Every time you make a phone call, stream a video or connect to Wi-Fi, your device is sending and receiving invisible signals through the air. So are your baby monitor, garage door opener, your GPS, the weather-monitoring satellites and the radars keeping planes safely apart. All of these rely on the same invisible resource: the radio spectrum.

The demand for wireless data – driven by smartphones, video streaming and billions of connected devices – keeps growing, making available spectrum scarce. But it doesn’t have to remain that way. As an electrical engineer who studies wireless communications, I’m part of a field of research working to address the radio spectrum supply crunch.

The solution engineers and regulators have been developing is dynamic spectrum sharing. The core idea is straightforward: Instead of reserving a portion of spectrum exclusively for one user forever, allow multiple users to share the same frequencies – intelligently, and with clear rules to keep them from stepping on each other’s signals.

Radio spectrum is at the low end of the electromagnetic spectrum, with frequencies below microwaves, light and X-rays. You can think of it as a vast collection of invisible highways, running at different frequencies, carrying signals through the air. Television, air traffic control, cellphones, remote sensing of distant stars – they all travel on different parts of this same invisible road network.

These communication highways span an enormous range, from very low frequencies used for submarine communication all the way up beyond radio waves to the frequencies of visible light. Higher frequencies carry signals over shorter distances but can move more data with wider highways. Because there is only so much spectrum to go around as a matter of fundamental physics, governments have historically managed it by issuing exclusive licenses – dedicating certain highways to specific users and telling everyone else to stay off.

This system worked well enough for decades, especially because the highway network was sufficient for the demand. Studies measuring actual spectrum use over many years have found something surprising: Large stretches of licensed spectrum sit idle much of the time. For example, a military radar system may only operate in certain locations on certain days.

Burgeoning demand for radio spectrum has left some of these roads clogged with traffic jams, while others nearby sit almost completely empty.

Traffic control for radio

Making dynamic spectrum sharing work requires radios that are more flexible than the fixed-frequency devices of the past.

Today’s smartphones and wireless devices are increasingly built on software-defined radio technology, meaning the frequencies they operate on can be adjusted by software rather than being locked into hardware. Think of it like a car that can switch lanes automatically rather than being stuck in one lane forever. Early researchers called the vision behind this “cognitive radio” – the idea of a radio that could sense its environment and adapt accordingly.

This flexibility opens the door to a layered approach to spectrum sharing. At the top of the hierarchy sit incumbent primary users – those who hold existing rights to a frequency, such as the military or licensed broadcasters. Below them, other secondary users can access the same spectrum when and where the incumbents aren’t using it, stepping aside automatically the moment an incumbent returns.

A more everyday version of this kind of sharing already exists in the Wi-Fi frequencies you use at home. Multiple devices – your laptop, your phone, your smart TV – share the same spectrum without a central authority assigning each one a dedicated slot. They do this by briefly sensing whether the channel is busy before transmitting, and by automatically adjusting their speed based on how crowded things get. The protocol resembles drivers at a four-way stop – informal rules that mostly work without anyone directing traffic.

A significant recent example of dynamic spectrum sharing in the United States is the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS, operating in the 3.5 GHz frequency band. The Federal Communications Commission created a three-tier system. Incumbent users – primarily U.S. Navy radar systems – sit at the top. Businesses and organizations that pay for priority access sit in the middle. And the general public can use whatever is left over.

A central computer system – the Spectrum Access System – acts as a real-time traffic controller, constantly tracking where Navy radar is active and automatically coordinating access for everyone else. When a Navy ship is not using the spectrum in your area, hospitals, factories, warehouses and campuses can use it for their own private wireless networks. When the Navy needs it back, everyone else steps aside within seconds.

Getting around interference

The biggest technical hurdle in spectrum sharing is interference – what happens when two signals overlap and scramble each other, like two people shouting different things in your ear at the same time. As more devices crowd the airwaves, each with different power levels and different bandwidth needs, keeping signals from colliding becomes increasingly complex.

My lab and other researchers are now turning to artificial intelligence for help. AI can learn from experience and adapt in real time to changing conditions – deciding who transmits when, and at what power level, in ways that older rule-based systems could not. At the same time, new challenges are emerging, such as satellites and ground-based networks increasingly needing to share the same frequencies.

The way radio spectrum is managed may not seem like a kitchen table issue, but it shapes everything from how fast your phone loads a video to whether a factory can automate its floor, to the reliability of a rural school’s internet access. Future wireless technologies, including those that connect self-driving cars and enable remote surgery, will depend on having access to enough spectrum. Dynamic spectrum sharing is how to make room for all of it without dismantling the systems already in place.

The airwaves are finite. But with smarter management, they can do far more than once thought possible.

Aylin Yener has received funding from The National Science Foundation, Department of Transportation, Army Research Laboratory/Office, National Security Agency, DARPA, US Marine Corps, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance, Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, AT&T Foundation, Cisco Research, Honda R&D Americas, Raytheon, Telcordia.

She is a fellow and a volunteer of The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She is a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science. She is an elected member of the Science Academy of Turkey.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/ai-is-helping-ease-competition-for-scarce-space-on-the-airwaves/

Sweden is imagined as the land of equality, modesty and Jantelagen – the unwritten rule that no one should think they are better than anyone else. But there has also been a fascination within Sweden with its billionaires, especially those who abide by these dominant cultural norms.

In the case of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of furniture giant IKEA, Swedes appreciated that he drove an old car (a Volvo, of course), engaged with employees working on the floor in his stores, and every year personally handed out Christmas gifts. His (some would say strategic) display of ordinariness made people overlook the fact that Kamprad was one of the world’s richest people and had moved to Switzerland to avoid Sweden’s high taxes.

But things have changed. The Wall Street Journal has written about Sweden’s surprising “capitalist makeover” and the Financial Times has reported on the idea the country is “overflowing with billionaires”. And in 2024 The BBC broadcast a documentary podcast called Super-rich Swedes. There are good reasons for their interest.

We think we know Sweden – a peaceful nation grounded in social democracy, natural beauty, IKEA and Abba. But in 2026, is this still the real Sweden? Ahead of the country’s general election on September 13, The Conversation UK has teamed up with its Swedish partner universities for a series of articles examining why this small nation remains so fascinating.

While for a long time Sweden was a country with some of the world’s highest taxes, this no longer applies to capital taxation. For instance, it no longer has a wealth tax, an inheritance tax or a property tax. The ideal of egalitarianism doesn’t seem to align with patterns of wealth accumulation, especially at the very top.

Forbes calculates more than 50 US-dollar billionaires in Sweden. This becomes even more extraordinary in a country of just 10.6 million people.

We used Forbes and UN data and found that in 2025 Sweden ranked fourth globally, with 4.7 dollar billionaires per million people. When excluding micro-states (fewer than one million people), Sweden is outnumbered only by Singapore (9.9), Hong Kong (9.1) and Cyprus (7.3), but before Switzerland (4.6) in fifth place. It ranks much higher than some of the world’s largest economies like the US (2.7), Germany (2.1), Canada (2.0) and the UK (0.8).

Read more:
‘We got lazy and complacent’: Swedish pensioners explain how abolishing the wealth tax changed their country

It is difficult to say for sure whether changes in regulation and wealth concentration have altered cultural norms, but there are clear indicators. Younger generations are now expressing strong materialistic values. When they rank what matters in life, earning money comes second to being with friends and far more important than being with family or getting an education.

Young Swedes and adults alike dream of building a “money machine” by investing in stocks so they can exit the labour market long before retirement. This might be surprising to some, since Sweden has long been shaped by a strong work ethic, both politically and culturally.

In research for a yet-to-be published paper, we found Swedish tabloids and business magazines show a remarkable rise in reporting about billionaires. This includes a fascination with their personal lives and framing them in positive terms such as “entrepreneurs”, “investors” and “philanthropists” (rather than “capitalists”, for example).

Awe and suspicion

This does not mean that wealth is no longer a sensitive topic in Sweden. When studying articles about billionaires in one of the country’s leading tabloids, we found an ambivalent form of “wealth porn”. In Sweden “wealth porn” tends to oscillate between celebrating it and questioning the luxurious lifestyles of billionaires.

The articles tempt readers with drone images and descriptions of lavish mansions – but they also repeatedly point out how reluctant the billionaires are to display and talk about their wealth. This frames the topic as socially sensitive and sometimes even dangerous to the billionaires’ personal safety. Readers are invited to fantasise about life as a billionaire – the transgressive act of breaking Jantelagen adds spice to the fantasy.

This kind of “wealth porn” remains focused on the moral issues around conspicuous consumption. Even though Sweden has long been a model of social democracy, the processes through which billionaires accumulate fortunes, and the political influence such wealth can generate, largely escape scrutiny.

Swedes’ ambivalence towards billionaires is also illustrated in a recent survey we conducted with a representative sample of the population. We asked people a set of questions about their views on money and wealth – it turned out that many find money a strong personal motivator. These people supported statements like “to have a lot of money is an important driver for me”. This suggests there is no social taboo around trying to get rich.

People also said money matters socially, as they largely supported statements like “money gives status and respect”. This indicates that hiding personal wealth may not be so important. In fact, displaying it might bring social benefits – being seen as a successful entrepreneur and someone to look up to, for example. We also asked about caps on wealth, but found strong support for statements like “one can never have too much money”.

While this indicates that Swedes value wealth, they still hold an ambiguous relationship with the super-rich. People reacted strongly against seeing the rich as “good role models for others”.

Striving to get rich seems to have become more socially acceptable in Sweden. Perhaps it always has been the way, but Swedes just never spoke about it (at least not in public). Actually being rich remains a contested topic. If Jantelagen still exerts any influence, it seems to be centred on shaping attitudes towards the wealthy themselves – rather than as a force to discourage the pursuit of wealth.

Håkan Johansson receives funding from FORMAS, the Swedish research council for sustainable development.

Axel Vikström receives funding from Handelsbanken’s research foundations.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/how-egalitarian-sweden-became-more-comfortable-with-wealth/

Southeast Asia has spent decades trying to tackle haze from forest fires. Yet every few years, the region finds itself breathing it again.. The transboundary environmental problem has become a recurrent phenomenon in the region.

The latest episode is no exception. Forest and land fires in Indonesia have sent smoke across parts of Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and other parts of Southeast Asia. On Aug. 26, the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre raised the regional haze alert to Level 3 as smoke from hotspots in Kalimantan, the Indonesian territory that makes up the majority of the island of Borneo, spread across borders.

Indonesia bears the primary responsibility for preventing and fighting fires on its territory. But once the smoke crosses national borders, haze becomes more than a domestic environmental problem. Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam have agreed to take this matter to the ASEAN level.

This issue has now become a test of whether ASEAN can help its members manage problems that no country can contain alone.

Baca juga:
Borneo forest fires spike again: Why El Niño isn’t the sole culprit

Why does the haze keep coming back?

Transboundary haze is hardly new. Historical records show that smoke from fires in Indonesia has affected neighbouring countries since at least the 1970s. The 1997 and 2015 fires were among the region’s most severe.

Scientific research points to a combination of human activity and environmental conditions. Land clearing through burning can ignite fires, while drained and degraded peatlands are particularly vulnerable. Once dry, peat can burn underground and produce thick, persistent smoke that is difficult to extinguish.

Weather can make the situation worse. Prolonged dry conditions, including those associated with El Niño, can dry out vegetation and peatlands, allowing fires to spread more easily. In the current crisis, below-normal rainfall and strong dry-season conditions are helping sustain the fires and carry smoke across borders.

This means the haze cannot be solved simply by responding when fires are already burning. Prevention, land management and enforcement matter just as much.

Baca juga:
Putting out wildfires: how peat restoration has reduced fire risk in Indonesia’s tropical forests

Indonesia has the primary responsibility

Indonesia is central to the problem because many of the fires generating transboundary smoke occur within its territory, particularly in the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan. This places the primary responsibility on the Indonesian government to prevent fires, enforce environmental regulations and hold those responsible accountable.

Indonesia already has laws and institutions aimed at preventing forest and land fires. Research also shows that the government has strengthened peatland protection and related institutions since 2016.

The challenge is implementation.

The recurring fires show how difficult it can be to translate regulations into effective prevention, particularly when land use, economic interests, local practices and extreme weather intersect. Indonesian authorities have recently, again, promised legal action against those responsible for the fires.

The question is not whether Indonesia should act, but whether national action alone is enough when the consequences are regional.

Baca juga:
Sumatra’s flood crisis: How deforestation turned a cyclonic storm into a likely recurring tragedy

ASEAN has tried before

ASEAN has recognised this problem for decades.

“

In 1997, member states adopted the Regional Haze Action Plan to strengthen prevention, monitoring and regional coordination. In 2002, they adopted the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP), creating a regional framework for preventing and responding to transboundary haze.

Indonesia, however, was the last ASEAN member to ratify the agreement, depositing its ratification in 2015. Studies argued that the treaty’s mechanisms remain limited because they reflect “the ASEAN Way” – particularly principles of sovereignty and non-interference.

This creates a dilemma: the haze is regional, but much of the authority to address its causes remains national.

This explains why ASEAN can coordinate information, monitoring and emergency responses but has struggled to make member states fully accountable for recurring transboundary pollution.

Baca juga:
Indonesia drags its feet on ASEAN haze treaty

Can ASEAN do more?

ASEAN does not need to become a supranational authority to become more effective.

First, affected countries can use ASEAN channels to demand stronger enforcement from Indonesia. Public scrutiny will also make inaction a major reputational liability.

Second, ASEAN can improve transparency. Regional sharing of hotspot data, fire information and assessments of government responses could make it easier to identify where fires occur and whether commitments are being implemented.

Third, ASEAN can step up practical collaboration, from early-warning systems to joint firefighting and peatland management. After all, regional frameworks already spot peat fires as the main driver of haze.

These measures would not replace Indonesia’s responsibility. They would support it.

ASEAN has demonstrated that it can use diplomacy to address regional crises, including tensions between Thailand and Cambodia. Environmental crises deserve similar political attention when their consequences cross borders.

Baca juga:
Why Indonesia can’t stamp out fires that have cast a haze over South-East Asia

The haze is regional, but responsibility still matters

The recurring haze exposes a broader challenge for Southeast Asia – national responsibility and regional consequences do not always fit neatly together.

Indonesia must take the lead in stopping fires within its borders. But neighbouring countries cannot simply wait for the next crisis, while ASEAN cannot treat another haze episode as business as usual.

The goal should not be to expect ASEAN to extinguish every fire. It should be to make regional cooperation strong enough that preventing those fires becomes harder to ignore.

After decades of recurring haze, Southeast Asia may not need another agreement. It needs to enforce its existing commitments, not just sign new ones.

Rifki Dermawan tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/why-does-southeast-asia-keep-breathing-the-same-haze-and-can-asean-do-more-to-stop-it/

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Margaret Preston is a breathtaking exhibition. It is Preston as we have never seen her before, and challenges many earlier preconceptions.

We see her work in the context of her students/lovers, Bessie Gibson and Gladys Reynell, and her obsession with First Nations art – her adaptations, her collections, and, now, commentaries on her adaptations by Trevor Nickolls and Gordon Bennett, among others.

A much more complex and nuanced image of Preston emerges than in previous exhibitions.

The show is a mixture of a chronological survey with her early still life paintings from the opening decade of the 20th century, then her decorative flower pieces moving to the magnificence of her hand-coloured woodcuts.

There is a desire to bring her art to life: we see her iconic Wheelflower print of 1929, next to the actual woodblock from which it was printed. Her First Nations pieces are shown together with their actual sources of inspiration.

The exhibition is full of these little detective pieces that save the exhibition from being just another Margaret Preston show to make it into the Margaret Preston show for our generation.

A spectacular makeover

Born Margaret Rose McPherson in Adelaide in 1875, she initially trained in Sydney, then at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. She spent many years travelling in Europe, mainly in Germany, France and England.

She first travelled with Betty Davidson and then Gladys Reynell, with both of whom, the NGV catalogue asserts, she had a romantic bond.

She exhibited to limited acclaim, first under the name of Rose McPherson and by 1912 as Margaret McPherson.

Her personal and artistic makeover was as spectacular as it was sudden.

On the last day of 1919, the 44-year-old McPherson falsified her age by eight years and married Lieutenant William George Preston, subsequently a successful businessman. This made her, at least on the marriage certificate, a socially respectable two years younger than her husband, rather than the embarrassing six years older.

She changed her exhibiting name to Margaret Preston and, armed with her husband’s wealth, launched her new career with a massive publicity blitz that was to last until her death in 1963.

Following her marriage, she settled with her husband in the bayside Sydney suburb of Mosman and moved rapidly up the social ladder to become a friend of the publisher Sydney Ure Smith.

Preston was the most articulate and outspoken female artist of her generation, writing frequent articles and giving lectures and interviews.

While always a committed traveller, after her marriage Preston embarked on numerous journeys throughout Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Europe.

At the height of the Depression, the Prestons moved from Mosman to a 14-acre block in rural Berowra, before returning to the Mosman neighbourhood in 1939, where they remained until her death.

A revelation

For me, a revelation of this exhibition is her late stencil pieces, including Christ turning the water into wine (1951) and White gum (1953) where Preston in her mature years is grappling with a host of conceptual problems and exhibits a brilliant technical inventiveness.

While many of the pieces have been seen before, here they gain a new poignancy through their new context.

With over 200 works on display, there is enough to present a comprehensive overview to gain a good understanding of her work and her contribution to Australian art and not an overkill requiring a packed lunch for viewing every print she ever made.

On ‘primative’ art

Although a strong advocate for First Nations art, I feel that Preston’s attitude still sat within the framework of cultural imperialism.

That is, it came from one who had not the slightest doubt in the superiority of her own culture that could absorb “primitive” elements from Indigenous cultures.

She illustrated how a sacred Kimberley dancing board could give you a suggestion for a curtain. In 1924 she boasted,

I have barely altered the design […] The Australian aboriginal has followed the usual abstract designs that are characteristic of the savage […] I have suggested a cushion cover that could be adapted from the design.

In 1925 Preston wrote,

In wishing to rid myself of the mannerisms of a country other than my own, I have gone to the art of a people who have never seen or known anything different from themselves, and were accustomed to always use the same symbols to express themselves.

[…]

It is on the primitive natural forms that we must depend. In returning to primitive art it should be remembered that it is to be used as a starting point only for a renewal of growth, and a gradual selection must take place to arrive at the culmination.

Over the decades, Preston’s attitude to First Nations art matured as she travelled thousands of kilometres to view rock art and art in various communities. But the art remained a quarry from which a “civilized” artist could plunder elements from which to create an “authentic” Australian national art.

Preston’s ideas on a national art were naïve, but, as shown by this exhibition, she did create a powerful and memorable oeuvre.

Margaret Preston is at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until January 31 2027.

Sasha Grishin 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/the-margaret-preston-retrospective-at-the-national-gallery-of-victoria-is-a-revelation/

Asia Pacific Report

A national pro-Palestine solidarity movement has condemned a spate of “radicalised” tyre slashing vandalism and other violent attacks by Israeli supporters.

The most recent pro-Israel vandalism is in Christchurch and Wellington alongside a violent attack on a supporter in Auckland, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) says in a statement.

In Christchurch, a prominent Palestine supporter had a car tyre slashed in his driveway. In Wellington, another supporter of Palestinian rights had a solidarity sticker scraped off their car and a swastika scrawled on the vehicle, the statement said.

• READ MORE: Eight-year-old Gaza girl killed by Israel on first day of school
• Other PSNA protest reports

Earlier in the year, a New Plymouth couple had their car tyres slashed outside their property and graffiti attacks on five separate occasions. Police could not find the perpetrator.

Other Palestine supporters had their tyres slashed in Raglan. In this case, the details of the offender, a prominent Auckland businessman in the pro-Israel lobby, were provided to police who “refused to prosecute”, the statement said.

At the same time, Israelis, including serving Israeli Defence Force personnel, and former Israelis, have physically attacked people at demonstrations, including outside the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.

PSNA national spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said these violent acts would be “described as terrorism” if they had been carried out against the Israeli lobby in New Zealand.

‘Lead to accident, death’
“A flat tyre can lead to an accident and death or injury. Lives have been put at risk,” she said.

“There is no question who the targets are — it’s the supporters of Palestinian rights protesting against a genocide.”

Tamimi blamed what she called “radicalised Zionists”.

“They are likely to believe in the most extreme demands and threats made from within the Israeli government. They feel they are entitled to assault people who call out Israeli terror.”

Tamimi said she did not know if any of the 50 New Zealanders who had served in the IDF (Israeli military) might be responsible for any of the attacks in New Zealand.

“But we do know that threats are coming more frequently from New Zealand fans of Israel. It seems they are frustrated that Israel is at last being revealed for the genocidal and apartheid state that it is, and they want to take it out on someone.”

Tamimi said PSNA had met senior police earlier this year to express its concerns.

“We also wanted to raise these attacks and threats against us with the Human Rights Commissioner, Stephen Rainbow,” she said.

“But we have just been informed that Dr Rainbow is too busy and other commissioners are not available till late October”

The PSNA statement said there was a “disturbing pattern of official disinterest” in sharp contrast with their energy and action when the pro-Israel lobby is attacked.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/solidarity-group-condemns-surge-in-anti-palestine-violence-in-nz/

ANALYSIS: By Antonia Bhagwan in Suva

The Pacific may have moved beyond the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, but its economic consequences continue to weigh on governments across the region.

Once again, countries are facing rising debt levels. In its 2026 Pacific Economic Update, the World Bank linked the current financial landscape to slower economic growth, narrowing fiscal space, climate disasters, high dependence on imported fuel, and an uncertain global economy.

According to Joey Tau, coordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), the region’s current debt problem must be understood historically and structurally.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific economics reports

“Over the past two decades, both internal and external developments have challenged the economic structures of Pacific Island states,” says Tau.

The region operates within a history of colonisation and has long been characterised as a group of “underdeveloped” small island states “faced with economic challenges”.

“It is under these conditions that debt has been something inherited from our colonisers, and we continue to struggle with.”

Public debt obligations
“Many Pacific Island countries continue to face challenges in meeting their debt obligations,” says PANG deputy coordinator Adam Wolfenden.

The issue of public debt in the region is a serious concern, with “real-world implications” for the diversion of public funds away from other essential services. The issue should not be reduced to simply “debt-trap diplomacy”.

According to Wolfenden, the terminology and implication that only certain donors are using funds for influence can distract from deeper questions about how borrowing is used to develop economies.

It can also distract from how debt obligations impact on public spending and economic sovereignty.

The region’s debt picture is mixed. The World Bank reports that average public debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratios declined modestly in 2025, with the average falling by 1.8 percentage points.

Between 2023 and 2025, the number of countries assessed at high risk of overall debt distress fell from five to three. However, four countries remain at high risk under the broader debt vulnerability analysis.

Fiji remains a notable example. Public debt stood at around 79 percent of GDP in 2025, the highest among the 11 countries covered in the report. While this is below its pandemic peak, the World Bank notes that progress towards stabilising the country’s debt has stalled, exposing deeper questions about Fiji’s economic make-up and need for diversification.

Public debt ratio doubled
“Meanwhile, Solomon Islands public debt-to-GDP ratio has nearly doubled, increasing by approximately 14 percentage points since 2022 to reach 30 percent of GDP in 2025. Ongoing elevated fuel costs will continue to further strain government spending and government deficits.

As some Pacific countries move away from grant-only financing towards a greater share of concessional borrowing, the World Bank says maintaining debt sustainability will become more difficult.

The World Bank projects public debt to rise in 2026–2027 as fiscal deficits widen and growth moderates.

For countries with limited financial buffers, concessional financing from multilateral institutions may become the primary avenue for covering financing gaps, despite the additional debt burden that will accompany this.

“The geopolitical competition in the Pacific has not necessarily led to greater access to resources for the region; rather, there is a global shrinking in the grants available, shifting more countries into lending financing,” says Wolfenden.

“This results in increased pressure on Pacific economies and political positioning.” At the same time, he argues that development finance cannot be separated from strategic interests.

“Infrastructure investments are often associated with, or facilitate access to, raw materials in the region,” Wolfenden says.

“This can result in financing infrastructure that has a distinct dual-use, providing the donor government with more power over the loan recipient.

“Donors may differ in the mechanisms for providing funds, but there is a shared understanding that debt creates opportunities for influencing the region.”

To illustrate, Wolfenden mentions that Australia’s development assistance is shifting to “securitisation”, compared to how the United States’ is withdrawing from the region while continuing to weaponise its trade policy.

Such approaches “further undermine the Pacific.”

Who Benefits?

“Borrowing is important, but are we borrowing for the sake of actual tangible development?” asks Tau.

“As small island developing states, are we put in a position that encourages ongoing borrowing, so it becomes a habit where your economy is dependent rather than looking at other options?

“It all comes down to the priorities and plan behind the borrowing,” he says. Tau argues that instead of allowing external interests to determine national spending priorities, fiscal planning should “equate to human development, ensuring that infrastructure services are not just accessible to its urban centres, but basic services reach its rural majority.

“Citizenry budgeting is necessary to establish whether public resources are being directed towards what communities actually need rather than depending on what a government chooses.

“It needs to be people informing priorities.”

Regional responses
Climate change continues to damage infrastructure and place additional pressure on public finances. In Tonga, for example, the economic impact of climate-induced events is disproportionately large, with the annual average loss estimated at TOP 178 million ($US 77 million), or 18.2 percent of GDP.

That is more than the total education and health budgets combined. This indicates that Tonga cannot fully absorb such losses on a yearly basis by itself.

“As the region continues to go through climate-induced impacts on infrastructure, what is the regional approach around ensuring that the Pacific doesn’t get into a debt spiral?” Tau asks.

It is especially challenging for Pacific governments facing growing spending needs while grant financing declines. The World Bank recommends credible fiscal frameworks, stronger debt and cash management, improved revenue collection, better project selection and procurement, and more disciplined borrowing.

However, these blanket suggestions are not always suitable in the Pacific context. The World Bank also warns that climate adaptation, resilient infrastructure, water, energy, transport, and public services will require substantial financing.

This creates a difficult balance. While grants are preferred, borrowing may be necessary to establish the infrastructure needed for economic growth potential. However, borrowing can leave governments more exposed to future crises, with excessive debt obligations undermining spending on other components of a growing economy, such as health, education, and targeted supports.

The World Bank therefore points to integrating disaster-risk financing and climate adaptation into fiscal planning. For Tau, however, the response also needs to extend beyond national fiscal planning to regional mechanisms that can help countries absorb financial shocks caused by climate change.

“We will incur unprecedented or unprojected expenditure, and we have to be prepared for it,” he says.

“We have to create an environment and facilities that, one, address this issue, but also sustain the region.”

Sovereignty and looking ahead
Ultimately, the Pacific’s debt challenge is a question of economic sovereignty. It asks whether Pacific governments have the space to determine their own development priorities and fund them without interference.

Wolfenden highlights the need for “greater economic and energy sovereignty in the region” in the face of inherited debt, global uncertainty, an erratic United States administration, the global fuel crisis, and climate change.

Tau similarly warns that the region’s sovereignty, including its ownership of state-owned enterprises, resources, access to resources and islands, is at risk if development priorities are not focused on long-term wellbeing.

“Fiscal policies need to project the realities of the economic status of a country. That means ensuring the wellbeing of its people first and foremost,” he says.

Antonia Bhagwan is a final-year student journalist who recently completed an internship with the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) as part of The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism programme. Published in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/08/debt-in-the-pacific-systemic-and-current-threats-to-regional-economic-sovereignty/

Imagine you’re halfway through your annual wheat harvest when a global crisis sends diesel and fertiliser prices soaring. All at once, your costs surge and your slender profit margin shrinks.

Are there alternatives? Increasingly, the answer is yes. Putting solar on the shed roof or an unproductive field could help keep the farm running.

In August, the federal government announced it would lift the cap on the long-running small-scale solar subsidy from 100 kilowatts to one megawatt – a size well suited to larger energy users, such as big farms.

If this plan comes into effect, it should reduce installation costs by about 20%, saving an estimated A$68,000 on the installation of a 250 kW system.

This could make larger solar systems more appealing for more farmers, reducing electricity costs and boosting energy self-reliance in the bush. It’s not yet possible to be fully self-reliant, as electric tractors and heavy machinery are still emerging. Anti-renewable sentiment in some communities could also be a challenge.

How far can farms go?

If farmers have the space and funds to build a large solar array, this may make sense as a first measure. The ability to produce low-cost electricity opens up many more options – especially if paired with energy storage such as batteries, so power can be stored and used later.

Some farms are shifting to hybrid models, where solar and batteries are integrated with farm equipment and a backup generator to form the farm’s own microgrid.

What about fuel? Right now, Australian farms are highly reliant on diesel. This energy-dense fuel supplies about 84% of the energy used on Australian farms.

Diesel powers harvesters and tractors. But it also runs water pumps and power generators. Over time, farmers can replace broken pumps with electric options and run their operations on solar power.

Much more can be done. This year, AgriFutures Australia laid out a roadmap for farming and other primary producers to shift from diesel to electric options.

Are farms actually doing this?

These technologies are already in use.

New South Wales almond operation Cadell Orchards has long been off-grid. Until recently, its irrigation pumps were powered by diesel generators. But diesel was getting too expensive and a grid connection wasn’t viable. As Australian Farming Services CEO David Armstrong said:

we couldn’t stay on generators forever … it just wasn’t feasible [and] the variability of costs is too great

Instead, the agribusiness installed a microgrid with over 8,000 solar panels and a battery. The goal is to produce over 85% of its own power.

To avoid the upfront cost, the business didn’t buy the whole system. Instead, an energy company owns and maintains it, while the orchard buys the power.

Some farmers have taken up “agrivoltaics”, which means combining farming and solar panels. Fields can carry more sheep and produce more and better wool, according to some farmers. This is because solar arrays provide shade and can help the ground retain moisture longer.

Tractors, harvesters and speed bumps

Small electric tractors are becoming available for smaller-scale jobs.

But large battery-powered tractors and harvesters aren’t ready for prime time yet, as diesel packs more energy by weight than today’s batteries by a wide margin.

There are other challenges too. Large electric machines would likely have to recharge during the working day, meaning charging infrastructure might have to be located near fields. Farmers often put in long hours to bring the crop in. Stopping for long recharges could interfere with time-sensitive crop harvesting.

The AgriFutures roadmap predicts stationary equipment such as pumps will electrify first, while liquid fuels will remain important longer.

Solar paired with batteries can keep a farm running overnight or during cloudy periods. But if dark, cloudy days drag on, it may be time to bring out the generator.

For some businesses, a battery may not stack up financially.

Even free sunshine can hit a roadblock. After Queensland cotton farmer Ian Brimblecombe installed a large solar system, he began saving about $60,000 a year. But power network rules restricted how much electricity he could export or move between pump stations.

It’s not all or nothing

Over time, more farms will produce more of their own energy. But there’s no silver bullet, and the shift will take place in fits and starts.

Some farmers may find it viable to produce their own biodiesel from oils or waste fats to keep existing machinery working.

For farmers to get the most out of clean energy, they will need dependable equipment, affordable finance, local technicians and guidance from people they trust. These aren’t always easy to access.

Some rural communities are sceptical about large-scale renewable projects and new transmission lines, often due to a perceived city-country divide. Campaigns against new solar, wind or transmission projects often focus on the impact on the landscape and distrust of far-off authorities. False claims are common. This may slow the shift towards energy self-reliance.

Over time, we may see this resistance become more nuanced. Some farmers may keep opposing large-scale projects, while moving to install their own systems.

New incentives may sweeten the deal too. We’re unlikely to see the farm diesel tank disappear any time soon. But we are likely to see many more shed rooftops covered in panels – and new ways to make use of clean, cheap power from the sun.

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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/farmers-can-now-produce-more-of-their-own-energy-than-ever-but-will-they/

US regulators are grappling with a controversial new frontier in online shopping: companies using our personal data to work out how much each of us is willing to pay.

The Federal Trade Commission is currently consulting on an enforcement policy for “personalised pricing”, amid concern increasingly sophisticated algorithms could allow businesses to tailor prices and discounts to individual customers.

Closer to home, Consumer NZ recently warned about the vast amounts of data collected through supermarket loyalty programmes.

There is no evidence New Zealand supermarkets are individually pricing products this way. But Consumer NZ argues loyalty data could give retailers an increasingly detailed picture of shopping habits – including clues about how much individual customers are prepared to pay.

The concern underscores a growing tension in the AI-driven economy: what happens when businesses become much better at learning the financial limits of the people they deal with?

The same question applies to workers: could algorithms also help businesses learn the lowest amount someone is willing to accept for their labour?

AI is changing who knows what

At the University of Auckland Business School, we spend a lot of time teaching students how businesses create value, compete and become more efficient.

But consider the same person in two markets. As a worker, their employer benefits from knowing the lowest amount they will accept; as a customer, a seller benefits from knowing the highest amount they will pay.

Traditionally, neither side knows those numbers precisely. A worker might accept $24 but receive $30 because that is the going rate; a customer might pay $20 but buy for $14 because that is the advertised price.

Algorithms are increasingly reducing that uncertainty – much faster for firms than for the workers and consumers they deal with.

Digital platforms can observe thousands of individual decisions. A ride-hailing platform can see which jobs a driver accepts, when they work and which incentives bring them online. A retailer can see purchases, abandoned carts and responses to discounts.

There is no strong evidence major companies already know everyone’s precise financial breaking point. But algorithmically mediated pay, personalised worker incentives, discounts and consumer offers are already real.

Lyft has already documented systems that determine which drivers receive incentives, with some earnings challenges explicitly personalised.

Recent research on 1.5 million Uber trips in the UK meanwhile found dynamic pricing was associated with lower real hourly earnings and greater inequality, although that does not prove Uber calculates the minimum each driver will accept.

A recent US Federal Trade Commission investigation also found pricing intermediaries had access to information including location, demographics, browsing histories, shopping-cart activity and even mouse movements in systems capable of influencing prices, discounts and promotions.

A retailer need not charge one customer $100 and another $120. It can simply offer a discount to someone predicted to walk away and withhold it from someone predicted to buy anyway.

It should be noted that markets have never been perfectly transparent. Employers know more about wage structures than workers and sellers more about margins than buyers. Yet there has traditionally been uncertainty on both sides.

Algorithmic systems now risk reducing that uncertainty in only one direction: firms can increasingly learn an individual’s limits, while their own remain hidden.

A worker cannot easily know whether rejecting $24 would have produced $28. Nor can a customer know whether walking away from a purchase today would have triggered a discount tomorrow.

Meanwhile, firms can observe, test and learn from repeated behaviour.

At its extreme, this risks becoming a kind of digital feudalism: platforms can increasingly see the people they deal with, while those people can barely see the systems governing the exchange.

Where do the gains go?

There can, of course, also be genuine benefits to AI-driven personalisation.

Targeted incentives can improve matching, personalised discounts can help price-sensitive customers and better forecasting can reduce waste.

The issue, however, isn’t whether these systems can create efficiencies, but how the gains are distributed. They could translate into higher wages, lower prices, better products, greater investment or higher profits.

That depends partly on information. Personal data has economic value because it can help predict the terms people are willing to accept, making privacy a question of bargaining power too.

Transparency is equally important. Workers and consumers are increasingly visible to businesses, while the systems making decisions about them remain largely opaque.

They might reasonably expect to know when an offer has been personalised, what information influenced it and whether others are receiving materially different treatment. That does not require companies to publish their algorithms, but visibility should not flow only one way.

Business schools also have a responsibility. Alongside teaching pricing strategy, segmentation, cost reduction and AI-driven decision-making, students should be encouraged to ask: effective for whom?

There is a difference between using technology to create new value and becoming better at capturing value from the other side of a transaction.

The most troubling outcome does not require malicious AI. Companies can rationally reduce costs and improve margins while becoming better at predicting what workers will accept and customers will pay.

The question cannot simply be whether something can be optimised. We should also ask who benefits, whether it is fair – and what happens if every business does the same thing.

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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/ai-is-helping-businesses-learn-what-customers-will-pay-and-workers-will-accept/

Across southern Europe, increasingly extreme heat, wildfire and intense rainfall are forcing planners to consider how one event can alter the risk of the next. Portugal’s exceptionally wet winter and another summer of wildfire risk are an example of this. As a professor of architecture and climate change adaptation who has been following the cyclical nature of weather extremes in the Pinhal Interior region since the deadly 2017 fires, I explain why prevention must connect forests, settlements, slopes and waterways.

Portugal, Spain and France have spent another summer confronting severe wildfires. But in Portugal, the story began months before the flames.

February 2026 was the country’s wettest February in 47 years. Across much of mainland Portugal, rainfall reached three to four times the normal monthly amount. Successive Atlantic storms saturated soils, caused flooding and brought down trees across central Portugal.

That water also favoured vegetation growth. Research in Mediterranean climates has found a counter-intuitive relationship: a rainy growing season can increase fine vegetation that later becomes fuel once summer heat dries it out. A very wet period does not necessarily mean a lower fire risk several months later – and fire is not the only hazard that the same rainfall from storms was quietly setting up.

The disaster before the disaster

Together with an NGO and my university colleagues, I have been following Portugal’s Pinhal Interior since 2017, when the Pedrógão Grande wildfire killed 66 people, many while trying to escape by road. Four months later, another devastating wave of fires killed around 50 people.

Disaster risk is commonly understood through a simple relationship: Risk = Hazard × Exposure × Vulnerability.

We cannot eliminate extreme heat, wildfire or heavy rainfall. Planning can, however, alter how exposed and vulnerable people and landscapes are.

Portugal has made progress since 2017. Its Integrated Landscape Management Areas seek to bring fragmented land under coordinated management and create more resilient landscape mosaics. Yet eucalyptus and maritime pine still occupy a very large share of Portugal’s forest area – about 48% in the latest national inventory figures available through PORDATA – and fragmented ownership and insufficient management continue to complicate prevention.

This winter exposed another vulnerability. Cyclonic winds from Storm Kristin toppled trees and blocked roads across central Portugal, with more than 3,300 incidents recorded by civil protection, obstructing forest access just as the Pinhal Interior needed it clear.

Pedrógão Grande subsequently mounted a major operation that restored more than 618 kilometres of forest roads before summer – infrastructure damaged by one hazard, repaired just in time to face the next.

This mirrors what a recent piece on The Conversation called the recovery gap, describing floods on the Nepal-Tibet border: a disaster’s true damage depends less on the hazard itself than on how much time a community had to recover from the one before. In the Pinhal Interior, that gap barely existed this year.

Landscape intervention alone is not enough. Household-level risk mapping and community preparedness matter just as much: the lesson from the fires in 2017 was about exposure and access, not just vegetation.

One wet winter, two disasters

This year, the exceptionally wet winter produced one immediate hazard, in February, while also creating conditions that can raise the risk of another months later.

Record rainfall breached ageing river defences on the Mondego (Portugal’s longest waterway), isolating the village of Ereira, in Montemor-o-Velho, for more than a week and flooding farmland and part of that year’s rice and corn harvest around Soure and Montemor-o-Velho, with water reaching basements and riverside businesses in Coimbra itself. The same wet season also favoured vegetation growth, which, after drying under summer heat, can add to the fuel available for wildfire: flood and fire are not necessarily independent events, since the conditions producing one can alter the risk of the other months later.

Fire adds a further layer of risk. Wildfire strips vegetation that normally protects soil from rainfall, and can increase soil water repellency, affecting infiltration, runoff and erosion. On slopes that have just burned, the first storm of the next rainy season can become a hazard in its own right.

Portugal already has evidence that relatively simple interventions can reduce this risk. In a burned eucalyptus plantation in central Portugal, researchers found that landscape recovery work involving applying forest-residue mulch reduced cumulative soil loss by 91% over five years.

Soil science recovery work on the land does the same underlying job as building-scale recovery work. Resilient construction, for instance, that holds up when fire reaches it reduces vulnerability before the next fire, not after.

Three things that should happen before the rains return

1. Severely burned slopes above settlements, roads and waterways should be assessed immediately. Mulching or other protective cover should stabilise exposed soil before heavy rainfall arrives; emergency seeding can complement this, but should not delay it.

2. Reconstruction should not simply reproduce what existed before the fire. Buildings in fire-prone landscapes need defensible space, fire-resistant construction – cork, harvested from trees that are themselves unusually fire-resilient, is one such material – and independent water storage; where rainfall is also a risk, permeable surfaces and drainage belong in the same design.

3. Forest and water management should be one prevention strategy. Clearing vegetation while neglecting streams and drainage channels addresses only half the problem. Keeping the hydrographic network functioning before the rains return is as urgent as preparing forest access before fire season. This requires architects and planners to think beyond individual buildings. Slopes, settlements, roads, forests and waterways form a connected territorial system.

Landscape architects, ecologists, engineers, risk specialists and local communities need to work together before reconstruction decisions become fixed – the same integrated approach I have developed with colleagues through long-term action-research on the sustainability, ethnography and cultural heritage of a Portuguese river landscape.

In a changing climate, the aftermath of one disaster can become the preparation ground for another.

Resilience is built in the interval between them – and that interval is getting dangerously short. The underlying hazards are not unique to Portugal. The lesson from Portugal’s Pinhal Interior is that fire and water can no longer be managed as separate problems: they are increasingly the same risk equation, seen at different moments of the year.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Afonso Nuno Martins is a board member and regular volunteer for the NGO Building 4Humanity.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/fire-and-floods-are-usually-treated-as-separate-hazards-portugals-pinhal-interior-shows-why-they-are-part-of-the-same-cycle/

OnlyFans was established in 2016 as a platform for content creators to post images and videos or host live streams in exchange for money. But what began as a small and relatively quiet niche startup suddenly exploded.

Global traffic to the site increased by over 90% between November 2019 and October 2020. At the height of the COVID pandemic, when governments all over the world issued stay-at-home orders, OnlyFans was one of the few marketplaces to experience major growth, from 7.5 million registered users to 85 million. In mid-2021, the platform was estimated to be worth over a billion dollars and, by 2026, over three times that.

Today OnlyFans is the most popular of many similar sites. In a digital gig economy, creators earn money directly from their fans through monthly subscription fees, tips, and pay-per-view messages.

Even though the platform hosts fitness and wellness instructors, music and bands, sports and athletic stars, it is by far best known for its adult content creators.

When I began studying OnlyFans in South Africa in 2022, there was growing consensus that it was a digital sex work marketplace.

In the global north, it’s been argued that OnlyFans is a prominent example of a “subscription-based pornographic sharing content website”. Academics outline how it has revolutionised the commercial sex work industry by providing a platform for creative independence and professional autonomy. It’s offered greater earning potential compared to other forms of sex work. In the process it has contributed to lessening the stigma of sex work by blurring the lines between traditional pornography and social media influencing.

These factors have potentially created a more acceptable career path than sex work in a physical space. But do South African OnlyFans creators even identify as sex workers?

Read more:
Student sex work is happening, and universities need to respond with health services

It’s one of the questions that I asked them as a social scientist in the course of my PhD research on OnlyFans use in South Africa as an example of platform labour in the gig economy. My work explores the meanings that attach to the body when young people use digital media to curate alternative realities for themselves that might help them reclaim agency and redefine their self-image.

I found that many South African OnlyFans creators do not identify as sex workers; they prefer to distinguish themselves from physical sex workers or from creators who also do in-person hook-ups. They manage online stigma by using pseudonyms. Even though they face piracy and extortion, they avoid taking legal action for fear of being judged.

Yet they are able to achieve moderate long-term income and some stability in a country with high youth unemployment. They do this by blending entrepreneurial skills and digital savvy to operate independently, and by constantly balancing online competition, algorithms and personal pressures to do their work.

Labouring on digital sexual spaces

How sex work happens cannot be separated from its legal status. While sex work is technically criminal in South Africa, platforms like OnlyFans are able to operate legally. In 1996, the country’s Films and Publications Act decriminalised the creation and distribution of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content.

I write about South Africans on OnlyFans as “labouring on digital sexual spaces”. This is a marketplace that blurs the “illegality” of sex work but also legitimises the labour that goes into creating content.

This labour includes, among other things, cultivating an audience, most often by using social media; managing relationships with collaborators; the admin of processing requests; and managing the reputational damage risk of being outed as a sex worker.

Instead of merely stating “sex work is work”, my research identifies the labour processes that differentiate digital sex work from traditional sex work. This is done to argue for how labouring on digital sexual spaces is a legitimate form of platform and gig economy work.

The study

Media articles signalled the existence of South Africans who were creating content for OnlyFans, but there was an absence of research on their experiences on the platform.

So, I shared a call for participants on social media and allowed people to volunteer to be part of the research by contacting me via email. At the same time, participants were recruited by word of mouth.

Reflecting South Africa’s demographics, many of the 17 participants who ended up sharing their lived experiences were Black women below the age of 35.

What I found

In part of my research, I set out to understand how OnlyFans creators see themselves and their peers who labour in a platform that gained notoriety for hosting sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content.

While some creators proudly embrace the label of sex worker, many others reject it.

Creators’ self-perceptions generally fall into two categories. The first, as adult content creators. They see their work as a form of media production, like art or performance, rather than a sexual service. For these individuals, this moral distinction is about not having physical sexual contact with the audience. This allows them to choose when and how they work. They compare their choice with what they see as survival-dependency of street-based sex workers.

At the same time, other creators proudly identify as sex workers. They view the term as an umbrella for anyone in the business of pleasure, and further believe that selling sex and arousal through audiovisual mediums is fundamentally still sex work.

The judgment of hook-ups by the former is then framed as an instance of “intra-industry stigma” (judgments within a line of work). Regardless of the label they choose – sex worker or adult content creator – they all anticipate stigma and have experienced it in their lives. Being an OnlyFans creator comes with social judgments from others.

They also all make use of stage names, pseudonyms and online alter egos. This functions as a psychological buffer, allowing them to perform confidently while keeping their authentic selves separate from the job.

A major hurdle is telling their family and intimate partners that they work as OnlyFans creators. If they do, they might tell family members they are posting “body art” or compare OnlyFans to platforms like Instagram. Intimate partners often place boundaries on what content can be made.

Read more:
South Africa’s gig economy workers set to get more protection under planned labour law reforms

There are other significant obstacles. While using watermarking (their user names are superimposed on their images), they are still highly vulnerable to their content being pirated and distributed on other platforms like Telegram or WhatsApp. They also live with the threat of cyber extortion. Stolen content might be used to blackmail creators, with threats of leaking it to their friends and family.

Yet none of the participants in my study felt safe to approach the police or lawyers to punish cyber bullying, extortion, stalking or harassment. This has an impact on their occupational health and safety.

What needs to happen

While digital platforms like OnlyFans offer financial freedom and sexual agency, the environment for South Africa’s creators remains dangerous. Decriminalising and properly regulating sex work could help ease some of these pressures.

Understanding the vulnerabilities of digital sex workers can help guide policy initiatives to make digital sexual spaces safer work environments.

From my study it’s clear that there also needs to be a concerted effort to develop educational resources that promote digital literacy and ethical online behaviour.

Phiwokazi Qoza 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/onlyfans-in-south-africa-what-creators-say-about-sex-work-personal-safety-and-the-gig-economy/

Is someone in poverty if they can afford food, housing and the things they really need, but not other things most people take for granted? Answering this question requires a judgment about where an acceptable standard of living ends and poverty begins.

Statistics can tell us how many people live in those circumstances, but not whether those circumstances should count as poverty. Even the categories themselves are not self-evident: deciding what is a need, and what is merely taken for granted, is itself part of drawing the poverty line.

Debates about poverty usually focus on the headline figures: how many people are poor, whether poverty is rising or falling, or how changes to the benefits system affect it.

This is complicated by the fact that the UK has no single, universally accepted definition of poverty. Its most widely used, official benchmark is relative low income: living in a household whose disposable income, adjusted for household size, falls below 60% of the median in that year. This is useful for showing whether lower-income households are keeping pace with typical living standards, but it does not directly reveal what they can afford. The threshold also moves as median income changes.

Political disagreement occurs over whether poverty results from individual choices or wider social conditions. For example, whether benefit claimants are deserving or “scroungers”.

My new research suggests that disagreement actually starts earlier – at the point where hardship is classified as poverty. And people with different political values draw the poverty line in different places.

I analysed responses from 2,642 participants in the 2022 British Social Attitudes survey. They were asked whether someone in Britain should count as poor in three increasingly severe situations.

The first described someone who could buy the things they really needed, but not the things most people take for granted. Around 41% called this poverty. The proportion rose to 68% when someone had enough to eat and live but not enough for other things they needed, and to 80% when they could not eat and live without getting into debt.

Read more:
Cost of living crisis: it’s not enough to know how many people are below the poverty line – we need to measure poverty depth

The survey measured left-right political orientation through several questions about redistribution, big business and economic fairness. A separate “welfarism” scale captured attitudes towards welfare provision and recipients – including benefit spending, personal responsibility for unemployment, deservingness and suspected benefit abuse.

Across all three situations, people with more right-leaning and welfare-sceptical views were less likely to apply the poverty label. The ideological divide was strongest for the broadest, socially comparative description and became weaker as hardship grew more severe.

The pattern was not simply a reflection of party politics: it remained after accounting for which party respondents supported, felt closest to or were most likely to vote for. This suggests that the differences reflect broader ideological orientations, rather than merely party allegiance, party messaging or attitudes towards the government of the day.

Different poverty lines, different views of Britain

Respondents’ views on the definition of poverty also translated to how widespread they thought poverty was.

People who subscribed to the broader, socially comparative definition of poverty, or the middle minimum-standard one, were more likely to say that there was “quite a lot” of real poverty in Britain.

Of the three definitions, the minimum-standard one was most consistently associated with respondents believing that poverty had increased over the previous ten years and would increase over the next ten.

By contrast, the most severe definition (subsistence and debt) attracted so much agreement that it did little to explain why people differed in their wider assessments of how much poverty existed or whether it was changing.

Differences in where respondents drew the poverty boundary statistically accounted for about a quarter of the left-right association with perceptions of how much poverty existed in Britain.

The findings show that definitions and evaluations are tightly connected. People can look at the same society and sincerely reach different conclusions, partly because they are classifying what they see differently.

Poverty statistics do not emerge from data alone. They are generated by applying a prior standard – relative living conditions, an agreed minimum or basic subsistence. Different standards can produce different accounts of the scale and direction of poverty. Every poverty measure reflects a judgment about what people need to live adequately and participate in society – and this is not politically neutral.

For researchers, policymakers and journalists, the practical lesson is to make the poverty line visible. Claims that poverty is widespread, rising or falling should specify the threshold being used and the forms of hardship it recognises.

Recent attempts to improve poverty measurement have moved beyond income alone. The government’s Below Average Resources measure includes savings and deducts unavoidable costs such as childcare and disability-related expenses. Its material-deprivation measures ask whether households can afford a contemporary set of necessities.

These measures may capture living conditions more realistically, but they do not eliminate judgment. Political decisions about which resources, costs and necessities count still determine where the poverty boundary falls.

Making the poverty line explicit will not make it politically neutral or universally accepted. It might, however, reveal whether disagreement concerns the evidence, the policy response, or the threshold at which hardship becomes recognised as poverty.

Joanna Syrda 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/when-does-hardship-become-poverty-the-left-and-right-draw-the-line-differently/

Pauline Hanson’s attention-grabbing policy to give mortgage holders and renters greater access to their super is high populism while being – according to its many critics – low economics and bad for people’s retirement.

That said, one “teal” independent, Kate Chaney, says it’s worth examining. And Liberal maverick frontbencher Andrew Bragg doesn’t seem to be entirely writing off the idea either.

Once again, One Nation is out in front, leaving the Liberals in particular in its dust. The Coalition was gazumped on tobacco excise policy. Now the Liberals are having to argue why the Hanson prescription for helping people with their cost of living is flawed.

Under the Hanson proposal, renters and those with mortgages could choose to receive a quarter of their future superannuation contributions in their take-home pay for up to three years.

Employers would continue to pay the full current contribution, which is 12% of wages.

“If you take the boost, one quarter of this contribution will be paid directly to you by your super fund,” Hanson said in a statement. This money would receive the same concessional tax treatment as if it had stayed in the fund. “For most Australians, that means it will be taxed at 15% rather than their higher personal income tax rate.”

Hanson says a full-time worker on $90,500 would receive about $2,300 a year after tax ($44 a week).

Pauline Hanson’s proposed change to Super access

The policy would not apply to investment properties. Nor would it apply to past super contributions.

At present there is some provision for access to superannuation in cases of “severe financial hardship” but it is very limited.

Predictably the industry doesn’t like the Hanson idea. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia said, “This policy would push up inflation and make people poorer in retirement. It’s as simple as that.”

Hanson insists the measure would be neutral for inflation, although the party has not produced any modelling. One Nation’s treasury spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, argues only some people would opt to take out money, and the effect on inflation would be “undetectable”.

Politically, Kos Samaras, from the Redbridge Group, doesn’t believe the policy will be a winner, saying it’s “ill thought-out”.

He says the voters to whom it is pitched are more likely to have parents on the pension. They would view their super “as the only thing they’ve got that would have them living a different life to their parents”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the policy as “a recipe to make Australian workers tens of thousands of dollars worse off in retirement”.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said the policy left many unanswered questions, declaring “what we see with these policy announcements constantly is no detail, and the detail really matters”.

The Liberals themselves have unanswered questions when it comes to superannuation. They’ve previously proposed allowing first home buyers to dip into their super to help with a housing deposit but are not saying whether they’ll persist with that proposal.

Bragg told News24 the opposition presently has under review “the intersection of the retirement and housing policies”.

As to Hanson’s policy: “Look, anything that’s going to help Australians with their cost of living right now is going to be worth looking at,” he said. “But I make the point that it doesn’t address the long-term structural challenge here, which is that we see a doubling of retired renters over the next couple of decades. That’s a trend we want to kill because we want people to be in their own
house when they are retired.”

Economist Richard Holden, from UNSW, says the One Nation policy is hard to assess without concrete details and a costing from the Parliamentary Budget Office. He said a thought bubble was better than having no thoughts but that did not add up to a proper policy.

Independent economist Chris Richardson tweeted that about two-thirds of Australians would be eligible for the Hanson policy.

“If everyone took that money, that’d be an extra $26 billion a year available to be spent. Much of that money would be spent on housing – as One Nation notes. But Australia doesn’t have a lack of money chasing our housing. What we have is a lack of housing.”

Chaney is open-minded, saying the One Nation idea deserves “further consideration”.

She references work by independent think tank the Grattan Institute.

In 2024 Grattan Institute’s Brendan Coates, told the Australian Financial Review Super and Wealth Summit: “There is now a really strong case for allowing early access – ideally, not just for housing, but to allow people some choice”.

“The best model is to basically allow people to cash out anything above about 8 to 9% of wages each year at tax time, and have those withdrawals be added to their taxable income and taxed as wages.”

Coates maintained people were being forced to put away more money than they needed. “That’s the conclusion of Grattan’s work – retirees typically have a higher standard of living in retirement than they have working – and that remains true regardless of whether you’re looking at full-time workers, part-time workers, those that take career breaks.”

Coates is now in treasury. He was recruited to help beef up the department’s advice on housing.

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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/view-from-the-hill-pauline-hanson-sets-new-hares-running-on-super/

In the same week the federal government is preparing to introduce its landmark digital duty of care legislation, it is also returning to some unfinished business: strengthening its social media age restrictions.

On Tuesday, the government will move an amendment through federal parliament to give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to investigate whether social media platforms are complying with the minimum age rules.

The changes bring these investigative powers into line with those eSafety already has for other online safety obligations.

Why is the government introducing these laws?

Australia’s social media age restrictions came into effect in December last year. They require major social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to stop Australians under 16 from holding accounts. Importantly, the law doesn’t punish teenagers for using designated platforms. The legal responsibility sits with the platforms to keep them from holding an account.

However, there are already serious questions about platform compliance.

A recent study provides some of the clearest evidence so far. Researchers followed more than 400 Australian teenagers before and after the restrictions took effect. Three months in, more than 85% of participants aged under 16 were still using social media platforms covered by the law. Most were accessing them through their own accounts.

There was certainly some circumvention. Of those that attempted to use a restricted service, between 15% and 19% reported using a fake account, while 6% to 11% reported accessing social media through a private browser.

But the problem isn’t simply crafty teenagers finding ways around the rules. Only about two-thirds of under-16s still using restricted platforms reported encountering any sophisticated age check at all. Common approaches included simply asking users to state their age or upload a selfie.

The researchers ultimately found little evidence that the legislation had produced a substantial immediate reduction in social media use among under-16s. That suggests the gap between passing an age restriction and actually enforcing one is significant.

This is the gap the new Online Safety Amendment Bill is trying to address.

What’s included in the amendments?

The most significant change is to eSafety’s information-gathering powers.

The amendment will empower the commissioner to demand documents – not just information – from social media companies which show what they’ve done (or failed to do) to enforce age restrictions.

It will also empower eSafety to gather information or documents from other people and organisations where it reasonably believes they have evidence relevant to an investigation.

This matters because social media platforms don’t operate in isolation. They sit within a much larger digital ecosystem of app stores, technology vendors, advertising companies, and increasingly, specialist age-assurance providers. A platform may be legally responsible for keeping under-16s from holding accounts, but the systems it relies on to do that may be designed or operated by other companies.

Imagine, for example, a social media platform engages a third-party company to provide its age-checking technology. Under the amendments, eSafety could seek information directly from that company to independently test whether the platform’s approach is actually working. App stores, which sit between platforms and many of their users, are another obvious potential source of information.

This gives eSafety a better view of the whole system rather than just the platform at its centre. Effective regulation can’t depend entirely on asking a company whether it thinks it is complying with the rules. If responsibility is spread across an ecosystem of different technologies and providers, regulators need to be able to follow the evidence across that ecosystem too.

The bill also doubles the fines that companies may be ordered to pay if they are found to have breached the age restrictions, bringing it up to a maximum of A$99 million.

This brings the financial penalties in line with other corporate regulation in Australia. However, the 2024 Rickard Review of the Online Safety Act recommended that courts should be able to impose penalties in an amount that reflects a percentage of global turnover, say 5%, if that is greater.

Other countries do this in their online safety laws. It is also in Australia’s competition and consumer law and privacy law.

Are these changes likely to be effective?

The amendment will give the regulator expanded access to important evidence, and a bigger stick when companies don’t comply. And it will bring the powers for enforcing the social media minimum age restriction into line with the other powers the eSafety Commissioner already has.

But there is a limit to what stronger information gathering and higher penalties for this one measure can achieve.

Researchers, including many of us working in this area, warned before the original legislation passed that age assurance would be difficult, young people would find ways around restrictions, and measuring whether the policy was actually working would be challenging.

The early evidence bears out many of those concerns.

Australia is simultaneously moving towards a digital duty of care, which starts from a somewhat different idea about online safety.

Age restrictions essentially ask: how do we keep young people out of potentially harmful digital environments?

A duty of care asks: how do we make all digital environments safer for everyone?

Teenagers are highly motivated users of digital services, and their online lives stretch across apps, browsers, devices, messaging services and other parts of a complex digital ecosystem. Keeping them out of a handful of social media platforms won’t address the deeper problems of platform design, recommendation systems and business models that can make these environments harmful in the first place.

That is why the digital duty of care may ultimately prove to be the better and more important reform. It puts responsibility back where much of it belongs: on platforms to identify and reduce foreseeable harms created by their services.

The difficulties enforcing the age ban only strengthen the case for getting that broader reform right.

Daniel Angus receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society, and QUT Node Lead for the Australian Internet Observatory.

Christine Parker receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/australias-social-media-ban-has-an-enforcement-problem-these-new-laws-aim-to-fix-it/

Across Australia, thousands of people are waiting to find out if their homes will be built, after several separate construction company collapses.

By far the biggest of those recent collapses has been the Bathla Group, a Sydney developer that’s been one of Australia’s largest affordable home builders.

Owing about A$3.4 billion to private lenders, Bathla’s voluntary administration has thrown the construction of more than 2,000 apartments into limbo, while jeopardising a further pipeline of 14,000 homes.

More builders going bust since COVID

Figures released last week show 3,472 Australian construction companies went bust in the financial year to June 30 2026: one in four (24.5%) of all company insolvencies nationally.

The only good news? The number of builder insolvencies was slightly down for the first time since a steep rise began during COVID.

However, our research has found insolvencies in the construction sector remain consistently higher than in other industries. That makes it harder to build the housing we need.

Australia is falling further behind in meeting the federal government’s 1.2 million new homes goal by 2029. Official forecasts released last month indicate the target won’t be met until December 2030. New South Wales – Australia’s largest housing market – may not meet its targets until March 2032, three years late on a five-year target.

There’s no shortage of demand for new homes. What we lack is a construction system capable of delivering them reliably, sustainably and at scale.

Bathla’s financial ripple effects

On Monday, more than 200 of Bathla’s 350 staff were stood down as the administrator continues to work on a rescue deal.

While most of its building projects are in Western Sydney, Bathla’s collapse is being watched around Australia because of its wider financial impacts.

Like any company collapse, there are specific circumstances involved in Bathla’s current woes. Its business model relied on high volumes of low-cost building.

The NSW building regulator has also conducted more than 40 inspections of Bathla sites in recent months, and ordered the builder to fix serious defects in one major development.

Bathla may have taken as many as 1,000 deposits from buyers for homes now stalled. But home buyers aren’t the only people affected.

‘Troubling developments’ in private credit

As well as owing money to subcontractors, Bathla owes money to a long list of non‑bank lenders – also known as private credit firms.

This reflects the construction industry’s heavy reliance on alternative finance, because banks have reduced their exposure to riskier lending.

On Friday, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chair Sarah Court said the corporate watchdog was closely following “several troubling developments in the private credit sector, most notably with the recent collapse of Bathla”.

Court pointed out that many Australians are exposed to private credit through their superannuation funds – meaning “this is not some peripheral issue”.

The perfect storm hitting builders

Bathla is not an isolated case. The wider construction industry is under strain, with higher costs, thinner profit margins and rising risks.

Figures released last month show house construction costs are now 51% higher than before COVID.

For builders with slim profit margins, the rise in costs can make some projects uneconomic.

With costs rising unpredictably, builders locked into fixed-price contracts are absorbing losses they cannot sustain. This was a major driver of the spike in builder insolvencies during COVID.

Falling house prices and poor market sentiment mean some projects no longer stack up financially.

Many investors and buyers are spooked by three interest rate rises this year, higher costs, and recent federal budget changes to housing tax concessions that have made housing less attractive to investors. The prospect of further interest rate increases is also likely to see projects stalled, as the market waits for conditions to improve.

Then there are ongoing shortages of tradespeople. On top of those, home builders are now competing with data centre builders for tradies, which has driven up salaries.

Little wonder construction insolvencies have risen back to pre-COVID levels, despite strong demand for housing.

Structural change is needed

Governments can’t fix all the problems we face, such as price hikes driven by the Middle East war.

But federal, state and local governments are increasingly recognising their role in creating structural barriers to building more homes.

A Productivity Commission draft report released in July identified many of the problems we need to address, including restrictive land-use regulation, slow and inconsistent approvals, poor coordination on key infrastructure, and complex regulation. These all increase costs and delays.

Our 2025 report showed over-regulation is particularly hard on small builders, who struggle to comply with overlapping national, state and local requirements. That matters because our research also showed almost two-thirds (63%) of building company collapses were concentrated among small builders.

The National Construction Code is another challenge. Even with some states deferring 2025 code changes, the national rules remain complex and frequently updated – again, making compliance difficult for small builders.

What’s safer than houses?

Some builders are responding by pivoting to infrastructure and commercial projects, such as Victoria’s Big Housing Build or Queensland’s Olympics construction projects. These can offer more manageable terms and less exposure to market volatility.

Good builders can pick and choose their work. Right now, housing is the riskiest option on the table.

Until that changes, we’re likely to see more Australian builders moving away from creating the homes we urgently need – along with more headlines about another builder going bust.

Lyndall Bryant is doing funded research on financial risks in housing supply for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. She has also received past funding from the Building 4.0 Cooperative Research Council grant – an industry-led research initiative co-funded by the Australian government. That grant was funded in collaboration with the Building and Plumbing Commission (Victoria), Master Builders Victoria and Holmesglen Institute.

Amanda Bull has previously received funding from Master Builders Victoria, the Building and Plumbing Commission (Victoria), and Homeslglen as part of the Building 4.0 Cooperative Research Council grant.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/australia-has-a-housing-shortage-so-why-are-bathla-and-other-home-builders-collapsing/

Investment funds increasingly promise to deliver social or environmental benefits alongside financial returns. Regulators rightly ask if these “impact investment” claims are accurate.

But we also need to ask what happens when an investment’s promised impact fails to materialise, or when pursuing it causes unintended harm.

This regulatory blind spot has practical consequences. Claimed or promised social or environmental impacts influence where people put their retirement savings. They also influence where governments, foundations and institutional investors direct capital.

The risk of greenwashing – where an investment is presented as more sustainable or socially responsible than it really is – needs to be carefully monitored.

Australia’s enforcement regime shows the importance of scrutinising these kinds of claims. Last month, a court ordered Fiducian Investment Management Services to pay A$7.3 million in penalties over a fund promoted as ethical and socially responsible.

The court found the fund had invested via other related funds that held companies earning revenue from fossil fuels. The court also found Fiducian failed to adequately monitor whether these investments were consistent with the fund’s stated objectives.

This followed earlier court-imposed penalties of $11.3 million against Mercer Superannuation and $12.9 million against Vanguard Investments Australia for misleading statements about sustainability made in their investment offerings.

New Zealand is also strengthening expectations. Financial Markets Authority guidance issued in May 2026 says investment funds’ sustainability-related claims should be “clear”, “substantiated” and “consistent”. Issuers of such funds also remain responsible when relying on third-party data, management or assurance for the claims being made.

These developments should make greenwashing more difficult. But even accurate disclosure does not guarantee a fund’s positive impact.

Five ways impact investing can go wrong

Our recent research reviewed 56 studies of impact-related risk and identified five interconnected ways impact investing can fail.

1. Positive impact risk: the intended benefit is not achieved – for example, an investment in a youth employment scheme may fail to deliver the expected improvement in employment outcomes.

2. Negative impact risk: pursuing an intended benefit causes unintended harm – for example, an ostensibly clean-energy investment producing biomass fuel from rubber trees may contaminate local water supplies through poorly managed operations, harming surrounding communities.

3. Impact evidence risk: claims cannot be reliably measured, attributed or verified. Reports may show different kinds of activity but do not necessarily demonstrate that people’s lives improved or ecosystems recovered because of the investment.

4. Impact accountability risk: poorly supported claims, disputed evaluation methods or unclear responsibilities expose investors to regulatory, legal or contractual challenges.

5. Impact legitimacy risk: investors lose the trust of communities, beneficiaries or the public. This can happen even without a legal breach, particularly when stakeholders believe financial returns have been prioritised over public benefit.

These risks are interrelated. Weak evidence may conceal underperformance or harm, eventually leading to regulatory action or loss of public trust.

Ironically, measures intended to show success can also create new risks.

Consider an investment programme in which payments depend on employment outcomes. Providers may focus on participants who are easiest to place in work. Reported performance improves, while those with more complex needs receive less assistance. A system designed to demonstrate impact has instead contributed to exclusion.

Good disclosure is not enough

Anti-greenwashing rules generally ask whether claims are clear, accurate and substantiated. These are essential questions.

But impact-investment governance must go further and ask whether the original assumptions remain plausible, whether harm is emerging, and whether investors can adapt when circumstances change.

Absolute certainty is impossible, but uncertainty must not justify vague promises. The stronger the impact claim, the stronger the supporting evidence, safeguards and accountability arrangements must be.

Based on our findings, we strongly recommend Australia and New Zealand introduce an impact-risk statement for funds making explicit claims. The statement should answer five questions.

1. What could prevent the intended impact?

2. Who might be harmed?

3. How will impact be demonstrated?

4. Who is accountable?

5. How can affected communities influence decisions or seek remedy?

This last question is especially important when considering investments that claim to benefit Indigenous communities. In Aotearoa New Zealand, products invoking Māori wellbeing, values, land or environmental guardianship should meaningfully involve Māori in defining impact and assessing risk.

The Financial Markets Authority already requires care when Māori values and te reo Māori (Māori language) are used in sustainability-related fund disclosures. Comparable principles should apply when investments claim benefits for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.

The impact-risk statement need not begin as a new statutory requirement. It could first be incorporated into regulatory guidance, fund certification and investment approval processes. Funds would later report whether identified risks materialised and how they were managed.

Reporting failure can strengthen trust

Impact reports predominantly showcase success. But acknowledging failed assumptions and unintended consequences could strengthen – not diminish – confidence in impact investing.

Not every shortfall indicates misconduct. What matters is whether investors identified material risks, listened to affected communities, and corrected course when problems emerged.

Greenwashing rules are key to ensuring impact investors mean what they say. Impact-risk statements will help determine if they can deliver what they promise.

The author acknowledges Claire Cui of the AUT Business School for her contribution to the research drawn on for this article.

Syrus Islam 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/investments-promising-social-or-environmental-benefits-need-tougher-anti-greenwashing-rules/