The reality of shorter working hours could be one step closer for many Australians, pending the outcome of the federal election.
The Greens, who could control crucial cross bench votes in a hung parliament, have announced plans for a four-day working week, with no loss of pay. They say the policy would alleviate stress and burn out, and increase women’s participation in the workforce.
Earning the same money for fewer hours would appeal to most workers. But is it too good to be true? Could it really be rolled out cost free to all workplaces, especially to “client facing” companies and service providers?
Or does research suggest the Greens could be onto something?
The Greens’ plan
The Greens’ policy would involve a new National Institute for the Four Day Work Week and a test case through the Fair Work Commission.
A series of national trials would be set up in a number of different industries, whereby workers would work 80% of their normal hours, while maintaining 100% of their pay.
According to Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, it’s a win-win for everyone:
It can increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, improve recruitment and retention and give employees more time to manage their home life. This change will allow workers to create a working week that works for them.
The 100:80:100 model
The four-day work week being proposed in this instance is commonly regarded as the 100:80:100 model.
It delivers 100% of the pay, for 80% of the hours, in return for maintaining 100% of productivity.
This is unlike other forms of shorter working weeks, which compress five days’ worth of work into four longer days. This obviously disadvantages some employees.
Recent research conducted by Swinburne University of Technology involved interviews with ten Australian firms that have already adopted the 100:80:100 model.
They were a mixture of small and medium sized private sector businesses, including management consulting firms, a shipping and logistics company, and recruitment and marketing agencies.
The research underlined the potential for a range of positive outcomes for both employers and employees.
Workers reported having better work-life balance, more time to complete “life administration” tasks, and more time to invest in hobbies, exercise, wellness and self-care. Bosses cited productivity gains, reduced sick days, and significant improvements in recruitment and retention rates.
However, the 100:80:100 model is viewed with scepticism in some quarters. There is still doubt that productivity and output would be maintained, or in some cases improved, when workers are working one day fewer per week.
Also, there could be costs associated with the implementation of this work model for front-line roles, such as retail, schools, hospitals and nursing homes. Additional workers may need to be hired, at extra expense, to cover the hours dropped by the existing workforce.
100 years of working 5 days a week
The year 2026 will mark the 100th anniversary of the five-day work week.
It was car maker Henry Ford who reduced the working week in the United States from six days to five. Other sectors and countries followed suit. This was at a time when the average life expectancy of Australian workers was just 55 and households typically only had one bread-winner.
Despite the time saved by the many technological breakthroughs in the past 100 years – from the photocopier, desktop computer and fax machine, to the internet, mobile phones and AI – the average Australian is now working longer hours in paid and unpaid labour than ever before.
The Greens point out Australian society is changing. More women and carers are either in the workforce or would be encouraged into the workforce by more flexible arrangements:
yet we are constrained by archaic labour laws that see the fruits of our efforts swallowed up in profits for bosses and shareholders.
The role of generative AI technologies in the workplace may also deliver benefits to workers. Separate Swinburne research has revealed an increasing expectation among workers that they will receive a share in the time saved by future technologies in the form of improved work-life balance and wellbeing gains.
Time to enter the 21st century
Earlier this year, 200 UK companies signed up to the 100:80:100 model, as part of a campaign to “reinvent Britain’s working week”. Large scale trials are also underway in Canada and several European countries.
The global interest in a shorter working week is not surprising, and has likely been fuelled by the COVID pandemic, which has caused workers and employers to re-imagine their working lives.
If the Greens are in a position to leverage any balance of power after the coming election, it could be Australia’s turn to recognise the conventional five-day working week is no longer fit for purpose.
John L. Hopkins 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.
From May 1, the oral contraceptive Slinda (drospirerone) will be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This means the price will drop for the more than 100,000 Australian women who currently use it – from around $A320 a year to around $94.
It’s the third contraceptive pill the federal government has added to the PBS this year, after Yaz and Yasmine. But these two are combined oral contraceptives – meaning they contain both the hormones oestrogen and progestogen – whereas Slinda is progestogen-only.
So, Slinda is a little bit different – here’s how it works and what it will cost.
What is Slinda and how does it work?
Oral contraceptive pills contain active ingredients based on the female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy.
Contraceptive pills with both hormones are known as combined-contraceptive pills. Progesterone only pills are often referred to as mini-pills.
The active ingredient in Slinda is a progestogen, which is a synthetic derivative of progesterone, which makes the medication a mini-pill.
Slinda works by stopping ovulation (the ovary doesn’t release an egg) and making the mucus in the cervix thicker so sperm cannot get into the uterus from the vagina.
Both combined contraceptive pills and mini pills effectively prevent pregnancy, but their suitability varies for different women. Mini-pills, including Slinda, can be 99% effective if used perfectly – but with typical day-to-day use, they provide only around 93% protection.
Who will find Slinda useful?
Slinda may be a particularly beneficial alternative for people who can’t use contraceptives containing oestrogen.
This may include women who are older, overweight, or prone to migraines. This is because oestrogen is known to increase the risk of blood clots which lead to deep vein thrombosis – already a higher risk for older and overweight women.
Similarly, combined pills containing oestrogen aren’t appropriate for those who’ve had a baby in the last 21 days or are breastfeeding. Lower levels of oestrogen are needed in a woman’s body post-birth as it stimulates prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production. Taking an oestrogen-based pill can potentially interfere with that.
Slinda can be taken at any time after childbirth, including while breastfeeding, and generally remains a safer option for people with a history of blood clots or migraines.
Slinda also has advantages over other, older generations of progestogen-based contraceptive pills. Mini-pills such as Microlut and Noriday have no pill-free days, whichs means if a woman misses taking the pill by even a few hours it can increase her chance of becoming pregnant.
The pill-free window for Slinda is 24 hours. This means if you are less than 24 hours late it’s considered a late pill, not a missed pill. If you take the late pill as soon as you remember, and then the next pill at the normal time, you should have effective protection from unwanted pregnancy.
The potential side effects for Slinda are similar to other contraceptive pills. Women may find that their period may stop altogether, or they may experience bleeding irregularities or spotting, as well as breast tenderness.
The pill may also not work effectively if it’s not taken correctly every day, or if it is taken with other drugs, such as the anti-viral ritonavir and anti-seizure medication phenytoin.
If a woman is suffering from vomiting or severe diarrhoea, Slinda may not be effective and she should use back-up contraception such as condoms.
There are other progesterone-only contraceptive options available on the PBS, such as levonorgestrel pills and implants, including the intrauterine devices, Mirena and Kyleena.
Why was Slinda added to the PBS?
Slinda has been available in Australia since at least 2004, but not at a subsidised price.
In November 2024, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended Slinda’s listing on the PBS. The committee cited several reasons, including advice from doctors, the need to provide women with more contraceptive options and Slinda’s longer pill-free window.
At a stakeholder meeting in October 2024, doctors stressed the need for more choice for women, when choosing a pill.
They highlighted women starting an oral contraceptive pill for the first time will often first use PBS-subsidised medications, even though a non-PBS product may be more suitable for them. Slinda’s listing makes it a more accessible first choice for women.
As Slinda is a prescription-only medication, if you wish to change pills or start on the drug you will need to consult your doctor. If you do change, from May 1 and based on similar PBS medications, you can expect to pay around $31 for a four-month supply.
Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and was previously a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design, and testing.
Jasmine Lee and Shoohb Alassadi do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The 72 hours after the sexual assault of a child can be a crucial window for police to collect biological evidence and document signs of bruising or injury.
But this procedure – known as a forensic medical examination – can be scary and invasive.
In new research published with colleagues, I interviewed ten children (aged 4-16) and their parents about their experiences attending a Melbourne paediatric hospital in the hours after an alleged assault.
This was a small group, but their stories shed light on wider concerns. Addressing them can help put children first in what may be the most traumatic time of their lives.
Its purpose is to gather biological evidence from the victim to help police identify an offender and prosecute them.
At a hospital crisis care suite, the child will speak to a specialist doctor (a forensic paediatrician) alongside another clinician, usually a psychologist or social worker. Police also attend.
The doctor will take the child’s medical history, as well as asking for an account of the assault.
The doctor swabs relevant areas – such as the child’s vulva, vagina or anus – to collect biological materials that may be present, including saliva or semen. They will also look for injuries or bruising.
This examination can be uncomfortable and can take hours. It may also be emotionally harrowing, for the child as well as their carer.
In the following days, children often need to give another statement to police and are referred for counselling.
A child usually attends a forensic medical examination alongside their parent. fizkes/Shutterstock
A trauma-informed approach means prioritising a sense of safety for children who have experienced trauma, building trust and sharing control, to avoid retraumatisation.
This means explaining to children and their carers what is going to happen next, gaining their consent and giving them some control over the timing and pace of any interventions (such as being swabbed).
Children and families have different – sometimes traumatic – experiences of dealing with health services and police. So considering a child’s personal history and culture is important.
However there is still little research examining children and young people’s experience of crisis care.
My study involved seven girls, two boys and one non-binary child, aged between four and 16. In the days or weeks after their examination, I interviewed the child and the parent who attended hospital with them, both individually and together (in child-parent pairs).
The interviews uncovered four areas that were important to children and their parents.
1. Repeating their story but not feeling heard
After they first report their experience, children need to tell their story several times to various strangers.
This means sharing highly personal details while distressed to people who often don’t have the time to get to know them, their context, family, previous trauma history or culture.
Fiona* (16) found this aspect of the process “very, very, very stressful.”
Some said repeating their story felt like they had to convince professionals it was true.
Layla (14) commented:
I felt like I was the one in trouble.
2. Being treated with care matters
Several young participants discussed feeling “traumatised,” “intimidated” and “ashamed” during the examination itself.
Seven-year-old Sasha told us about the doctor who examined her:
She kept saying, ‘Lie still,’ and it was hard for me to just lie still. Then she just, when she did the examination […] I was crying on the bed, and it hurt me […]. And she just looked at me. Because she’s seen me crying and she just looked at me.
But when the doctor, or the clinician was caring – and took time to understand them and their individual needs – it helped ease some of the distress.
One parent, Kaye, felt the clinician “had this incredible demeanour and heart about her” and helped her child “understand what was going to happen.”
Other young people appreciated the clinician helped them with panic attacks and “made us feel relaxed.”
The youngest participant Ava (4) said she liked that she was given a teddy bear.
Children told us caring gestures – such as providing a teddy bear – made the experience less scary. fizkes/Shutterstock
3. Unpleasant surroundings made the experience worse
Some participants described the space where the forensic medical examination took place as small and unwelcoming.
Dylan (16) felt it was “unsafe”, while Ava said it was “a bit scary”.
Examination spaces need to be kept forensically clean. In the hospital where these examinations took place, that meant there were no windows, pictures on the walls or soft furnishings.
Several young participants felt it showed what had happened to them was somehow shameful. As Felicity explained:
it was frightening. […] You’re just walking down a really long corridor, all these white […] ceilings and walls. And it was kind of just like a bit […] not welcoming, not nice and hidden away.
Parents often felt sidelined or unheard before, during and after the examination.
Samira (a parent) said she didn’t feel like her concerns were understood:
I come from a different background, I don’t know what is happening and I don’t know what to ask. I’m not very trusting of police.
Children themselves worried about their parent. As Layla said:
it’s not just me that’s going through this, it’s my mum. […] I feel like she should be able to have that support too. None of it was offered to her.
One parent said they’d been “sent home without any support”. Another had a sense of being “just left there and wondering what to do”.
Responding to the whole child
The children and adults I interviewed made clear they wanted a holistic approach.
They wanted professionals (including doctors, clinicians and police) to not only pursue justice on their behalf, but also listen and respond to their physical, emotional and social needs and take into account their particular context and culture.
The response needs to make children and their families feel safer – not more scared.
It also needs to help them recover from the trauma, including counselling for both parents and children without long waitlists.
The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.
*Names have been changed.
Caroline Whitehouse is employed by the Northern Centre Against Sexual Assault, which is affiliated with the peak body Sexual Assault Support Services Victoria (SASVic). She was previously employed by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, where this study took place. The Royal Children’s Hospital, along with LaTrobe University, gave ethics approval for the study.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
As most of us appreciate, there is a whole geopolitical world that overlays the formal political world of about 200 ‘nation states’ (aka ‘polities’). Geopolitical fractures – a result of the ‘big games’ over and above the ‘rules-based order’ – occur in all sorts of places, sometimes through provinces, even counties. Their significances wax and wane, as geopolitics itself is a dynamic game of changing exceptions and allegiances, and the expansions or contractions of ‘real estate assets’.
How about this one, given the apparent detaching of the United States of America from the liberal democratic western alliance? (Is the western alliance – which includes Canada – in the process of becoming a set of American proxies, like certain Latin American countries, rather than a partnership? Or is it a process of divorce?) Point Roberts is a United States enclave within the Greater Vancouver urban area. Should Canada – or British Columbia – file for Point Roberts? It would be the tidy thing to do, as part of the divorce settlement.
Geopolitics operates on at least two levels. There are the big fractures, where potential world wars – hot and cold – are simmering. Then there are the smaller fractures, such as those between the European Union and its neighbours: Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Cyprus. And those within the world’s mini-empires: Denmark vis-à-vis Greenland; Australia vis-à-vis Norfolk Island; New Zealand vis-à-vis Cook Islands; France vis-à-vis New Caledonia.
At an intermediate level are boundary disputes between Japan and Russia (Kuril Islands), India and Pakistan (Kashmir), India and China (Himalayas), and Rwanda and the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). Then there are new hot-fractures being created through civil wars; such as that between the Arabic and African worlds within Sudan, Islamic and Buddhist populations within Myanmar, and different ethno-cultural minorities within (and on the edges of) Syria and in the west of China.
There’s also a growing north-south sectarian divide in Nigeria (reflecting complex geopolitical game-playing in the Sahel, to Nigeria’s north and northwest), Africa’s most populous country. And there are geopolitical pushes and pulls in the non-EU Balkans. Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina (European countries with majority Islamic populations) have become effective proxies of the United States; the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina is fractured almost fifty-fifty, the other part being the autonomous though unrecognised Russian-aligned Republika Srpska. (China is currently building a north-south railway through the Balkans from Piraeus in Greece to Budapest in Hungary, while the European Union is sponsoring a new railway from Albania in the Adriatic Sea to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.)
Finally, there’s a big geopolitical tension within the core Islamic world, which has led to the long-running civil war in Yemen; the two sides being proxies for Iran and for Saudi Arabia; for Tehran and for Riyadh.
The players – the ‘Great Powers’
At present, it would seem, the United States of America, which sees itself as the world’s preeminent geopolitical player, is impatient for conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine to end, so that it can get on with its ‘game of choice’, namely the ‘new cold war’ conflict with China.
We should note that, in Geopolitics, the players are typically identified by the countries’ capital cities. Thus, the United States becomes Washington, the United Kingdom becomes London, and the European Union becomes Berlin or Brussels. Sometimes the players are or have been referred to by power-centres within cities, such as the Kremlin (Moscow), or the Quai d’Orsay (Paris). (The New Zealand equivalent might be ‘Bowen Street’!)
Beijing and Taiwan; and Washington
I saw this Daily Telegraph story in the New Zealand Herald last weekend: Chinese navy practices amphibious landings with new barges in South China Sea. To this end Taiwan is the American proxy through which the conflict may be waged; just as Ukraine and Israel are American proxies; proxies in the most visible of the world’s current geopolitical hot wars.
From the story: ‘Emma Salisbury, a sea power research fellow at the Council on Geostrategy’ says “The fact Beijing has permitted details of these barges to become public signals the threat China poses in the region.” No, it doesn’t. It indicates that China is – had has been for decades – playing the geopolitical game of ‘optics’. Beijing is saying to Washington “don’t mess with us”, rather than “we are going to mess with you”.
Kinmen and Lienchiang Counties, Fujian. But what country?
Is this the world’s least understood geopolitical faultline?
The central piece of geography in the New Cold War is understood to be the Taiwan Strait; indeed we routinely see pictures of that Strait on our news bulletins. Usually, they look like these BBC versions:
The clear tale being told here in these maps is that there is a simple border in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China, and that there are two countries, Taiwan and China. The constitutional reality is that there are two regimes claiming constitutional sovereignty over a single estate. We may call these regimes China-Taipei and China-Beijing. (In the Olympic Games and other sports, Taiwan competes as Chinese-Taipei.) The official name of the two regimes are Republic of China (RoC), and Peoples Republic of China (PRC). (I once watched a story on TV3 News involving some Beijing-Chinese people in New Zealand. TV3 mistakenly showed pictures of a China Airlinesaircraft, when it should have been Air China.)
The BBC’s two-country optics are neat and tidy (compared to the one-territory two-regime reality), but is negated by the presence of two Taiwanese counties in the territory of Fujian province, PRC; Kinmen and Lienchiang (although Kinmen is sometimes called Jinmen or Quemoy, and in China Lienchiang is spelt ‘Lianjiang’). At its closest point, Kinmen (Taiwan) is 4km from the large Chinese city of Xiamen (and 190 km from the Taiwanese mainland); indeed Kinmen is located in Xiamen harbour, just as Rangitoto Island is in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. (Xiamen has the same population size as New Zealand, just over five million people.) Lienchieng is the Taiwanese portion of Lianjiang county, a subdivision of Fujian. (We note that Taiwan still uses the ‘postal’ style of anglicisation of Chinese names that was generally used before the 1970s; eg Peking instead of the Pinyin form, Beijing.)
From the inception of the United nations in 1945, until 1971, China-Taipei (aka Taiwan) held a permanent seat on the Security Council, with the right of veto). This only changed in 1971 after US President Nixon, committing to reality over narrative, moved towards rapprochement towards China (although the United States was not ready for the UN recognition switch in 1971); while at the same time fudging the issue of the status of Taiwan. That fudge remains the official status quo in the international ‘rules-based-order’.
We should also note that Taiwan (RoC) withdrew from the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, due to its erosion of status as a recognised nation-state, with particular note that Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, had led the realpolitik move, recognising China in 1970.
This map correctly shows all of Taiwan, noting the black dashed lines. And this shows Taiwanese Fujian. This huge geopolitical boundary between West and East passes through the Chinese province of Fujian.
Geopolitical Implications
Presumably the people in these counties, for the most part, prefer the status quo and hope that it can be maintained indefinitely, and without military hostilities.
If there was a push for Taipei to repudiate its constitutional claim to all of China – for example as a means to de jureindependence as its own sovereign state – it is difficult to see how this could happen without Taipei ceding Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to Beijing. That would indeed be the minimum price Taipei would have to pay for Beijing to abandon its claim over all of Taiwan.
In effect, these two counties are hostages to both regimes. If the United States or any other United States’ aligned nation-state invaded China, then it would be realistic to expect that Kinmen and Lienchiang would be snaffled-up by Beijing; maybe one county immediately and, for leverage, the other staying on as a hostage.
On the other hand, if the United States was to escalate its optical war against Beijing into a fully-fledged ‘cold war’, it might install threatening military equipment into Kinmen or Lienchiang, much as the Soviet Union did in Cuba in 1962. Thus these counties represent leverage of Taipei (acting as a proxy for the United States) over China.
It would be hard to see China not-responding to such provocation. Further, in such a hostile context, China would be tempted to activate its claim over the whole of Taiwan, and not just the two counties in Fujian.
So, the untidy one-country two-regime status quo should be simply left as it is. Speculative political rhetoric against Beijing or Taipei should be treated by the international community as tantamount to diplomatic ‘hate-speech’. And simplistic media stories which represent Taiwan only as an island 100 kilometres away from China, should be corrected. Responsible media – unlike the BBC or the Daily Telegraph – do not distort the known truth.
We don’t want to end up in a major geopolitical conflict as a result of politicians and political journalists not even knowing or understanding the location of the China/Taiwan border. The border anomalies result from the pragmatic settlement of a military conflict between the two Chinese regimes; a conflict that took place in the decade after 1949.
Lessons for the Ukraine-Russia conflict
The present military boundary between Ukraine and Russia passes inside three recognised provincial boundaries of Ukraine: Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. (The provinces of Luhansk and Crimea should be off the negotiating table; the world has to accept that they are now, for better or worse, de facto or de jure, territories of Russia; albeit unrecognised in the same way that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are Russian territories unrecognised by the United Nations. (And Northern Cyprus for that matter, as an unrecognised Turkish territory inside the European Union nation of Cyprus; a territory which untidily passes through the Cyprus’s capital, Nicosia.)
Successful negotiations to end wars have to take account of military realities. China’s 1950s’ concessions to Taiwan over Kinmen and Lienchiang show that such splits need not impede a long-lasting and workable peace. What does impede a transition to peace is the insistence on substantial one-sided deviations from the military reality at the time of a ‘cease-fire’; certainly, the side that is at a military disadvantage should not be demanding one-sided concessions from the other side.
Lessons for Palestine-Israel conflict
In 1967 and 1973, there were major wars between, in essence, Israel and Egypt. The lands most under contention were those that we call ‘Occupied Palestine’ (and ‘Occupied East Jerusalem’) today; though other lands were captured (especially the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria). The 1967 War was started by Israel under the pretext that Egypt was about to invade Israel. Israel unambiguously won this war. (In 1967, Israel even attacked – deliberately – an American naval vessel: USS Liberty.)
Israel had not thought-through the strategic consequences of its annexation (from Egypt and Jordan) of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel was working towards an acceptable way of incorporating Palestinian Israelis into the ‘Jewish State’. Now, all of a sudden, they found themselves with an enlarged country with a majority (or near-majority) Palestinian population. A legal fiction – replacing the language of ‘annexation’ with that of ‘occupation’ – enabled the non-Jewish populations of the ‘occupied territories’ to be treated as, at best, third -class citizens.
The 1973 War – started by Egypt, principally to regain its Sinai territory – triggered changes to the global architecture of capitalism. After the advantage switched from Egypt to Israel, Israeli troops crossed the Suez Canal and were heading towards Cairo when the cease-fire was called. Subsequent negotiations, over six years, saw Israel’s military successes eroded into something like the present situation in which Palestinians living in Palestine are citizens of nowhere.
After two military victories, through the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel found that it had forfeited almost all its military gains; for Israel it felt like they had won the war but lost the peace. The result of the process was a substantial and unfortunate switch to the Right in Israeli politics. Since then, especially since the 1990s, Israel has been looking for ways to annex a Palestine free of Palestinians; to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians as part of an unapologetic annexation process undertaken with the full blessing of its geopolitical patron.
Proxy Warfare
Most wars today, including ‘civil wars’, are proxy-wars funded (on one side at least) by external patrons. While Ukraine has been a proxy of the United States for most of this century, Ukraine is now morphing into a proxy of Brussels and London; of the barely-elected Starmer (one-third of the vote in a low turn-out election) and an unelected Ursula von de Leyen (a bureaucrat who’s not even a Member of the European Parliament).
On Al Jazeera News (6am New Zealand summer time, 18 March 2025), it was reported that Donald Trump posted this message on his favoured social-media platform: “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” (See this quote on U.S. Air Campaign Against Houthis Continues Into Third Day, TWZ, The War Zone.)
This is a clear statement that the United States President, at least, believes that the patrons of proxies are the real antagonists, and should be deemed responsible – indeed ‘criminally responsible’ for misdeeds of aggression – for acts performed by their proxies. It should be quite easy to apply this dictum, at least allegorically, to the big hot wars of the moment: Ukraine and Palestine.
Conclusion
We can avoid most wars by finding pragmatic solutions to geopolitical conflicts, accepting realities as they stand, and avoiding inflammatory rhetoric towards others. We have avoided violent conflict in and around the Fujian geopolitical faultline by not, so far, trying to find and impose final tidy solutions.
Likewise, to find peace in the world’s current military hotspots, we have to accept and negotiate around the current realities of those situations. Most importantly, we follow the ‘first law of holes’: ‘if you are in a hole, stop digging’. Inflaming sensitive situations through speculative assertions about the other side’s escalating malevolence are unhelpful.
In today’s wars the western ‘liberal democratic’ side is not even close to being the ‘good guys’ in wars framed as good-versus-evil. The conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine demonstrate that these wars – like most past wars – represent the ‘hot’ phases of geopolitical game playing; wars are ‘bad guys’ versus ‘bad guys’, and such wars end through transactional deals. (The antagonists may be different shades of bad; and there are always good victims, though many of these are not ‘perfect victims’.) The ‘bad guys’ include the patrons of the proxies. Further, contemporary warfare targets civilians rather than soldiers.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s annoying to open your dishwasher after the cycle is finished only to find half of the dishes still wet. Instead of being able to stack them away, you end up with a full drying rack.
And you’ve probably noticed it’s always plastic items that end up the most wet. What’s going on?
The answer is a bit convoluted and requires some materials and physics knowledge, but bear with me.
Plastics have very different properties to ceramics and metals – the stuff your plates and cutlery are most likely made out of. Two key things play a role: one is how the materials store heat, and the other is what happens on their surfaces.
How dishes store heat
If you take your dishes out of the dishwasher promptly after the cycle ends, you’ve likely noticed that plates, glasses and ceramic mugs are still hot, while plastic containers don’t feel warm at all.
This relates to their heat capacity, sometimes also referred to as the “thermal mass” of these materials. Ceramics, glass and metals can store more heat, and it takes longer for them to give it away to their surroundings than it does for plastics. In other words, ceramics and metals cool down more slowly.
Since evaporating water takes energy and cools the surface – which is also how your body cools down on a hot day as you sweat – plastics cool down faster, leaving much of the water on the surface.
Ceramic, metal and glass items retain heat better than plastics – so they dry faster. Velik/Shutterstock
How water behaves on different surfaces
The other part of the problem is in surface energy, which tells us how water wets different surfaces.
You’ve probably seen water droplets bead up on things like high-end rain jackets or non-stick frying pans. These surfaces are called hydrophobic, meaning they “fear” water. This is also the case for most plastics, although not always to such a dramatic effect.
On the other end of the spectrum, surfaces like many ceramics and metals are coated with water easily. That’s because they are more hydrophilic or “water-loving”.
On a hydrophobic material such as a rain jacket, water will bead into droplets. Ondra Vacek/Shutterstock
But there’s another factor here – and it has to do with dishwashers, in particular. Dishwasher detergent contains a mixture of chemicals, mainly surfactants – substances that lower the surface tension of water.
Surface tension is the property of the material’s interface (for example, between solid and liquid, or liquid and gas) that tells us how much energy it takes to create a larger surface. By adding detergent to water, we reduce its surface tension. This makes it easier for the water to spread over surfaces it encounters (even over these hydrophobic plastics), in turn making it easier to wash your dishes.
More importantly, the surfactants in detergent are molecules that have both hydrophobic and hydrophilic chemical groups. This makes them a kind of link between water and fats. Since oil and water don’t like to mix, a surfactant helps to “blend” the latter and have it float in water, helping remove any oily residues from your dishes.
This happens in the main washing cycle. After rinsing, the chemicals get removed and your dishes are sprayed with clean water so you don’t have to taste the detergent in your tea.
So, at the end, water beads up on your hydrophobic plastic dishes and spreads all over your more hydrophilic ceramic plates, cups and metal pots. A large bead of water evaporates more slowly than when the same amount of water is spread more thinly over your plates and pots.
On top of that, ceramic dishes retain more heat, which makes them dry more quickly – the water that’s already spread more thinly just evaporates faster.
Is there anything I can do to make plastics dry faster?
You’ve probably heard about rinse aids that are added to the rinse cycle. Their key ingredients are different types of low-foaming surfactants and chemicals that make water softer. Some “all in one” dishwasher tablets may already contain a small amount of rinse aid and the makers provide instructions on how to use them in a safe and efficient way.
Rinse aids also lower the surface tension of water, making it easier for water to wet and run off the surfaces, preventing it from beading up and reducing streaks.
This also works on plastic dishes, leaving much less water behind. Some dishwasher manufacturers recommend using rinse aids because in addition to drying dishes faster, they can prevent corrosion of dishwasher parts from detergent residues.
Is there anything else you can do to dry the dishes faster?
There is one thing that is really simple: just crack the door open as soon as the cycle is finished and it’s safe to do so, so that water vapour can escape. If hot air and moisture instead remain trapped in the dishwasher, the water vapour will condense on all surfaces, like dew before dawn.
At the end, you have a way to make most of your dishes drier after the cycle, although you may still end up with a first-world problem in the form of some wet plasticware. There will be less water on it if you use a rinse aid according to instructions, and open the dishwasher when safe, after the cycle is completed.
Kamil Zuber 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 Ilan Noy, Chair in the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Following the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to USAID funding last month, the online international disaster database EM-DAT (normally funded by USAID) went dark for a week.
EM-DAT collates data on the occurrence and impacts of thousands of mass disasters worldwide and records both human and economic losses in a publicly available dataset. It relies on various sources, including United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations, but also news reports.
The vulnerability of this database to the Trump administration’s cuts highlights the need for New Zealand to take charge of its own data on the damage caused by extreme events.
Currently, New Zealand has no dedicated disaster loss database. This means we don’t know how much extreme weather events and other types of disasters are costing us.
Two events in 2023 – Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods – illustrate this problem. They were by far the costliest weather disasters in New Zealand’s modern history and we know they were exceptionally damaging.
But we don’t know the aggregate financial losses they caused, and the different sources shown in the table below provide conflicting numbers, none of them comprehensive.
Without understanding the magnitude of the problem, our ability to prevent damage or recover from extreme weather is diminished. It is indeed difficult to manage what we don’t measure.
In the face of these unknowns, most other countries, including Australia, are investing in the collection, collation and analysis of their own data to make informed decisions about disaster risk management. It is high time New Zealand did the same.
The limits of New Zealand’s data on loss and damage
Currently, data on extreme weather costs have come primarily from the Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) or from EM-DAT, whose data sometimes come from less reliable sources. New Zealand’s reliance on a private source and an international organisation leaves us with data that could charitably be described as fragmented, incomplete and unreliable.
ICNZ figures showing insurance payouts for disasters are commonly used by the government and media as a proxy for total cost. But private insurance accounts for only a small share of the losses resulting from some extreme weather. Roads, bridges and many other parts of public infrastructure are not insured; many private assets are not insured either.
Furthermore, wealthier communities tend to be better insured and hence receive higher payouts. The ICNZ data imply they experience more damages than poorer, less insured communities, even when that is not the case.
As climate change brings more extreme weather, more homes will likely be under-insured. Phil Walter/Getty Images
Globally, insurance tends to retreat when the risks become too high to be covered affordably. We expect that in the future a higher number of homes and businesses will be under-insured. Relying solely on data on insured damages will hence provide us with an increasingly partial picture of damages caused by extreme weather.
The second main source of disaster loss data is EM-DAT. In principle, it aims to include all damage costs (not just insured ones), but the approach does not necessarily result in more accurate numbers.
As the graph below shows, ICNZ can be counted on to provide reliable data for all large events, but there are frequent gaps in EM-DAT’s data for New Zealand. It is also clear that the difference between ICNZ private insurance payouts and total cost estimates from EM-DAT is too small to accurately reflect uninsured losses.
In previous research (co-authored with Rebecca Newman) we identified other gaps in the EM-DAT international estimates of extreme-weather costs, most notably for wildfires, droughts and heatwaves.
Damages from these events are largely uninsured and so are not included in the ICNZ data either. Yet their likelihood is increasing because of dramatic changes in our climate.
We only have a partial picture, and a potentially very misleading one at that – both in terms of the size of the problem and how the problem is changing.
Nevertheless, the data from the ICNZ and EM-DAT are still the best we have for understanding what is happening.
When EM-DAT temporarily went offline last month following the termination of its funding from USAID, we received a crude reminder of how critical this resource is in the global context. How can we talk about disaster risk management and risk reduction when we have no idea what is going on?
Effective policy relies on accurate data
There are myriad ways in which a disaster-loss database for New Zealand could be used effectively by central and local government, insurance and banking companies, weather-exposed industries such as agriculture, community organisations and by individuals.
Policies about flood protection, planned relocation (managed retreat), climate adaptation, insurance pricing, banking regulation, home loans and infrastructure maintenance should all be informed by knowledge of the risks from extreme-weather events and other hazards.
A concrete example of how useful this data would be is for planned relocations. We need a clear perspective of the history of flood events in different communities and comprehensive assessments of past damages in order to quantify the future costs of relocations. Without these data, how can we decide which financial arrangements for relocation are fiscally sound?
A comprehensive New Zealand disaster-loss database is possible. As a nation we have the datasets we need, but these are held within different government agencies and other organisations, with no centralised collection or reporting.
Hidden there is everything we need to understand the current situation and plan better for the future. We just have to make the decision to invest in collecting and curating this data.
Stats NZ would be the data’s logical host, given the agency’s extensive experience in collecting and posting data to help us organise our society. Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods should have convinced us we need this. Maybe EM-DAT going dark, and thus obscuring a worldwide risk, should convince us even more.
I am grateful for the contribution of Jo-Anne Hazel (writing) and Tom Uher (data collection).
Ilan Noy is a member of the scientific committee of EM-DAT (pro bono).
The Removalists was first performed in 1971 at La Mama Theatre, Carlton, by the Australian Performing Group, an ensemble of young graduates, artists and friends.
A beacon of the New Wave of Australian drama, David Williamson was part of a new generation of theatre artists who were interested in reflecting Australia back to its audiences. Now one of Australia’s most prolific playwrights, Williamson’s early plays are part of the repertoire of modern Australian classics.
The Removalists was just his fourth play. A brutal commentary on Australian masculinity, it was a dark turn for the young artist.
A crooked cop, an easily corruptible young constable, a boozy husband and father who beats his wife and demands his dinner, and a removalist who sees no evil, does no evil. A new production by the Melbourne Theatre Company, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, celebrates the enduring appeal of the play.
A suburban police station
We begin in a police station. Young constable Neville Ross (William McKenna) is being inducted into the force by a bitter, manipulative, rule-bending sergeant, Dan Simmons (played with menace by the moustachioed Steve Mouzakis).
When middle class sisters Kate (Jessica Clarke) and Fiona (Eloise Mignon) enter to report domestic violence, Simmonds asks invasive questions about Fiona’s relationship to her beer-swilling loudmouth husband Kenny (Michael Whalley).
Fiona initially expressed uncertainty about making the complaint. Kate insisted on going to the police. The action that follows exposes the humiliation that accompanies reports of domestic violence.
The production exposes the humiliation that accompanies reports of domestic violence. Pia Johnson/MTC
In an excruciating moment, Kate stands by watching while Simmonds asks Fiona to show him the bruises on her back and upper thigh. Fiona is unsure as she turns her back to the auditorium, slowly pulls up her jumper and exposes the bruises on her bare back.
Under Sarks’ direction, it is a moment filled with empathy.
Enter the removalist
The action shifts in act two to Fiona’s place. Expecting Kenny to be out drinking, Simmonds – who is expecting sexual favours from Kate – and Ross arrive to help Fiona move into her new flat. But Kenny is home, and sprays a string of obscenities at the policemen. Simmonds cuffs him – and lands a few quiet punches.
The removalist (Martin Blum) interrupts the action, while turning a blind eye to the mayhem. The entrances and exits of the removalist and Ross and the moving of furniture, punctuate the drama with comic effect, injecting a light touch in the midst of the play’s violence.
The removal of furniture injects a light touch in the midst of the play’s violence. Pia Johnson/MTC
When the sisters and the removalist leave, the cops beat Kenny in an orgy of violence that is so relentless and brutal, it descends into farce.
The bloody ending has something of the Grand Guignol to it – the 19th century theatre of revenge that descends into comic horror but also raises serious questions about violence in the contemporary real life world.
Critiquing white Australia
Clever balancing of humour and social commentary is the key to Williamson’s critique of the law in relation to violence against women.
In an era of diverse casting, Sarks has cast The Removalists with an all white cast, laying the violence of the play at the feet of white Australian culture.
Matilda Woodroofe’s costumes contribute to the play’s critique of Australian culture. Kenny wears a pair of footy shorts and a t-shirt, Blundstone boots and short black socks, evoking the unoffical uniform of the ocker male Australian.
Onstage seating echos the intimate space of the original theatre, La Mama. Pia Johnson/MTC
In a novel touch, Dale Ferguson’s set adds rows of onstage seating for those who would like a much closer view of the action. Not only do they get a stronger sense of the onstage actors’ energy and presence, they experience the play as the original audience did in the tiny La Mama theatre.
Just as playwright Williamson targeted a conservative macho ocker culture in the early 1970s, this revival can be understood as its contemporary counterpart. Sarks highlights the particular kinds of violence that is systemic within Australian culture that continues today.
Sarks accords the female characters more dignity and independence than earlier versions. They deliver the same lines, but with confidence that speaks of their self-assurance. Kate uses her gaze to put Simmonds, the disgusting older cop, in his place. After her humiliation at the police station, Fiona rejects Kenny’s appeals.
Sarks accords the female characters dignity and independence. Pia Johnson/MTC
These subtle and not so subtle changes in the delivery of the women’s lines show how directing an historical play can resist the ideologies that determined more passive roles for women in the past.
The Removalists is at Melbourne Theatre Company until April 17.
Denise Varney received funding from the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Scheme.
New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state
In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.
The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.
During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.
Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.
Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).
Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement
Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.
New Zealand and the Gaza conflict Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.
New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.
While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.
He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.
In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.
While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.
In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.
At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.
Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.
New Zealand’s low-key policy On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.
Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.
But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza
Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Freedom of the press — a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States.
Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.
After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus.
They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security.
President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.
These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration.
We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.
There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.
There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.
One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.
The President has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favourable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him.
He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state.
Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government.
Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
The Columbia Journalism School stands in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardise these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Randall Wayth, SKA-Low Senior Commissioning Scientist and Adjunct Associate Professor, Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, Curtin University
The first image from an early working version of the SKA-Low telescope, showing around 85 galaxies.SKAO
Part of the world’s biggest mega-science facility – the SKA Observatory – is being built in outback Western Australia.
After decades of planning, countless hours of work, and more than a few setbacks, an early working version of the telescope has captured its first glimpse of the sky.
Using 1,024 of what will eventually be 131,072 radio antennas, the first SKA-Low image shows a tiny sliver of sky dotted with ancient galaxies billions of light-years from Earth.
This first snapshot shows the system works, and will improve dramatically in the coming months and years – and starts a new chapter in our exploration of the universe.
A glimpse of the universe
The SKA-Low telescope is currently under construction on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia, around 600 kilometres north of Perth. Together with the SKA-Mid telescope (under construction in South Africa), the two telescopes will make up the world’s largest and most sensitive radio observatory.
SKA-Low will consist of thousands of antennas spread across a vast area. It is designed to detect low-frequency radio signals from some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.
The first image, made using just 1,024 of the planned 131,000 antennas, is remarkably clear, confirming that the complex systems for transmitting and processing data from the antennas are working properly. Now we can move on to more detailed observations to analyse and verify the telescope’s scientific output.
Bright galaxies, billions of years old
The image shows a patch of the sky, approximately 25 square degrees in area, as seen in radio waves.
Twenty-five square degrees is an area of sky that would fit 100 full Moons. For comparison, it would be about the area of sky that a small apple would cover if you held it at arm’s length.
The first image from an early working version of the SKA-Low telescope, showing around 85 galaxies. SKAO
The dots in the image look like stars, but are actually some of the brightest galaxies in the universe. These galaxies are billions of light-years away, so the galaxies we are seeing now were emitting this light when the universe was half its current age.
They are so bright because each of these distant galaxies contains a supermassive black hole. Gas orbiting around black holes is very hot and moves very quickly, emitting energy in X-rays and radio waves. SKA-Low can detect these radio waves that have travelled billions of light years across the universe to reach Earth.
The world’s largest radio telescope
SKA-Low and SKA-Mid are both being built by the SKAO, a global project to build cutting-edge telescopes that will revolutionise our understanding of the universe and deliver benefits to society. (SKA stands for “square kilometre array”, describing the initial estimated collecting area of all the antennas and radio dishes put together.)
My own involvement in the project began in 2014. Since then I, along with many local and international colleagues, have deployed and verified several prototype systems on the path to SKA-Low. To now be part of the team that is making the first images with the rapidly growing telescope is extremely satisfying.
A complex system with no moving parts
SKA-Low will be made up of 512 aperture arrays (or stations), each comprised of 256 antennas.
Unlike traditional telescopes, aperture arrays have no moving parts, which makes them easier to maintain. The individual antennas receive signals from all directions at once and – to produce images – we use complex mathematics to combine the signals from each individual antenna and “steer” the telescope.
The SKA-Low telescope uses arrays of radio antennas (called stations) to create images of the universe. SKAO / Max Alexander
The advantages and flexibility of aperture arrays come at the cost of complex signal processing and software systems. Any errors in signal timing, calibration or processing can distort the final image or introduce noise.
For this reason, the successful production of the first image is a key validation – it can only happen if the entire system is working.
The shape of the universe and beyond
As SKA-Low grows, it will see more detail. Simulations show the full telescope may detect up to 600,000 galaxies in the same patch of sky shown in the first test image. SKAO
Once completed, SKA-Low promises to transform our understanding of the early universe.
The antennas of the full telescope will be spread across an area approximately 70 kilometres in diameter, making it the most sensitive low-frequency radio array ever built.
This unprecedented sensitivity to low-frequency radio signals will allow scientists to detect the faint signals from the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang – the so-called “cosmic dawn”. SKA-Low will be the first radio telescope capable of imaging this very early period of our universe.
It will also help map the large-scale structure of the universe. We expect the telescope will also provide new insights into cosmic magnetism, the behaviour of interstellar gas, and the mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy.
The sensitivity and resolution of SKA-Low gives it a huge discovery potential. Seven out of the top 10 discoveries from the Hubble Space Telescope were not part of the original science motivation. Like the HST, SKA-Low promises to be a transformative telescope. Who knows what new discoveries await?
What’s next
SKA-Low’s commissioning process will ramp up over the course of the year, as more antenna arrays are installed and brought online. With each additional station, the sensitivity and resolution of the telescope will increase. This growth will also bring greater technical challenges in handling the growing complexity and data rates.
By the end of 2025, SKA-Low is expected to have 16 working stations. The increased volume of output data at this stage will be the next major test for the telescope’s software systems.
By the end of 2026, the array is planned to expand to 68 working stations at which point it will be the the most sensitive low-frequency radio telescope on Earth.
This phase will be the next big test of the end-to-end telescope system. When we get to this stage, the same field you see in the image above will be able to comprehensively map and detect up to 600,000 galaxies. I’m personally looking forward to helping bring it together.
Randall Wayth 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.
German anaesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has an unfortunate claim to fame. According to Retraction Watch, a public database of research retractions, he is the most retracted scientist of all time. To date, 220 of his roughly 400 published research papers have been retracted by academic journals.
Boldt may be a world leader, but he has plenty of competition. In 2023, more than 10,000 research papers were retracted globally – more than any previous year on record. According to a recent investigation by Nature, a disproportionate number of retracted papers over the past ten years have been written by authors affiliated with several hospitals, universities and research institutes in Asia.
Academic journals retract papers when they are concerned that the published data is faked, altered, or not “reproducible” (meaning it would yield the same results if analysed again).
Some errors are honest mistakes. However, the majority of retractions are associated with scientific misconduct.
But what exactly is scientific misconduct? And what can be done about it?
From fabrication to plagiarism
The National Health and Medical Research Council is Australia’s primary government agency for medical funding. It defines misconduct as breaches of the Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
In Australia, there are broadly eight recognised types of breaches. Research misconduct is the most severe.
These breaches may include failure to obtain ethics approval, plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification and misrepresentation.
This is what was behind many of Boldt’s retractions. He made up data for a large number of studies, which ultimately led to his dismissal from the Klinikum Ludwigshafen, a teaching hospital in Germany, in 2010.
In another case, China’s He Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison in 2019 for creating the world’s first genetically edited babies using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. His crime was that he falsified documents to recruit couples for his research.
But it still represented a case of image duplication and misrepresentation of data. This lead to the journal retracting the paper and launching an investigation. The investigation concluded the breach was unintentional and resulted from the pressures of academic research.
Fewer than 20% of all retractions are due to honest mistakes. Researchers usually contact the publisher to correct errors when they are detected, with no major consequences.
The need for a national oversight body
In many countries, an independent national body oversees research integrity.
In the United Kingdom, this body is known as the Committee on Research Integrity. It is responsible for improving research integrity and addressing misconduct cases. Similarly, in the United States, the Office of Research Integrity handles allegations of research misconduct.
In contrast, Australia lacks an independent body directly tasked with investigating research misconduct. There is a body known as the Australian Research Integrity Committee. But it only reviews the institutional procedures and governance of investigations to ensure they are conducted fairly and transparently – and with limited effectiveness. For example, last year it received 13 complaints, only five of which were investigated.
Instead Australia relies on a self-regulation model. This means each university and research institute aligns its own policy with the Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Although this code originated in medical research, its principles apply across all disciplines.
For example, in archaeology, falsifying an image or deliberately reporting inaccurate carbon dating results constitutes data fabrication. Another common breach is plagiarism, which can also be applied to all fields.
But self-governance on integrity matters is fraught with problems.
Investigations often lack transparency and are carried out internally, creating a conflict of interest. Often the investigative teams are under immense pressure to safeguard their institution’s reputation rather than uphold accountability.
A 2023 report by the Australia Institute called for the urgent establishment of an independent, government-funded research integrity watchdog.
The report recommended the watchdog have direct investigatory powers and that academic institutions be bound by its findings.
The report also recommended the watchdog should release its findings publicly, create whistleblower protections, establish a proper appeals process and allow people to directly raise complaints with it.
Research credibility is on the line
The consequences of inadequate oversight are already evident.
One of the biggest research integrity scandals in Australian history involved Ali Nazari, an engineer from Swinburne University. In 2022 an anonymous whistleblower alleged Nazari was part of an international research fraud cartel involving multiple teams.
Investigations cast doubt on the validity of the 287 papers Nazari and the other researchers had collectively published. The investigations uncovered numerous violations, including 71 instances of falsified results, plagiarism and duplication, and 208 instances of self-plagiarism.
If Australia had a independent research integrity body, there would be a clear governance structure and an established and transparent pathway for reporting breaches at a much earlier stage.
Timely intervention would help reduce further breaches through swift investigation and corrective action. Importantly, consistent governance across Australian institutions would help ensure fairness. It would also reduce bias and uphold the same standards across all misconduct cases.
The call for an independent research integrity watchdog is long overdue.
Only through impartial oversight can we uphold the values of scientific excellence, protect public trust, and foster a culture of accountability that strengthens the integrity of research for all Australians.
Nham Tran has received funding from Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Galyna Piskorska, Associate Professor, Faculty of Journalism, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Ukraine) and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Advanced Centre for Journalism, The University of Melbourne
Three years into Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Ukrainian journalists are facing enormously difficult challenges to continue their work.
Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, 40% of Ukrainian media outlets have been forced to close down, mostly due to the Russian occupation or financial difficulties caused by the war. Many of these are in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian journalists and media outlets have also become targets. More than 100 media workers have been killed since the full-scale war began.
Some, like 28-year-old journalist Viktoriya Roshchyna, were captured by Russian forces and died in brutal conditions in captivity. More than 30 media workers are still in Russian captivity.
Others were killed by Russian missile and drone attacks, like Tetiana Kulyk, who died alongside her husband, a surgeon, after her home was hit by a drone in late February.
For those journalists that remain, fatigue is a major issue. Many are emotionally exhausted. Some cannot cope and leave their jobs. The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) helps with seminars and psychological support.
Despite the dangers, local media remains in high demand near the front lines of the war. These outlets have lost so much – advertising, subscribers and staff – but their journalists still have the passion and determination to continue their work documenting history.
The role of local media on the front lines
According to researchers who interviewed 43 independent local media outlets last year, the key challenges for newsrooms have not changed since the start of the war:
a shortage of employees (22% of respondents said this was a challenge in 2023, compared to 16% in 2022);
psychological stress (18% in 2023, 16% in 2022)
lack of funds (16% in both years).
Often, journalists must perform different roles in their work, including being a driver, mail carrier and even a psychotherapist.
Without working telephones or internet in areas near the front lines, print newspapers remain the only source of trusted information for many people. This includes up-to-date information on evacuation plans and humanitarian aid, as well as content not related to the war, such as public transport schedules and how to access medicines and necessary items for home repairs.
Tetiana Velika, editor in chief of the Voice of Huliaipillia in southeastern Ukraine, was one of about 120 journalists who took part in a recent online conference organised by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine to discuss the state of Ukraine’s media.
She said media have remained connected with readers through both openness and authenticity. This includes having active social media networks, publishing journalists’ mobile phone numbers and allowing people to reach out anytime.
Vasyl Myroshnyk, the editor in chief of Zorya, a newspaper in eastern Ukraine, described how he travelled 400 kilometres each week to deliver copies of his newspaper to even the most dangerous places.
Svitlana Ovcharenko, editor of the newspaper Vpered in the city of Bakhmut, which was destroyed by Russian forces in the opening weeks of the war, said the paper has remained a lifeline for a displaced population.
We have a unique situation — we don’t have a city. It’s virtual, it’s only on the map, it doesn’t physically exist. Not only is it destroyed, but it’s also been bombed with phosphorus bombs, and no one lives there.
Ovcharenko, who now lives in the city of Odesa, said her newspaper’s readers are scattered all over the world. (There are 6,000 printed copies distributed each week across Ukraine.) The coverage focuses on how former Bakhmut residents have restarted their lives elsewhere, while also paying homage to the city’s past.
Independent media is now at stake
Funding remains a formidable challenge. Advertising revenue has dried up for many outlets, leaving international donors as the primary journalism funding source.
Now, the Trump administration in the United States is gutting much of this funding through its dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). According to one estimate, 80% of Ukrainian media outlets received funding through USAID. As Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, said:
The problem is that almost everyone had grants. The question is that for some, these grants amounted to 100% of their income and they could only survive thanks to grants. These grants amounted to 40–60% for some, less for others.
According to media researchers, without donor aid or state budget support in 2025, newspapers and magazines may decrease by a further 20% in Ukraine, while subscription circulation could drop by 25–30%.
The heavy reliance on such funding has already led to the closure of some outlets, while others have been forced to launch public fundraising campaigns.
Donor funding has also given Ukrainian outlets a measure of independence, allowing them to report on corruption within the Ukrainian government, for example. Many independent outlets are now vulnerable to being taken over by commercial or political entities. When these groups gain control, they can influence media coverage to benefit their own interests. This is known as “media capture”.
Research shows how this has occurred in other post-conflict and developing countries where independent media outlets have been transformed into business entities more focused on profits and maintaining good relations with authorities than on producing quality journalism.
This is a critical time for the future of Ukrainian media, to ensure it remains financially self-sufficient and free from the influence of both Russian propaganda and Ukrainian oligarchs. Without this funding, the preservation of Ukraine’s independent media and democracy remain under dire threat.
Galyna Piskorska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Many of us, however, hesitate to seek help or testing for our hearing. Perhaps you’re afraid you’ll be told to wear hearing aids, and envision the large and bulky hearing aids you might have seen on your grandparents decades ago.
In fact, hearing aids have changed a lot since then. They’re often now very small; some are barely noticeable. And hearing aids aren’t the only option available for people experiencing hearing loss.
The earlier you do something about your hearing, the greater the likelihood that you can prevent further hearing decline. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
Why you shouldn’t ignore hearing loss
Acquired hearing loss can have a serious impact on our life. It is associated with or can contribute to:
social isolation
loneliness
not being able to work as much, or at all
memory problems
trouble thinking clearly
conditions such as dementia.
Hearing loss has also been associated with depression, anxiety and stress. A systematic review and meta-analysis found adults with hearing loss are 1.5 times more likely to experience depression than those without hearing loss.
A large population study in the US found self-reported hearing loss was associated with:
higher levels of psychological distress
increased use of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications, and
greater utilisation of mental health services.
The good news is that doing something about your hearing loss can help you live a happier and longer life.
So why don’t people get their hearing checked?
Research has found adults with hearing loss typically wait ten years to seek help for their hearing.
Less than a quarter of those who need hearing aids actually go ahead with them.
Hearing declines slowly, so people may perceive their hearing difficulties aren’t concerning. They may feel they’re now used to not being able to hear properly, without fully appreciating the impact it’s having on their life.
Others may have overheard their partner, family or friends say negative things or make jokes about hearing aids, which can put people off getting their hearing checked.
People often associate hearing loss with negative stereotypes such as ageing, weakness and “being different”.
Our recent research found that around one in four people never tell anyone about their hearing loss because of experiences of stigma.
Adults with hearing loss who experience stigma and choose not to disclose their hearing loss were also likely not to go ahead with hearing aids, we found.
The first step in helping your hearing is to have a hearing check with a hearing care professional such as an an audiologist. You can also speak to your GP.
If you’ve got hearing loss, hearing aids aren’t the only option.
Others include:
other assistive listening devices (such as amplified phones, personal amplifiers and TV headphones)
doing a short course or program (such as the Active Communication Education program developed via University of Queensland researchers) aimed at giving you strategies to manage your hearing, for instance, in noisy environments
monitoring your hearing with regular checkups
strategies for protecting your hearing in future (such as wearing earplugs or earmuffs in loud environments, and not having headphone speakers too loud)
a cochlear implant (if hearing loss is severe)
Hearing care professionals should take a holistic approach to hearing rehabilitation.
That means coming up with individualised solutions based on your preferences and circumstances.
What are modern hearing aids like?
If you do need hearing aids, it’s worth knowing there are several different types. All modern hearing aids are extremely small and discrete.
Some sit behind your ear, while others sit within your ear. Some look the same as air pods.
Some are even completely invisible. These hearing aids are custom fitted to sit deep within your ear canal and contain no external tubes and wires.
Some types of hearing aids are more expensive than others, but even the basic styles are discrete.
In Australia, children and many adults are eligible for free or subsidised hearing services and many health funds offer hearing aid rebates as part of their extras cover.
Despite being small, modern hearing aids have advanced technology including the ability to:
reduce background noise
direct microphones to where sound is coming from (directional microphones)
use Bluetooth so you can hear audio from your phone, TV and other devices directly in your hearing aids.
When used with a smartphone, some hearing aids can even track your health, detect if you have fallen, and translate languages in real time.
Modern hearing aids use Bluetooth so you can hear audio from your phone. Daisy Daisy/Shutterstock
What should I do next?
If you think you might be having hearing difficulties or are curious about the status of your hearing, then it’s a good idea to get a hearing check.
The earlier you do something about your hearing, the greater the likelihood that you can prevent further hearing decline and reduce other health risks.
And rest assured, there’s a suitable option for everyone.
Katie Ekberg has previously received funding from the Hearing Industry Research Consortium, which funded research into stigma associated with hearing loss and hearing aids.
Barbra Timmer is a part-time employee of Sonova AG, a global hearing care company. She was a Chief Investigator on a Hearing Industry Research Consortium grant that investigated the experiences of stigma for adults with hearing loss. She is the president of Audiology Australia.
Australia’s energy policy would take a sharp turn if the Coalition wins the upcoming federal election. A Dutton government would seek to build seven nuclear power plants at the sites of old coal-fired power stations.
So is there another option? Yes: pumped hydro storage plants. This technology is quicker and cheaper to develop than nuclear power, and can store solar and wind rather than curtail it. It’s better suited to Australia’s electricity grid and would ultimately lead to fewer emissions. Drawing on our recent global analysis, we found the technology could be deployed near all but one of the seven sites the Coalition has earmarked for nuclear power.
Building pumped hydro storage systems near old coal-fired power generators has some advantages, such as access to transmission lines – although more will be needed as electricity demand increases. But plenty of other suitable sites exist, too.
It involves pumping water uphill from one reservoir to another at a higher elevation for storage. Then, when power is needed, water is released to flow downhill through turbines, generating electricity on its way to the lower reservoir.
Together with battery storage, pumped hydro solves the very real problem of keeping the grid stable and reliable when it is dominated by solar and wind power.
By 2030, 82% of Australia’s electricity supply is expected to come from renewables, up from about 40% today.
But solar panels only work during the day and don’t produce as much power when it’s cloudy. And wind turbines don’t generate power when it’s calm. That’s where storage systems come in. They can charge up when electricity is plentiful and then release electricity when it’s needed.
Grid-connected batteries can fill short-term gaps (from seconds to a few hours). Pumped hydro can store electricity overnight, and longer still. These two technologies can be used together to supply electricity through winter, and other periods of calm or cloudy weather.
Two types of pumped-storage hydropower, one doesn’t require dams on rivers. NREL
Finding pumped hydro near the Coalitions’s proposed nuclear sites
Australia has three operating pumped hydro systems: Tumut 3 in the Snowy Mountains, Wivenhoe in Queensland, and Shoalhaven in the Kangaroo Valley of New South Wales.
We previously developed a “global atlas” to identify potential locations for pumped hydro facilities around the world.
More recently, we created a publicly available tool to filter results based on construction cost, system size, distance from transmission lines or roads, and away from environmentally sensitive locations.
In this new analysis, we used the tool to find pumped hydro options near the sites the Coalition has chosen for nuclear power plants.
Mapping 300 potential pumped hydro sites
The proposed nuclear sites are:
Liddell Power Station, New South Wales
Mount Piper Power Station, New South Wales
Loy Yang Power Stations, Victoria
Tarong Power Station, Queensland
Callide Power Station, Queensland
Northern Power Station, South Australia (small modular reactor only)
Muja Power Station, Western Australia (small modular reactor only).
We used our tool to identify which of these seven sites would instead be suitable for a pumped hydro project, using the following criteria:
low construction cost (for a pumped hydro project)
located within 85km of the proposed nuclear sites.
We included various reservoir types in our search:
new reservoirs on undeveloped land (“greenfield” sites)
Exactly 300 sites matched our search criteria. No options emerged near the proposed nuclear site in Western Australia, but suitable sites lie further north in the mining region of the Pilbara.
One option east of Melbourne, depicted in the image below, has a storage capacity of 500 gigawatt-hours. Compared with Snowy 2.0, this option has a much shorter tunnel, larger energy capacity, and larger height difference between the two reservoirs (increasing the potential energy stored in the water). And unlike Snowy 2.0, it is not located in a national park.
Of course, shortlisted sites would require detailed assessment to confirm the local geology is suitable for pumped hydro, and to evaluate potential environmental and social impacts.
More where that came from
We restricted our search to sites near the Coalition’s proposed nuclear plants. But there are hundreds of potential pumped hydro sites along Australia’s east coast.
Developers can use our free tool to identify the best sites.
So far, the Australian electricity transition has mainly been driven by private investment in solar and wind power. With all this renewable energy entering the grid, there’s money to be made in storage, too.
Large, centralised, baseload electricity generators, such as coal and nuclear plants, are becoming a thing of the past. A smarter energy policy would balance solar and wind with technologies such as pumped hydro, to secure a reliable electricity supply.
Timothy Weber receives funding from the Australian government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics.
Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Australian government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other organisations.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law (consumer protections and credit law), The University of Melbourne
Late last week, corporate watchdog the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued a warning to lenders that provide high-fee small-amount loans – known as payday lenders – that they may be breaching consumer-lending laws.
Trying to provide effective protections to borrowers of these small loans is fiendishly difficult. People in financial hardship turn to payday loans, even though they are expensive. Lenders can charge high fees for such loans but may change products to avoid regulation.
If access to payday loans dries up, borrowers in need are likely to turn to other products. And so the cycle begins again.
The regulator’s report might be a prompt to government to think about other strategies.
What is payday lending and why is it a concern?
Payday lending is the name commonly given to loans of small amounts (under A$2,000) for short periods of time (16 days to one year) that promise quick credit checks and don’t require collateral.
They are called payday loans because the original idea was borrowers would pay them back when they got their next pay cheque. But often that is not how it works, and borrowers struggle to repay.
Payday lenders offer fast cash, but there are strings attached.
ASIC said the total value of small and medium loans provided to consumers in 2023–24 was $1.3 billion. An earlier study by Consumer Action Law Centre found 4.7 million individual payday loans were written over three years to July 2019.
Why do borrowers use (expensive) payday loans?
Small, short-term loans like payday loans have been around for a long time – and in part, they respond to a reality that, for many people, their income is not sufficient to give them buffers.
Payday loans can be used by borrowers who don’t have savings or credit cards to pay for one-off unexpected bills – a broken fridge, an emergency medical appointment or even utilities bills. But they can also be used to meet daily living expenses.
There are limited other practical options – for some types of bills, there are hardship schemes, but these are not always well-known. For one-off expenses, there are low and no-interest loan schemes but they can be quite restrictive. Free financial counselling may also help, but knowledge and access can be an issue.
Payday lenders have been moving customers into bigger loans that are harder to repay. Doucefleur/Shutterstock
Why were new laws dealing with payday loans introduced?
Payday lenders have typically charged very high fees. In 2013, concerns about the high cost of payday loans led to specific provisions to limit the fees that could be charged.
Nonetheless, regulators and consumer advocates remain concerned these kinds of loans lock borrowers into debt spirals because they keep accumulating and that lenders manage to avoid many of the restrictions.
Further reforms in 2022 introduced a presumption a loan is unsuitable if the borrower has already taken out two payday loans in the preceding 90 days. The reforms also prohibit payday lenders from offering loans where the repayments would exceed a prescribed proportion of a borrower’s income.
What did ASIC say?
ASIC said it found a trend of payday lenders moving borrowers who previously might have borrowed relatively small amounts ($700 to $2,000) to medium-sized loans ($2,000 to $5,000), which are not subject to the same consumer protections.
The regulator said small loan credit contracts fell from 80% of loans in the December quarter of 2022 to less than 60% of loans by the August 2023 quarter.
It said it was concerned by this approach and reminded lenders they were still subject to the reasonable lending regime. This effectively means not lending amounts that would be unsuitable for borrowers.
Why are payday lenders moving consumers to larger loans?
It’s a concern that lenders change products to avoid restrictive rules. But it is not altogether surprising.
One response from increasing restrictions on one form of credit might be that lenders decide to focus on other, less restricted, products like medium-sized loans – this is what ASIC seems to have found.
This is problematic if those larger loans are not meeting consumers’ needs and objectives (for instance, if they only needed a smaller amount), or complying with the loan would cause substantial hardship. It’s important to remind lenders that the responsible lending obligations apply to medium size loans, and for ASIC to take enforcement action where appropriate.
What might be a better approach?
The ASIC report highlights the increasing complexity of the National Consumer Credit Act regime – with the standard obligations complemented by specific and unique rules for a range of credit products. These include small amount credit, standard home loans, credit cards, reverse mortgages, and Buy Now Pay Later.
It’s worth thinking about whether a better strategy might be to go back to a simpler approach, where one set of rules applied to all consumer credit products. Regulatory exceptions and qualifications are minimised.
If access to payday loans becomes more restrictive, borrowers are likely to turn to other products. This means ASIC should also be looking at other products that are used to provide short-term small loans. These are likely to include buy now pay later schemes and pawn broking.
Buy now pay later products are subject to their own regulations, including responsible lending obligations. But pawn brokers aren’t covered by the Consumer Credit laws and are subject to little regulatory scrutiny. This is also something that should change.
We also need to consider whether there are financial inclusion options not dependent on lenders out to make a profit from borrowers struggling with the cost of living.
Jeannie Marie Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on Treating Consumers Fairly.
Nicola Howell receives funding from funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on Treating Consumers Fairly. She is affiliated with the Consumers’ Federation of Australia, as a member of the CFA Executive.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc C-Scott, Associate Professor of Screen Media | Deputy Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching, Victoria University
Shutterstock
This month marks a decade since Netflix – the world’s most influential and widely subscribed streaming service – launched in Australia.
Since then the media landscape has undergone significant transformation, particularly in terms of how we consume content. According to a 2024 Deloitte report, Australians aged 16–38 spent twice as much time watching subscription streaming services as free-to-air TV (both live and on-demand).
Part of the success of streaming services lies in their ability to provide content that feels handpicked. And this is made possible through the use of sophisticated recommender systems fuelled by vast amounts of user data.
As streaming viewership continues to rise, so too do the risks associated with how these platforms collect and handle user data.
Changing methods of data collection
Subscription streaming platforms aren’t the first to collect user data. They just do it differently.
Broadcasters have always been invested in collecting viewers’ information (via TV ratings) to inform promotional schedules and attract potential advertisers. These data are publicly available.
In Australia, TV data are collected anonymously via the OzTam TV ratings system, based on the viewing habits of more than 12,000 individuals.
Each television in a recruited household is connected to a metering box. Members of the household select a letter that corresponds to them, after which the box records their viewing data, including the program, channel and viewing time. But this system doesn’t include broadcasters’ video-on-demand services, which have been around since the late 2000s (with ABC iView being the first).
In 2016 a new system was launched to measure broadcast video-on-demand data separately from OzTam ratings.
However, it collected data in a rolling seven-day report, in the form of total minutes a particular program had been watched online (rather than the number of individuals watching, as was the measurement for TV). This meant the two data sources couldn’t be combined.
In 2018, OzTAM and Nielsen announced the Virtual Australia (VoZ) database which would integrate both broadcast TV and video-on-demand data. It took six years following the announcement for the VoZ system to become the industry’s official trading currency.
Streamers’ approach
Streaming platforms such as Netflix have a markedly different approach to acquiring data, as they can source it directly from users. These data are therefore much more granular, larger in volume, and far less publicly accessible due to commercial confidence.
In recent years, Netflix has shared some of its viewing data through a half-yearly report titled What We Watched. It offers macro-level details such as total hours watched that year, as well as information about specific content, including how many times a particular show was viewed.
Netflix also supplies information to its shareholders, although much of this focuses on subscriber numbers rather than specific user details.
The best publicly accessible Netflix data we have is presented on its Tudum website, which includes global Top 10 lists that can be filtered by country.
The main data Netflix doesn’t share are related to viewer demographics: who is watching what programs.
Why does it matter?
Ratings and user data offer valuable insights to both broadcasters and streaming services, and can influence decisions regarding what content is produced.
User data would presumably have been a significant factor in Netflix‘s decision to move into live content such as stand-up comedy, the US National Football League (NFL) and an exclusive US$5 billion deal with World Wrestling Entertainment.
Streaming companies also use personal data to provide users with targeted viewing suggestions, with an aim to reduce the time users spend browsing catalogues.
Netflix has an entire research department dedicated to enhancing user experience. According to Justin Basilico, Netflix’s Director of Machine Learning and Recommender Systems, more than 80% of what Netflix users watch is driven by its recommender system.
As noted in its privacy statement, Netflix draws on a range of information to provide recommendations, including:
the user’s interactions with the service, such as their viewing history and title ratings
other users with similar tastes and preferences
information about the titles, such as genre, categories, actors and release year
the time of day the user is watching
the language/s the user prefers
the device/s they are watching on
how long they watch a particular Netflix title.
If a user isn’t happy with their recommendations, they can try to change them by editing their viewing and ratings history.
Personalised or predetermined?
The rise of streaming hasn’t only transformed how we watch TV, but also how our viewing habits are tracked and how this information informs future decisions.
While traditional broadcasters have long relied on sample anonymised data to measure engagement, streaming platforms operate in a landscape in which detailed user data can be used to shape content, recommendations and business decisions.
While personalisation makes streaming more appealing, it also raises important questions about privacy, transparency and control. How much do streaming platforms really know about us? And are they catering to our preferences – or shaping them?
Marc C-Scott 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’s concentrated supermarket sector is back in the spotlight after Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was open to offering “VIP treatment” to a third international player willing to create competition.
However, New Zealanders hoping for a foreign hero to break up the current supermarket concentration will be waiting a long time.
It could take five years or more for an international brand such as Aldi to enter New Zealand and establish a nationwide chain. It is a risky bet. So far, no foreign operator has expressed interest publicly in setting up shop here on a national scale.
To create more competition in the supermarket sector, the New Zealand government needs go back to where the issues began: allowing multiple companies to merge until there were few alternatives for shoppers.
Breaking up two of the major entities in the sector would be a relatively quick way to reintroduce competition and improve affordability for everyone.
The rise in concentration
The current state of New Zealand’s supermarket sector – dominated by Woolworths (formerly Countdown), Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island – is a result of successive mergers and acquisitions along two tracks.
Progressive Enterprises was sold to Woolworths Australia, its’ current owner, in 2005. In less than 25 years, six brands owned by multiple companies were whittled down to a single brand, Woolworths.
The second was the concentration of the “Foodstuffs cooperatives” network. This network once included four regional cooperatives and multiple banners including Mark’n Pak and Cut Price, as well as New World, PAK’nSave and Four Square.
The decision of the four legally separate cooperatives to include “Foodstuffs” in their company name blurred the lines between them. The companies looked similar but remained legally separate.
While the Commerce Commission declined the clearance for Foodstuffs North Island Limited and Foodstuffs South Island to merge into one single national grocery entity, more can be done to drive competition in the supermarket sector.
The fastest option would be to break up the “Foodstuffs” companies into smaller entities, with the breakaway and re-branding of PAK’nSave across both islands.
But to do this the government would need to update legislation to allow parliament to force divestiture, consistent with the United Kingdom and the United States.
This would allow New Zealand to go from three supermarket companies to five or more in a short period of time.
Reducing the power dependency of suppliers and customers on the current companies would also reduce barriers to entry for overseas brands.
Global players will take too long
Breaking up the local dominant supermarket players is simply faster, and more straightforward, than waiting for a foreign company to enter New Zealand. It takes time and is expensive to build scale with stores. It can also be risky, as recent history in Australia shows.
In 2017, another German company, Kaufland, announced ambitious plans to enter the Australian market, starting with 20 stores. It purchased its first site in 2018 and hired 200 staff. However, the company abandoned launch plans in 2020 and divested completely from the market.
Additionally, it took US-based bulk retail store Costco three years – and NZ$100 million – to go from announcing its plans for one New Zealand store to open. The retailer has hinted at opening a second location but this has not yet happened.
In the end, the solution to New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector needs to come from within. Breaking up the power held by the dominant supermarket companies will allow prices to come down more quickly than waiting for a foreign supermarket to arrive.
The government allowed the market to become concentrated, so it can now fix it. An international brand is not the hero – local, New Zealand-owned competition is.
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.
Imagine a world where bacteria, typically feared for causing disease, are turned into powerful weapons against cancer. That’s exactly what some scientists are working on. And they are beginning to unravel the mechanisms for doing so, using genetically engineered bacteria to target and destroy cancer cells.
Using bacteria to fight cancer dates back to the 1860s when William B. Coley, often called the father of immunotherapy, injected bacteria called streptococci into a young patient with inoperable bone cancer. Surprisingly, this unconventional approach led to the tumour shrinking, marking one of the first examples of immunotherapy.
Over the next few decades, as head of the Bone Tumour Service at Memorial Hospital in New York, Coley injected over 1,000 cancer patients with bacteria or bacterial products. These products became known as Coley’s toxins.
Despite this early promise, progress in bacteria-based cancer therapies has been slow. The development of radiation therapy and chemotherapy overshadowed Coley’s work, and his approach faced scepticism from the medical community.
However, modern immunology has vindicated many of Coley’s principles, showing that some cancers are indeed very sensitive to an enhanced immune system, an approach we can often capture to treatpatients.
How bacteria-based cancer therapies work
These therapies take advantage of the unique ability of certain bacteria to proliferate inside tumours. The low oxygen, acidic and dead tissue in the area around the cancer – the tumour “microenvironment” (an area I am especially interested in) – create an ideal niche for some bacteria to thrive. Once there, bacteria can, in theory, directly kill tumour cells or activate the body’s immune responses against the cancer. However, several difficulties have hindered the widespread adoption of this approach.
Safety concerns are paramount because introducing live bacteria into a patient’s body can cause harm. Researchers have had to carefully attenuate (weaken) bacterial strains to ensure they don’t damage healthy tissue. Additionally, controlling the bacteria’s behaviour within the tumour and preventing them from spreading to other parts of the body has been difficult.
Bacteria live inside us, known as the microbiome, and treatments, disease and, of course, new bacteria that are introduced can interfere with this natural environment. Another significant hurdle has been our incomplete understanding of how bacteria interact with the complex tumour microenvironment and the immune system.
Questions remain about how to optimise bacterial strains for maximum anti-tumour effects while minimising side-effects. We’re also not sure of the dose – and some approaches give one bacteria and others entire colonies and multiple bug species together.
Recent advances
Despite these challenges, recent advances in scientific fields, such as synthetic biology and genetic engineering, have breathed new life into the field. Scientists can now program bacteria with sophisticated functions, such as producing and delivering specific anti-cancer agents directly within tumours.
This targeted approach could overcome some limitations of traditional cancer treatments, including side-effects and the inability to reach deeper tumour tissues.
Emerging research suggests that bacteria-based therapies could be particularly promising for certain types of cancer. Solid tumours, especially those that have a poor blood supply and are resistant to conventional therapies, might benefit most from this approach.
Colon cancer, ovarian cancer and metastatic breast cancer are among the high-mortality cancers that researchers are targeting with these innovative therapies.
One area we have the best evidence for is that “bug drugs” may help the body fight cancer by interacting with routinely usedimmunotherapydrugs.
Recent studies have shown encouraging results. For instance, researchers have engineered strains of E coli bacteria to deliver small tumour protein fragments to immune cells, effectively training them to recognise and attack cancer cells. In lab animals, this approach has led to tumour shrinkage and, sometimes, complete elimination.
By exploiting these mechanisms, bacterial therapies can selectively colonise tumours while largely sparing healthy tissues, potentially overcoming limitations of conventional cancer treatments.
Ultimately, we need human trials to give us the answer about whether this works, by controlling or eradicating cancer and, of course, if there are side-effects, its toxicity.
In one study I worked on, we showed that part of a bacterial cell wall, when injected into patients, could safely help control melanoma – the most deadly form of skin cancer.
While we’re still in the early stages, the potential of bacteria-based cancer therapies is becoming increasingly clear. As our understanding of tumour biology and bacterial engineering improves, we may be on the cusp of a new era in cancer treatment.
Bacterial-based cancer therapies take advantage of several unique mechanisms to specifically target tumour cells. As a result, these therapies could offer a powerful new tool in our arsenal against cancer, working in synergy with existing treatments like immunotherapy and chemotherapy. And, as we look to the future, bacteria-based cancer therapies represent a fascinating convergence of historical insight and groundbreaking science.
While challenges remain, the progress in this field offers hope for more effective, targeted treatments that could significantly improve outcomes for cancer patients.
Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In this etching from Dutch theologian Lambertus Hortensius’ 1614 book ‘Van den oproer der weder-dooperen,’ Anabaptists warn the residents of Amsterdam of the coming vengeance of Christ in 1535.(Lambertus Hortensius)
Far-right politics and Christian nationalism are on the rise in North America and Europe, leading to growing concerns about what it means for human rights and democracy.
Why? Because we’ve seen before what happens when religious groups use government to force their beliefs and morality upon society.
Religion scholar Bradley Onishi writes that the Christian nationalist movement known as the “New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is one of the most influential and dangerous Christian nationalist movements in the United States” and has become “a global phenomenon.”
This movement has reshaped its theology in ways eerily reminiscent of the prophets of the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster of the 1530s in present-day Germany. As my scholarship has examined, those religious dissenters faced polemical demonizing by religious authorities and faced violent oppression, via torture and execution.
Today’s Christian nationalists, however, have faced no such maltreatment. Yet, like persecuted dissenters of the 1530s, they claim divine authority to remake society.
The Anabaptists of Münster
A portrait of Jan van Leiden, a leader of the Münster Anabaptists, by Dutch artist Jan Muller circa 1615. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The 16th-century Reformation had originally broken down the religious state of medieval Europe. However, Protestant leaders like Martin Luther and John Calvin quickly saw the advantage of having civic governments force conformity to their reforms, and punish dissent.
Derisively called Anabaptists, the small group of dissenters also refused to participate in government. For these practices they were persecuted, with hundreds horrifically tortured and executed.
Here the city’s major preacher, Bernhard Rothmann, was moving the city into the Reformed Protestant camp, rather than that of their Lutheran neighbours. When large numbers of Anabaptist refugees arrived in 1533, they won the civic election and Münster became an Anabaptist city.
The Catholic bishop of Münster had other ideas. Hiring Catholic and Lutheran troops, he laid siege to the city and things became desperate. Enraged by persecution, the Münsterite Anabaptists changed their image of Jesus from the peacemaker of the Gospels to the apocalyptic Jesus of Revelation.
The Jesus of Anabaptist Münster
Rothmann’s original theology was like what Calvin would develop for Geneva. What made the two cities distinct was the charismatic leadership of the Dutch Anabaptist prophet Jan Matthijs, who predicted that Christ would return on Easter Day, 1534, adding both urgency and confidence in applying God’s directives.
When Christ did not return on Easter 1534 and Matthijs was killed by the besiegers, his successor, Jan van Leiden, simply postponed Christ’s return to the following Easter and declared himself a semi-divine king.
He also abandoned the message of the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount in favour of the vengeful Jesus of the Book of Revelation. Rothmann justified this in a tract which I translated as:
“It was … the intention of our hearts in our baptism, that we would suffer for Christ, whatever men did to us. But it has pleased the Lord … that now we and all Christians at this time may not only ward off the violence of the godless with the sword, but also, that he has put the sword into our hands to avenge all injustice and evil over the entire world.”
King van Leiden sent people out to spread this revolutionary message and take over other cities. This led to several militant episodes, including in Amsterdam, where in February 1535, 11 Anabaptists paraded naked through the streets proclaiming the “naked truth” of God’s anger.
Others delivered the message while waving swords. Finally, in May, 1535 about 40 Anabaptists captured Amsterdam’s city hall. All were arrested and executed. These were the actions of desperate people inspired by their prophets’ assurances of divine authority. When, however, Münster fell at the end of June 1535, the result was massive disillusionment, a return to non-violence and increased persecution.
This etching (circa 1629-1652) by Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch depicts Anabaptists walking naked through the streets of Amsterdam after being inspired to remove and burn their clothes in February 1535. (Rijksmuseum)
Divine authority to remake society?
This transformation of the Münster Anabaptists into vengeful militants reminds me of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). As Matthew D. Taylor has revealed, this movement sees itself as fighting a “spiritual battle” against the demonic forces opposing Trump; some participated (non-violently) in the Jan. 6, 2020 riot.
Taylor concludes with a warning that the NAR act as “spiritual warmongers, constantly expanding the arena of spiritual warfare, mapping it onto geographical territory and divisive politics in a deeply destabilizing and antidemocratic manner.” It is as if we are listening to Rothmann’s fiery sermons again.
One difference, of course, is that the NAR folk are not under persecution, despite what they might claim. Taylor describes this as “the Evangelical Persecution Neurosis.”
A charismatic approach to Christian life that affirms God speaks directly to them. They see themselves as biblical prophets who speak God’s commands which must be implemented regardless of social impact.
The Evangelical Christian belief of living in the end-times on the eve of Jesus Christ’s return for judgment. NAR preachers proclaim that while Jesus in the Gospels taught to “turn the other cheek,” they now follow the judgmental Jesus of the apocalyptical Book of Revelation and mobilize a struggle with Satan to rely on scapegoat ideology.
Derived from a group of Reformed or Calvinist theologians called “Christian Reconstructionists,” and building on Calvin’s theology of the “godly city,” they pursue a broader “dominionist” rationale to take over all of society for Christ. Believing one is living in the end-times means that society must be taken over and cleansed immediately, adding to urgency.
Believers, drawing on these three beliefs, derive an assurance they speak with God’s voice. This was the case for the Münster Anabaptists, and now similarly, for the NAR. As the example of the Münster Anabaptists suggests, we’ve seen this many times before throughout history, and it doesn’t end well.
A 1685 engraving by Dutch poet and engraver Jan Luyken depicting the 1571 burning of Anabaptist woman Anneken Hendriks from Thieleman van Braght’s 1660 book ‘The Bloody Theatre or Martyrs Mirror.’ (Allard Pierson Museum)
There have been many more recent episodes of Christian groups claiming divine authority to remake society. Like Jan van Leiden, those in the NAR or who concur with its theology have recast the Jesus of the Gospels, and U.S. President Donald Trump, in apocalyptic terms.
This gives a gloss of divine approval for Trump’s autocratic goals. As authoritarianism and Christian nationalism rises, the fusion of charismatic authority with Reformed Protestant certitude and end-times fervour continues to attract followers.
Gary K. Waite has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Allyn Dale, Director of the MA in Climate and Society program at the Columbia Climate School, Columbia University
After the devastating 1994 genocide, Rwandans returning from the violence established homes and began farming where they could find land.
Since then, the Rwandan government has aimed to bring people scattered across rural parts of the country into grouped settlements which they have called “model villages”. These are intended to provide extra support for highly vulnerable residents, such as the homeless and those who are living in “high risk zones” – areas prone to floods, drought and mudslides, and which are likely to be affected by climate change in the future.
Rwanda has a population of 14.5 million. An estimated 62,000 rural families have been resettled into 14,815 villages, of which 253 are considered “model villages”. Some of them are considered “green”, because they use solar power and biofuels as energy sources. Rainwater harvesting, tree planting, and terraced vegetable plots are other features of the green, environmentally friendly model villages.
We conducted a study to understand the impact of relocating rural communities from high risk zones where they face threats from a changing climate, such as erratic rainfall, drought, floods and landslides. We looked at two lake island communities who were experiencing floods. They also suffered a lack of health and education services and security problems from being too close to an unguarded border.
We used the Rweru Model Green Village as a case study. Based on our interviews with families who were moved there, we found that relocating people can be double-edged. On the positive side, resettlement increased access to modern facilities and social services. On the downside, people found it hard to earn a living. They lacked access to natural and financial capital and had to adapt to a different climate.
The resettlement programme overall is now understood to be part of the government of Rwanda’s approach to climate change adaptation. However, our findings suggest that this should be done with care, considering factors like community expectations and government development plans.
Why people were moved
The Rweru Model Green Village was set up in 2016 to house residents from two nearby islands on Lake Rweru, Sharita and Mazane. Located along the southern border with Burundi, these islands were home to generations of Rwandans. But they lived in relative isolation without access to services like education, healthcare or markets.
We interviewed and surveyed people from 64 households in the Rweru village. At the time of our research, 1,777 people had been moved in, all from Sharita and Mazane islands.
Participants said fishing had been a way of life on the islands, providing them with a consistent source of protein. Beans, potatoes, cassava and sorghum grew successfully. Even relatively impoverished households said they had enough food to live on: 55% said the productivity of the land was high.
However, 84% of respondents also described an isolated life without services. As one put it:
we were cut off from the rest of the world.
Many mentioned the lack of drinking water, roads and electricity as a major drawback to living on the islands. While primary school was available, older children could only get to a secondary school by a two hour boat ride. Some dropped out of school.
Healthcare was absent, and respondents described harrowing journeys to find medical attention. As one woman said:
When we were still there in Sharita, a woman could want to deliver a baby but getting a boat it takes a long time, a woman can even lose her life waiting.
The boat rides were dangerous because of hippos in the lake, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and the risk of drowning.
Others said that people from Burundi could access the islands easily and sometimes assaulted or killed the island residents. About 76% of the people we interviewed described their lives before relocation as dangerous. Residents had been asking to be resettled for some time because of these problems.
One of the driving forces for organising rural life into model villages is to enhance the capacity of residents to adapt to changes, including climate impacts such as the increased risks of flooding, drought or landslides. In that way, the model green village programme is also understood to have climate change adaptation elements.
The pros and cons after resettlement
After resettlement, most respondents described improvements in their overall quality of life. They were less exposed to floods, which they’d experienced on the islands. They had improved access to healthcare, social services and quality housing.
Many (66%) described the housing they received as the most important advantage of their new lives:
Above all, the nicest thing I was given was the house.
They also described clean water (26%), markets (50%), healthcare (55%), schools (50%) and electricity (24%) as benefits of living in the new model village. It was the first time they’d been able to manage livestock, having only had chickens on the islands. Their children were benefiting from having milk.
Some residents appreciated having a mattress for the first time; 50% indicated furniture and kitchen equipment as advantages. About 34% of respondents were pleased that they no longer needed to travel by boat.
They also felt safer. But despite these positive outcomes, they said they were poorer and had less food. Unlike the islands, the micro-climate inland was very hot, with little rain and increasing drought.
Most people we interviewed (55%) said their new, smaller plots of land were “infertile”, “unproductive” or “barren”. They couldn’t fish or grow enough fruit or vegetables. One person said many of the elderly people who were moved only ate one meal a day in the village “and others are starving completely”.
Increased hunger caused children to miss school:
Sometimes I cannot put food on the table, my son sleeps with an empty stomach and he cannot go to school the next day.
The future of model green villages
The Rwandan government plans to continue setting up model villages, and wants these to be sustainable for many years.
More research is needed to determine whether living in a model village provides young people with a better quality of life. The government will also need to address the economic challenges, food insecurity and welfare needs of residents in the new villages.
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.
Western leaders often use it to describe a framework of rules, norms and institutions designed to guide state behavior. Advocates argue that this framework has provided the foundation for decades of stability and prosperity, while critics question its fairness and relevance in today’s multipolar world.
But what exactly is the international rules-based order, when did it come about, and why do people increasingly hear about challenges to it today?
The birth of a universal vision
The rules-based international order, initially known as the “liberal international order,” emerged from the devastation of World War II. The vision was ambitious and universal: to create a global system based on liberal democratic values, market capitalism and multilateral cooperation.
At its core, however, this project was driven by the United States, which saw itself as the unmatched leader of the new order.
The idea was to replace the chaos of great power politics and shifting alliances with a predictable world governed by shared rules and norms.
Central to this vision was the establishment of institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions, alongside widely accepted norms and formalized rules, aimed to promote political cooperation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and economic recovery for countries damaged by war.
However, the vision of a truly universal liberal international order quickly unraveled. As the Cold War set in, the world split into two competing blocs. The Western bloc, led by the United States, adhered to the principles of the liberal international order.
Meanwhile, the Soviet-led communist bloc established a parallel system with its own norms, rules and institutions. The Warsaw Pact provided military alignment, while the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance managed economic cooperation. The communist bloc emphasized state-led economic planning and single-party rule, rejecting the liberal order’s emphasis on democracy and free markets.
Emerging cracks
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the liberal international order appeared to have triumphed. The United States became the world’s sole superpower, and many former communist states integrated into Western institutions. For a brief period, the order’s universal vision seemed within reach.
By the 1990s and early 2000s, however, new cracks began to appear.
NATO expansion, the creation of the World Trade Organization and greater emphasis on human rights through institutions such as the International Criminal Court all closely aligned with Western liberal values. The spread of these norms and the institutions enforcing them appeared, to many outside the West, as Western ideology dressed up as universal principles.
In response to mounting criticism, Western leaders began using the term rules-based international order instead of liberal international order. This shift aimed to emphasize procedural fairness – rules that all states, in theory, had agreed upon – rather than a system explicitly rooted in liberal ideological commitments. The focus moved from promoting specific liberal norms to maintaining stability and predictability.
New challenges to the status quo
China’s rise has brought these tensions into sharp relief. While China participates in many institutions underpinning the rules-based international order, it also seeks to reshape them.
The Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank illustrate Beijing’s efforts to establish alternative frameworks more aligned with its interests. These initiatives challenge existing rules and norms by offering new institutional pathways for economic and political influence.
Meanwhile, Russia’s actions in Ukraine – especially the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the 2022 invasion – challenge the order’s core principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Western inconsistencies have long undermined the credibility of the rules-based order. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, widely criticized for bypassing international norms and institutions, exemplified a selective application of the rules. This double standard extends toward Washington’s selective engagement with international legal bodies and its inconsistent approach to sovereignty and intervention.
An uncertain future
Supporters argue that the rules-based order remains vital for addressing global challenges such as climate change, pandemics and nuclear proliferation.
However, ambiguity surrounds what these “rules” actually entail, which norms are genuinely universal, and who enforces them.
This lack of clarity, coupled with shifting global power dynamics, complicates efforts to sustain the system.
The future of the rules-based international order is uncertain. The shift from “liberal” to “rules-based” reflected an ongoing struggle to adapt a complex web of rules, norms and institutions to a rapidly changing international environment.
Whether it evolves further, splinters or endures as is will depend on how well it balances fairness, inclusivity and stability in an increasingly multipolar world.
Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Themiya Nanayakkara, Lead Astronomer at the James Webb Australian Data Centre, Swinburne University of Technology
The Big Wheel alongside some of its neighbours. Weichen Wang et al. (2025)
Deep observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed an exceptionally large galaxy in the early universe. It’s a cosmic giant whose light has travelled over 12 billion years to reach us. We’ve dubbed it the Big Wheel, with our findings published today in Nature Astronomy.
This giant disk galaxy existed within the first two billion years after the Big Bang, meaning it formed when the universe was just 15% of its current age. It challenges what we know about how galaxies form.
What is a disk galaxy?
Picture a galaxy like our own Milky Way: a flat, rotating structure made up of stars, gas and dust, often surrounded by an extensive halo of unseen dark matter.
Disk galaxies typically have clear spiral arms extending outward from a dense central region. Our Milky Way itself is a disk galaxy, characterised by beautiful spiral arms that wrap around its centre.
An artist impression of the Milky Way showcasing the dusty spiral structures similar to The Big Wheel.
Studying disk galaxies, like the Milky Way and the newly discovered Big Wheel, helps us uncover how galaxies form, grow and evolve across billions of years.
These studies are especially significant, as understanding galaxies similar to our own can provide deeper insights into the cosmic history of our galactic home.
A giant surprise
We previously thought galaxy disks form gradually over a long period: either through gas smoothly flowing into galaxies from surrounding space, or by merging with smaller galaxies.
Usually, rapid mergers between galaxies would disrupt the delicate spiral structures, turning them into more chaotic shapes. However, the Big Wheel managed to quickly grow to a surprisingly large size without losing its distinctive spiral form. This challenges long-held ideas about the growth of giant galaxies.
Our detailed JWST observations show that the Big Wheel is comparable in size and rotational speed to the largest “super-spiral” galaxies in today’s universe. It is three times as big in size as comparable galaxies at that epoch and is one of the most massive galaxies observed in the early cosmos.
In fact, its rotation speed places it among galaxies at the high end of what’s called the Tully-Fisher relation, a well-known link between a galaxy’s stellar mass and how fast it spins.
Remarkably, even though it’s unusually large, the Big Wheel is actively growing at a rate similar to other galaxies at the same cosmic age.
The Big Wheel galaxy is seen at the centre. In striking contrast, the bright blue galaxy (upper right) is only about 1.5 billion light years away, making the Big Wheel roughly 50 times farther away. Although both appear a similar size, the enormous distance of the Big Wheel reveals its truly colossal physical scale. JWST
Unusually crowded part of space
What makes this even more fascinating is the environment in which the Big Wheel formed.
It’s located in an unusually crowded region of space, where galaxies are packed closely together, ten times denser than typical areas of the universe. This dense environment likely provided ideal conditions for the galaxy to grow quickly. It probably experienced mergers that were gentle enough to let the galaxy maintain its spiral disk shape.
Additionally, the gas flowing into the galaxy must have aligned well with its rotation, allowing the disk to grow quickly without being disrupted. So, a perfect combination.
An illustration of how a massive spiral galaxy forms and evolves over billions of years. This evolutionary path is similar to real-world galaxies like Andromeda, our closest spiral galaxy neighbour, which also developed distinct spiral arms similar to the Big Wheel.
A fortunate finding
Discovering a galaxy like the Big Wheel was incredibly unlikely. We had less than a 2% chance to find this in our survey, according to current galaxy formation models.
So, our finding was fortunate, probably because we observed it within an exceptionally dense region, quite different from typical cosmic environments.
Besides its mysterious formation, the ultimate fate of the Big Wheel is another intriguing question. Given the dense environment, future mergers might significantly alter its structure, potentially transforming it into a galaxy comparable in mass to the largest ones observed in nearby clusters, such as Virgo.
The Big Wheel’s discovery has revealed yet another mystery of the early universe, showing that our current models of galaxy evolution still need refinement.
With more observations and discoveries of massive, early galaxies like the Big Wheel, astronomers will be able to unlock more secrets about how the universe built the structures we see today.
A Fijian academic believes Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s failed attempt to garner enough parliamentary support to change the country’s 2013 Constitution “is only the beginning”.
Last week, Rabuka fell short in his efforts to secure the support of three-quarters of the members of Parliament to amend sections 159 and 160 of the constitution.
The prime minister’s proposed amendments also sought to remove the need for a national referendum altogether. While the bill passed its first reading with support from several opposition MPs, it failed narrowly at the second reading.
Jope Tarai, an indigenous Fijian PhD scholar and researcher at the Australian National University, told RNZ Pacific Waves that “it is quite obvious that it is not going to be the end” of Rabuka’s plans to amend the constitution.
However, he said that it was “something that might take a while” with less than a year before the 2026 elections.
“So, the repositioning towards the people’s priorities will be more important than constitutional review,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A second man has died from Japanese encephalitis virus in New South Wales on March 6, the state’s health authorities confirmed on Friday. Aged in his 70s, the man was infected while holidaying in the Murrumbidgee region.
This follows the death of another man in his 70s in Sydney last month, after holidaying in the same region in January.
Japanese encephalitis is one of the most serious diseases that spreads via mosquitoes, with around 68,000 cases annually across Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions.
The virus is thought to be maintained in a cycle between mosquitoes and waterbirds. Mosquitoes are infected when they feed from an infected waterbird. They then pass the virus to other waterbirds. Sometimes other animals, and people, can be infected.
Pigs are also a host, and the virus has spread through commercial piggeries in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. (But it poses no food safety risk.)
People with mild cases may have a fever, headache and vomiting.
In more serious cases – about one in 250 people infected – people may have neck stiffness, disorientation, drowsiness and seizures. Serious illness can have life-long neurological complications and, in some cases, the infection can be life-threatening.
There had been no evidence of activity on the mainland since 2004 but everything changed in the summer of 2021–22. Japanese encephalitis virus was detected in commercial piggeries in southeastern Australia during that summer.
This prompted the declaration of a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance. At the time, flooding accompanying the La Niña-dominated weather patterns and a resulting boom in mosquito numbers, and waterbird populations, was thought responsible.
The virus has spread in subsequent years and has been detected in the mosquito and arbovirus surveillance programs as well as detection in feral pigs and commercial piggeries in most states and territories. Only Tasmania has remained free of Japanese encephalitis virus.
Human cases of infection have also been reported. There were more than 50 cases of disease and seven deaths in 2022.
Due to concern about Japanese encephalitis virus and other mosquito-borne pathogens, health authorities around Australia have expanded and enhanced their surveillance programs.
In Queensland, this includes mosquito monitoring at a number of locations, including urban areas of southeast Queensland. Mosquitoes collected in this monitoring program tested positive for Japanese encephalitis virus, promoting the current health warnings.
Why is its detection in Brisbane important?
Up to now, scientists have thought the risk of Japanese encephalitis was likely greatest following seasons of above-average rainfall or flooding. This provides ideal conditions for waterbirds and mosquitoes.
But the activity of Japanese encephalitis virus over the summer of 2024–25 has taken many scientists by surprise. Before Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred arrived, there had been somewhat dry conditions with less waterbird activity and low mosquito numbers in many regions of eastern Australia.
However there has still been widespread Japanese encephalitis virus activity in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
To date, Japanese encephalitis virus activity hasn’t extended to the coastal regions of southeast Queensland. The detection of the virus in suburban Brisbane may require authorities to rethink exactly where the virus may turn up next. Authorities are ramping up their surveillance to see just how widespread the virus is in the region.
Health authorities and scientists are also trying to understand how the virus moved from western areas of the state to the coast and what drives virus transmission in different regions.
There is currently no evidence the virus is active in coastal regions of northern NSW.
Mosquitoes collected in Brisbane have tested positive for Japanese encephalitis virus. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology)
What can people do to protect themselves?
Avoiding mosquito bites is the best way to reduce the risk of Japanese encephalitis virus.
Cover up with long-sleeved shirts and long pants for a physical barrier against mosquito bites.
Use topical insect repellents containing DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Be sure to apply an even coat on all exposed areas of skin for the longest-lasting protection.
Ensure any insect screens on houses, tents and caravans are in good repair and reduce the amount of standing water in the backyard. The more water there is around your home, the more opportunities for mosquitoes there are.
It may take many weeks following vaccination to achieve sufficient protection, so prioritise reducing your exposure to bites in the meantime.
Cameron Webb and the Department of Medical Entomology, NSW Health Pathology and University of Sydney, have been engaged by a wide range of insect repellent and insecticide manufacturers to provide testing of products and provide expert advice on medically important arthropods, including mosquitoes. Cameron has also received funding from local, state and federal agencies to undertake research into various aspects of management of various medically important arthropods.
Andrew van den Hurk has received funding from local, state and federal agencies to study the ecology of mosquito-borne pathogens, and their surveillance and control. He is an employee of the Department of Health, Queensland government.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has announced a Coalition government would introduce legislation, based on an American law used to pursue the Mafia, to enable police to target the “kingpins” of criminal organisations such as outlaw motorcycle gangs.
This follows new allegations by Nine newspapers and 60 Minutes about the rogue union the CFMEU. The allegations include “the employment of ‘baseball-twirling violent people’ on the [Victorian government’s] Big Build, where women have been bashed and then black-banned after they complained”.
The Nine investigation further alleged that “gangland and bikie-linked figures are receiving large payments from companies on publicly funded projects looking to gain favour with union insiders, leaving state and federal taxpayers in effect underwriting payments to the underworld.”
The Coalition said Monday the proposed new offences would “be based on the highly effective Mafia takedown laws in the US”. Dutton and shadow ministers Michaelia Cash and James Paterson said in a statement:
By targeting groups that engage in a pattern of criminal behaviour, these offences will put police in the position where they can target the criminal organisation and its leadership.
This means the bosses and kingpins of groups such as outlaw motorcycle gangs can be jailed even if they distance themselves from the crimes their organisations commit.
Dutton described the CFMEU as “a modern-day mafia operation”. He added:
The culture of criminality and corruption is so entrenched, and it will never change – especially under the weak and incompetent Albanese Labor government.
Dutton claimed the CFMEU affair was the “biggest corruption scandal in our country’s history”.
The opposition said it would also set up an Australian Federal Police-led taskforce that would bring together federal law enforcement agencies and state and territory police forces to target criminal behaviour.
After the latest revelation surfaced in Nine media at the weekend, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt said on social media he would refer the allegations to the police.
On Monday, Watt condemned Dutton’s proposal for a new law.
We don’t need to import an American racketeering law – we already have our own laws to go after ‘kingpins’, such as section 390.6 of the Criminal Code, which already deals with directing criminal organisation.
He also condemned the opposition’s long-standing policy to deregister the union, saying this would mean there was no regulation.
Peter Dutton’s reckless desire for a headline puts at risk the investigations and crime-fighting that the Coalition never bothered to commence in their decade in office.
Victoria police is undertaking an investigation into the fresh allegations.
The US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) Act, dating from 1970, enables prosecutors to take down whole mob-related organisations rather than having only the power to deal with figures individually. It is intended to deal with mob bosses who could not be directly connected to the crimes.
Its use, however, has extended well beyond mob prosecutions to a range of targets, from street gangs to politicians.
US President Donald Trump was charged under Georgia’s RICO act for “knowingly and willfully joining a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the [2020] election”.
The construction and general division of the CFMEU has been in administration since last August.
The union’s national secretary, Zach Smith, said on Facebook: “We cannot let our union or our industry be a safe haven for criminality of corruption”.
He also said that “violence against women is completely unacceptable to our union”.
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.
Australian workers have to overcome some significant barriers in navigating their careers.
Some may lack the training or work experience opportunities needed to make themselves stand out and take the next step. Others may be extensively qualified, but face limited new job or promotional opportunities relevant to their skill set.
But there’s another common barrier that’s often overlooked: post-employment restraints. Among the most well-known are non-compete clauses, but these aren’t the only kind.
These tools are designed to protect employer interests. But their widespread use has far-reaching consequences for job mobility, wages and innovation across Australia.
Our new research, which was commissioned by the Department of Treasury and conducted by researchers at Queensland University of Technology, set out to examine how these agreements are impacting Australia’s workforce.
We zeroed in on two very different occupational groups – hairdressers and IT professionals. Our findings point to an urgent need for regulatory reform in Australia. But we also offer solutions that could better balance business needs with worker rights.
What are post-employment restraints?
Post-employment restraints are contractual clauses that restrict what workers can do after leaving their jobs.
One common type are non-compete clauses, which prevent workers from joining competitors or starting their own businesses, usually (though not always) in the same industry.
Signing a non-compete agreement often prevents you from working for a competing business. G.Tbov/Shutterstock
There are also non-solicitation agreements, which restrict them from approaching former clients or colleagues.
And non-disclosure obligations can limit the use of confidential information concerning the employer’s business – even when created by workers themselves.
Businesses argue these clauses help them safeguard their proprietary interests, such as hard-won client relationships, trade secrets and intellectual property.
However, their application is not limited to high-level executives or sensitive roles. Such restraints are more common than many realise.
Data cited in our report from businesses with 200 employees or less confirms previous Australian research: at least one in five businesses use non-compete, non-solicitation of clients and non-solicitation of co-workers clauses. The number is even higher if non-disclosure agreements are included in the list of restraints.
Overall, half of all Australian workers are reported to have post-employment restraints – including many in low-paid jobs.
As former Fair Work Commission President Iain Ross has pointed out, this raises critical questions about fairness and the broader impacts on the labour market.
A tangle of restrictions in hairdressing
Hairdressing is a predominantly female, low-wage profession. Our interviews with hairdressers reveal the outsized impact that post-employment restraints can have on vulnerable workers.
Restrictions typically include bans on working within a certain radius of their former salon, taking clients to a new employer, or starting their own business.
Many interviewees only learned about these restrictions after accepting a position or deciding to leave. Some reported being barred from telling clients of their departure or facing demands to pay penalties if clients followed them to a new salon.
The personal relationships hairdressers form with their clients are central to their work and professional identity. However, these relationships often become battlegrounds when employment ends.
Hairdressers explained the difficulties that often arose from becoming “friends” with clients. As one put it:
As soon as you leave, it’s almost harder than a breakup.
Financially, these restrictions exacerbate the already precarious conditions in the hairdressing industry.
With limited opportunities for wage growth, many hairdressers establish their own businesses or rent chairs in salons for greater independence.
Yet, non-compete clauses often delay these plans. Hairdressers are then forced to accept lower-paying positions or leave the profession entirely.
Social media has added a whole new layer of complexity. Hairdressers are often required to use their personal social media accounts to promote their employer’s business, only to have their posts deleted or accounts locked when they leave. This can erase years of professional work and connections.
Many young hairdressers we spoke to expressed particular frustration that their social media presence, cultivated under the salon’s brand, could not be carried forward to new roles.
Holding back innovation
Our study found while hairdressers face restrictions on their mobility and client relationships, IT professionals face obstacles that limit their ability to innovate.
IT professionals often develop new technologies, software or processes, sometimes in their own time. However, contracts often claim ownership of these innovations for the employer.
We found non-disclosure agreements, non-compete clauses and intellectual property ownership terms are all common in the industry.
This environment discourages entrepreneurial ventures and independent projects, even as the industry demands agility and creativity.
As one participant explained:
It’s made me pause multiple times, made me think about not developing a code that you’re interested in just for your own development.
Professionals reported feeling “locked in” to roles, unable to pursue side projects or start their own businesses without risking legal action.
Non-compete clauses in IT contracts also restrict job mobility when professionals cannot join competitor companies or use their expertise in new roles.
This impacts not only individual workers but also the broader industry, as firms struggle to recruit skilled talent.
Paradoxically, some employers actively poach talent from competitors while enforcing non-compete clauses against their own staff.
Intellectual property restrictions can discourage IT professionals from working on their own innovative projects. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock
The way forward
By limiting job mobility, post-employment restraints contribute to wage stagnation and reduce workers’ bargaining power.
Australia’s regulatory approach to this issue lags behind other countries. There are no formal limits on the length or breadth of restraints, just a vague test of “reasonableness” that makes it hard to know what is permissible, without costly litigation.
In the United States, California has banned non-compete clauses outright, fostering a thriving tech industry. In Europe, companies like Germany impose strict limits on the duration of restraints and require employers to compensate workers during the restricted period.
These models demonstrate that balancing employer interests with worker rights is possible and can yield positive outcomes.
One option for policymakers in Australia would be to impose new restrictions on the scope and duration of restraints to ensure they serve legitimate business interests without unduly restricting workers.
Employers could be required to provide plain-language explanations around these restrictions at the time of hiring and compensate workers for the duration of any restraint, as seen in some European models.
Post-employment restraints are a double-edged sword. While they may protect legitimate business interests, their overuse undermines job mobility, innovation and worker wellbeing.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor & Principal Fellow in Urban Risk & Resilience, The University of Melbourne
A fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia has killed at least 59 people and injured more than 150. The blaze broke out at the Pulse nightclub in Kočani, where around 500 people were attending a concert.
Witnesses reported that pyrotechnics used during the performance ignited the ceiling, causing flames to spread rapidly.
Authorities have arrested 20 people so far, including the club’s manager. Investigations continue. The North Macedonian government has declared a seven-day mourning period.
While building fires are not limited to nightclubs, many of the most devastating building fires in history have happened in nightclubs around the world. So why are nightclubs such a risky place for deadly fires?
A long history of nightclub fires
A look at past nightclub fires shows just how common and deadly they’ve been in the past 100 years. We identified at least 24 nightclub fires where ten or more people died since 1940.
Collectively, these 24 incidents account for at least 2,800 deaths, with nearly 1,300 in the 21st century alone.
Now, North Macedonia’s Pulse nightclub joins this long list.
Why are nightclubs so risky for fires?
A review of past nightclub fires we’ve collated in our database reveals common patterns. Two key factors have contributed to the frequency and severity of these fire disasters.
1. Pyrotechnics, fireworks and flammable materials
One of the most common causes of nightclub fires has been the use of pyrotechnics in enclosed spaces. Pyrotechnics are controlled chemical reactions designed to produce flames, smoke, or light effects.
They have been involved in at least six of the deadliest nightclub fires, including the recent Pulse nightclub fire in North Macedonia, as well as The Station (United States, 2003), Kiss (Brazil, 2013), Colectiv (Romania, 2015), Lame Horse (Russia, 2009) and República Cromañón (Argentina, 2004).
In some cases, fireworks – which are different from stage pyrotechnics and sometimes illegally used indoors – have played a role. The Lame Horse nightclub fire, which killed 156 people in Russia in 2009, was caused by a spark from fireworks igniting a low ceiling covered in flammable plastic decorations.
Foam insulation, wooden panelling, plastic decorations and carpeted walls have all been key factors in past nightclub fires. In Cocoanut Grove (Boston, 1942), artificial palm trees and other flammable decorations accelerated the blaze.
2. Overcrowding and blocked or insufficient exits
Evacuation failures have been a factor in nearly every major nightclub fire.
In some instances, crowds may not immediately recognise the severity of the situation, especially if they mistake alarms for false alarms or special effects (for example, smoke machines, loud music).
Further, patrons could be intoxicated due alcohol or other drugs. Intoxication combined with potential disorientation due to dim lighting can further reduce judgement during an evacuation.
Clearly, the best way to protect patrons is to prevent a fire from breaking out in the first place. But in settings where fire risks are inherently high, the ability to evacuate people swiftly is crucial.
Nightclubs are among the most crowded indoor spaces. While crowd density is part of a nightclub’s design and atmosphere, overcrowding beyond legal capacity is common.
A crowd that has gradually gathered over several hours must suddenly evacuate in seconds or minutes to survive a fire. This is made more difficult by narrow hallways and limited exits, which quickly become bottlenecks when hundreds of people attempt to escape at once.
What’s more, not all exits are always accessible during a fire. In several past nightclub disasters, locked or obstructed emergency exits have significantly worsened the death toll.
Minimising the risks
Nightclubs are uniquely vulnerable to fires due to a combination of structural risks, unsafe materials, overcrowding and regulatory failures.
While human behaviour plays a role in how fires unfold in confined spaces such as nightclubs, people should be able to go for a night out and expect to come home safely.
Regulatory oversight must ensure strict compliance with fire codes. Venues should have fire suppression systems (such as sprinklers, fire extinguishers and smoke detectors) to control or contain fires before they spread, and adequate exits.
Nightclubs should ban indoor pyrotechnics and fireworks, as history has repeatedly shown their deadly consequences.
Capacity limits must be enforced, and emergency exits should always be accessible.
Public awareness is also key. Patrons need to understand the real risk of fires in nightclubs, and be prepared to evacuate swiftly but calmly if danger arises.
Ruggiero Lovreglio receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi (NZ) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA).
Milad Haghani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The US government has sent a 36-point questionnaire to some Australian researchers who are working on joint projects with US colleagues.
ABC Radio National reports at least eight Australian universities are involved. Their research areas include foreign aid, medicine, vaccines and defence. The New York Times reports a similar document has also been sent to other overseas organisations with US funding links.
The questions are wide-ranging and cover academics’ links to China as well as their projects’ focus on topics such as diversity, inclusion and gender identity, as well as climate change.
Some of the specific questions include:
Can you confirm that your organisation has not received ANY funding from PRC People’s Republic of China, Russia, Cuba or Iran?
Can you confirm that this is no DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] project or DEI elements of the project? [sic]
Does this project take appropriate measures to protect women and to defend against gender ideology as defined in the below Executive Order?
Can you confirm this is not a climate or “environmental justice” project or include such elements?
The survey also covers issues such as secure borders with Mexico, ending government waste, terrorism, the war on opioids, and “eradicating anti-Christian bias”.
Concern and anger
In response, the Group of Eight (which represents Australia’s top research universities) and Australian Academy of Science have separately raised concerns with the Australian government about the survey and its impact on Australian research.
The Group of Eight says the US has already suspended or terminated research grants with six of its eight member universities.
The National Tertiary Education Union also labelled the survey “blatant foreign interference”.
A spokesperson for Education Minister Jason Clare says Australia is
“engaging with the US government to understand what these measures mean for future funding and collaboration”.
Are Trump’s orders legal?
Trump’s executive orders are currently the subject of numerous lawsuits in the US. Plaintiffs say Trump’s orders violate the First and Fifth Amendments – those dealing with protection of free speech, equal protection and “due process of law” when depriving a citizen of property.
Whether Trump’s orders are legal or not is a tricky question, and will likely come down the judges hearing each case.
US involvement in Australian research is significant. According to the Academy of Science, US government research funding involving Australian research organisations was $A386 million in 2024.
It is arguable Trump’s orders infringe Australian sovereignty. But the US has always had the capacity to interfere in Australian university research – it just hasn’t actually done it until now.
Research contracts signed between universities and funding bodies can contain all kinds of requirements, so US law can end up applying to Australian researchers. When the AUKUS deal was announced in 2021, a huge question was how universities would comply with notoriously harsh US export control laws.
The survey indicates it was issued by the US Office of Management and Budget and appears to be supported by the US CHIPS and Science Act (which authorises certain research investments) and National Science Foundation policies. So, while Australian researchers could potentially ignore these questionnaires, that would legally give a US funding body grounds to cancel the funding contract.
Our foreign interference laws also weren’t designed for situations like this. Even if they did, Trump is the current head of the US government, and is likely to be immune from prosecution
Statutory tests for foreign interference – including criteria that such acts are covert, and/or involve threats of harm – simply don’t apply to a US president like Trump.
So legally, it doesn’t look like there is much Australia can do about Trump’s orders.
What can Australia do?
Some newly unemployed researchers are now poised to leave the US, taking their research with them. This poses a potential security risk, with countries such as China and Russia both keen to capitalise on Trump’s decisions.
But other nations are also aware of the possibilities. The European Union has already offered displaced US scientists a more “sympathetic place to work”. South Korea and Canada are also marketing themselves as attractive options. Australia could follow suit.
The federal government is currently doing a strategic review of Australia’s research and development system. This could make diversifying our research partners a national priority.
Either way, given such radical changes in the US, Australia needs to seriously reconsider how it is funding and structuring research.
Brendan Walker-Munro has consulted for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, and is also an Adjunct Expert Associate of the National Security College. He has received funding from the Social Cyber Institute and Active Cyber Defence Alliance.
Serwah Attafuah, The Darkness Between The Stars, JOAN. Landscape still.Courtesy of the artist.
Virtuosic digital artistry is on show in Serwah Attafuah’s installation The Darkness Between the Stars, currently showing at ACMI.
The work fiercely challenges stereotypes of black femininity and draws upon the history and culture of the Ashanti people of modern-day Ghana, one of the countries most affected by the Atlantic slave trade and the site of remembrance and pilgrimage for many descendants of the people trafficked as slaves.
Serewah is part of a generation of video artists like Melbourne’s Xanthe Dobbie, British artist Rachel Maclean, and Paris based, French Guianese artist Tabita Rezaire. These artists all channel the moving image culture of gaming and the internet, rather than the cinematic or televisual references of their forebears.
Each of these artists uses exuberant humour and a tough-minded politic to challenge the reductive construction of female and queer identities.
As we pass through the arch at the entry to the gallery, we are greeted by a 3D animation of an ocean reflecting a sky that cycles from starlit to slowly emerging dawn. We are told the arch references the entry to the Elmina castle built by the Portuguese: one of two major points from which enslaved African people were cast into the hell of the Atlantic passage and life in bonds.
African warriors
Beyond the entrance we are faced by a series of five screens in portrait format. Each shows short loops of African warriors, suggesting the idealised – and, here, heroic – forms of game avatars a la Fortnite.
Each of the images is framed in gold e-waste. This brings to mind Congolese street art costumes, similarly made of waste which blend cultural traditions and an Afrofuturist resistance that dares to imagine a better future.
The first portrait is a furred, horn helmeted, and neck ringed warrior woman. Armed with a laser and an automatic pistol, she has further weapons adorning her back ready to be deployed.
Serwah Attafuah, The Darkness Between The Stars, ANANSI, 2025. Still courtesy of the artist
Behind and around her are malfunctioning computer screens. One scrolls through an online dating text exchange which evokes the idealised and reductive self-curation of the online profile. This chat is between Jenny and Mark, a FIFO worker on an offshore oil rig in Western Australia. This ties to the images of oil rigs found elsewhere in the show, evoking the plundering of African resources: human and otherwise; historical and ongoing.
The second screen pictures an armoured woman (or cyborg?) atop a rearing tiger. The tiger is an intriguing choice given it is an Asian animal but potentially points to a pan exoticism rooted in the confusion of cultures.
She wields a curved blade amid a savannah populated with umbrella thorn acacia and what appear to be comfortingly homely (and amusing) ground-hugging waratahs in the foreground.
Serwah Attafuah, The Darkness Between The Stars, JOAN, 2025. Still courtesy of the artist.
Complicating fetishes
Moving around the room, floating robots accompany another warrior who props against a sword supported by a fragmented classical column.
She stands beneath an oversized moon, evoking an off-world setting, a reading compounded by her protective headwear.
Alongside a writhing snake, we catch sight of her Betty Davis (no, the Black one) super heels: a clear link to the under-remembered pioneer of Afrofuturism.
Serwah Attafuah, The Darkness Between The Stars, KING, 2025. Still courtesy of the artist.
Continuing this play of sexual provocation and power is the addition of a techno tutu which further accentuates her already thrusting buttocks.
The problematisation of sexualised imagery is one of the exhibition’s central themes. Attafuah toys with the Western fetishisation and fear of Black women’s sexuality.
Occasionally borrowing cliches from the gaming and pornographic worlds, Attafuah forcefully complicates such fetishes by arming four of her five warriors to the teeth. They take aim at us, challenging their construction as passive objects for our visual consumption.
A further figure, singularly unarmed apart from her thorny armbands, appears in the next frame. She runs through a series of coquettish modelling poses in her mesh bodysuit as she stands amid buzzing screens and computer detritus.
In yet another confusingly (and amusingly) stereotyped African landscape she is pictured among palm trees and sand, in what I took to be an evocation of a North African environment complete with desert fortress, oil rig and passing container ship.
In the final of the five portraits a young, braided, and fantastically eyelashed woman takes aim at us with a pistol straight from Star Wars (Rebel Alliance issue, naturally).
Serwah Attafuah, The Darkness Between The Stars, VENUS, 2025. Still courtesy of the artist.
She stands hip deep in a lagoon of water lilies and floating CDs. A futuristic city fills the background with a slowly turning wind turbine that sports yellow and black radiation colouring – yet another paradoxical meeting in an exhibition characterised by mixed messages that contradict easy readings.
In The Darkness Between the Stars, Attafuah proves herself to be a powerful, uncompromising and most welcome voice in contemporary Australian art. She proves herself capable of generating sophisticated, nuanced and playful reflections on complex problems that we carry from past to present.
Serwah Attafuah: The Darkness Between the Stars is at ACMI, Melbourne, until June 1.
Dominic Redfern works at RMIT with, and previously taught, Xanthe Dobbie.
It took thousands of years to develop the world’s extraordinary range of domesticated farm animals – an estimated 8,800 livestock breeds across 38 farmed species.
But this diversity is dwindling fast. Advances in selective breeding and artificial insemination have fuelled the global spread of a small number of profitable livestock types. Their popularity has left ever more heritage breeds at risk of extinction.
Why does this matter? Each breed represents vital genetic diversity for the livestock species on which we rely, known as agrobiodiversity. As the number of breeds shrink, we lose their genetics forever.
There are bright spots amid the decline. Hundreds of passionate farmers are working hard to keep heritage breeds alive around Australia. As my new book shows, they do it primarily for love.
Which livestock breeds are disappearing – and why?
Cattle have experienced the highest number of extinctions, with at least 184 breeds lost globally.
Of all chicken breeds, one in ten is now extinct, and a further 30% are endangered.
The fleece of Elliotdale sheep has been used to make woollen carpets. Sue Curliss, CC BY-NC-ND
Pigs fare little better. Australia’s 2.5 million pigs are predominantly Large White, Landrace and Duroc crossbreeds, while none of the eight remaining purebred pig breeds in Australia currently has more than 100 sows registered with the Rare Breeds Trust. While not all sows are registered, we know breeds such as Tamworths are at dangerously low numbers.
How did this happen? Over the past century, the goal of animal husbandry has shifted from breeding hardy, multipurpose animals to increasing performance for economic gain. For livestock, performance means more of what humans value, such as pigs with extra ribs, prolific egg-laying hens and sheep with finer wool.
Huge sums have been spent on selective breeding and artificial insemination technologies. This, in turn, has made it possible for a small number of profitable livestock types to be farmed globally.
For instance, when you buy a roast chicken, it will likely be one of just two types of fast-growing broilers (meat chickens), the Ross or the Cobb. Their genetics are developed and trademarked by two multinational agribusinesses who dominate the global broiler market.
Chicken breed numbers have shrunk too, risking rare breeds such as Transylvanian naked neck cockerel bantams. Scott Carter, CC BY-NC-ND
It’s hard to overstate how big the increases in production have been from reproductive technologies. In the dairy industry, for instance, milk yield per cow has doubled in the past 40 years. These volumes are around six times greater now than a century ago.
Holsteins, the top dairy breed, have become globally dominant. Almost 1.4 million of Australia’s 1.65 million dairy cows are Holsteins. But as Holstein numbers soar, other breeds dwindle. Many farmers have simply stopped rearing other breeds, leading to many becoming endangered or extinct.
For Holsteins themselves, this has come with a cost. Selective breeding for high milk volume has meant Holsteins suffer more medical issues such as metabolic diseases and frequent mastitis. They also have reduced fertility and longevity.
Researchers have found 99% of Holstein bulls produced by artificial insemination in the United States are descended from just two sires. This wide dissemination of limited bloodlines has led to the spread of genetic defects.
Our food systems face growing threats. Genetic diversity provides a safeguard for livestock species against lethal animal diseases such as H5N1 bird flu and African swine fever.
If we rely on just a few breeds, we risk a wipe out. The Irish potato famine is a catastrophic example. In the 1800s, Irish farmers took up the “lumper” variety of potatoes to feed a growing population. But when fungal rot struck in the 1840s, it turned most of the crop to mush – and led to mass starvation.
Some breeds have very useful traits, such as resistance to particular pests and diseases.
Chickens and other birds die in swathes if infected by Newcastle disease, one of the most serious bird viruses. But breeds such as the hardy Egyptian Fayoumi survive better, while the European Leghorn – whose genetics are used in commercial egg-laying breeds – is highly susceptible.
Local breeds can also have better resistance to endemic pests. The Indian zebu humped cattle breed, for example, is less prone to tick infestation than crossbreeds.
Climate change is also making life harder for livestock, and some breeds are better adapted to heat than others.
For different cultural groups, local heritage breeds also have unique symbolic and culinary value.
While it’s well-known eating less meat would benefit ecosystems, animal welfare and human health, eating meat remains entrenched in our diets and the economy. Pursuing more sustainable and higher-welfare approaches to livestock production is crucial.
Some Aussie farmers love heritage breeds
A cohort of Australian farmers is working hard to conserve dozens of endangered livestock breeds such as Large Black pigs, Shropshire sheep and Belted Galloway cattle.
A rare Belted Galloway cow with a one week old calf. Scott Carter, CC BY-NC-ND
But these farmers are hampered by our reluctance as consumers to pay more to cover the cost of raising slower-growing breeds in free-range environments. Not only that, but meat processors are increasingly closing their doors to small-scale producers.
Why persevere? For four years, I’ve conducted ethnographic research with Australia’s heritage breed farmers. I found they were motivated by one of the most powerful conservation tools we have: love.
Of his endangered English Leicester sheep, one farmer told me:
I consider them to be family; they have been our family for over 150 years. I talk to them, and the rams in particular talk to me. Sorry if I sound like a silly old man, but you must talk to them. I gave myself a 60th birthday present by commissioning a large portrait of an English Leicester head, which hangs in our kitchen (I do not have a painting of my wife).
Love doesn’t often feature in agricultural research. But it is an important force. We know from wildlife conservation that humans will act to save what they love. This holds for livestock, too.
Catie Gressier receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project scheme as well as the European Research Council. She is affiliated with the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia and the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.
Some have said Christopher Luxon’s pledge to get a free trade deal between New Zealand and India over the line in his first term as prime minister was overly optimistic. But not all trade deals are the same, and Luxon may yet get to claim bragging rights.
Already he is managing expectations, saying a “good” deal will be better than waiting a long time for a “perfect” one. And with formal negotiations confirmed not long after Luxon touched down in New Delhi, we can perhaps expect genuine movement.
At the same time, India’s negotiating style is notoriously rigid, with its bilateral investment treaty model having proved a stumbling block to deals with many other nations or blocs, including the United Kingdom and European Union.
New Zealand first held formal negotiations with India over a decade ago. But talks derailed in 2015 over the inclusion of dairy products in any agreement. We can be fairly sure this will be the compromise Luxon’s government is ready to make now.
Beyond the economic implications, of course, lie domestic political calculations. Luxon needs a win to counter flatlining poll numbers and speculation about his leadership future. Good news in India offers just that.
Playing the Indo-Pacific card
Using diplomatic language that plays up New Zealand being part of the Indo-Pacific region – rather than the traditional Western alliance – will be essential.
New Zealand – despite its relatively small size – is still a significant regional player, with the Indo-Pacific’s fourth highest GDP per capita.
In the context of an imminent “Asian Century”, and the region becoming a crucial zone for economic and military power, New Zealand also provides a strategic pathway into the Pacific, where India is becoming increasingly involved.
All of this will influence Luxon’s keynote address today at the 10th Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship multilateral conference on global politics and economics. He is the first leader not governing a European country to make such a speech, and is also the chief guest at the dialogue.
Luxon is already on the record as saying New Zealand and India are “very aligned” on Indo-Pacific security and concerns over Chinese regional influence, with scope for more joint defence exercises. This linkage between security and trade mirrors Wellington’s recent relations with Beijing, which have become increasingly difficult to navigate.
Solid foundations
But there is a long way to go. In 2024, India-New Zealand trade was worth a combined NZ$3.14 billion – a fraction of the $208.46 billion generated by trade with China in the same year.
Nevertheless, Luxon and his ministers have made undeniable progress. His “recalibration of a relationship that has long been neglected” bore fruit in October last year when he met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the ASEAN summit, and the countries announced their intention to take the relationship to “greater heights”.
The previous Labour government helped set the scene with a succession of high-level diplomatic visits and parliamentary exchanges. In 2023, the Indian government described relations with New Zealand as having “an upward trajectory”.
And there are clearly good foundations to build on – especially the 292,000 people of Indian ethnicity in New Zealand, who contribute US$10 billion to the New Zealand economy.
Great expectations
Trade is ripe for expansion, too. New Zealand primarily exports wool, iron and steel, aluminium, fruits and nuts, wood pulp and recovered paper, and imports Indian pharmaceuticals, machinery, precious metals and stones, textiles, vehicles and clothing.
There were 8,000 Indian students in New Zealand last year, a number that may well grow given a relative drop in student numbers from China. With the US and UK becoming more hostile to immigration, New Zealand can offer a relatively safe and tolerant alternative.
As such, while Luxon has momentum on a trade deal, he is also part of a long queue. Given the relative power imbalance between the two countries, the weight of expectation sits squarely on his shoulders.
Chris Ogden is a Senior Research Fellow with The Foreign Policy Centre, London.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Peter Cronau for Declassified Australia
Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.
As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.
Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.
He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.
“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .
Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”
To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”
If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.
Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.
And from the very start the official facts became slippery.
Our latest investigation –
AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS
We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.
— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025
What did they know and when did they know it The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.
The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.
We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.
The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.
“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . .. the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”
But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.
The Chinese Navy’s stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, sailing south in the Coral Sea on February 15, 2025, in a photograph taken from a RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane. Image: Royal Australian Air Force/Declassified Australia
Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.
“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”
Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.
Eyes and ears on ‘every move’ It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.
Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.
The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.
“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.
“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . . we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”
Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.
Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.
Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.
“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”
The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.
This map indicates the routes taken by the three Chinese Navy ships on their “right to freedom of navigation” voyage in international waters circumnavigating Australia, with dates of way points indicated — from 3 February till 6 March 2025. Distances and locations are approximate. Image: Weibo/Declassified Australia
As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.
With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.
“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.
As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.
The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.
There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.
Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.
Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.
Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.
The spy base – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) – showing the north-eastern corner of the huge base with some 18 of the base’s now 45 satellite dishes and covered radomes visible. Image: Felicity Ruby/Declassified Australia
The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.
A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:
“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . . Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”
The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.
It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.
Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.
These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.
Alliance priorities The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.
For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.
However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.
Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.
But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.
The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.
Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.
The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.
Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.
It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.
Who knew and when did they know If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.
Inside an operations room at the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra. Image: ADF/Declassified Australia
Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.
As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.
Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.
If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.
A final word In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.
The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.
Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.
Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.
Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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
A national Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted March 13–15 from a sample of 1,051, gave the Coalition a 51–49 lead by respondent preferences, a one-point gain for Labor since the late February Freshwater poll.
Primary votes were 39% Coalition (down two), 31% Labor (steady), 14% Greens (up one) and 16% for all Others (up one). By 2022 election preference flows, this would be about a 50–50 tie.
Anthony Albanese’s net approval improved one point to -10, while Peter Dutton’s slid four points to -12. In the last two months, Albanese is up eight and Dutton down eight. It’s the first time since May 2024 that Albanese has had a better net approval than Dutton in this poll.
Albanese led Dutton by 45.9–42.5 as preferred PM, his best lead in this poll since last September. By 42–40, respondents thought Dutton better suited to negotiate with US President Donald Trump than Albanese (47–36 in November).
The Coalition leads on important issues, but Labor has gained seven points on economic management and three points on cost of living since February.
There has been improvement for Labor across a range of polls in the last few weeks, and the graph below has Labor leads in three of the last five national polls (two YouGovs and a Morgan), with the Coalition still ahead in Newspoll and Freshwater.
In analyst Kevin Bonham’s aggregate, Labor now leads by 50.5–49.5 using 2022 election flows, while it’s a 50–50 tie adjusting for a likely pro-Coalition shift in One Nation preferences.
Last Wednesday Trump imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the US, including on Australia. I believe this will assist Labor as the tariff imposition will appear unjustified to most Australians, and the Coalition is the more pro-Trump party. If the stock market continues to fall, this will undermine support for Trump’s economic agenda.
Trump has been threatening Canada with tariffs for much longer than Australia, and the centre-left governing Liberals have surged back in the polls to a near-tie with the Conservatives from over 20 points behind, and have taken the lead since Mark Carney’s March 9 election as Liberal leader.
Labor retains lead in YouGov
A national YouGov poll, conducted March 7–13 from a sample of 1,526, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, unchanged from the February 28 to March 6 YouGov poll. YouGov is conducting weekly polls, and the previous poll was the first Labor lead in YouGov since July 2024.
Primary votes were 36% Coalition (steady), 31% Labor (steady), 13.5% Greens (up 0.5), 7.5% One Nation (up 0.5), 1% Trumpet of Patriots (steady), 9% independents (down one) and 2% others (steady). YouGov is using weaker preference flows for Labor than occurred in 2022, and by 2022 flows Labor would have a lead above 52–48.
Albanese’s net approval improved three points to -6, with 49% dissatisfied and 43% satisfied, while Dutton’s net approval slid two points to -6. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by an unchanged 45–39.
Since the first weekly YouGov poll in late February, Albanese has gained six points on net approval while Dutton has slid four points. This is the first time Dutton has not had a better net approval than Albanese in YouGov since March 2024.
On the ongoing conflict caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 69% of Australians thought we should stand with Ukraine President Zelensky, while 31% wanted us to stand with Trump.
Labor regains lead in Morgan poll
A national Morgan poll, conducted March 3–9 from a sample of 1,719, gave Labor a 51.5–48.5 lead by headline respondent preferences, a two-point gain for Labor since the February 24 to March 2 poll. This is Labor’s second lead in the last three Morgan polls, after they had trailed in this poll since November.
Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down three), 30% Labor (up 1.5), 13.5% Greens (steady), 5% One Nation (up one), 10.5% independents (steady) and 4% others (up 0.5). By 2022 election flows, Labor led by 52–48, a two-point gain for Labor.
By 51.5–33, respondents said the country was going in the wrong direction (52–31.5 previously). Morgan’s consumer confidence index was down 0.8 points to 86.9.
Poll of teal-held seats has the teals struggling
Freshwater took a poll for the News Corporation tabloids of six seats held by teal independents. These are Curtin in WA, Goldstein and Kooyong in Victoria and Mackellar, Warringah and Wentworth in NSW. The poll was conducted March 5–7 from an overall sample of 830.
Across the six seats polled, the Liberals had a 51–49 lead, representing a 5% swing to the Liberals since the 2022 election. On these figures, the Liberals would gain four of these teal seats (Curtin, Goldstein, Kooyong and Mackellar).
Primary votes were 41% Liberals (up two since 2022), 33% teals (steady), 7% Labor (down six), 7% Greens (down two) and 12% others (up six). Albanese and Dutton were tied at 39–39 on better PM. By 47–42, respondents opposed their local MP backing an Albanese Labor minority government.
The YouGov MRP poll that was conducted between late January and mid-February from a sample of over 40,000 had all the teals holding their seats. At the March 8 Western Australian election, swings to the Liberals were lowest in affluent Perth seats.
WA election late counting
With 70% of enrolled voters counted for the WA election, the ABC is calling 43 of the 59 lower house seats for Labor, six for the Liberals, four for the Nationals and six seats remain undecided. The Poll Bludger has Labor ahead in 47 seats, with the Liberals and Nationals ahead in six seats each.
On election night, it had appeared likely that an independent would win Labor-held Fremantle. However, the independent has performed badly on absent and postal votes, and Labor will retain.
In the upper house, all 37 seats are elected by statewide proportional representation with preferences, and a quota for election is just 2.63%. With 63% of enrolled counted, Labor has 15.8 quotas, the Liberals 10.5, the Greens 4.1, the Nationals 2.1, One Nation 1.35, Legalise Cannabis and the Australian Christians 1.0 each, an independent group 0.48 and Animal Justice 0.43.
On current figures, Labor will win 16 seats, the Liberals ten, the Greens four, the Nationals two, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and the Christians one each and two seats are unclear (Liberals, independent group and Animal Justice contesting). Counting of absents in the lower house has hurt the Liberals, so their vote is likely to drop further. Labor and the Greens will have a combined upper house majority.
Liberals hold Port Macquarie at NSW byelection
A byelection occurred on Saturday in the New South Wales Liberal-held state seat of Port Macquarie. Labor did not contest after finishing third behind the Nationals and Liberals at the 2023 NSW election with 19.2%.
With 59% of enrolled counted, The Poll Bludger is projecting that the Liberals will defeat the Nationals by 52.8–47.2, a 7.9% swing to the Nationals since 2023. Current primary votes are 34.2% Liberals (down 4.1%), 31.2% Nationals (up 5.5%), 12.8% for an independent (new), 10.7% Greens (up 3.7%) and 7.9% Legalise Cannabis (up 3.4%).
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Boichak, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, Australian Research Council DECRA fellow, University of Sydney
More than three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a 30-day ceasefire between the two warring countries may be imminent. But much more needs to happen before a just and lasting peace is achieved.
The Russian-Ukraine war is one of the most visible, analysed and documented wars in human history. Since the night of February 24 2022, millions of Ukrainian citizens, military personnel, journalists, officials and civil society activists have shared first-hand eyewitness accounts, updates, commentaries and opinions on the war.
Around the world, many online communities have also sprung into action to counter Russian propaganda and raise awareness of what is happening inside Ukraine.
We have been studying these communities for the past three years, conducting hours of interviews with members and observing their activity on social media. To conduct much of this research and connect with members, we had to join some of these communities – a common requirement for researchers working in online settings.
Our work reveals a range of skills and strategies activists use in the online fight against Russia. More broadly, it shows how social media users can mobilise during times of war and other international crises and have a material impact offline.
In some cases, social media platforms have aided the Russian cause. At the same time, they have suppressed evidence of war crimes.
For example, in the first year of the Russian invasion, independent investigative journalism organisations such as Disclose documented thousands of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians. These crimes included murder, torture, physical and sexual violence, forced relocation, looting, and damage to civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
Much of this content included graphic imagery, violence and offensive language. As a result, it was permanently removed from platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.
On the other hand, content containing disinformation evaded moderation. For example, a 2023 investigation by the BBC revealed thousands of fake TikTok accounts created as part of a Russian propaganda campaign spreading lies about Ukrainian officials.
This often led to a distorted information environment online. Russian disinformation was visible, while the true extent of Russian violence against Ukrainians was hidden.
Boosting Ukrainian voices
In this context, thousands of internet users formed online communities to creatively support Ukraine without attracting the attention of content moderators.
This isn’t new or unique to the war in Ukraine. For example, in 2019, US TikToker Feroza Aziz shared a makeup tutorial in which she subtly raised awareness of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs – a topic that is often suppressed on the Chinese-owned platform.
It started in May 2022 when a young man with the online name Kama mashed up a Reddit meme of a Shiba Inu dog nicknamed Cheems and a picture of a dilapidated Russian tank. This was a celebration of a Ukrainian battlefront victory. It was only intended to mock Russia.
But as Kama changed his profile picture to the meme, the trend started spreading quickly to his followers on X (formerly Twitter). They quickly grew into an online collective dedicated to fighting Russia online. Members – or “fellas”, as they are known – from many regions around the world were brought together by its rituals using internet and popular culture memes.
Calls to action
In many similar posts across Facebook, X and TikTok, users share selfies or other images to achieve high visibility while calling followers to action. In most cases, this involves raising funds for urgent military or humanitarian efforts to benefit Ukraine.
Another common strategy is storytelling. Some users share amusing or ridiculous anecdotes from their lives before closing with a donation request.
These requests often have a clear target and beneficiary. They are also often time-sensitive. For example, they may be aimed at purchasing a particular model of a drone for a particular brigade of Ukraine’s armed forces that will be delivered to the battlefront within days.
Through collaborations with Ukraine’s official fundraising platform, the North Atlantic Fella Organisation has collected more than US$700,000 towards Ukraine’s defence.
Combatting propaganda
Members of the North Atlantic Fella Organisation also try to combat Russian propaganda and disinformation.
Instead of arguing in good faith with highly visible disinformation-spreading accounts (often controlled by the Russian government), members try to derail the disinformation campaigns. They highlight their ridiculousness by responding with memes and jokes. They call this practice “shitposting”.
People spreading Russian disinformation often find themselves annoyed by the swarms of “meme dogs” in their replies. This has led some to respond aggressively. In turn, this has allowed North Atlantic Fella Organisation members to report them for violation of X’s terms of service and have their accounts suspended, as our forthcoming research documents.
However, from late 2022 onward, North Atlantic Fella Organisation members we interviewed as a part of our research reported decreased effectiveness of X’s response to problematic user conduct. This was soon after tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform.
Despite this, members continue to support each other and develop playful tactics to ensure they remain visible on the platform.
It seems war will continue online for as long as Russia wages its war on Ukraine’s territory.
Olga Boichak has received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a director of the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia and an executive committee member of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. She has been a member of the North Atlantic Fella Organisation since 2022 for research purposes.
Kateryna Kasianenko has been a member of the North Atlantic Fella Organisation since 2022 for research purposes.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shamit Saggar, Executive Director, Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success and Professor of Public Policy, Curtin University
Two months out from an Australian federal election, the polling is pointing to a very tight race between the two major parties. This means, if the polls are correct, neither party will likely win enough seats to command a parliamentary working majority.
Australia’s most recent experience of a hung parliament was the Gillard-Rudd government of 2010–13. Many still see that as an unhappy era, with internal division within Labor’s party room in Canberra, and yet another leadership coup, as the lasting, bitter memory.
So, it is time to reassess whether – or how well – Australia might be governed in similar circumstances.
Building a stable coalition
The answer depends on us being open to the meaning of a stable, inter-party coalition. This is particularly tricky in Australia for three reasons. First, although the political parties themselves are coalitions of philosophies and factions, this is often masked by high levels of party discipline. With very few exceptions, MPs elected through the major parties pretty much do as they are told when they go to Canberra.
Second, the popular vote share that goes to the two major parties has been in long-term decline, from about 90% 40 years ago, to about 70% of late. The drift hasn’t just gone towards populist insurgents and protests, but increasingly to the benefit of the Greens and, more recently, the Teals. The national preferential voting system pushes candidates to compete in the traditional left-right middle ground. But this overlooks the fact that some voters’ sympathies lie in single-issue campaigns.
Third, and most importantly, our model of minority government is conspicuously one-dimensional. For instance, party leaders and managers think purely in terms of confidence and supply agreements. These are important, of course, but they provide artificial stability by limiting disagreement in parliament that might bring down a government.
One eye-catching proposition for stable minority government involves Labor and the Coalition coming together to agree not to topple the other for an arbitrary period of half a parliamentary term.
There are several better options. The UK’s Conservatives and Liberal Democrats ran a joint government from 2010–15, with some distinction. A big party and small party formed a coalition, and once they had agreed to disagree, they ringfenced specific policy areas as belonging to one party and the other party signed up to it as a policy priority of the whole government. This resulted in the full implementation of their respectively most prized policies.
And just two months ago, Ireland’s centre-right Fianna Fáil and Fine Gail parties, working with unaligned independents and a more formal Independent Ireland, came up with similar coalition agreement.
The inference is that stable multi-party government involves a mature negotiation on the issues, priorities and policies that can unite across party lines. It also requires a readiness to prioritise policy issues within parties.
Of course, this is an indirect way of asking if the Teals can and wish to operate as a de facto party. And while the Greens are a political party to begin with, the extent of their party discipline has not been tested to the full.
Meanwhile, there is evidence of pressure to keep both the Teals and Greens at a distance from any such agreement, with reports that lobby groups for the hospitality and coal sectors respectively will fund major party candidates to help defeat hostile crossbenchers.
As politicians mull these challenges, we should consider the likely “safe” issues – as against the “tricky” ones – in the coming parliament that a stable minority government or coalition would face. Their appetite to govern will be affected accordingly.
‘Safe’ and ‘tricky’ issues in a minority government
From Labor’s perspective, the nucleus is around a disparate set of economic and social modernisation policies. Since many of these have begun in this parliament, the focus in the next will be on pursuing them to full implementation.
For the Coalition, reshaping tax and spending, increasing housing affordability checking workplace employee rights and a bold nuclear power proposal sit at the core. This is accompanied by wariness of immigration and identity politics. Survey research points to its broad appeal certainly but less is known about the depth of this support.
Finding a middle path on these issues that would satisfy enough crossbenchers to help one of the major parties form government will be the challenge. It is not necessarily a bad outcome for the nation. But it means all MPs will have to take into account the greatly enhanced premium on stable government before any serious horse-trading happens.
Shamit Saggar 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.
One of the most enduring questions humans have is how long we’re going to live. With this comes the question of how much of our lifespan is shaped by our environment and choices, and how much is predetermined by our genes.
A study recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine has attempted for the first time to quantify the relative contributions of our environment and lifestyle versus our genetics in how we age and how long we live.
The findings were striking, suggesting our environment and lifestyle play a much greater role than our genes in determining our longevity.
What the researchers did
This study used data from the UK Biobank, a large database in the United Kingdom that contains in-depth health and lifestyle data from roughly 500,000 people. The data available include genetic information, medical records, imaging and information about lifestyle.
A separate part of the study used data from a subset of more than 45,000 participants whose blood samples underwent something called “proteomic profiling”.
Proteomic profiling is a relatively new technique that looks at how proteins in the body change over time to identify a person’s age at a molecular level. By using this method researchers were able to estimate how quickly an individual’s body was actually ageing. This is called their biological age, as opposed to their chronological age (or years lived).
The researchers assessed 164 environmental exposures as well as participants’ genetic markers for disease. Environmental exposures included lifestyle choices (for example, smoking, physical activity), social factors (for example, living conditions, household income, employment status) and early life factors, such as body weight in childhood.
They then looked for associations between genetics and environment and 22 major age-related diseases (such as coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes), mortality and biological ageing (as determined by the proteomic profiling).
These analyses allowed the researchers to estimate the relative contributions of environmental factors and genetics to ageing and dying prematurely.
What did they find?
When it came to disease-related mortality, as we would expect, age and sex explained a significant amount (about half) of the variation in how long people lived. The key finding, however, was environmental factors collectively accounted for around 17% of the variation in lifespan, while genetic factors contributed less than 2%.
This finding comes down very clearly on the nurture side in the “nature versus nurture” debate. It suggests environmental factors influence health and longevity to a far greater extent than genetics.
Not unexpectedly, the study showed a different mix of environmental and genetic influences for different diseases. Environmental factors had the greatest impact on lung, heart and liver disease, while genetics played the biggest role in determining a person’s risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers, and dementia.
The environmental factors that had the most influence on earlier death and biological ageing included smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity levels and living conditions.
Interestingly, being taller at age ten was found to be associated with a shorter lifespan. Although this may seem surprising, and the reasons are not entirely clear, this aligns with previous research finding taller people are more likely to die earlier.
Carrying more weight at age ten and maternal smoking (if your mother smoked in late pregnancy or when you were a newborn) were also found to shorten lifespan.
Probably the most surprising finding in this study was a lack of association between diet and markers of biological ageing, as determined by the proteomic profiling. This flies in the face of the extensive body of evidence showing the crucial role of dietary patterns in chronic disease risk and longevity.
But there are a number of plausible explanations for this. The first could be a lack of statistical power in the part of the study looking at biological ageing. That is, the number of people studied may have been too small to allow the researchers to see the true impact of diet on ageing.
Second, the dietary data in this study, which was self-reported and only measured at one time point, is likely to have been of relatively poor quality, limiting the researchers’ ability to see associations. And third, as the relationship between diet and longevity is likely to be complex, disentangling dietary effects from other lifestyle factors may be difficult.
So despite this finding, it’s still safe to say the food we eat is one of the most important pillars of health and longevity.
What other limitations do we need to consider?
Key exposures (such as diet) in this study were only measured at a single point in time, and not tracked over time, introducing potential errors into the results.
Also, as this was an observational study, we can’t assume associations found represent causal relationships. For example, just because living with a partner correlated with a longer lifespan, it doesn’t mean this caused a person to live longer. There may be other factors which explain this association.
Finally, it’s possible this study may have underestimated the role of genetics in longevity. It’s important to recognise genetics and environment don’t operate in isolation. Rather, health outcomes are shaped by their interplay, and this study may not have fully captured the complexity of these interactions.
This study found environmental factors influence health and longevity to a far greater extent than genetics. Ground Picture/Shutterstock
The future is (largely) in your hands
It’s worth noting there were a number of factors such as household income, home ownership and employment status associated with diseases of ageing in this study that are not necessarily within a person’s control. This highlights the crucial role of addressing the social determinants of health to ensure everyone has the best possible chance of living a long and healthy life.
At the same time, the results offer an empowering message that longevity is largely shaped by the choices we make. This is great news, unless you have good genes and were hoping they would do the heavy lifting.
Ultimately, the results of this study reinforce the notion that while we may inherit certain genetic risks, how we eat, move and engage with the world seems to be more important in determining how healthy we are and how long we live.
Hassan Vally 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 Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
Casino operator Star Entertainment has been under financial pressure for some time. The company’s share price has tanked, and the business, with its three casino properties, has been bleeding money.
Last year’s opening of a new riverside casino in Queen’s Wharf, Brisbane, was seen as a way to revitalise the business. But Star has swung from one lifeline to another.
Just as it was set to run out of cash on Friday March 7, Star announced a last-minute rescue package. This centred on selling its 50% stake in the Queens Wharf casino to Hong-Kong-based joint venture partners for $53 million.
Star has also started documentation for a $250 million bridging loan but still needs to finalise a proposal for long-term refinancing.
All of this remains subject to details being finalised, and regulatory approvals. An alternative $250 million takeover offer from US casino operator Bally’s currently isn’t Star’s preference because it is considered too low.
But Star is far from out of the woods yet. Whatever happens to it and its casino assets, there are bigger questions about whether the age of unfettered gambling revenue for casinos may have already ended.
Elsewhere, gambling is booming
If Australian casinos are struggling, it’s not because punters are giving up gambling. Whereas most of the gambling market recovered rapidly after the end of pandemic restrictions, casinos floundered.
Between 2018–19 and 2022–23, before and after pandemic restrictions were in place, total Australian gambling expenditure (in other words, gamblers’ losses) grew by 6.8% in real terms (adjusted for inflation).
Real wagering losses grew by 45%. This segment has clearly emerged as the second-biggest gambling market in the country, with gambling expenditure of $8.4 billion.
But over the same period, expenditure at casinos declined by more than 35% nationally, and by 42% in New South Wales.
Both Star and Australia’s other major casino operator, Crown, have emerged from a range of high-profile scandals in recent years.
Media reporting, inquiries, and royal commissions into Crown, and then Star, give some insight into how the casino business used to be run in Australia.
Star’s (and Crown’s) business model appears to have previously relied on two major revenue streams: benefiting from the proceeds of crime (by operating as a cash laundry for organised criminal gangs), and exploiting every vulnerable person who walked onto their premises.
Both casinos facilitated money laundering, particularly via junket operators, organisers of casino visits by high rollers. Unfortunately, many of these people had strong links to organised crime gangs keen to launder their illegally acquired money.
This wasn’t just high rollers. Ordinary people were also encouraged to use poker machines for hours without any attempt at encouraging a break, as mandated by “responsible gambling” codes.
The Victorian Royal Commissioner, investigating Crown, regarded its “responsible gambling” failures as particularly heinous.
Although neither casino chain closed its doors, regulatory breaches led to appointment of special managers to oversee the business and hold the licences. Further change included beefing up regulators’ powers and resources.
Turning a page
Without significant funds from the proceeds of crime, or exploitation of the vulnerable, casinos are clearly struggling.
In NSW and Victoria, the casinos have been required to introduce “cashless gaming” systems.
This takes cash out of the system, deterring money launderers. Gamblers must also set a limit on their gambling spend, and adhere to it. The system is in the process of being introduced in Queensland.
Competition from online wagering and pokie venues may also be playing a part. These businesses are not currently regulated as effectively as casinos.
Precommitment systems for online wagering would be relatively easy to introduce. They would require punters to set a limit on deposits or bets, or indeed the time they spend gambling, and enforce these technically.
Getting these in place, however, may be as formidable a task as getting gambling ads banned from sporting broadcasts, if not more so.
The gambling industry understandably opposes this. After all, these measures would reduce the amount that people lose. From a public health perspective, however, they provide an effective system to prevent harm in the first place, rather than simply picking up the pieces.
Without effective reform of local gambling venues and online wagering, casinos may try to mount an argument for less effective regulation. That would be an admission that their “tourism” attractiveness has waned. It’s also a powerful argument to speed up the transition of effective regulation to all gambling operators.
Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government’s Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm. He made a submission to and appeared before the HoR Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm.
Including pronouns in introductions, your email signature or your social media bio may seem like a minor detail. Pronouns are just small words we use in place of names all the time. But, like names, pronouns have personal significance. They say something about who we are.
Linguistic shifts towards gender inclusivity are occurring worldwide, and the use of gender-neutral or inclusive pronouns is not a new nor exclusively Western phenomenon.
Chinese, one of the world’s oldest languages and spoken by more than one billion people, illustrates how languages adapt to reflect shifting understanding of gender. Its pronoun system may be on the cusp of significant change.
The modern Chinese pronoun system is fascinating for two reasons.
First, gendered pronouns have only been part of the Chinese language for 100 years: the feminine pronoun 她 (she) was only adopted in the 1920s.
Second, although there are now distinct Chinese characters for “he”, 他, and “she”, 她, these are both pronounced tā in Mandarin. You can have a whole conversation about someone without revealing their gender.
The lack of gender-distinct pronouns in spoken Mandarin has prompted calls for written Chinese to follow suit. Queer Chinese speakers have proposed several gender-inclusive pronouns that would be pronounced tā, just like 他 (he) and 她 (she).
Queer Chinese speakers have proposed several gender-inclusive pronouns. Mogome01/Shutterstock
These include the romanised form “TA” and new Chinese characters 「⿰无也」 and 「⿰㐅也」. These new characters might look strange: they are written like this to clarify that they should be read as one Chinese character. Currently, they take up the space of two Chinese characters because they are not yet in Unicode and cannot be typed properly.
Other people hope to see the now-masculine 他 regain its original function as an ungendered pronoun.
What pronouns do queer Chinese speakers use?
To understand how Chinese pronouns are changing, I surveyed more than 100 queer Chinese speakers across 12 countries. I asked survey respondents, a third of whom were nonbinary or otherwise gender-diverse, about their pronoun preferences and perceptions. I also analysed how pronouns are used in a large database of contemporary Chinese texts.
My research found gender-inclusive pronouns accounted for about a quarter of first-choice pronouns, and nearly half of all pronouns used by survey respondents. TA was overwhelmingly preferred by gender-diverse individuals (70%), with the English “they” (20%) the next most popular option.
While cisgender and transgender men almost exclusively used masculine pronouns, cis and trans women showed significant openness to using gender-inclusive pronouns alongside feminine ones. After 她 (she), TA was the second most common pronoun for women (40%) and second most common overall (17%).
Notably, 他 (he) was not used by any women or gender-diverse people, except one who considered it gender-neutral. This suggests reviving its original ungendered usage may be difficult.
Survey participants were overwhelmingly positive about TA. Chay_Tee/Shutterstock
TA emerged as the most recognised gender-inclusive pronoun, with nearly all respondents (97%) familiar with it regardless of their age, gender, region or language background. In contrast, fewer than 8% had encountered the new character-based pronouns 「⿰无也」 or「⿰㐅也」 and no one reported using them.
What makes TA so popular?
Survey participants were overwhelmingly positive about TA, with 63% expressing favourable views. As one respondent explained:
The look and feel is good, it suits people’s everyday pronunciation habits, and doesn’t create issues with having to specify someone’s gender.
TA functions similarly to English singular “they”. It works in two ways: as a gender-neutral pronoun when gender is unknown (like saying “someone left their umbrella”), and as a gender-inclusive pronoun specifically including gender-diverse people.
Many survey respondents called TA “respectful” and “inclusive” but also simply “convenient”.
However, some respondents were concerned TA is “untraditional” and “pollutes the Chinese language”.
Practical considerations for using emerging Chinese pronouns also extend to the technical challenges of typing new Chinese characters. Before a new character can be typed on computers or phones, it needs to be officially encoded in Unicode, the global standard for digital text.
My research shows this requirement is strongly influencing which emerging Chinese pronouns can gain traction.
While some survey respondents hoped to see a gender-inclusive Chinese character adopted, they weren’t optimistic about 「⿰无也」or 「⿰㐅也」 becoming mainstream.
As one noted:
「⿰无也」is good, but it’s hard to type and it takes a long time to explain.
User-friendly and easily understandable
TA is currently the most popular emerging Chinese gender-inclusive pronoun, crucially because it mimics how people use tā in spoken Mandarin.
It is already part of people’s vocabulary, and already used (at least as a gender-neutral pronoun) by mainstream Chinese media and on online platforms.
This 2023 TEDxSuzhouWomen talk is titled ‘We are all gender misfits’ (你我ta都是”性别酷儿)
Unlike other recently proposed pronouns, TA is versatile, user-friendly and easily understandable for queer and non-queer Chinese speakers alike. This makes TA a strong contender for widespread adoption into contemporary Chinese.
Like the introduction of a Chinese feminine pronoun 她 (she) in the 1920s, the emergence of TA as a gender-inclusive pronoun in the 2020s is about recognising a wider spectrum of identities.
Pronouns are not a political statement, just a personal statement. When you use someone’s correct pronouns, you’re saying, “I see you, and I respect who you are”. That’s something worth talking about, in any language.
Janet Davey is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
When two junior employees bump into each other in the corridor and start chatting about their manager’s overbearing manner, it’s typically considered gossip. But what about when two managers have an off-record catch-up to discuss an under-performing employee?
Both scenarios meet traditional definitions of gossip – the information being shared is about other people, the people it’s about are absent, the information is shared in a way that casts judgement on those people, and it’s informal. Yet the two situations are viewed very differently.
What counts as gossip is much more slippery than we might think. I reviewed 184 academic articles to understand what really constitutes workplace gossip.
The key, I found, is not any set of objective criteria, but rather people’s shared agreement that a situation counts as gossip.
This understanding of gossip helps us make sense of the “workplace gossip paradox” – the idea that gossip can be considered both a reliable source of social information (“the inside word”) and an unreliable information source (“just gossip”).
My work also provides insights into how businesses can manage gossip before it becomes a scandal.
Knowledge is power – but power controls knowledge
How does recognising the slipperiness of gossip help us understand the workplace paradox? The answer has to do with the role of power in legitimising information.
Leaders and managers need information to justify action. If a manager is going to investigate a sexual harassment claim, they can’t do so based solely on a hunch. They need to hear about from it someone.
If the victim of sexual harassment complains directly to their manager, an investigation is automatically justified. But what if the manager hears about harassment indirectly and unofficially (for example, through “gossip”), with the added complication that the alleged perpetrator is another manager?
If the manager does something about what they’ve heard and the source turns out to be unreliable, they could face negative consequences for acting on what was essentially “just gossip.” But if they don’t act, and the information turns out to be credible, they could face repercussions for ignoring the “inside word.”
There is evidence that such paradoxical situations play out quite frequently in real-world workplaces. For example, inside information about negligence towards patient safety in healthcare settings has, in the past, been dismissed as “just gossip” until it provoked a public scandal.
One case study from the United States found managers tended to keep an ear out for information passing through the grapevine and selectively use it to further their own interests.
If gossip threatened their power, they repressed it as “just gossip”. But if gossip provided “useful” information – ammunition against a subversive employee, for example – management legitimised gossip as “official information”.
To avoid workplace scandals when gossip is ignored, managers should co-opt the information and make it safe to address anti-social behaviour. La Famiglia/Shutterstock
How to manage the workplace gossip paradox
To avoid scandals stemming from when gossip is ignored, managers might consider “co-opting” gossip, bringing it into official communication channels.
But there’s a problem with this approach. Gossip gains its credibility as the inside word because it takes place outside official communication channels. Therefore, if managers try to co-opt gossip into formal management processes, it’s likely to have the unintended consequence of discrediting the shared information.
Instead, “managing gossip” requires a better understanding of its functions and motivations.
One function is to reduce uncertainty. Research suggests gossip often arises to fill information gaps. For example, people might speculate about a manager’s salary by gossiping about their expensive car or holiday.
Such gossip is likely to be exaggerated and counterproductive. However, it could be managed simply by being transparent about staff salaries, filling the information gap before gossip does.
Another key function of gossip is to warn against antisocial behaviours like bullying. But if employees feel comfortable speaking up about such behaviour — even when it’s perpetrated by those with official power – managers will not face the dilemma of whether to act on information that could turn out to be “just gossip.”
Gossip is a slippery and paradoxical form of communication. Some would say it’s unmanageable. But what can be managed are the workplace behaviours and hierarchical relationships that gossip loves to sink its teeth into.
The author would like to acknowledge Trish Corner, Helena Cooper-Thomas and Rachel Morrison for their contributions to developing this research.
James Greenslade-Yeats 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.
Cyclone Alfred will cost the March 25 budget at least A$1.2 billion, hit growth and put pressure on inflation, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says.
In a Tuesday speech previewing the budget, Chalmers will also say that on preliminary estimates, the cyclone’s immediate hit to GDP is expected to be up to $1.2 billion, which could wipe a quarter of a percentage point off quarterly growth.
“It could also lead to upward pressure on inflation. From building costs to damaged crops raising prices for staples like fruit and vegetables,” Chalmers says in the speech, an extract of which has been released ahead of delivery.
The treasurer says the temporary shutting of businesses due to the cyclone lost about 12 million work hours.
By last Thursday, 44,000 insurance claims had been lodged. Early modelling indicated losses covered by the Cyclone Reinsurance Pool were about $1.7 billion.
The estimated costs to the budget, which are over the forward estimates period, are preliminary.
The government has already co-sponsored with the states $30 million in support for immediate recovery costs, Chalmers says. Millions of dollars are being provided in hardship payments.
“The budget will reflect some of those immediate costs and we’ll make sensible provisions for more to come,” he says.
“I expect that these costs and these new provisions will be in the order of at least $1.2 billion […] and that means a big new pressure on the budget.”
This is in addition to the already budgeted for disaster relief.
“At MYEFO, we’d already booked $11.6 billion for disaster support nationally over the forward estimates.
“With all of this extra funding we expect that to rise to at least $13.5 billion when accounting for our provisioning, social security costs and other disaster related support.”
Chalmers will again argue in the speech his recent theme – that the economy has turned a corner. This is despite the global uncertainty that includes the Trump tariff policies, the full extent of which is yet to be spelled out.
Australia is bracing for the possibility our beef export trade could be caught in a new tariff round to be unveiled early next month.
Despite last week’s rebuff to its efforts to get an exemption from the aluminium and steel 25% tariffs, the government has vowed to fight on for a carve out from that, as well as trying to head off any further imposts on exports to the US.
In seeking the exemption, Australia was unsuccessful in trying to leverage its abundance of critical minerals, which are much sought after by the US.
Trade Minister Don Farrell told Sky on Sunday:
What we need to do is find out what it is that the Americans want in terms of this relationship between Australia and the United States and then make President Trump an offer he can’t refuse.
In Tuesday’s speech, Chalmers is expected to say the budget will contain fewer surprises than might be the case with other budgets.
This is because this budget – which would have been avoided if the cyclone had not ruled out an April 12 election – comes after the flurry of announcements already made this year and before further announcements in the campaign for the May election.
Those announcements already made include:
$8.5 billion to boost Medicare
$644 million for new Urgent Care Clinics
a multi-billion dollar package to save Whyalla Steelworks
$7.2 billion for the Bruce Highway and other infrastructure
funds for enhanced childcare and to provide some
student debt relief
new and amended listings for contraception, endometriosis and IVF on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Deloitte Access Economics in its budget monitor predicts the budget will have a deficit of $26.1 billion for 2024-25.
Deloitte’s Stephen Smith said that although a $26.1 billion deficit was slightly smaller than forecast in the December budget update, the longer-term structural deterioration should be “a reality check for politicians wanting to announce election sweeteners in the weeks ahead”.
Deloitte projects a deficit of nearly $50 billion in 2025-26.
Open to a ‘small’ Ukraine peacekeeping role
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took part in the “coalition of the willing” virtual meeting convened by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in support of Ukraine.
The meeting also included Ukraine, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, the Scandinavian countries, Canada and New Zealand. The United States did not participate. President Donald Trump is trying to force an agreement between Ukraine and Russia to end the conflict.
Albanese reiterated after the meeting: “Australia is open to considering any requests to contribute to a future peacekeeping effort in support of the just and lasting peace we all want to Ukraine”.
He added the obvious point: “Of course, peacekeeping missions by definition require a precondition of peace”.
Albanese said that any Australian contribution to a Ukraine peacekeeping force would be “small”.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has opposed sending Australians to a peacekeeping force.
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.
