Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/nz-elections-what-a-weakened-luxon-does-with-an-empowered-act-and-nzf/

By Jale Moala

Qiulae Wong may have failed to win her electorate seat in New Zealand’s general election on Saturday. Still, the Fiji-born political newcomer has achieved something that three previous leaders of her party could not — and she’s getting into Parliament anyway.

She has taken the Opportunity Party across the five percent threshold needed to enter Parliament.

With 5.96 percent of the preliminary party vote, the party is projected to secure seven seats, including one for Wong through the party list.

• READ MORE: A knife-edge result, three possible outcomes – what comes next after NZ’s election?
• Qiulae Wong says she will pick up the phone if Luxon doesn’t
• NZ’s next government hangs in the balance: 2026 election results at a glance
• Other NZ election reports

But behind the 38-year-old mother of two is a remarkable family story with deep roots in Fiji, particularly Lautoka.

Qiulae is the granddaughter of the late Eddie Yan Kong Wong, a successful businessman, former mayor of Lautoka and Fiji’s first senator of Chinese descent.

Her grandparents, Eddie and Sennung Wong, migrated from China and established a new life in Fiji.

Eddie became one of Lautoka’s prominent businessmen through Eddie Hin Limited, which operated in food distribution, supermarkets and soft-drink manufacturing.

He was also very involved in community affairs and served as Lautoka’s first Chinese mayor in 1967 and 1968.

First Chinese senator
Following Fiji’s independence in 1970, he became the country’s first senator of Chinese descent.

His public service extended to the boards of the Fiji Electricity Authority, Civil Aviation Authority and Tilak High School.

Interestingly, Eddie’s business legacy continues in New Zealand.

His grandchildren, Qiuchee and Qiujing Wong, revived the name Lūkbo for their Auckland-based food distribution company.

Meaning “six treasures”, Lūkbo was originally the name Eddie chose for a range of soft drinks manufactured in Fiji before his company began producing RC Cola and later Pepsi Cola.

The grandchildren say they revived the name to honour their grandfather and continue the family’s business tradition.

Qiulae’s father, Jilyin Wong, moved from Fiji to Auckland for his secondary and university education, where he met Margaret Malcolm, a Pākehā New Zealander.

Moved to Fiji
The couple subsequently moved to Fiji, where Qiulae was born in 1988, before relocating to New Zealand when she was just six months old.

Margaret also has a background in public affairs, served as a senior adviser to former National Party minister Judith Collins and was chief executive of the Auckland District Law Society.

Qiulae grew up in Auckland, the youngest of three children, in a household shaped by both Chinese and New Zealand cultures.

Politics was not her initial career choice.

After studying law and politics, she worked in sustainable fashion in London before returning to New Zealand and joining international consultancy firm KPMG.

Her political journey began almost unexpectedly in 2025 when she responded to an advertisement seeking a new leader for the Opportunity Party.

Despite having no parliamentary political experience, she applied and eventually secured the position.

Economic reform, housing
She subsequently led a campaign focused on economic reform, housing affordability and environmental sustainability.

Her rapid rise has come with personal challenges, including balancing political commitments with raising two young daughters, Malia and Cleo, with her husband, Grant Anthony.

She has also spoken about experiencing racism and personal attacks during the campaign.

But Wong’s sense of family history remains strong.

In 2013, she travelled to China with relatives to visit the villages her grandparents had left decades earlier, describing the experience as a pilgrimage.

Now, her family’s journey has reached another milestone, with Qiulae Wong poised to enter New Zealand’s Parliament as the leader of a party that has finally broken through under her leadership.

The official election results, including special votes, are due on November 27.

For the Wong family, however, the story stretches much further back — from China to Lautoka, and now to New Zealand’s Parliament. It is a story of migration, enterprise, public service and opportunities embraced across generations.

Jale Moala, one of Fiji’s most experienced and talented journalists, has been editor of The Fiji Times, Fiji Daily Post, Islands Business, Pacific Islands Monthly, night editor of The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and a senior journalist on several New Zealand news media. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/from-lautoka-to-nz-parliament-the-remarkable-journey-of-qiulae-wong/

Jared Diamond is back. Since Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse were published a generation ago, Diamond has been synonymous with sweeping explanations for complex historical problems.

His latest book, Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? tackles another ambitious question: when do leaders make a difference?

Diamond assembles examples from politics, business, sport and religion. The result is an accessible, highly readable book.

Review: Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? – Jared Diamond (Penguin Books)

The book is strongest when it explores leadership as a relationship between individuals and circumstances. Diamond avoids the extremes of either “great man” theory (about history being shaped by exceptional individuals) or structural determinism (all about systems, with individual talent or effort playing a lesser role).

Instead, he argues a middle position: leaders do matter, but only under particular conditions.

Another key attraction in this book is its range. Beyond obvious figures, such as British wartime leader Winston Churchill, Diamond introduces readers to an eclectic cast of world leaders.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s ability to weave different examples into a compelling narrative remains one of his greatest strengths.

Historians like me may have some quibbles with Diamond’s approach. But this book is not written for them. Instead, it’s designed to encourage further exploration about history and society – and on that front, it succeeds.

The problem with Diamond’s ‘Hamlet test’

Diamond’s central device is what he calls the “Hamlet test”. Would the same outcome have occurred if a particular leader had never existed? Or, could anyone else in Elizabethan England have written Hamlet?

This is a form of counterfactual history: asking what might have happened under different circumstances.

Counterfactual history isn’t new. Historians have debated its usefulness for decades, with most very cautious of this approach.

While a conventional history can be checked against the evidence, counterfactual histories are impossible to verify. They can be entertaining thought experiments, but historical circumstances contain far too many dependencies to predict the outcome with any real meaning.

The book’s second major weakness is its choice of case studies. Although Diamond successfully highlights several neglected figures, those selected are almost always interesting or unusual. This makes for engaging reading – but it also introduces sample bias.

If we only study exceptional leaders, we should hardly be surprised when they appear to have influenced history. Everyday, mediocre and unremarkable leaders can often tell us most about whether (and when) leadership actually matters.

Who counts as a leader?

Diamond’s comparison across politics, religion, business and sport initially seem refreshingly interdisciplinary. However, the book largely treats leadership as a single phenomenon, rather than an industry-specific occupation.

The skills required to manage a multinational corporation differ from those needed to lead a religious movement, govern a nation state, or coach a winning basketball team. Leaders emerge through industry pipelines, succeed according to different criteria and face different constraints.

A religious leader is typically a member of their faith. A chief executive usually spends decades developing industry expertise. A coach usually played their sport.

Success for each is measured in a different way.

This becomes important when Diamond draws on “natural experiments” – studies where two groups are exposed to experimental and control conditions by external factors – to supplement his counterfactual biographies.

Natural experiments are extremely useful when a clearly defined intervention affects one group, but not another. While the studies drawn on by Diamond meet these criteria, their findings are less convincing when applied to the general question of: “do leaders matter?”.

Diamond’s central concept of “making a difference” is vague. His book is an assemblage of circumstances in which leaders are seen to matter if they had an outcome – any outcome – on the course of history.

Moving from the impact of a distracted CEO on earnings, to an inbred monarch on territory expansion, to the chances of winning the big game after firing your basketball coach, requires comparability that the book never really establishes.

The missing gender story

This book pays remarkably little attention to gender.

By studying leadership domains historically dominated by men – “prophets, coaches and kings” – Diamond inevitably presents men as default leaders.

Some women do appear, including former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and American conservationist Rachel Carson, who wrote the influential book Silent Spring. But they do so as exceptional participants, not natural occupants of leadership.

Botswana’s founding president Seretse Khama’s story, while captivating, illustrates this problem.

As a man, Khama inherited the throne of his clan. During his presidency, from 1966 to 1980, the discovery of diamonds on his clan’s land helped fund Botswana’s national development, rather than let the country descend into civil war.

Yet his impact on Botswana cannot be separated from the gendered institutions that gave him access to power.

More broadly, many leadership characteristics Diamond identifies are implicitly gendered.

For instance, Diamond argues “charisma”, or the ability to command others, is necessary for impact.

Men and women are socialised to behave differently – and often evaluated according to their gender. A man who displays “charisma” may be considered a “strong” leader. A woman who does the same can be regarded as “bossy”.

The question of when leaders matter is therefore impossible to separate from questions of who gets to be a leader in the first place.

Provocative and hard to put down

Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings is unlikely to settle scholarly debates about leadership.

Yet Diamond’s greatest strengths are in tackling an enormous question, assembling evidence from a variety of fields, and offering an elegant and accessible explanation.

Like Guns, Germs and Steel, this book is ambitious, provocative and flawed. It’s also difficult to put down.

Claire Wright 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/2026/11/08/why-jared-diamonds-leadership-book-on-prophets-coaches-and-kings-is-flawed-but-fun/

Australian school students already do major tests in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 before going on to final exams in Year 12.

But amid ongoing concern around Australian students’ academic performance, there’s been a call for more testing.

The Page Research Centre, affiliated with the National Party, has proposed students sit additional exams in Years 6, 10 and 12. These would occur alongside NAPLAN, rather than replace it.

More testing might seem like an obvious response. But would it work? And is it needed?

What does the report say?

The report examines how assessments works across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory. It identifies “concerning trends”, such as:

• different assessment requirements among states and territories

• an increased proportion of Year 12 students receiving higher final grades, despite steady or declining results from other national and international assessments.

The report recommends a study into increasing the number of national exams that directly assess curriculum knowledge. This is distinct from tests such as NAPLAN, which assesses students’ literacy and numeracy skills.

How much testing already happens?

Compared to other similar countries such as the United States, England and New Zealand, Australia uses less frequent standardised testing to measure student performance.

But Australia already has several layers of standardised testing, where students sit the same exam at the same time.

Each year, NAPLAN tests every student in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Each round covers reading, writing, language conventions (including punctuation) and numeracy. So, a student sits 16 tests across four school years to track both individual and group performance.

A select sample of students in Years 6 and 10 also completes national assessments in science, civics and digital literacy, through the same testing body that administers NAPLAN. These run every three years and are used to track how students are performing in these subjects as a group.

Australia also participates in several international assessments, which tell us how Australian students are performing over time and compared to other countries. These run at both primary and high school levels.

Recent media reporting has focused on the latest results from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA exams, which test 15-year-olds’ skills in reading, maths and science.

How are students performing in standardised tests?

There is a strong narrative that Australian students perform poorly in major tests. But it depends which figures you examine.

Nationally, students’ NAPLAN performance was broadly stable between 2023 and 2025, although this follows longer-term performance declines. Also, around one-third of Australian students fail to meet national literacy and numeracy benchmarks.

Australia’s latest PISA results showed small declines in reading and maths and stable science results. Australia remained above the OECD average in all three subjects and was similar to the UK, US and New Zealand.

Some researchers argue public debates about school performance are missing the big picture – which is that students’ scores on many standardised assessments are not in decline.

Does testing improve learning?

Research suggests some types of testing can directly support learning.

A 2021 review of 222 studies found classroom quizzes (as opposed to major exams) improved student achievement by giving students opportunities to practise recalling their knowledge. It also provided the chance to repeat class material and gain teacher feedback.

Other research on policies that attach rewards or penalties to students’ test results (such as teacher performance pay or sanction) offers a more cautious picture.

For example, a major US research review found these policies generally only resulted in, at most, small gains in student grades.

Some findings are positive. A study of America’s No Child Left Behind policy – which required schools to test students regularly, publish the results and act when students were not meeting standards – found standardised testing led to some improvements in Year 4 students’ maths scores and more limited improvements in Year 8 testing scores. But it also didn’t lead to improvements in Year 4 reading scores.

Importantly, these studies examined testing linked to accountability, such as the threat of changes to staffing and curriculum and school restructuring, not simply additional standardised exams.

Overall, these mixed findings challenge the assumption that measuring performance will reliably improve student learning.

How results are used matters

Tests do not simply measure learning. They also shape what teachers teach and students study.

A US review of 49 studies found standardised testing commonly narrowed teaching towards the content tested in the exams. This was especially so if the test emphasised isolated facts and procedures.

However, tests requiring interpretation, writing and critical literacy often encouraged teachers to connect ideas, broaden content and use more student-centred activities.

In short, the design of tests and their intended uses matter.

The bigger picture

So, the question is, if Australia was to introduced more exams, what would they encourage schools to prioritise? Would they support broader learning or simply more test preparation?

We also need to consider what new information the tests would provide. For example, would they guide teaching, identify schools needing support or determine students’ pathways?

More testing is not, by itself, a learning strategy.

Steven Lewis receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Department of Education

Sarah Langman 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/2026/11/08/does-australia-need-more-national-exams-for-school-students/

Aboriginal people are advised that this review mentions deceased Aboriginal persons and may be distressing for some.

Some documentaries seek to answer a question. Others, like 2.6 Seconds: When Tragedy Meets History, force us to ask questions that have never been fully resolved.

The title refers to the 2.6-second interval between the first and the second shots fired by former Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe during an attempted arrest on November 9 2019.

The target was 19-year-old Warlpiri-Luritja man Kumanjayi Walker. While those few seconds sit at the climax of the story, 2.6 Seconds demonstrates how the circumstances that led to Walker’s death stretched back much further.

Rolfe was acquitted of all charges against him, including for murder and manslaughter, in March 2022.

A lens on life in remote Central Australia

2.6 Seconds illustrates the extreme remoteness of the setting in which Walker’s fatal shooting took place. Directed by Darren Dale, the series is set in Yuendumu, a remote community with less than 1,000 residents, west of Alice Springs and more than 1,500 kilometres from Darwin.

At its heart, the series is an examination of policing, power, race, and the enduring consequences of Australia’s colonial history. It places Walker’s shooting within the broader realities of life in the remote Northern Territory. It is especially effective in demonstrating how the past continues to impact the present in contemporary Aboriginal communities.

Yuendumu is still marked by memories of state violence and dispossession, such as in the 1928 Conniston Massacre in which more than 60 Aboriginal people were killed. For the people in this region, this isn’t some distant and disconnected colonial event; it is part of their living historical memory.

The documentary does not suggest a simplistic or direct link between those past events and Walker’s death. It does, however, explore how many Aboriginal families distrust modern policing due to a history of unresolved grievance and loss.

One of the production’s greatest strengths is its commitment to context. Through extensive interviews, archival material and evidence examined during the court process, viewers are introduced to Kumanjayi Walker as far more than a statistic.

We learn about a young man whose life was marked by instability, repeated contact with the justice system, and missed opportunities for support and intervention at critical points in his life.

The documentary does not excuse Walker’s harmful behaviour, nor minimise the challenges he presented to those around him. Instead, it asks viewers to consider how a 19-year-old arrives at this juncture.

Centering community and Elders

The series is equally compelling in its examination of police decision-making. It recounts the findings of NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage, who found failures in Rolfe’s risk assessment and arrest strategy. She concluded Walker’s death was indeed avoidable.

What makes these findings particularly troubling is the context in which the arrest occurred. Walker had returned to Yuendumu to attend his grandfather’s funeral and participate in Sorry Business.

The series further reveals there were no health services available in the community at the time, which means his bullet wounds could not have been treated.

The documentary argues persuasively that greater reliance on local knowledge, community relationships and culturally-informed policing could have reduced the likelihood of a violent confrontation under already strained circumstances.

Centering community and Elders

Throughout the series, the voices of Yuendumu Elders, family members and community leaders provide personal narrative, creating an emotional centre. Particularly significant are the many young women, both Walker’s relatives and in the wider community, who became powerful public voices.

Their dedication to truth-telling reminds viewers that public knowledge of such cases does not emerge automatically: it is brought into view by community members who refuse to let injustice disappear from public memory.

Their reflections reveal grief and disappointment, but also resilience and determination. The documentary captures a community refusing to allow Walker’s death to be reduced to a legal case number.

Thoughtful and emotionally confronting

The greatest strength of 2.6 Seconds is that it does not tell viewers what to think or feel. It forces us to grapple with uncomfortable realities and disputed truths that persist to this day. It demonstrates how a fatal encounter can only be fully understood within a broader context of historical trauma and unequal power relations.

The series asks difficult questions that extend well beyond Yuendumu and a single night in November 2019. How should policing and law operate in Aboriginal communities? What role should local knowledge, lore and cultural authority play in decision-making? And what does it take to restore public trust in those institutions after it has been severely damaged?

This series offers no easy answers. Instead, it provides a confronting and deeply human examination of a tragedy that is still being felt.

2.6 Seconds: When Tragedy Meets History premieres on November 10 at 8:30pm on SBS and NITV, and can be streamed for free on SBS On Demand.

I respectfully acknowledge the Walpiri-Luritja custodians and communities, their enduring connection to Country and their resilience. I acknowledge the family and community members who remain committed to truth-telling and have made this documentary series possible.

Cally Jetta 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/2026/11/08/2-6-seconds-new-documentary-explores-the-history-grief-and-looming-questions-of-kumanjayi-walkers-death/

RNZ News

With more than 90 percent of the vote counted in the New Zealand general election, the final result was still up in the air last night, but the lead governing coalition party National has been left bruised, losing some of its most senior and experienced MPs.

On current results the right bloc — National, ACT and New Zealand First — have the most seats and would be in a position to form a government.

However, National’s leadership would look very different with the loss of senior list-only National MPs such as outgoing Finance Minister Nicola Willis, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and Speaker Gerry Brownlee.

• READ MORE: RNZ News live election blog
• Other NZ election reports

Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has conceded defeat in Hutt South and also misses out on a return to Parliament.

National’s current coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First both picked up support while the Greens had their strongest parliamentary showing in its history.

It is the third biggest party with 13.3 percent.

A new party, Opportunity, also had a strong showing — and is sitting on six percent.

Locked in tight battle
In terms of the party vote, National and Labour remain locked in a tight battle with only about 300 votes between them.

National was on 29.3 percent and Labour 29.2 percent.

Many of the results will hang on the estimated 700,000 special votes which are still to be counted.

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins arrived at the Upper Hutt Cossie Club in his electorate to chants of “Chippy! Chippy! Chippy!” — his popular moniker.

“Tonight New Zealand has spoken. It may take us a little bit longer to figure out what exactly it is that you’ve said,” he joked.

“Every vote matters and every vote must now be counted.”

He thanked those who had put their trust in the Labour Party and given them their votes this campaign.

“As things stand tonight it’s clear that we’re not going to know the exact shape of our next government for a little while longer yet.

“But there are some things that are clear from tonight results; our next Parliament is going to require all of us to compromise, to work together and to find common ground.”

He said the people had spoken and it was now politicians’ responsibility to make things work.

‘Things on knife edge’
With the coalition looking like retaining a majority thanks to National’s four-seat overhang on current numbers, Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was still too early to call.

“Things are on a knife’s edge,” she said.

“I think that anybody who’s watching the results live right now and refreshing their browser will know that that is chopping and changing with every other minutes that passes,” she told reporters at the Greens HQ in Auckland.

“Right now, anybody who is trying to declare the tea leaves is kind of getting a bit too ahead of themselves.”

The vote count after reaching 90 percent:

National – 29.3 percent
Labour – 29.1 percent
Greens – 13.3 percent
ACT – 11 percent
NZ First – 9.8 percent
Opportunity – 5.9 percent
Te Pāti Māori – 0.6 percent

This story was first published on

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/07/right-bloc-takes-lead-in-nz-election-but-senior-national-mps-ousted/

As predicted, the 2026 election was all about the maths. With National winning more electorate seats than its party vote would have delivered, and Te Pāti Māori taking five Māori seats, there is a provisional parliamentary overhang of nine or ten seats.

That means a parliamentary majority requires 65 or 66 seats, which the right bloc has on the provisional results. Even with the Opportunity Party’s provisional seven seats, the left would still not have the numbers.

However, the results are finely poised, and special votes may change the picture once the final count is confirmed on November 27. In the meantime, the overhang means National has lost senior list-only MPs, including former finance minister Nicola Willis.

The Opportunity factor

The Opportunity Party has secured 6% of the party vote, provisionally winning seven seats in parliament and potentially holding the balance of power between the left and right blocs.

The result puts Qiulae Wong’s party a percentage point above the crucial 5% threshold for entering parliament, after polling as high as 7% earlier in the campaign. Its final share, however, remains subject to special votes, which will be included in the official results on November 27.

Opportunity’s position could prove decisive in negotiations over the next government. National leader Christopher Luxon had ruled out working with the party during the campaign, while Wong has indicated she is open to discussions with either side.

Wong has maintained she would negotiate with the party with the most votes first. But the decision about any coalition and confidence and supply agreements will not be up to Opportunity’s elected MPs because the party operates under a constitutional rule requiring a 75% sign-off from its board.

Māori electorates

Te Pāti Māori has won five of the seven Māori electorates, with Labour taking two, in a result that could have significant implications for the size and make-up of the next parliament.

Among the clearest victories were Te Pāti Māori’s Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke in Hauraki-Waikato, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer in Te Tai Hauāuru and Oriini Kaipara in Tāmaki Makaurau. The contest in Te Tai Tokerau was considerably tighter, with Aperahama Edwards facing a strong challenge from the Greens’ Hūhana Lyndon.

Across the Māori electorates, there was a notable contrast between electorate and party votes, with Labour and the Greens attracting strong party-vote support even in seats won by Te Pāti Māori candidates.

Strong advance voting

Advance voting opened 12 days before election day and at 1.91 million, the number of people voting early was almost as high as during the 2020 election (1.98 million), which was marked by the COVID pandemic.

According to the Electoral Commission, a total of 913,762 votes were cast during the first five days of the advance-voting period, which ⁠represents a 28% jump compared with the same period during the 2023 election.

Digital Storytelling Team 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/2026/11/07/nzs-next-government-hangs-in-the-balance-2026-election-results-at-a-glance/

COMMENTARY: By Jason Jones

The American public’s outrage over Gaza just decided this week’s US midterms.

Democrats have now won control of both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, taking them from a belligerently defensive Republican Party that not only did the bidding of Israel and its allies in America’s foreign policy commentariat, but went out of its way to smear and shame those who opposed that deeply unpopular choice.

To take as a sample the nation’s most hotly contested and watched election, what we saw in Michigan was the defeat of a candidate who disregarded that public outrage by a candidate who sympathised with and substantially addressed it.

• READ MORE: ‘This is catastrophic’ – Gaza hit hard by UN food cuts and lack of humanitarian aid
• PSNA ‘outraged’ over NZ suspension of UNRWA aid, calls for immediate restored funding
• Caitlin Johnstone: Israel claims it had nothing to do with Trump’s decision to attack Iran . . . and other notes
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed beat out Republican Mike Rogers there. And this was a victory that really showed just how committed voters now are to ridding themselves of the influence of apologists for the tragedy of Gaza.

Before the US Senate vote in Michigan, El-Sayed was targeted for defeat with a record-breaking amount of political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has made it its business to play surrogate to the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as his government’s violent campaigns in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and the West Bank draw mounting international condemnation.

In fact, not only did AIPAC and its affiliates spend nearly $30 million to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary by backing self-proclaimed “Zionist Democrat” Haley Stevens — their largest-ever investment in a single race — but AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, an organisation in the US allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money for political advertising, continued spending against El-Sayed after the primary, benefitting Rogers.

And finally Stevens, explicitly citing El-Sayed’s campaign messaging against Israel’s military actions and US taxpayer funding for it, baffled her own party by endorsing his Republican rival just days before the election.

Acknowledged by Vance
Vice-President JD Vance himself acknowledged the morning after the elections that the same coalition that voted President Donald Trump and himself into office in 2024 had just decided the results of 2026.

Citing his own best advisers, Vance said voters were motivated by four priorities:

1. ending the war on Iran;
2. the rising cost of living/inflation;
3. putting America First; and
4. changing the US relationship to Israel

“Our voters showed up,” the Vice-President said. “And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”

And Vance is hardly going out on a limb with that analysis. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s own son, publicly endorsed Vance’s admission of the GOP’s failures. Hours later, President Trump himself called Vance’s analysis “good” although he stood by the disastrous war nonetheless.

That’s because it is impossible to obscure or erase the impression the whole drama of this year’s elections leaves us with. The impression of a hostile faction embedded in our political class whose commitment to Israel-right-or-wrong is directly, undemocratically and contemptuously opposed to the growing consensus of the American people.

It is also impossible to miss, however, that the American people this year showed themselves willing and able to oust that faction. And it is impossible to miss why. To paraphrase the immortal maxim of Democratic political strategist James Carville: “It’s Gaza, stupid.”

The Gaza genocide scandal
As I’ve argued repeatedly over the past few years, the scandal of the Gaza genocide itself has profoundly reshaped Americans’ attitudes towards foreign policy, war and military aid — particularly when it comes to the Netanyahu regime.

Over the past year, Trump and other politicians have compounded that genocide with the disastrous Iran war and Israel’s new military campaigns in Lebanon — all while an increasingly antiwar America watches with growing outrage as its political leaders use our tax dollars for violence.

The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 was built around a rejection of what he called “forever wars” and “stupid wars”. On the campaign trail, he even spoke explicitly about ending the violence in Gaza.

As I wrote at the time, when a voter in Dearborn, Michigan, asked him about the Gaza genocide, Trump replied: “It’s gotta stop. What we want is peace.” So there is no denying that the initiation of the US-Israeli war against Iran this year was a betrayal and a reversal of the will of those who voted this administration into office.

Democrats had already received this warning in 2024. The Jerusalem Post reported in February that Democratic National Committee officials had acknowledged that the Gaza policy of President Joe Biden’s administration was a “net negative” in that election. The party’s defeat should have warned Republicans against treating public outrage over Gaza as politically irrelevant.

It is also no secret that this war would likely not have happened were it not for Israeli operatives (including Netanyahu himself) and neoconservative figures like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin pressing for it.

Poll after poll has shown growing American disapproval of Israeli military actions. A valuable election night poll also showed a stunning 62 percent of voters explicitly calling the joint US-Israeli initiation of a war with Iran “wrong” while 74 percent identified the war as a crucial or major factor in their votes.

Concerned about ‘affordability’
But more broadly, the polls have shown clearly all this year that the American public is concerned about affordability. What showed less clearly was that, in the public mind, “affordability” concerns were always synonymous with the war and the war synonymous with the influence of Israel and Israel synonymous with the Gaza genocide — that is, with a warlike military policy that is as thoughtless of its cost to the American taxpayer as it is of the sanctity of innocent Palestinian lives.

And all this is to say nothing of the final scandal that, in a way, hits particularly close to home for American Christians: the Israeli terrorist campaign to ethnically cleanse the West Bank — including by attacking the ancient Christian communities who have lived there since the first century.

One can imagine how central that drama will be to the next major American election season. November is not far from December, after all, and asking Americans in 2028 to approach Christmas with few (or no) Christians left to celebrate it in Bethlehem thanks to Israel-backed settler terrorism against our coreligionists in the Holy Land would spell the end of whatever remains of the GOP after Tuesday’s midterms.

The effect of the Gaza genocide and its hideous, snowballing effects on American public life are unmistakable to those with eyes to see, even if invisible to the few pollsters and prognosticators who have somehow managed to remain too out of touch with common sentiments to rightly quantify them.

But that leads to a final consideration that leaders in both parties must now keep in mind: It is the coalition that Trump rallied in record numbers two years ago that won last night.

Not a political party and not a small, elite group in a strategy meeting who now might go on to manage and fine-tune that coalition as if it were their own man-made invention.

GK Chesterton once observed that the American way of life is not based on the clumsy ambitions of a tribe, on ethnic identity or even on some fragile truce between such groupings. Rather, America is united by the creed expressed in our Declaration of Independence – a creed of belief in the dignity of every human person, based on a reverence for immortal nature and “Nature’s God”. In this way, Chesterton wrote, America is “a nation with the soul of a church”.

The outrage over Gaza is a phenomenon as real and as unwieldy as that soul. Democrats should take no comfort in imagining that this outrage belongs to their party. It belongs to Americans who want their leaders to stop financing the slaughter of innocent people.

If the politicians entrusted with power now refuse to listen, they too can be replaced. The demand remains what it was when Trump spoke in Dearborn: End the violence.

Jason Jones is an American human rights activist and author. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/06/getting-rid-of-the-influence-of-us-apologists-for-the-tragedy-of-gaza/

On the eve of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency of the United States, in January 2025, Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that changes would be made to his company’s moderation policies in the name of “freedom of expression”, which, he said, was under threat by global pressures for what he saw as censorship. The announcement signaled a rapprochement between Meta and the far right around a common goal: the deregulation of Big Tech. Since then, growing entanglement between major technology companies and the U.S. President Donald Trump administration has shown how the private interests of a small group can override the public interest.

In recent months, allegations have been mounting that Big Tech companies, especially Meta, have been interfering in the Brazilian electoral process this year, aiming to undermine the reelection of President Lula (PT). This kind of accusation is not new. Over the past decade, a vast body of literature has exposed the mediating role played by digital platforms in foreign interference in elections around the world. These reports have also highlight the challenges of holding companies accountable for allowing these interference campaigns to be amplified.

At our research group, NetLab UFRJ, we have spent years investigating how major digital platforms shape public debate and influence people’s perceptions of reality, often outside the regulatory and normative frameworks in force in Brazil. Meta in particular has become fertile ground for disinformation and boosting fraudulent ads, which already account for 10% of its annual revenue.

Despite lawsuits and administrative actions brought by Brazilian authorities against Meta, complaints and requests from civil society for investigations, as well as reports published by the press, the company has shown neither the willingness nor the diligence needed to effectively fight this kind of content.

Given this troubling track record, NetLab UFRJ created the “Big Tech Observatory” during the 2026 election campaign period in order to monitor how Meta and other digital platforms performed in two key areas: algorithmic recommendation and political advertising. The initiative set out to examine whether these companies would comply with the current Brazilian legislation established by the Electoral Supreme Court (TSE). The results of the analyses, however, told a predictable story.

We found that, between July and September, Meta received approximately R$ 2 million (US$ 400,000) for running 1,613 ads placed from outside Brazil that aimed to either favor or harm candidates. All were paid for in foreign currencies and boosted by pages with declared locations in other countries. The amount invested in this advertising is equivalent to that spent on prominent campaigns, including the race for Presidency and other executive offices.

Brazilian electoral law expressly prohibits candidates from receiving cash or donations in-kind from abroad. This ban, however, did not prevent the ads from being displayed to Brazilian users of Meta’s platforms. According to the available information, not only the ads were allowed to circulate but they may have reached up to 171 million views in the country.

But the irregularities in advertising do not stop there. Brazilian electoral rules prohibit electoral advertising from 48 hours before the polls to 24 hours afterwards. However, our analyses of both rounds of the 2026 election identified hundreds of ads in favor or against specific candidates that circulated on Meta’s platforms with no apparent restrictions. The company even allowed fake profiles posing as official channels of the Electoral Supreme Court to boost disinformation about a supposed “digital vote” which stated that people would be allowed to cast their vote from home on the day of the first round — something which does not exist in the Brazilian electoral system.

In addition to these irregularities, Lula’s political campaign page was temporarily disabled by Meta without explanation, preventing it from running electoral ads. On September 23, his Worker´s Party (PT) reported they had been blocked from advertising on Meta’s platforms. In a statement released on October 16, the company rejected the accusations of election interference and attributed the temporary deactivation to an “incorrect anti-fraud review” carried out under an agreement with the federal government to fight fraud involving public programs.

The effectiveness of the company’s anti-fraud measures, however, is questionable: an analysis carried out by NetLab UFRJ identified hundreds of fraudulent ads involving federal public policies circulating before and after September 23, indicating that those same measures were not able to stop this kind of content from running during the same period.

Finally, we found signs of discriminatory practices in ad pricing. Based on data released by Meta, we estimate that for the first round Lula’s campaign may have paid between 33% and 43% more than his far right adversary Flávio Bolsonaro campaign to reach the same number of users on Meta’s platforms. Despite this substantial difference, limitations in the company’s transparency policies make it impossible to identify precisely which parameters and criteria are used to price ads and, consequently, to draw definitive conclusions about the mechanisms behind this disparity. Even so, studies conducted in other contexts, such as the United States, India and the Netherlands, also point to evidence of discriminatory pricing practices in the platform’s advertising.

Other complaints made during the elections add to this overall scenario of negligence and show that, despite being worth billions and their strategic position at the forefront of technological innovation, major digital platforms invest little in protecting their users. For example, this 2026 election in Brazil saw several controversies involving WhatsApp’s image generation service, powered by the Meta AI artificial intelligence. Users reported being able to generate content favorable to Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign without difficulty, whereas they were not getting the same results for Lula. Meanwhile, the documentary channel Revelando had videos criticizing Flávio Bolsonaro removed from its Instagram profiles shortly after they were posted, without clear justification from the company.

These episodes cast doubt on the consistency of Meta’s moderation and content control systems, exposing failures that call for greater investment and improvement. The situation is made worse by the absence of transparent criteria or guarantees of equal treatment in how ads are handled, how content is recommended, how advertising is priced, and how profiles and posts are moderated.

Big Tech companies have developed predatory business models, and they are currently joining forces with political forces committed to deregulation in Brazil. This is part of a strategy to protect their businesses and expand their room for maneuver.

Whether or not one side of the electoral race is being deliberately favored, it is indisputable that the major digital platforms continuously exercise the power to determine what gains visibility and what remains on the margins, with no transparency over their criteria and no mechanism for accountability. What is clear is that, for these platforms, defending their economic interests and maximizing their profits prevails above user rights, public interest, and democracy itself.

Os autores não prestam consultoria, trabalham, possuem ações ou recebem financiamento de qualquer empresa ou organização que se beneficiaria deste artigo e não revelaram qualquer vínculo relevante além de seus cargos acadêmicos.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/06/we-need-to-talk-about-meta-political-interference-and-interests-in-the-brazilian-elections/

As an avid tennis player, I never imagined an injury would lead me to discover a new sport. But just a few months ago, forced to take a break from tennis, I picked up a padel racket for the first time. I assumed that years of playing tennis would give me a head start; after all, how different could two racket sports really be? To my surprise, the answer was “very.”

Padel, which originated in Mexico in the late 1960s, is an enclosed-court racket sport typically played in doubles. Combining elements of squash and tennis, it uses solid, stringless bats, lower-compression balls and glass or mesh walls off which the ball can rebound. While it has long been a sporting obsession in Spain and Latin America, its explosive global growth has recently made it the fastest-growing racket sport worldwide.

While tennis and padel share many technical similarities, they require somewhat different ways of thinking. I soon discovered that some of my tennis instincts were actually holding me back. Hitting harder wasn’t always the answer. Attacking too early often left me exposed, while patience, positioning, and anticipating my opponents’ next move proved far more valuable than a powerful shot.

Read more:
How padel disrupted the genteel world of lawn tennis

That experience made me curious about something beyond court technique. As a researcher in strategic management, I focus on how people and organisations navigate uncertainty, allocate limited resources and make decisions to gain a competitive advantage. I quickly began to recognise these exact same challenges on the padel court.

What if, I wondered, the secret to becoming a better padel player isn’t simply learning to hit the ball better, but learning to think more strategically? Here are four ways thinking like a strategist can help you level up your padel game:

1. Consider yourself a resource orchestrator, not a player

According to resource orchestration theory, which emphasises how managers organise, combine and deploy resources to create value, success depends not simply on the resources you possess, but on how effectively you orchestrate them.

We can apply this directly to padel. For example, if your partner has an exceptional volley, try to create opportunities for them to use it. Before starting a match, discuss your individual strengths with your partner and plan how best to combine them. In fact, what you initially view as a resource constraint can often be turned to your advantage.

2. Train your attention, not just your shots

In both business and padel, your strategic mindset starts with where you focus your attention. The real power of training your attention is cumulative. During each game, choose one specific aspect to focus on closely: whether that is your opponents’ bandeja (a defensive overhead shot) or their footwork and movement.

After several games, your observations will accumulate into strategic insight. This accumulated knowledge allows you to anticipate your opponents’ moves rather than simply react to them.

3. Play the opponent in front of you, not the one in your head

To increase your odds of winning, try to reflect on and challenge your assumptions about your opponents and how you judge their moves on the padel court.

We often rely on first impressions about competitors, which can distort our judgement and affect our play and decisions. Instead, view your assumptions as hypotheses to be tested based on your opponents’ next shots, rather than as concrete truth.

4. Thinking backwards can lead you further forward

Instead of trying to assume your opponents’ next move, practice backward reasoning.

Imagine a situation where your opponents are dominating the net. Try not to assume their next move, but to influence the choices they make next.

To develop a strategic mindset and improve your padel practice, define your desired outcome and work backwards, identifying the decisions that will help you achieve it. Strategic management means that, rather than simply reacting to your opponents’ next moves, you actively consider how your own actions can influence their next shot.

To play strategically, stop asking yourself “Where should I hit the ball next?” and start asking “What position do I want to be in two shots from now, and how can my next shot help me get there?” By thinking backward from the outcome you want to create, you transition from reactive play to tactical planning.

For instance, if your opponents are dominating the net, your immediate goal isn’t to hit an instant winner, but to force them out of their attacking position. Hitting a soft drop or deep lob buys you time, surrenders their net advantage and sets up a favourable position to control the point on your next turn.

To become a better player in padel, tennis, or any racket sport, the smartest way to win a point is often to out-think rather than out-play your opponent. Next time you’re on the court, remember that your strategic mindset is a skill you can train – just like your forehand, volley, or bandeja.

Veselina Stoyanova 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/2026/11/06/four-ways-thinking-like-a-strategist-can-make-you-a-better-padel-player/

It’s just a tiny thing, but then, sometimes small things can carry bigger messages.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is delaying by a day his departure to the international climate conference (COP31) in Turkey to chair ministerial meetings on work for the budget update, which will be released in December.

The government would deny it, of course, but this can be seen as symbolising how the country’s economic problems are overwhelming everything else on the government’s agenda. And certainly, this includes the COP summit that Australia fought so hard to host (but ended up only co-hosting).

Albanese, who only returned to Australia from the Caribbean on Friday, must feel trapped by the multiple overseas commitments the current “summit season” is imposing on him.

The optics of this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the Caribbean were unfortunate at best, what with clips of the PM’s small talk with King Charles and nothing much of substance out of the conference.

Albanese will now leave for COP on Tuesday, giving him Monday to devote to cabinet’s expenditure review committee discussions.

This week’s interest rate rise has elevated the importance of the budget update. Albanese said in its wake, “it makes our decision that we were looking for savings, it confirms it”.

The flip side of that, however, is this very public search for savings also raises the political hype around the update.

Senior ministers will struggle to find large enough savings, because they are constrained by the need to avoid hurting already angry and agitated voters during a cost-of-living crisis. And large savings would involve significant policy changes.

The government is also trying to ride two horses at once, saying it is really serious about the budget update but also that it shouldn’t be seen as anything out of the ordinary – that it’s just what you do every December.

Meanwhile, two strong official voices are putting ministerial feet to the economic fire, especially those of Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

The Albanese government has prided itself in the number of women it has appointed to senior jobs, but it may be squirming at the willingness of two of its high-profile choices, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock and Productivity Commission Chair Danielle Wood, to speak their minds so freely.

Initially, Bullock was extremely careful, reluctant to be interpreted as telling the government what it should be doing. But her messaging about inflation has become increasingly sharp.

On Tuesday, the emphases in her comments and those of the treasurer on the rate rise were quite different. She stressed the local factors in Australia’s inflation problem; he stressed the Iran war.

“The Middle East is a big factor in the uptick in inflation. It’s the primary driver of that uptick,” Chalmers told his news conference before adding, “it’s not the only driver.”

But Bullock said: “Monetary policy cannot impact global oil prices. Rather, the tightening in monetary policy is to address domestic capacity pressures.”

For her part, Wood is obviously deeply frustrated that more progress is not being made on productivity and that the commission’s hands have been tied to an extent in probing for solutions.

The commision’s report, titled “Unlocking business dynamism: removing barriers to entry, growth and exit”, released this week, said bluntly: “Our terms of reference state that tax, workplace relations and mergers frameworks are not intended to
be an inquiry focus”.

Wood indicated that while these exclusions weren’t necessarily a problem for the inquiry, which encompassed a broad range of issues from regulatory burdens to access to finance, workplace relations should be considered in the broader productivity debate.

She told Nine Media, “It doesn’t make sense to leave a big area like workplace relations off the table”.

Of course it doesn’t. But put industrial relations on the table and that runs up against the constraint imposed by the union movement. The government’s history has been to give to the unions; it doesn’t take away from them.

So whether it is finding savings or boosting productivity, the goverrnment’s room to move is limited. And, at the moment, so is the flexibility in the prime minister’s calendar.

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/2026/11/06/view-from-the-hill-an-over-committed-albanese-is-scrambling-to-keep-his-eyes-on-the-main-game/

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/06/israels-election-shows-its-democracy-is-a-sham-but-the-west-cant-stop-buying-the-lie/

This year may be seen as a turning point in the climate crisis. The UN has accepted that global warming is going to exceed 1.5°C, while climate scientists have concluded that the rate of warming has effectively doubled over the past decade.

What’s worse, the world may be approaching climate tipping points that could trigger further heating and catastrophic environmental change.

Back in 2018, an international team led by Earth system scientist Will Steffen warned that continued greenhouse gas emissions and destruction of biodiversity could produce a cascade of warming that would culminate in the climate systems passing a threshold into a so-called “Hothouse Earth”.

The engine of this cascade would be individual tipping points in the climate. For example, the shutdown of certain Atlantic Ocean currents would not just plunge Europe into freezing winters, but could significantly starve the Amazon rainforest of water vapour. A drought that turns the Amazon to savanna would have huge consequences for the global carbon cycle and climate system. Further warming would accelerate ice sheet loss and ramp up temperatures.

As various tipping points are passed, the Earth system reaches a threshold that could produce a rise in temperatures greater than any for the past 1.2 million years. This would have devastating impacts on ecosystems and societies. Indeed, it’s hard to see how complex, industrialised civilisation would be able to exist in a world that has rapidly warmed beyond 4°C.

Are we responding to the risks?

To what extent the Earth system has the capacity to produce this sort of cascading warming is a topic of intense scientific research. We may be lucky, in that individual tipping elements such as Atlantic current collapse require much higher levels of warming, or more fundamentally the Earth’s current climate may prove to be more resilient than we think. Unfortunately, the opposite may be the case and a planetary threshold may lurk at lower levels of warming than Steffen and colleagues proposed.

It seems reasonable to assume that a deepening climate crisis will focus minds and spur climate action. Unfortunately, new research by my coauthors and I suggests the exact opposite may happen: the worse climate change gets, the harder it could be to stop it. The end point of that process is a disastrous acceleration towards further warming.

Rather than being a purely theoretical exercise, we propose that we can begin to see signs of this slide away from climate action in the real world. For example, those nations most at risk from climate change can be caught in a sovereign debt “doom loop” whereby the damage caused by extreme weather reduces their abilities to repay loans and makes it harder to obtain desperately needed finance to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.

This feedback loop can derail climate policy over time: as debt servicing consumes growing shares of government revenue, climate investments are sidelined, and the country becomes increasingly exposed to climate change.

Increased warming can also increase conflict, thus undermining international cooperation required for mitigation. This is affected by a range of socioeconomic factors, such as inequality and political polarisation.

For example, see the increase in popularity of Spain’s far right-wing and climate-denying Vox party following the devastating Valencia floods of 2024. While the floods were made much more likely because of human-caused climate change, Vox argued that it was left-wing “ideological” environmental policies that made people more vulnerable to the intense rainfall.

The name we give to these dynamics is “derailment risk”, the situation where the consequences of climate change makes it harder to deal with the drivers of climate change, and so sustainability efforts end up being derailed.

Planetary stewardship

Given the potentially devastating consequences of a Hothouse Earth, it seems sensible to minimise the chances of it happening as much as possible. To that end, climate and Earth system scientists have argued that active management of this risk is required.

This “planetary stewardship” goes beyond phasing out the burning of fossil fuels to include strengthening forests, peatlands and other natural stores of carbon, along with behavioural changes, technological innovations, new ways of governing, and transforming social values. But derailment risks could undermine the political and social conditions needed to establish any sort of planetary stewardship.

A key concept here is agency – the capacity to produce change. In the original hothouse framework, agency is essentially one way. Humans affect the Earth system by destabilising it. But humans are not simply an external force acting on the Earth system: we are part of it, and our social and political forces can influence its stability and whether the planet slides into a hothouse state.

We argue that the feedback loops pulling us towards derailment can be stronger than those needed to establish planetary stewardship. That’s because collective action can be easier to destroy than build. At a psychological level, bad events affect people more strongly than good events. This is a factor in how trust within a society can be much easier to undermine than create. Increasing climate change impacts could therefore erode the social institutions needed to sustain effective mitigation and adaptation, just when they are most needed.

To respond to this risk we propose a three-stage framework for assessing and managing derailment threats. First, identify and map feedback loops between the human and natural world; second, anticipate disruption and build resilience; third, develop active responsive governance strategies for periods of escalating instability.

Humans are entirely responsible for the climate and ecological crisis, but we also hold the solutions. Maintaining our agency – the ability to put solutions into practice – may prove to be the keystone for all climate policies.

James Dyke 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/2026/11/06/the-worse-climate-change-gets-the-harder-it-becomes-to-stop-it/

This week, mortgage holders were hit with more bad news as the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the fifth time this year.

Businesses too are feeling the pinch, from increasing costs, high rates, and low consumer confidence.

Critics of the government call for policy changes, notably that public spending should be reined in to help fight inflation.

CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Andrew McKellar, joined us on the podcast to discuss ACCI’s prescriptions for the country’s economic ills, some of it very strong and unpalatable medicine.

McKellar says first and foremost the government should set out strong fiscal rules:

We need to say that we need to balance the budget on average over the course of the economic cycle. We need to pay down net debt more than we are currently projected to do.

Now is as good a time as any for the government to send a clear signal to say, we heard the message, we understand that change is necessary, if that means we got it wrong in the past, we accept that we got it wrong, and we are going to change direction, we are going to set some really firm guidelines about this, and we are going to get the budget back into balance on average over the course of the economic cycle.

McKellar says reform is needed on industrial relations, where some of the government’s changes have added to the burden on business:

We’ve had a succession of different changes, whether it’s casual employment or labour hire, or whether it is payday super, or whether it’s youth wages, all coming at businesses, particularly small businesses, which just hold them back at the moment.

He suggests what he says would be a small but useful change:

I do think it’s just a simple thing, like adopting a consistent definition to small business in the Workplace Relations Act, in the Fair Work Act. Now, I don’t think that’s philosophical. I don’t think that’s something that the ACTU, if it really put its mind to it, could disagree with. So I think those sorts of things should be on the table.

To improve the budget, the government should be going through line by line:

With government spending hitting almost 27% of GDP, we need to pull that back. We need to pull it back to probably something closer to 25% of the GDP. You can go through the budget line by line and there will be savings that can be found. No one’s saying that it’s an easy thing to do.

[We support] more targeted means testing for a range of different initiatives. […] People have talked about things like the EV subsidies. We have very broad childcare subsidies. There is some means testing of that, but we can, I think, still save significant amounts of money.

In contrast to the opposition, ACCI supports the European Union free trade deal, and is lobbying senators to have parliament pass it. McKellar says it is not a “perfect deal” but it’s “unequivocally in the national interest”.

Well it is a good deal, it’s not a perfect deal, I think that point is conceded but if you look at this around 98% of all tariff lines would be liberalised. It’s a huge opportunity for Australian exporters in a market of 450 million people, 27 economies. It’s a market that we’ve really struggled to get access to now for decades.

We think it’s unequivocally in the national interest and if you go to the opposition, the Coalition, traditionally they have been supporters of market liberalisation and freer trade.

One way or another we’re hopeful that there’ll be nine senators [the number required beyond Labor] who see that it is clearly in the national interest. […] We’re gonng to talk to every member of the [Joint Standing Committee on Treaties]. We’re going to talk to the crossbench, we’re going to talk to the Greens, so we’re going talk to the opposition as well.

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/2026/11/05/politics-with-michelle-grattan-business-chief-urges-government-to-use-more-means-testing/

Progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race was one of the most-watched contests in the 2026 midterm elections.

As the results for this race came in, I had my eye on one demographic: Black voters. I am a political scientist who studies Black political behavior. My research has been published in numerous journals, as well as in my forthcoming book, “Black Resilience,” which examines Black voters’ political participation.

Wayne County voters

The support of Black voters for El-Sayed was not a given. In the August primary, 62% of Detroit voters chose U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens over El-Sayed. Many pundits predicted it would be difficult for El-Sayed to gain support in Detroit, which is about 75% Black.

After the primary, El-Sayed made overtures by sharing his plans to improve the lives of Black Americans, which included supporting the growth of minority-owned businesses, creating more affordable housing, eliminating food deserts and expanding the Rx Kids cash assistance program nationwide.

About 91.8% of Detroit voters supported El-Sayed in the general election, according to the city’s unofficial results. Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said 209,924 residents voted in the 2026 midterms, up about 21% from the 2022 midterm elections. For the 2024 presidential election, 247,770 city residents cast a ballot.

In fact, El-Sayed received 70.6% of Wayne County votes, which includes Detroit. In 2024, Kamala Harris received 62.7% of the vote in Wayne County.

Statewide support is holding steady

In the 2024 presidential election, Michigan’s Democratic vote share fell to 48.3%, from 50.6% in 2020, as the state went for Donald Trump instead of Democratic nominee Harris.

Despite their ideological differences, Sen. Elissa Slotkin and El-Sayed drew similar support among Black voters. In 2024, Slotkin – a moderate Democrat – won 48.6% of the vote, a small margin over Mike Rogers, who was the Republican candidate in that race. In 2026, El-Sayed defeated Rogers statewide by a substantially wider margin, winning 52% of the vote.

In other words, these early election results do not indicate whether Black voters embraced El-Sayed’s progressive platform or simply voted for the Democratic candidate. Voters may have been rejecting Republican Party politics or expressing anger toward Trump over pocketbook issues.

Researchers from Michigan State University found that precincts with more than 80% of Black voters supported Democratic statewide candidates over Republicans at a rate of 92% to 94% during the 2024 general election, which is only slightly lower than the 94% to 95% levels observed in similar precincts during the 2020 contest between Trump and Joe Biden.

Even while Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats, small shifts in their support and turnout can influence the outcome of close and competitive races. These shifts may help explain differing outcomes, including El-Sayed’s victory in 2026 and Harris’ defeat there in 2024.

While Black voter support for El-Sayed was high, estimated at around 86% statewide, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s support among Black voters was about 94% in the 2022 gubernatorial race, according to an ABC exit poll.

Similarly, preelection polling indicated that Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee for governor, polled more favorably among nonwhite voters compared to El-Sayed. NBC exit poll data shows that 86% of Black voters in Michigan supported El-Sayed, while 90% supported Benson, who won the governorship over Republican John James.

Historic power and unity

Black voters are often strategic voters who support the candidate they believe best aligns with Black interests, which has usually been the Democratic candidate since the Civil Rights Movement.

Generally, Black voters have made their electoral choices based on what’s believed to be best for the group as a whole – a concept described by political scientist Michael C. Dawson as linked fate.

However, recent research shows that Black social networks and institutions, including churches and civic organizations, reinforce expectations of political solidarity. Weaker ties to these networks may lessen the social pressure that encourages Black Americans to participate in politics and support Democratic candidates.

Lower participation by Black Americans could lead to elected officials paying less attention to issues important to Black voters, such as affordability and the cost of living, healthcare, and reducing racial discrimination. If officials assume Black voters will remain loyal to Democrats, they’re under less pressure to win their votes by addressing their concerns.

My research has demonstrated that after the 2024 election, Black women in particular felt frustrated with the Democratic Party, yet they participated in elections despite these frustrations.

An agenda that matters

El-Sayed was part of a field of notable Democratic candidates in this election cycle. For example, Angie Nixon, a state representative in Florida, championed affordability alongside a moratorium on evictions and a universal jobs program, while James Talarico, a former schoolteacher in Texas, focused on public education.

El-Sayed is a former public health official who had not previously held elected office. This may have turned off some Black voters who often value governing experience. El-Sayed advocated for Medicare For All and lowering the costs of gas prices and groceries.

Although he doesn’t identify as a democratic socialist, El-Sayed campaigned with several progressive elected officials, such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed El-Sayed on the day he announced his candidacy in 2025. El-Sayed also campaigned with the Black establishment, including U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. Former President Barack Obama spoke at a rally for El-Sayed in Detroit in October 2026.

Stevens, who lost the Democratic nomination to El-Sayed in the primary, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers after she attended a service with the Republican candidate at a predominantly Black church in Detroit two days before the election. Stevens’ tactic drew severe backlash from Democratic leaders and may have mobilized some Black voters to turn out for El-Sayed on Election Day.

“I felt like she pimped my community,” one Black voter from Detroit told ABC News in response to Stevens’ last-minute endorsement of Rogers.

Christine Slaughter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/05/black-michiganders-helped-push-abdul-el-sayed-to-victory-but-the-numbers-show-he-was-less-popular-with-this-key-voting-block-than-some-other-democratic-candidates/