the Abbott opposition was polling 55% in two-party terms. The first Newspoll of 2022 had the Albanese opposition on 56%.
Governor Michele Bullock will deliver the next big marker on the political calendar when the Reserve Bank announces next week whether it will cut interest rates.
If it does, there will be a frenzy of speculation about the election being held in April, which would mean scrapping the scheduled March 25 budget.
Quite how Albanese would explain this, when he and his ministers say every other day how much work is being done on that budget, is unclear. Those in Labor who are in the camp of a May election say the government needs time for an interest rate cut to flow through.
Only one man determines the timing, and he’s on record recently saying the date remained “fluid”.
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.
New Zealand should be robust in its response to the “unacceptable” situation in Gaza but it must also back its allies against threats by the US President, says an international relations academic.
Otago University professor of international relations Robert Patman said the rest of the world also “should stop tip-toeing” around President Donald Trump and must stand up to any threats he makes against allies, no matter how outlandish they seem.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ that New Zealand would not comment on the plan until it was clear exactly what was meant, but said New Zealand continued to support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
Dr Patman said the president’s plan was “truly shocking and absolutely appalling” in light of the devastation in Gaza in the last 15 months.
It was not only “tone deaf” but also dangerous, he added, with the proposal amounting to “the most powerful country in the world — the US — dismantling an international rules=based system that [it] has done so much to establish”.
“This was an extraordinary proposal which I think is reckless and dangerous because it certainly doesn’t help the immediate situation. It probably plays into the hands of extremists in the region.
“There is a view at the moment that we must all tiptoe round Mr Trump in order not to upset him, while he’s completely free to make outrageous suggestions which endanger people’s lives.”
Professor Robert Patman . . . Trump’s plan for Gaza “truly shocking and absolutely appalling”. Image: RNZ
Winston Peters’ careful position on a potential US takeover of Gaza was “a fair response . . . but the Luxon-led government must be clear the current situation is unacceptable” and oppose protectionism, he said.
“[The government ] wants a solution in the Middle East which recognises both the Israeli desire for security but also recognises the political right to self determination of the Palestinian people — in other words the right to have a state of their own.”
New Zealand should also speak out against Trump’s threats to annex Canada, “our very close ally”, he said.
He was “not suggesting New Zealand be provocative but it must be robust”, Dr Patman said.
Greens also respond to Trump actions The Green Party said President Trump had been explicit in his intention to take over Gaza, and New Zealand needed to make its position crystal clear too.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the Prime Minister needed to stand up and condemn the plan as “reprehensible”.
“President Trump’s comments have been pretty clear to anybody who is able to read or to listen to them, about his intention to forcibly displace, or to see displaced, about 1.8 million Gazans from their own land, who have already been made refugees in their own land.”
France, Spain, Ireland, Brazil and other countries had been “unequivocal” in their condemnation of Trump’s plan, and NZ’s Foreign Affairs Minister should be too, she added.
“New Zealanders value justice and they value peace, and they want to see our leadership represent that, on the international stage. So [these were] really disappointing and unfortunately unclear comments from our Deputy Prime Minister.”
Yesterday Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ that New Zealand still supported a two-state solution, but said he would not comment on Trump’s Gaza plan until officials could grasp exactly what this meant.
Dozens of countries have expressed “unwavering support” for the ICC in a joint statement, after the US President imposed sanctions on its staff.
The 125-member ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression against the territory of member states or by their nationals.
The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.
Trump has accused the court of improperly targeting the US and its ally, Israel.
Neither New Zealand nor Australia had joined the statement, but in a statement to RNZ the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had always supported the ICC’s role in upholding international law and a rules-based system.
University of Victoria law professor Alberto Costi said currently New Zealand is at little risk of sanctions and there’s no need for a stronger approach.
“At this stage there is no reason to be stronger. New Zealand is perceived as a state that believes in a rules-based order and is supportive of the work of the ICC.
“So there’s not much need to go further but it’s a space to watch in the future, should these sanctions become a reality.
“But as far as New Zealand is concerned, at the moment there is no need to antagonise anyone at this stage.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A national Palestine advocacy group has hit back at critics of its “genocide hotline” campaign against soldiers involved in Israel’s war against Gaza, saying New Zealand should be actively following international law.
“Why is concern for the sensitivities of soldiers from a genocidal Israeli campaign more important than condemning the genocide itself?,” asked PSNA national chair John Minto in a statement.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow and the New Zealand Jewish Council have made statements “protecting” Israeli soldiers who come to New Zealand on “rest and recreation” from the industrial-scale killing of 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza until a truce went into force on January 19.
“We are not surprised to see such a predictable lineup of apologists for Israel and its genocide in Gaza from lining up to attack a PSNA campaign with false smears of anti-semitism,” Minto said.
He said that over 16 months Peters had done “absolutely nothing” to put any pressure on Israel to end its genocidal behaviour.
“But he is full of bluff and bluster and outright lies to denounce those who demand Israel be held to account.”
Deny illegal settler visas Minto said that if Peters was doing his job as Foreign Minister, he would not only stop Israeli soldiers coming to Aotearoa New Zealand — as with Russian soldiers in the Ukraine war — he would also deny visas to any Israeli with an address in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Whlle the commission said it had received 90 complaints about the hotline, it had also received eight complaints about immigration policy allowing Israeli soldiers to enter New Zealand under the visa waiver scheme that applies to Israel.
“Our campaign has nothing to do with Israelis or Jews — it is a campaign to stop Israeli soldiers coming here for rest and recreation after a campaign of wholesale killing of Palestinians in Gaza,” Minto said.
“To imply the campaign is targeting Jews is disgusting and despicable.
“Some of the soldiers will be Druse, some Palestinian Arabs and others will be Jews.”
The five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, shot 355 times by Israeli soldiers on 29 January 2024. Image: @Onlyloren/Instagram
Israeli soldiers are facing a growing risk of being arrested abroad for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, with around 50 criminal complaints filed so far in courts in several countries around the world.
Earlier this month, a former Israeli soldier abruptly ended his holiday in Brazil and was “smuggled” out of the country after a Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation against him. The man fled to Argentina.
A complaint lodged by the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) included more than 500 pages of court records linking the suspect to the demolition of civilian homes in Gaza.
‘Historic’ court ruling against soldier The foundation called the Brazilian court’s decision “historic”, saying it marked a significant precedent for a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to enforce Rome Statute provisions domestically in the 15-month Israeli war on Gaza.
The foundation is named in honour of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed on 29 January 2024 by Israel soldiers while pleading for help in a car after her six family members were dead.
According to The New Arab, the foundation has so far tracked and sent the names of 1000 Israeli soldiers to the ICC and Interpol, and has been pursuing legal cases in a number of countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Cyprus, France, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, together with a former Hamas commander, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Minto accused the New Zealand Jewish Council of being “deeply racist” and said it regularly “makes a meal of false smears of anti-semitism”.
“It’s deeply problematic that this Jewish Council strategy takes attention away from the real anti-semitism which exists in New Zealand and around the world.
“The priority of the Jewish Council is to protect Israel from criticism and protect it from accountability for its apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
“We are demanding that accountability.”
NZ ‘going through the motions’ In a later statement, PSNA said the government had begun to “go through the motions” of questioning Israeli soldiers at the border but it was just a “look busy policy – too little too late”.
NZ requires Israelis to disclose IDF service details as condition for entry – a similar policy to Australia. Image: Times of Israel screenshot APR
Immigration questioning Israeli of soldiers about their military service in Gaza at the New Zealand border was revealed in a Times of Israel report today which said:
“New Zealand’s government immigration authority has begun to require Israelis applying for a visa to report details of their military service as a condition for entry, and at least one person has been denied admission after doing so.”
PSNA’s Minto said the government must also uphold the ICJ advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 which called on global governments to end support for Israel’s illegal occupation.
“This means we should also deny entry to every Israeli wanting to visit here who has an address in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Minto added.
By the time US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on China and Canada last Monday which could kickstart a trade war, New Zealand’s diplomats in Washington, DC, had already been deployed on another diplomatic drama.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz had said on social media it was “difficult to treat New Zealand as a normal ally . . . when they denigrate and punish Israeli citizens for defending themselves and their country”.
He cited a story in the Israeli media outlet Ha’aretz, which has a reputation for independence in Israel and credibility abroad.
But Ha’aretz had wrongly reported Israelis must declare service in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as part of “new requirements” for visa applications.
Winston Peters replied forcefully to Cruz on X, condemning Ha’aretz’s story as “fake news” and demanding a correction.
Winston Peters puts Ted Cruz on notice over the misleading Ha’aretz story. Image: X/RNZ
But one thing Trump’s Republicans and Winston Peters had in common last week was irritating Mexico.
His fellow NZ First MP Shane Jones had bellowed “Send the Mexicans home” at Green MPs in Parliament.
Winston Peters then told two of them they should be more grateful for being able to live in New Zealand.
‘We will not be lectured’ On Facebook he wasn’t exactly backing down.
“We . . . will not be lectured on the culture and traditions of New Zealand from people who have been here for five minutes,” he added.
While he was at it, Peters criticised media outlets for not holding other political parties to account for inflammatory comments.
Peters was posting that as a politician — not a foreign minister, but the Mexican ambassador complained to MFAT. (It seems the so-called “Mexican standoff” was resolved over a pre-Waitangi lunch with Ambassador Bravo).
But the next day — last Wednesday — news of another diplomatic drama broke on TVNZ’s 1News.
“A deal that could shatter New Zealand’s close relationship with a Pacific neighbour,” presenter Simon Dallow declared, in front of a backdrop of a stern-looking Peters.
TVNZ’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reported the Cook Islands was about to sign a partnership agreement in Beijing.
“We want clarity and at this point in time, we have none. We’ve got past arrangements, constitutional arrangements, which require constant consultation with us, and dare I say, China knows that,” Peters told 1News.
Passports another headache Cook Islands’ Prime Minister Mark Brown also told Barbara Dreaver TVNZ’s revelations last month about proposed Cook Island passports had also been a headache for him.
“We were caught by surprise when this news was broken by 1News. I thought it was a high-level diplomatic discussion with leaders to be open and frank,” he told TVNZ this week.
“For it to be brought out into the public before we’ve had a time to inform our public, I thought was a breach of our political diplomacy.”
Last week another Barabara Dreaver scoop on 1News brought the strained relationship with another Pacific state into the headlines:
“Our relationship with Kiribati is at breaking point. New Zealand’s $100 million aid programme there is now on hold. The move comes after President [Taneti] Maamau pulled out of a pre-arranged meeting with Winston Peters.”
The media ended up in the middle of the blame game over this too — but many didn’t see it coming.
Caught in the crossfire “A diplomatic rift with Kiribati was on no one’s 2025 bingo card,” Stuff national affairs editor Andrea Vance wrote last weekend in the Sunday Star-Times.
“Of all the squabbles Winston Peters was expected to have this year, no one picked it would be with an impoverished, sinking island nation,” she wrote, in terms that would surely annoy Kiribati.
“Do you believe Kiribati is snubbing you?” RNZ Morning Report’s Corin Dann asked Peters.
“You can come to any conclusion you like, but our job is to try and resolve this matter,” Peters replied.
Kiribati Education Minister Alexander Teabo told RNZ Pacific there was no snub.
He said Kiribati President Maamau — who is also the nation’s foreign minister — had been unavailable because of a long-planned and important Catholic ordination ceremony on his home island of Onotoa — though this was prior to the proposed visit from Peters.
Public dispute “regrettable’ Peters told the same show it was “regrettable” that the dispute had been made public.
On Newstalk ZB Peters was backed — and Kiribati portrayed as the problem.
“If somebody is giving me $100m and they asked for a meeting, I will attend. I don’t care if it’s my mum’s birthday. Or somebody’s funeral,” Drive host Ryan Bridge told listeners.
“It’s always very hard to pick apart these stories (by) just reading them in the media. But I have faith and confidence in Winston Peters as our foreign minister,” PR-pro Trish Shrerson opined.
So did her fellow panellist, former Labour MP Stuart Nash.
“He’s respected across the Pacific. He’s the consummate diplomat. If Winston says this is the story and this is what’s happening, I believe 100 percent. And I would say, go hard. Winston — represent our interests.”
‘Totally silly’ response But veteran Pacific journalist Michael Field contradicted them soon after on ZB.
“It’s totally silly. All this talk about cancelling $104 million of aid is total pie-in-the-sky from Winston Peters,” he said.
“Somebody’s lost their marbles on this, and the one who’s possibly on the ground looking for them is Winston Peters.
“He didn’t need to be in Tarawa in early January at all. This is pathetic. This is like saying I was invited to my sister’s birthday party and now it’s been cancelled,” he said.
Not a comparison you hear very often in international relations.
“While the conspiracy around Kiribati and China has deepened, no one is noticing the still-viable Kiribati-United States treaty which prevents Kiribati atolls [from] being used as bases without Washington approval,” he added.
Kiribati ‘hugely disrespectful’ But TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver said Kiribati was being “hugely disrespectful”.
In a TVNZ analysis piece last weekend, she said New Zealand has “every right to expect better engagement than it has been getting over the past year.”
Dreaver — who was born in and grew up in Kiribati and has family there — also criticised “the airtime and validation” Kwansing got in the media in New Zealand.
“She supports and is part of a government that requires all journalists — should they get a visa to go there — to hand over copies of all footage/information collected,” Dreaver said.
Kwansing hit back on Facebook, accusing Dreaver of “publishing inane drivel” and “irresponsible journalism causing stress to locals.”
“You write like you need a good holiday somewhere happy. Please book yourself a luxury day spa ASAP,” she told TVNZ’s Pacific Affairs reporter.
“Despite this media issue, the government of Kiribati remains convinced the strong bonds between Kiribati and New Zealand will enable a resolution to this unfortunate standoff,” it said.
Copping the blame Another reporter who knows what it’s like to cop the blame for reporting stuff diplomats and politicians want to keep out of the news is RNZ Pacific’s senior journalist and presenter Lydia Lewis.
Last year, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese questioned RNZ’s ethics after she reported comments he made to the US Deputy Secretary of State at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga — which revealed an until-then behind closed doors plan to pay for better policing in the Pacific.
She’s also been covering the tension with Kiribati.
Is the heat coming on the media more these days if they candidly report diplomatic differences?
TVNZ Pacific senior journalist and presenter Lydia Lewis . . . “both the public and politicians are saying the media [are] making a big deal of things.” Image: RNZ Pacific
“There’s no study that says there are more people blaming the media. So it’s anecdotal, but definitely, both the public and politicians are saying the media (are) making a big deal of things,” Lewis told Mediawatch.
“I would put the question back to the public as to who’s manufacturing drama. All we’re doing is reporting what’s in front of us for the public to then make their decision — and questioning it. And there were a lot of questions around this Kiribati story.”
Lewis said it was shortly before 6pm on January 27, that selected journalists were advised of the response of our government to the cancellation of the meeting with foreign minister Peters.
Vice-President an alternative But it was not mentioned that Kiribati had offered the Vice-President for a meeting, the same person that met with an Australian delegation recently.
A response from Kiribati proved harder to get — and Lewis spoke to a senior figure in Kiribati that night who told her they knew nothing about it.
Politicians and diplomats, naturally enough, prefer to do things behind the scenes and media exposure is a complication for them.
But we simply wouldn’t know about the impending partnership agreement between China and the Cook Islands if TVNZ had not reported it last Monday.
And another irony: some political figures lamenting the diplomatically disruptive impact of the media also make decidedly undiplomatic responses of their own online these days.
“It can be revealing in the sense of where people stand. Sometimes they’re just putting out their opinions or their experience. Maybe they’ve got some sort of motive. A formal message or email we’ll take a bit more seriously. But some of the things on social media, we just take with a grain of salt,” said Lewis.
“It is vital we all look at multiple sources. It comes back to balance and knowledge and understanding what you know about and what you don’t know about — and then asking the questions in between.”
Big Powers and the Big Picture Kwansing objected to New Zealand media jumping to the conclusion China’s influence was a factor in the friction with New Zealand.
“To dismiss the geopolitical implications with China . . . would be naive and ignorant,” Dreaver countered.
Michael Field pointed to an angle missing.
“While the conspiracy around Kiribati and China has deepened, no one is noticing the still viable Kiribati-United States treaty which prevents Kiribati atolls being used as bases without Washington approval,” he wrote in his Substack.
In the same article in which Vance called Kiribati “an impoverished, sinking island nation” she later pointed out that its location, US military ties and vast ocean territory make it strategically important.
Questions about ‘transparency and accountability’ “There’s a lot of people that want in on Kiribati. It has a huge exclusive economic zone,” Lewis said.
She said communication problems and patchy connectivity are also drawbacks.
“We do have a fuller picture now of the situation, but the overarching question that’s come out of this is around transparency and accountability.
“We can’t hold Kiribati politicians to account like we do New Zealand government politicians.”
“I don’t want to give Kiribati a free pass here but it’s really difficult to get a response.
“They’re posting statements on Facebook and it really has raised some questions around the government’s commitment to transparency and accountability for all journalists . . . committed to fair media reporting across the Pacific.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown says New Zealand is asking for too much oversight over its deal with China, which is expected to be penned in Beijing next week.
Brown told RNZ Pacific the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship was reciprocal.
“They certainly did not consult with us when they signed their comprehensive partnership agreement [with China] and we would not expect them to consult with us,” he said.
“There is no need for New Zealand to sit in the room with us while we are going through our comprehensive agreement with China.
“We have advised them on the matter, but as far as being consulted and to the level of detail that they were requiring, I think that’s not a requirement.”
Brown is going to China from February 10-14 to sign the “Joint Action Plan for a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”.
The Cook Islands operates in free association with New Zealand. It means the island nation conducts its own affairs, but Aotearoa needs to assist when it comes to foreign affairs, disasters, and defence.
NZ seeks more consultation New Zealand is asking for more consultation over what is in the China deal.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said neither New Zealand nor the Cook Island people knew what was in the agreement.
“The reality is we’ve been not told [sic] what the nature of the arrangements that they seek in Beijing might be,” he told RNZ Morning Report on Friday.
In 2023, China and Solomon Islands signed a deal on police cooperation as part of an upgrade of their relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.
Brown said he had assured New Zealand “over and over” that there would be no impact on the countries’ relationship and “no surprises”, especially on security aspects.
“But the contents of this agreement is something that our team are working on with our Chinese counterparts, and it is something that we will announce and provide once it is signed off.”
He said it was similar to an agreement New Zealand had signed with China in 2014.
Deep sea mining research Brown said the agreement was looking for areas of cooperation, with deep sea mining research being one area.
However, he said the immediate area that the Cook Islands wanted help with was a new interisland vessel to replace the existing ageing ship.
Brown has backed down from his controversial passport proposal after facing pressure from New Zealand.
He said the country “would essentially punish any Cook Islander that would seek a Cook Islands passport” by passing new legislation that would not allow them to also hold a New Zealand passport.
“To me that is a something that we cannot engage in for the security of our Cook Islands people.
“Whether that is seen as overstepping or not, that is a position that New Zealand has taken.”
A spokesperson for Peters said the two nations did “not see eye to eye” on a number of issues.
Relationship ‘very good’ However, Brown said he always felt the relationship was very good.
“We can agree to disagree in certain areas and as mature nation states do, they do have points of disagreement, but it doesn’t mean that the relationship has in any way broken down.”
On Christmas Day, a Cook Islands-flagged vessel carrying Russian oil was seized by Finnish authorities. It is suspected to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet and cutting underwater power cables in the Baltic Sea near Finland.
Peters’ spokesperson said the Cook Islands shipping registry was an area of disagreement between the two countries.
Brown said the government was working with Maritime Cook Islands and were committed with aligning with international sanctions against Russia.
When asked how he could be aligned with sanctions when the Cook Islands flagged the tanker Eagle S, Brown said it was still under investigation.
“We will wait for the outcomes of that investigation, and if it means the amendments and changes, which I expect it will, to how the ship’s registry operates then we will certainly look to make those amendments and those changes.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Byelections occurred on Saturday in the Victorian state seats of Prahran and Werribee. The Liberals gained Prahran from the Greens by a 51.6–48.4 margin, a 13.6% swing to the Liberals since the 2022 state election.
Primary votes were 36.2% Liberals (up 4.8%), 36.2% Greens (down 0.6%), 12.8% for independent Tony Lupton, the Labor member for Prahran from 2002 to 2010, and 5.3% for another independent. Labor did not contest after winning 26.8% in 2022.
The primary vote swings between the Greens and Liberals only explain 2.7% of the 13.6% two-candidate swing. In 2022, Labor preferences would have flowed strongly to the Greens, but at the byelection Lupton recommended preferences to the Liberals on his how-to-vote material. The Greens’ share of overall preferences plunged from nearly 80% in 2022 to 44%.
In Werribee, Labor leads the Liberals by 50.6–49.4, a 10.4% swing to the Liberals since 2022. Primary votes are 29.0% Liberals (up 3.7%), 28.7% Labor (down 16.7%), 14.7% for independent Paul Hopper (up 8.8%), 7.5% Greens (up 0.7%), 7.3% Victorian Socialists (up 3.7%), 5.5% Legalise Cannabis (new) and 4.4% Family First (up 1.9%).
Labor’s primary vote slumped in Werribee, but the Liberals were not the main beneficiary. There were just enough preferences from left-wing sources (Greens, Socialists and Legalise Cannabis) to put Labor over the line.
The large majority of outstanding votes at these byelections will be postals. In postals counted so far in Werribee, the Liberals lead by 53–47, and they will need to increase that margin on remaining postals to erase Labor’s current lead. But later postals are usually better for left-wing parties than earlier ones.
In Prahran, the Liberals lead the Greens on postals counted so far by 65–35. Later postals will probably be better for the Greens, but the Liberals will still win this byelection.
In Prahran, the Greens should have been able to overcome a shift against them on preferences with an improved primary vote. Losing this seat, which they have held since the 2014 state election, is a dismal result for the Greens.
Labor is likely to retain Werribee, but the slump in the Labor primary vote validates the recent Victorian Resolve poll that had Labor’s statewide primary vote at just 22% and the Liberals in a clear election-winning position.
Victorian upper house reform delayed again
Since winning government at the November 2014 election, Labor has done nothing to reform the upper house electoral system. The upper house still uses group ticket voting (GTV), which is no longer used in any other Australian jurisdiction.
GTV was scrapped in New South Wales before the 2003 election, federally before 2016, in South Australia before 2018 and in Western Australia before this year’s March election. Other jurisdictions have never used GTV.
The artificially strong preference flows produced by GTV can allow parties with very low vote share to win seats through preference deals by overtaking parties with a much higher vote. In a system where voters direct their own preferences, this does not occur.
Analyst Kevin Bonham wrote on Friday that the parliamentary Victorian Electoral Matters Committee had recommended scrapping GTV, but the government has delayed any response until after the Committee publishes its final report in December. By this time, it will be difficult to make changes so that they can be implemented for the November 2026 election.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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