Keith Rankin, 9 November 2026 – New Zealand’s MMP voting system is the old First Past the Post (FPP) system with a corrective proportional overlay. As time has passed, and fewer remember voting before 1996, it has morphed into a proportional party list system (primary vote) with a local electorate FPP underlay (second vote).

What happened – and was almost certainly going to happen in any election in which Labour and National were close to each other and both were below 35% of the total vote – was that the FPP underlay trumped what was meant to be a proportional election. This has led to an eleven-seat ‘overhang’.

This 29 October 2026 article on polling history – RNZ-Reid Research poll: View all results and charts – shows that New Zealand was in ‘significant overhang risk territory’ from late 2024, long before Finance Minister Nicola Willis made the decision to run ‘list-only’ in 2026. She made her choice in full knowledge of the polling trend. Further, it is clear that National Party support below 30% dates back to around April 2026, well before any campaign to get National Party supporters to transfer their party votes to Act or New Zealand First.

One part of the problem on Saturday was that the FPP election allocated 71 seats, leaving just 49 ‘list’ seats to make the proportional correction. In the first MMP election in 1996, it was 65 FPP seats and 55 seats to make the proportional correction. If, in 2026, there were instead 50 FPP seats and 70 proportional corrective list seats, the overhang would have been much smaller, though National would still have had few if any list MPs.

A better fix would be to go to MMMP: multi-mixed-member proportional, using multi-member electorates. I outline this below, noting that it’s easy to understand, using present voting as an example, how the overhang problems resolve under MMMP. A few other comments first, though.

The 20-Day wait for a result update!

This long wait is a complete nonsense. The election was on Saturday 7 November, and the final result is scheduled for a Friday 27 November three long weeks later. The election night tally is a provisional vote count. There is no reason why there cannot be additional provisional counts on Friday 13 November and on Friday 20 November. Such counts would facilitate the process of government formation, substantially minimising the uncertainty – the long vacuous vacuum, when mischievous narratives take hold – relating to the final count. We note that many past governments have been formed on the basis of statistically significant provisional results.

The Natural Gerrymander

One most important question to be asked today is: how can National win twice as many electorates as Labour, when both parties are equally popular? The answer is the natural gerrymander, which I discussed last week in my Gerrymandering and Dummymandering: USA and New Zealand, Scoop 2 November 2026. In that article I correctly predicted that the Wairarapa electorate could be pivotal to the final election outcome.

In the 2005 general election, the electorate vote totals for National and Labour were both about 900,000, and the electorates were split 31 each. This year is the next time after 2005 when National and Labour have been so close to each other; yet the two-party electorate lottery has swung very differently. This time has clearly been an election much more favourable to incumbent electorate MPs than was 2005.

2026 Provisional Results under Five electoral systems

One. The actual provisional result of the election, under MMP with 71 electorates, is: Right (67), Left (64); placing Opportunity as part of the Left bloc. This is made up of: N(42), L(36), G(16), A(13), NZF(12), O(7), TPM(5). Total Parliament of 131. Winning margin for the Right is 3 seats, which is 2.3% of 131. A narrow provisional win to the Right.

I have recast the provisional result under four other compatible electoral systems. The results vary from a narrow win to the Left to a ‘landslide’ to the Right, all with the same actual levels of popular support for the seven parties.

Two. Under a pure list proportional system, the result would have been: Right (60), Left (60). This is made up of: N(35), L(36), G(16), A(13), NZF(12), O(7), TPM(1). Total Parliament of 120. Winning margin to the Right is 0, which is 0% of 120. A Right-Left tie.

Three. Under an FPP single-member electorate system, the result would have been: Right (43), Left (28). This is made up of: N(42), L(21), G(2), A(1), NZF(0), O(0), TPM(5). Total Parliament of 71. Winning margin to the Right is 15, which is 21% of 71. A ‘landslide’ win to the Right.

Four. Under an SM supplementary-member electorate system – a tweaked version of FPP with some list MPs – the result would have been: Right (67), Left (43). This is made up of: N(56), L(36), G(9), A(6), NZF(5), O(3), TPM(5). Total Parliament of 120. Winning margin to the Right is 14, which is 11.7% of 120. A ‘tsunami’ win to the Right, about the same sale as the ‘blue tsunami’ in the United States last week.

Five. Under a multi-member MMP system (MMMP, see below), the result would have been: Right (60), Left (61). This is made up of: N(35), L(36), G(16), A(13), NZF(12), O(7), TPM(1). Total Parliament of 120. Winning margin to the Left is 1, which is 0.8% of 121. A tie-breaker win to the Left. (There is no Left-bias in MMMP; the Left advantage here relates specifically to Te Pati Māori.)

Description of the proposed multi-member MMP system. Call it MMMP.

Imagine a Parliament of 120 members, with 18 electorates (including two Māori electorates), normally with four-members per electorate, and 48 list MPs. There would be 72 electorate MPs and 48 list MPs; just as in a normal election today.

Parties choose up to four candidates per electorate. These candidates, 72 maximum per party, would also constitute the nationwide party list.

Each voter has a single party vote, and a single electorate vote (ie one electorate vote, for just one candidate, though ranked-choice preferential voting could be an option). The four candidates with the most votes are provisionally declared the election winners. Parliamentary representation is topped up by the party list, to ensure party proportionality.

If there is an overhang result, then each electorate only returns three MPs, and the number of list MPs grows to 66.

If there is still an overhang, then each electorate only returns two MPs, and the number of list MPs grows to 84.

If there is still an overhang, then each electorate only returns one MP, and the number of list MPs grows to 102.

If there is still an overhang, then that overhang is left in place, allowing the Parliament to be slightly above 120.

The nationwide party list would be required to be regionally balanced. There would be no list-only candidates. Each party would take one candidate from each electorate to be its top-18 on its nationwide party list. The next 18 on each party’s party list would also be one from each electorate. And so on. Within that constraint, parties would be free to rank the candidates as they please.

Application of MMMP to this month’s election.

There are two overhangs to contend with this year. The National overhang could be resolved by going down to three members per electorate, and 66 list MPs. But the TPM overhang would require going down to just one MP per electorate, and there would still be a rump overhang of one. This is because TPM’s party vote only entitles it to one MP, but it would have two out of the 18 electorate MPs. So there would be a Parliament of 121, with 18 electorate MPs, and 103 list MPs.

This would be a highly unusual result. Under MMMP, there would be every incentive to vote TPM on the party vote as well as the electorate vote. That way there could be as many as eight TPM members in Parliament – presuming TPM only stands candidates in Māori electorates – though almost always there would be less than eight, because of some non-TPM representation in Māori electorates. We also note that TPM could and should solicit general party list votes. (Indeed, during the 2010s, I party-voted TPM in every election. And I am not Māori. In 2011, I was the only TPM vote in the Avondale Primary School booth!)

On the matter of National’s senior MPs who missed out this election, this could no longer happen. First, all candidates would have to be listed in an electorate. And if they don’t make it to Parliament in that electorate, they would make it into Parliament via the party list. In general, in any situation whereby the number of MPs per electorate has to be reduced, most MPs who miss out would be returned as list MPs.

I have just described an excellent MMMP system, which tweaks MMP to remove the FPP wrinkles we saw this year, and works exactly the same from a voter perspective. One vote for one party, and one vote for one candidate. Split voting would be not only acceptable, but encouraged. The overhang loophole would be closed. And most MPs would, most of the time, be electorate MPs rather than list MPs.

About the writer:

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Paris in the 1830s and 40s danced on the edge. Napoleon was dead. The Bourbon royals were back. Revolutions in 1830 and 1848 brought pitched battles to the streets. Glitzy wealth rubbed up against dire poverty.

Yet the city was a honey-pot for 20-something creatives; meet the bohemians. These brooding, passion-infused romantics dominated the art world. Chopin was there penning some of the most romantic piano music ever written. Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame came out in 1831.

Among these dreamers was Henry Murger, a jobbing writer living hand-to-mouth. In 1849, he penned a series of autobiographical sketches glamourising his friends, lovers and exploits.

Murger’s tales were a runaway success. But it was Italian composer Giacomo Puccini who immortalised them with his 1896 opera La Bohème, based on Murger’s 1851 novel Scènes de la vie de bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life).

La Bohème sealed Puccini’s fate as arguably the greatest opera composer of all time. Opera Australia now brings a fresh look to this eternally popular masterpiece.

Puccini’s timeless tale

Rather than spinning a grand plot, La Bohème drops us into four scenes spanning a Parisian winter. Four young down-and-out creatives are following their dreams. But there’s not enough food to go round. They torch the furniture to keep warm. The rent hasn’t been paid for three months.

It is two great love affairs that warm the hearts of audiences as much as they do those of the two leading men, Rodolfo and Marcello. La Bohème lives on quick-fire dialogue among rough-and-tumble young men, but illness and frailty lurk throughout. In the end, tragedy strikes.

Murger’s tale has been repackaged various times in pop culture, including in the 1990s rock musical Rent. Young love, glamour, infatuations, jealousy and loss never tire as theatrical crowd-pleasers.

A bold, vibrant and vivacious take

Opera Australia’s production, which opened at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre on Saturday, is Constantine Costi’s first major outing as the company’s director.

Costi and his team have come up with a contemporary, vivacious and playfully cheeky take on an old favourite. The leading man, Rodolfo, comes over as a sensitive, slightly over-awed young man. Decked out in green velvet, he is closer to a boy-band heartthrob for the TikTok era than to the traditional Italian lover.

Kang Wang has a fine, compact voice to match. His first act aria on opening night needed to project a bit more, but his presence grew as the night progressed. This Rodolfo is not going to sweep you off your feet. He is too 2026 for that – but he still has many endearing features.

Costume designer Sabina Myers channels Parisian painters of the 1920s to produce a whole catalogue of vivid looks. Her coat for Mimi, Rodolfo’s great flame, pays homage to French artist and designer Sonia Delaunay and Orphism – an offshoot of Cubism.

Fresh from a run as Mimi in Munich last year, Galina Cheplakova makes her Australian debut in the role. Strongest in the high register, she brings a coy smile to her first encounter with Rodolfo and luxuriated in the soaring vocal lines as she recalled the first April sun in her lonely loft.

Act two sees our Bohemians at a famous Parisian cafe. This act made the most demands on the opera’s original creatives. Two writers penned numerous versions before Puccini was happy.

The effort paid off handsomely. The chorus and lead singers toss snappy jokes between each other. Split-second timing is essential, and the Opera Australia team pulls it off brilliantly.

Marcello’s old flame Musetta, played by Alexandra Flood, steals the show at Cafe Momus. Coiffed with a wonderful roaring ‘20s look, she knows how to turn heads. Her sugar daddy tags along but can’t keep up. Flood plays the femme fatale with bravura and a flair for sartorial provocation.

Parisian flair at the Paris end

La Bohème can pose a challenge for directors. The opening and final acts need intimacy. Act two, on the other hand, portrays a bustling street scene with kids, crowds and marching bands. Going too far in either direction risks making the show feel disjointed.

Set designer Dann Barber neatly dodges this bullet with tightly masked apartment scenes, and a hot-air balloon that floats the lovers from Rodolfo’s dingy loft into the let-it-rip colour and Marc Chagall ambience of the street outside Café Momus.

The Regent Theatre takes pride of place at the “Paris end” of Collins Street and makes a beautiful, traditional venue for La Bohème. Yet it lacks an orchestra pit. Orchestra Victoria sits at the front of the stalls and the stage is set well back – sacrificing some immediacy in the drama.

Conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, in his Australian debut, works hard to keep the orchestra from overloading the cast – but this comes at the cost of some lushness in Puccini’s orchestral writing.

Opera Australia has a hit on its hands. No matter if you’re falling in love with Puccini’s gem for the first time, or if it’s an old favourite, this bouncy new Bohème will enchant newcomers and devotees alike.

La Bohème is showing in Melbourne until November 18, and opens in Sydney on January 2, 2027.

Brian Long 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/2026/11/09/opera-australias-la-boheme-captures-the-romance-of-bohemian-paris-with-a-fresh-twist/

Compared to other primates, humans have lost much of the thick hair covering the body. But we’ve kept the visible hair on our scalp, in our armpits, and around the genitals.

But why? What is pubic hair for – and does it matter if we remove it?

There are different theories

Developing pubic hair is tied to sexual maturity. It first appears during puberty under the influence of androgens – the sex hormones – including testosterone.

Researchers have proposed several theories about why humans have retained it.

One theory is that pubic and armpit hair help retain and disperse body scent. Secretions from sweat glands interact with bacteria on the skin to produce odours, which can cling to the hair and gradually be released. Researchers have suggested these scents may play a role in sexual communication – but this work is based on what we know about other species, and has not been established in humans.

Another theory is that pubic hair helps reduce friction and chafing during movement and sexual activity.

Both theories are plausible, but neither has been conclusively established.

What about hygiene?

Some people worry that pubic hair makes the genital area “dirty”. While they may prefer to remove it, there is no general medical or hygiene reason to do so.

Normal washing is enough for everyday hygiene. For women, washing the external genital area (the vulva) – either just with water or with a mild, unscented cleanser – is sufficient. The vagina does not need to be washed internally, as this can disturb its normal bacterial balance.

There is no need to groom before seeing a doctor. Health professionals see a wide range of bodies, and pubic hair is completely normal.

The link with infection is less straightforward

Research has suggested removing pubic hair may increase the risk of some infections, and reduce the risk of others.

For example, there is some evidence pubic lice infections (crabs) may have decreased as removing pubic hair – where lice and their eggs can attach – has become more popular.

But the overall picture is still unclear.

A 2024 review of 22 studies, involving more than 73,000 women, found women who groomed were more likely to have had gonorrhoea or chlamydia. However, there was no clear difference for viral infections such as genital herpes or genital warts.

A 2026 review of 15 more recent studies found frequent or complete hair removal was associated with a higher risk of problems including sexually transmitted infections, urinary tract infections and vaginal irritation.

But one US study of 214 female university students tested participants for chlamydia and gonorrhoea rather than relying on self-reports. It found no link between infection and frequent grooming.

Most of this research explores an association, and can’t show that removing or retaining pubic hair causes infection. So we should be cautious, as other factors may be at play.

For example, shaving can cause small cuts and skin irritation, which could mean infections enter or spread through the skin.

But it’s also possible that people who groom pubic hair have different sexual behaviour from those who don’t – and that these explain the association, not the hair removal itself.

So, why do people remove it?

Pubic hair removal is not new. People have removed or shaped pubic hair for centuries. What has changed is how common extensive pubic hair removal has become in recent decades.

Some researchers have suggested internet pornography may have influenced changing expectations about genital appearance, including preferences for less pubic hair.

In our research, we have explored young adults’ attitudes towards pubic hair grooming, including why they do it, differences in practices between men and women, and whether pornography might play a role.

We conducted the same anonymous online survey twice, in 2014 and 2021, involving 1,560 young adults aged 18 to 25 in total. Around 73% of women and 65% of men reported grooming their pubic hair in the past year, ranging from partial to complete removal.

There were several reasons for grooming, including:

• comfort when wearing clothing
• wanting a neater or cleaner appearance
• preparing for a health-care appointment, and
• religious practices.

However, we didn’t ask participants about their religion or ethnicity, so we can’t say how much this explains our findings.

What about sex?

We found most women said they preferred complete removal when receiving oral sex, and most men said they preferred complete removal if performing oral sex on a female partner. We didn’t ask participants their preferences on whether men should groom before receiving oral sex.

Among participants who reported grooming, 75.5% also reported viewing pornography. But we didn’t compare this with people who didn’t groom, so we can’t say whether people who groom are more likely to view pornography. And the study couldn’t establish whether pornography influenced their decision to groom.

Our study had limitations. For example, we collected responses at two separate points in time but we didn’t follow the same people over time. So while it could potentially reflect some cultural changes, the research can’t establish how individual grooming behaviours changed (or didn’t).

So, does it matter if you remove it?

It’s up to you.

Most injuries related to waxing, shaving or trimming are minor. But removing all your hair – and doing it often – raises the risk of issues such as in-grown hairs or skin irritation.

In the end, keeping, trimming or removing pubic hair is a personal choice. From a health point of view, there’s no need to remove it.

Dr Brigitte Gerstl has previously published peer-reviewed research on pubic hair grooming behaviours. The research was funded by The Rosa Institute and co-authored by Gabriela Rosa, who was affiliated with The Rosa Institute at the time of publication.

Rebecca Deans 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/2026/11/09/what-is-pubic-hair-actually-for-and-does-it-matter-if-you-remove-it/

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

Like the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand’s unique isolation makes it an iconic natural history location of global importance.

Already famous for its flightless birds and their story of evolution on a mammal-free archipelago, New Zealand is home to many other, less well known but equally important plants and animals.

This includes horopito, which has the most primitive flower of any plant alive today, or the hihi/stitchbird, which is the only member of an entire avian family.

I often wonder why New Zealand doesn’t have a dedicated natural history museum (like those in London, Paris, Vienna or New York) to celebrate its unique biodiversity, geology and fossil record.

With ongoing changes in leadership at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, it might be time to have this conversation.

The case for a natural history museum

The research of natural history scientists at Te Papa is world class. But in terms of public-facing displays, the museum cannot do New Zealand’s geological and biological heritage justice.

It has to be too many things to too many people, leaving too little space for natural history.

Some treasures are currently on display, including New Zealand’s first dinosaur fossil discovered by famed palaeontologist Joan Wiffen. But this and other fossils of national and global significance remain mostly confined to a small exhibition area.

Only a tiny fraction of any museum’s collections is on display. Notable examples missing from display at Te Papa include reconstructions of New Zealand’s dinosaurs and many fossils of recently discovered species such as the eight-million-year-old giant crab from Taranaki.

Apart from Te Papa’s collections, Wellington holds others of national importance, including of fossils, marine species and rocks at Earth Sciences New Zealand.

Around the country, other collections also exist, including of arthropods and fungi as well as the Allan Herbarium at the Bioeconomy Science Institute. The University of Otago’s geology museum is an example of a collection held by an academic institution.

But these collections aren’t protected by an act of parliament like Te Papa, and they don’t have the same level of public accessibility or funding the national museum has. I propose they should all be combined to form the basis of a new museum.

Current public displays on New Zealand’s biodiversity don’t always put it into a global or evolutionary context. For example, New Zealand is the cradle of penguin evolution and the ancestors of many now endemic birds came from Australia, South America, the northern hemisphere and in some cases, places unknown.

Biodiversity displays could be further strengthened by showcasing New Zealand’s geological heritage. Rock and mineral displays can be popular attractions and it would be a prime opportunity to put pounamu in a global context. Pounamu is the Indigenous Māori name for nephrite jade and bowenite, which is a taonga (treasure) for carving.

From contested to globally relevant spaces

The Victorian concept of a museum has a colonial history. This has led to collections containing numerous contested objects such as the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum and Indigenous human remains stored in collections worldwide.

By being open about this history and working with mana whenua (local Māori groups), a new museum could help heal these rifts.

This would enable exhibitions with a global focus, for example about the evolution of life on Earth, to be told through the fossil record and living biodiversity.

A prime example is the fossil of one of the first dinosaurs ever described (Iguanodon), held by Te Papa, which helped start the world’s ongoing interest in dinosaurs.

Currently Te Papa does not display any biodiversity from outside New Zealand. Imagine seeing a whole gallery of fossil and living whale skeletons to illustrate their remarkable evolutionary journey from land to sea, similar to displays in the gallery of palaeontology and comparative anatomy in Paris.

Like the incredible, almost complete Triceratops skeleton Museums Victoria acquired for AU$3 million, a dedicated natural history museum in New Zealand should source specimens and loans ethically to promote collaborative research and public outreach.

Scientists and their research could also be showcased. This would keep the museum relevant and in the public mind. As part of its public exhibitions, the Swedish Museum of Natural History has displays of their researchers explaining the importance of their work.

Location, support and funding

Core activities of a natural history museum include growing, caring for and researching collections as well as providing access to the public. Most of these are not financially viable.

A natural history museum would therefore require core funding from central government to avoid closure such as what recently happened at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

Public-private partnerships are a funding option but have raised ethical issues such as the London Science Museum’s past relationship with the oil company Equinor.

A new museum may seem expensive, but it could generate significant tourism income to reinvest into curation and research. Museums in New Zealand contributed at least NZ$1.1 billion to New Zealand’s GDP in 2023.

High-quality international touring exhibitions, such as Te Papa’s successful Whales Tohora, could further showcase the global importance of New Zealand’s biological heritage.

Gareth Nelson, who was the curator of fishes at the American Museum of Natural History before retiring to Australia to work on plant taxonomy, once famously said:

Explain New Zealand and the world falls into place around it.

This could be the guiding principle for a new museum dedicated to New Zealand’s biological heritage.

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund and collaborates with scientists at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/nz-has-unique-stories-of-evolution-and-geology-is-it-time-for-a-natural-history-museum/

When sandpaper comes to mind, it usually relates to a weekend trip to a suburban hardware store. Yet, the Australian men’s cricket team has somehow turned this humble home maintenance staple into a symbol of scandal.

In a 2018 Test series against South Africa, captain Steve Smith and fellow batters David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were exposed for conspiring to tamper with the ball (using sandpaper to create an aerodynamic imbalance) during the third match in Cape Town.

This so-called “Sandpapergate” led to a media storm and widespread condemnation, including by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The three players were suspended and fined.

The scandal was widely revisited in the sport media when the team returned to Cape Town in October during the Test series in South Africa.

Now, a decade later, the scandal is back in the spotlight after retired batter Usman Khawaja, who was on the 2018 tour, began promoting his soon-to-be published autobiography, Sabr.

What did Khawaja reveal?

The most telling revelation from Khawaja was that Sandpapergate was not a rogue enterprise involving just three players – he said in a media interview: “it was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.”

The official Cricket Australia (CA) line that it was a one-off infraction by a fraction of the team, is therefore cast into serious doubt.

But the governing body recently insisted: “all relevant information presented to CA to date has been properly considered and we remain comfortable with the findings of our integrity process.”

Khawaja claims he unsuccessfully urged the whole dressing room at the time to take collective responsibility, but it was just “those three guys [who] got crucified”.

He also stated sandpaper had been used on the ball by Australia in the previous Test match in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha.

The changing narrative

Sandpapergate never entirely passed into history, with continuing scepticism that the hasty investigation and determination by CA was designed to cauterise the wound rather than explain how the disease had spread.

The four leading Australian bowlers on that tour released a statement in 2021 responding to a media interview with Bancroft implying others were in the know.

Current captain Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon declared: “we did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball”, pleading for “an end to the rumour-mongering and innuendo. It has gone on too long and it is time to move on”.

Khawaja’s incendiary comments and dedicated Sandpapergate chapter in his book contradicts that narrative. It vividly reveals the scandal has not gone away, and his insider account cannot be dismissed as mere uninformed speculation.

What is ball tampering?

Roughening one side of the ball to gain “reverse swing” is against the laws and spirit of cricket.

Read more:
How cricket balls move: the science behind swing, seam and spin

But it is widely believed ball tampering is as old as cricket itself, and that an “arms race” earlier this century involved all Test match nations. Most international teams, including South Africa, England and India have found themselves in the ball tampering dock.

Still, some wicked pleasure was taken in the humiliation of an Australian men’s team described in two commissioned, independent post-Sandpapergate reports as having an “arrogant” and “controlling” culture.

Why this is hugely harmful to cricket

Those who care little for sport will wonder what all the fuss is about, as there are many more important outrages in the world than some elite sportsmen bending the rules. But it must be appreciated that sport is suffused with Olympian myths of honourable competition and respect for opponents and the game itself.

Test cricket, in particular, remains as something of a bulwark against the large-scale commercialisation of sport, including its own “fast food” forms like Twenty20.

Read more:
Game changers: how a rainy week led a frustrated Don Bradman to reinvent cricket

It provides nostalgic glimpses of a gentlemanly antiquated world represented by its apologists as enlightened and benign.

When twinned with nationalism and masculinity, cricket is lavishly celebrated by the likes of long-serving Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who in 1997 declared:

All my life I really have regarded being captain of the Australian cricket team as the absolute pinnacle of sporting achievement and really, the pinnacle almost of human achievement in Australia.

That brand of cricketing romanticism is always ripe for a fall from grace.

What happens now?

So, what will result from this latest episode of the Sandpapergate melodrama?

Cricket Australia will be pressured to reopen the case. Captain Cummins, his fellow bowlers, and the rest of the 2018 tour party are now under renewed suspicion.

The “Sandpapergate three” may feel empowered, even compelled to tell their stories.

Khawaja can expect strained relations with some former colleagues as he promotes a book suggesting they committed the original sporting sin: failing to back up your mates.

David Rowe 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/2026/11/09/did-australias-cricket-leaders-sandpaper-over-the-truth-new-ball-tampering-revelations-suggest-so/

By Mark Rabago of RNZ Pacific

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/advocacy-group-warns-proposed-us-census-changes-could-deepen-inequalities-in-pacific-territories/

There have been three recent federal polls. The combined vote for One Nation and the Coalition was down one point to 47% in Resolve, up three points to 53% in Redbridge and steady at 50% in YouGov. Anthony Albanese’s ratings are very poor in all three polls. Economic perceptions appear to be hurting Labor.

It’s less than three weeks until the November 28 Victorian election. Recent polls all have the Coalition gaining to open a large lead over Labor.

In preliminary results for Saturday’s New Zealand election, right-wing parties have a combined 67 of the 131 seats, a majority. Parliament has been expanded from its nominal 120 seats to 131 due to “overhangs”.

Democrats are likely to win the US Senate by 56–44 over Republicans in last Tuesday’s midterm elections. They lead in the national House popular vote by nearly 13 points.

Federal Resolve poll

A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted November 2–7 from a sample of 2,250, gave Labor 28% of the primary vote (down one since the early October Resolve poll), One Nation 25% (steady), the Coalition 22% (down one), the Greens 13% (up one), independents 6% (steady) and others 5% (steady).

Albanese’s net approval was down four points to -22 (56% poor, 34% good). Angus Taylor’s was up two points to +9 (42% good, 33% poor). Pauline Hanson’s was down one point to +3 (45% good, 42% poor).

In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 29% (down three), Taylor 25% (up three) and Hanson 24% (down two).

For Labor politicians, Mark Butler was at +1 net likeability, Richard Marles at -3, Penny Wong at -4, Tony Burke at -5, Chris Bowen at -9 and Jim Chalmers at -11. Nationals leader Matt Canavan was at +6, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce at -2 and Greens leader David Shoebridge at -5.

On what is most responsible for rising living costs, 42% blamed the federal government, 26% global factors, 7% the Reserve Bank and 5% state and territory governments.

Redbridge poll

A national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted November 2–6 from a sample of 1,005, gave One Nation 28% of the primary vote (down one since the early October Redbridge poll), Labor 26% (down two), the Coalition 25% (up four), the Greens 13% (up two) and all Others 8% (down three).

This is the highest Coalition support in a Redbridge poll since December 2025, while Labor is at a record low.

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by 54–46, a two-point gain for Labor. The Coalition led Labor by 53–47, a one-point gain for Labor. By 2025 election preference flows, the Coalition led Labor by 51–49, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Albanese’s net favourability was up four points from a record low to -23, Taylor’s was up one point to -5, Hanson’s was down four points to -14, Shoebridge was at -12 and Chalmers was up one point to -22.

In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 30% (down one), Hanson 24% (down two) and Taylor 16% (up one).

Combining One Nation and the Coalition against Labor and the Greens, the right led by 44–27 on cost of living, 36–34 on healthcare, 36–29 on housing, 52–24 on immigration, 43–27 on the economy and by 45–24 on national security. The left’s one lead was on climate change by 43–23. There hasn’t been much movement on the issues since October.

YouGov poll

A national YouGov poll for News24, conducted October 27 to November 3 from a sample of 1,500, gave One Nation 27% of the primary vote (steady since the mid-October YouGov poll), Labor 25% (up one from a record low), the Coalition 23% (steady), the Greens 13% (down one), independents 5% and others 7%.

By respondent preferences, Labor and the Coalition remained tied at 50–50, equal to Labor’s low this term. Labor led One Nation by 54–46, a one-point gain for Labor.

Albanese’s net approval was up one point from a record low to -29 (62% dissatisfied, 33% satisfied). Taylor’s net approval was up two points to -12 (48% dissatisfied, 36% satisfied).

Taylor led Albanese as better PM by 41–39. reversing a 41–39 Albanese lead. It’s the first time Taylor has led in this poll. Albanese led Hanson by 51–39 (previously 50–42).

Victorian Lighthouse and Morgan polls

A Victorian Lighthouse poll for The Herald Sun, conducted October 19 to November 1 from a sample of 1,289, gave the Coalition 31% of the primary vote, One Nation 23%, Labor 22%, the Greens 14% and all Others 10%. No two-party estimate was given.

Labor premier Ben Carroll’s net favourability was -21. Liberal leader Jess Wilson’s was +9. This poll will be updated weekly until the election. The Poll Bludger said this poll is being conducted by “News Corp’s internal research and data analytics operation”.

A SMS Victorian Morgan poll, conducted October 26–29 from a sample of 3,610, gave the Coalition 29.5% of the primary vote (up 3.5 since an unreleased early October SMS Morgan poll), Labor 22.5% (steady), One Nation 22% (down three), the Greens 12.5% (down 1.5), independents 7.5% (up 0.5) and others 6% (up 0.5).

By respondent preferences, the Coalition led Labor by 56–44, a one-point gain for the Coalition and a five-point gain for them since the early August Morgan poll. Labor led One Nation by 54.5–45.5, a 0.5-point gain for Labor.

As no two-party estimate was reported from the Lighthouse poll, I haven’t included it in the poll graph below.

The recent trend in all Victorian polls has been to the Coalition, and they have opened a large lead over Labor.

Well-overhung NZ Parliament and US midterm updates

I wrote about Saturday’s New Zealand election for the NZ edition of The Conversation. Parliament has a nominal 120 seats, but both the conservative National and pro-Māori Te Pāti Māori won more single-member electorates than their entitlements. On the preliminary results, there will be a total 11-seat “overhang” with right-wing parties having 67 of the 131 seats, a majority.

Final results won’t be released until November 27. In previous elections, left-wing parties have gained from the preliminary results. If this occurs, the combined right could fall below a majority, leaving the centrist Opportunity with the balance of power.

In developments from last Tuesday’s US midterm elections, Democrats are likely to win the Senate by 56–44 over Republicans, a nine-seat gain, as their lead in Mississippi’s Senate contest has increased to nearly 2,600 votes. In the House of Representatives, Democrats lead in called races by 254–162 with 19 uncalled.

The Cook Political Report has a House popular vote tracker, with Democrats leading by 55.7–42.8, a 12.9-point margin that will expand further as Democratic strongholds like California count slowly.

I had live coverage of the NZ election for The Poll Bludger.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/poor-polls-continue-for-both-federal-and-victorian-labor/

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/

This week, around 80 world leaders – including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – will descend on the coastal Turkish city of Antalya for the annual United Nations climate summit, COP31. For the first time, the summit duties will be shared; Turkey will play host, while Australia leads negotiations.

At home, these national leaders have no shortage of issues to contend with: the challenges of AI, major wars and declining trust in democracy. Yet looming over all of them is the existential threat posed by a heating planet.

Climate change is a truly global challenge. Greenhouse gases have no respect for national boundaries, and the devastating impacts are being felt everywhere. We don’t have a world government, but we do have processes of international diplomacy to hammer out shared commitments. This is how the world is trying to deal with the climate crisis.

It can be easy to be pessimistic, but COP31 can still deliver real progress. In Antalya, countries will consider a global electrification target to hasten the shift from coal, oil and gas toward clean electricity.

If agreement can be found, this will be a major step forward.

Remind me, what is a COP?

When scientific consensus emerged on global warming in the 1980s, countries negotiated and signed a new framework on climate change in Rio De Janeiro in 1992.

Since then, diplomats and negotiators have met annually for the UN’s Conference of Parties (COP) to discuss how to address dangerous human-made climate change. These talks have become huge, attended by tens of thousands of delegates every year. This year, the 31st COP is being held in Antalya, Turkey.

After three decades of climate talks, countries are turning the tide on emissions. Many are transitioning away from fossil fuels, if not at the speed required. Overall, global emissions held roughly flat in 2025, though lower wildfire and land-use emissions masked continued growth from fossil fuels.

Yes, the annual UN climate talks are beset by challenges. The United States has withdrawn completely. Countries are not on track to limit warming to agreed levels. Governments can’t even agree when to release the next report on global warming to guide negotiations.

In some ways it’s a miracle these talks achieve anything. Agreements must be reached by consensus and endorsed by 190-plus countries, from petro-states in the Middle East to vulnerable island nations in the Pacific.

Consensus is both strength and weakness. When agreements are reached, they have great legitimacy. The 2015 Paris Agreement came after two decades of hard-fought negotiations. The agreement was a monumental achievement.

But consensus also means COP decisions tend to be “lowest-common-denominator” outcomes, representing incremental progress. Again and again, politics and diplomacy fall short of what the science says is required. Still, if we take a long view, we can see the UN climate talks have helped avoid the most catastrophic global warming and are transforming economies.

How the Paris Agreement is working

At the heart of the Paris Agreement is the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C above the long-term average. This requires the global economy to get to net-zero emissions by the middle of this century. To get there, countries agreed to set emissions targets and increase these every five years. While these targets are slowly cutting emissions and limiting warming they are still clearly insufficient.

Before the Paris Agreement, the world was on track for a cataclysmic 4°C degrees of warming this century. The first wave of emissions targets brought this below 3°C. The 2025 round of targets suggests countries may limit warming to 2.6°C.

Every fraction of a degree matters. With more ambitious policies, we could theoretically still peak warming at 1.8C and return below 1.5°C later this century through investment in carbon dioxide removal. However, this would take a radical step-change in ambition.

Since Paris, more than 130 countries have set long-term targets to achieve net-zero emissions. Countries have begun to signal the end of the fossil fuel era. At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries agreed to “phase down coal”. At COP28 in Dubai in 2023 they agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels”. The task now is to make good on these promises.

Taken together, COP commitments act as a market signal. This year, global investment in clean energy hit A$3.2 trillion – twice as much as investment in coal, oil and gas. Renewables also overtook coal as the world’s biggest source of electricity.

A new age of electricity

For COP31, there is a push for an electrification target of “35 by 35”. Both Turkey and Australia are pressing for a global commitment to increase the share of the energy delivered to consumers by electricity, from just over 20% today to 35% by 2035. It sounds wonkish, but could usher in a new age of electricity.

A shift to electric vehicles, electric heating and cooling, and modernised heavy industry will cut emissions while slashing global fossil fuel import bills by $720 billion each year. An electrification target may also be easier to land than agreement to phase out fossil fuels.

Ironically, given his support for the oil industry, US president Donald Trump has made perhaps the clearest case for electrification. The US war on Iran has triggered the largest disruption of oil supply in history. Demand for clean energy technologies is surging as countries seek alternatives to volatile fossil fuel imports.

The exact form of an electrification target at COP31 will be subject to intense negotiations. Australian climate minister Chris Bowen will have his task cut out for him as chief negotiator.

In itself, COP31 can’t deliver a silver bullet for climate action. But if it reinforces international cooperation and moves the dial forward on global electrification, hope remains.

Wesley Morgan is a fellow at the Climate Council of Australia

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/yes-the-cop-climate-talks-are-far-from-perfect-but-they-still-hold-the-power-for-change/

Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, is about to embark on his most significant diplomatic challenge. For the next two weeks, Bowen takes on the role of “president of negotiations” at the United Nations climate summit, COP31, in Turkey, also called Türkiye.

Bowen is regarded as a strong negotiator, held in high esteem by close observers of the COP process. As well as legislating Australia’s emissions targets, Bowen had policy wins on vehicle emissions standards and renewable energy funding.

However, in Turkey he faces his biggest challenge yet. Australia’s significant contribution to climate change as a fossil fuel exporter hangs over its negotiating team. This is especially the case if Australia wants to showcase its “partnership with the Pacific”, a region acutely vulnerable to climate change.

Bowen will also need to balance competing goals: working with host Turkey in an unprecedented power-sharing arrangement, while acting as chief negotiator.

How did we get here?

At last year’s conference in the Brazilian city of Belém, an impasse between Australia and Turkey over who would host was broken with a compromise deal. Turkey would host the 2026 climate summit, and Australia would shape the agenda and co-host an earlier Pacific pre-COP meeting in the Pacific to discuss the threat of climate change to small island nations.

These talks in Fiji and Tuvalu in early October faced criticism over the low turnout of world leaders. But Bowen defended the meetings, pointing out these preparatory events do not usually involve leaders. It was still a major diplomatic win for the region, he said.

Australia says its presidency will give it “exclusive authority” to shape global climate decisions. But Australian negotiators could struggle to simultaneously work effectively with Turkey, represent Pacific concerns, secure international agreement and advance Australian interests. The latter, linked to profits from fossil fuel exports, likely includes a gradual, rather than immediate plan, to phase out fossil fuels.

Pulling off this balancing act will be no mean feat.

What’s on the agenda for COP31?

This year’s summit is being referred to as an “implementation COP”, with a focus on practical initiatives to turn existing commitments into tangible action.

A key goal of COP31 is boosting global electrification. Turkey and Australia will try to secure support for the goal of “35 by 35”, meaning 35% of consumer energy should come from electricity, rather than fossil fuels, by 2035. The rationale for this goal is that it’s easier to generate electricity from renewable sources.

Other goals include halving the growth of waste the world generates, and cutting energy intensity in the building sector. While worthy aims, some environmental groups have been critical of the limited ambition of the agenda given the scale of the climate challenge.

What are Australia’s priorities?

Bowen has indicated he’s keen to push wealthy countries to commit more climate funding. He has singled out the need to increase funding for small island countries to address climate damage and disruption.

At the pre-COP he reaffirmed the importance of the Paris goal of keeping warming to 1.5°C, even while acknowledging “overshoot” was likely.

These commitments align with Pacific concerns. And they arguably reflect Bowen’s eagerness to make good on his claim that Pacific interests will be advanced by Australia as president of negotiations.

A skeptical view

A skeptical view of Australia’s position is that it reflects strategic concerns about the Pacific. This particularly applies to China, which has been increasingly engaged in the region. Canberra is concerned Beijing will gain a military and strategic foothold in a region close to Australia’s territory.

Australia’s embrace of Pacific climate leadership could therefore be viewed as a means of contesting China’s regional influence. Some experts say advancing Australia’s strategic concerns in the Pacific might require leadership on the issue most important to the region: climate change.

It’s certainly politically easier for Bowen and Australia to play a prominent role in international negotiations than block any new fossil fuel projects at home.

A diplomatic tightrope

Last year, Australia belatedly joined 80 countries as a signatory to the Belém agreement, a voluntary agreement made at COP30 in Brazil, to accelerate the phase-out of coal, oil and gas. Oil-producing countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia opposed any mention of fossil fuels in the COP30 final statement.

But along with Turkey, which imports significant volumes of Australian coal, Australia has resisted calls to put a timeline for ending fossil fuels on the COP31 agenda.

For the Albanese government, the Paris Agreement “loophole” – which means only emissions produced in Australia (not overseas) count towards our climate targets – has helped it bypass the toxic politics of climate change at home. Australia can say we’re progressing towards ambitious emissions reduction targets at home. But it can also enjoy the financial benefits from fossil fuel exports that produce close to 5% of global emissions.

Whether Bowen is genuinely pushed on this issue in Turkey and how he responds will be crucial to watch next week.

Matt McDonald has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/08/australias-climate-minister-is-about-to-walk-a-diplomatic-tightrope-at-cop31/

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/

In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis set off a wave of massive protests that spread to Europe within weeks. Invited to comment on them, historian Michael Zeuske stated on German public radio that “Kant helped lay the foundations of European racism in his anthropological writings.”

The remark sparked a debate in the German-language media. By the end of the year, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities hosted a lecture series titled :“Kant, a Racist?”

Immanuel Kant is one of the most widely taught thinkers in western moral philosophy, famous for the formulation of what he called the categorical imperative in 1785:

“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”

How could someone who set out such a demand have defended, at the very same time, a hierarchy among human races?

The answer is less straightforward than it might appear. Behind the question “was Kant a racist?” lies another, more rarely asked: what principles guide our own reading of the racist prejudices of a classic author?

The ‘Americans’ in Kant’s hierarchy

In his texts, lectures and private notes, Kant affirmed the unity of the human species while distinguishing four “races,” identified by skin colour, to which he attributed unequal capacities.

One feature sets his scheme apart: the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, then called “Indians” or “Americans,” occupy the lowest rank, after the “Whites,” the “Hindus” and the “Blacks.”

In 1788, Kant explained this last rank through a hypothesis, with no empirical data and no claim to scientific status. As the ancestors of Indigenous Americans migrated from Africa through Asia to North and South America, passing through changing climates repeatedly interrupted and stalled the development of their natural dispositions. He concludes:

“This race that is too weak for hard labour, too indifferent for industry and incapable of any culture — although there is enough of it as example and encouragement nearby — ranks still far below even the Negro, who stands on the lowest of all the other steps that we have named as differences of the races.”

This hierarchy did not concern physical traits alone, but the complete development of the same initial dispositions. Kant saw human development as a gradual movement away from the natural condition, passing through four stages: discipline, culture, civilization and, finally, moralization.

Every individual could, in principle, pass through all the stages, but environments had hereditary effects that stabilized different capacities among populations classified as races.

The uneven development of these capacities across four stages could then be correlated with the differences among the four “races.” The Indigenous Peoples in the Americas would therefore have remained at the lowest level of development: able to discipline their natural instincts, but incapable of any culture — that first form of social life when talents, sciences, arts and moral discernment develop.

How could Kant give the slightest credence to such a claim? To support it, he relied on Antonio de Ulloa, who had observed the inhabitants of the Americas.

What Antonio de Ulloa really said

De Ulloa travelled across South America for 11 years. On his return to Spain, he published a monumental account, the Relación histórica del viage a la América Meridional (1748). Translated into German in 1751 as A Voyage to South America, it became the primary source of information for all of Europe.

The chapter on the “Indians” of the Quito region, descendants of the Incas, paints an unflattering portrait, quite close to what Kant would later say: lazy, slow, immoral, drunken, incapable of caring for their bodies and souls.

But de Ulloa doesn’t present these as the fixed traits of a race. He describes them at that particular moment, and says he cannot understand their decline given the level of culture their ancestors achieved. What he describes is not an inherent incapacity for culture, but the historical destruction of a culture.

The envoy of Spain did not speak publicly on the matter, but in a later 1826 analysis, de Ulloa openly blames colonialism for abuses against Indigenous Peoples, such as forced labour, land theft and oppression. He judges the opinion that Indians are lazy to be “entirely unfounded.”

Kant could not have read this text — he died in 1804 — but the source he explicitly invokes already contains the elements of a counter-narrative: not a fixed racial incapacity, but a historical downgrading. I analyzed other discrepancies in a 2025 study (in French).

Why does Kant say nothing of this? He may have read quickly or consciously set aside what contradicted his thesis. No single explanation is compelling; this is where the evidence ceases to permit a definitive answer, and forces us to question our own readings.

How we read Kant matters

Three readings dominate the discussion of the gap between Kant’s moral philosophy and his racism. The first, contextualist, sees in his racism the survival of attitudes common in Kant’s day, with no real connection to his philosophy. The second sees a head-on contradiction: Kant contradicts himself, but his moral philosophy remains intact. The third, internalist, argues that these prejudices are consistent with his entire system, and even that they reveal a dimension of it that had remained implicit.

Each of these readings has its limits.

The contextualist reading runs up against de Ulloa. The published texts Kant could have read already described a historical decline rather than an incapacity inscribed in “race.” The context was not unambiguous, and deciding what belongs to it is already a choice of reading.

The contradiction reading identifies incompatibilities but does not try to explain them: it excludes them from what it takes to be Kant’s thought.

The internalist reading links Kant’s inquiries into nature to the empirical conditions of morality. But to claim that the system “calls for” these prejudices, one has to fill in gaps in the text, sometimes against its letter, even though Kant himself calls his hypotheses a “fiction.”

These readings diverge, but all assume a “proper” Kantian thought forming a coherent unity. This alone is an interpretive choice, rarely made explicit.

Another approach is not to project a ready-made coherence onto a body of work. Statements written by the same author at roughly the same time do not necessarily belong to the same layer of thought.

Following Fernand Braudel’s distinction between historical time scales, historians separate short-term events from the long-term structures and mindsets coexisting within the same period.

Thought progresses and regresses

Perhaps the same is true within a single period of an author’s thought. In Kant’s case, his critique of slavery and colonialism and his cosmopolitanism appear only in the 1790s, and yet his 1798 anthropology still maintains the link between physical constitution and moral character. An author’s thought can progress in one area and regress in another.

None of this exonerates Kant: these statements are his own. But it prevents us from concluding in advance that they express the deep intention of his philosophy, or that they are merely a reflection of his time.

The question therefore extends well beyond Kant. When we read statements from the past that we now judge untenable, both scientifically and morally, it’s not enough to document or condemn them. They force us to examine not just historical thinkers’ prejudices, but also the interpretive assumptions we use to frame their legacy.

Arnaud Pelletier 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/incapable-of-any-culture-kants-racism-and-a-forgotten-source-on-indigenous-peoples/