Labor’s primary vote in Newspoll was down two points to 27%, their worst Newspoll since 2012 and just one point above their record low. Anthony Albanese’s net approval slumped six points to a new low of -27.

However, in the DemosAU poll, Labor’s primary vote was up two points to 28%, their highest in that poll since February. The combined vote for One Nation and the Coalition was steady at 49% in Newspoll, but down three points to 46% in DemosAU, the lowest combined right vote in DemosAU since January.

In the last two weeks, the Morgan and DemosAU polls have been relatively good for Labor, but Newspoll and Resolve have been relatively bad.

In the August DemosAU poll, Bob Hawke was the most popular former PM, followed by John Howard and Robert Menzies, while Scott Morrison was the least popular.

In state polls, a Victorian Redbridge poll ahead of the November 28 election gave the Coalition a 56–44 lead over Labor. A New South Wales Resolve poll would still give Labor a clear two-party lead due to NSW’s optional preferential voting and the split right vote.

Federal Newspoll

A national Newspoll, conducted September 14–17 from a sample of 1,244, gave One Nation 30% of the primary vote (steady since the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago), Labor 27% (down two), the Coalition 19% (steady), the Greens 13% (steady) and all Others 11% (up two).

This is Labor’s second lowest ever primary vote in Newspoll, which they had last equalled in April 2012 when Julia Gillard was prime minister. Labor’s lowest ever primary vote was 26% in September 2011.

Albanese’s net approval slumped six points to -27, his worst in Newspoll since he became PM, with 62% dissatisfied and 35% satisfied. Angus Taylor’s was up two points to -15 (50% dissatisfied, 35% satisfied). Pauline Hanson’s was down six points to -7 (51% dissatisfied, 44% satisfied).

The graph below shows that Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll has been on a clear down trend since the beginning of 2026. His net approval has been at -15 or below since late February.

In the normal better PM question, Albanese led Taylor by just 42–41, his lowest margin this term (previously 44–35 to Albanese). In a three-way forced choice, Albanese had 44% (down two), Hanson 32% (up one) and Taylor 24% (up one). After preferences from Taylor’s voters, Albanese led Hanson by 55–45 (56–44 previously).

DemosAU poll

A national DemosAU poll for Capital Brief, conducted September 10–14 from a sample of 1,583, gave Labor 28% of the primary vote (up two since the mid-August DemosAU poll), One Nation 26% (up two), the Coalition 20% (down five), the Greens 13% (up one) and all Others 13% (steady).

It’s Labor’s highest primary vote in a DemosAU poll since February, and the combined right’s lowest since January.

No two-party estimate was given, but seat projections gave Labor a majority of House of Representatives seats with 76–88 out of 150 (61–73 previously). One Nation had 38–49 (26–39 previously), the Coalition 8–21 (32–50), the Greens 0–4 (0–5) and others 6–11 (5–10). These seat estimates apply uniform swings to the May to July DemosAU MRP poll.

Albanese’s net positive score was up three points to -16 (45% negative, 29% positive). Taylor’s was steady at -4 (27% negative, 23% positive). Hanson’s was up four points to -12 (44% negative, 32% positive).

In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 36% (up one), Hanson 25% (up three) and Taylor 21% (down two). In head to head matchups, Albanese led Hanson by 45–33 and Taylor by 39–35 (43–32 and 38–36 respectively in August).

By 66–13, respondents supported giving social media users the choice to opt out of algorithms. By 65–22, they thought social media platforms should be legally required to reduce risks instead of being free to decide.

On the growing black market in illegal cigarette sales, 47% thought the government should cut cigarette taxes significantly while 37% favoured increased law enforcement.

Ratings of former PMs

In an additional question from the August DemosAU poll, Bob Hawke (Labor) was the most admired former PM with a net positive score of +31. John Howard (Liberal) was second at +24 and Robert Menzies (Liberal) third at +17. Ben Chifley and John Curtin (both Labor) were equal fourth at +11.

Malcolm Fraser (Liberal) was sixth at +7, Gough Whitlam (Labor) ninth at +4 and Paul Keating (Labor) 11th at +1. The five most recent PMs were the bottom five, with Gillard (Labor) at -2, Kevin Rudd (Labor) at -5, Tony Abbott (Liberal) at -6, Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal) at -9 and Scott Morrison (Liberal) at -16.

Morgan poll on One Nation’s support by place of birth

Morgan has aggregated its polls from the first seven months of 2026, with an overall sample size of more than 26,000. Overall, One Nation had 24% of the primary vote. Support for them was highest with those born in South Africa (36%), Italy (30%) and mainland Europe (29%). However, those born in Asia only gave One Nation 9%, with mainland China the lowest at 5%.

Victorian Redbridge poll

The Victorian election is on November 28. A Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Australian Financial Review, conducted September 1–14 from a sample of 2,371, gave the Coalition 29% of the primary vote (down one since a Redbridge poll that was taken after the change of premier from Jacinta Allan to Ben Carroll in late July).

One Nation had 25% of the primary vote (up three), Labor 24% (up one), the Greens 15% (up one) and all Others 7% (down four). While Labor is in third on primary votes, Greens preferences would put them well ahead of One Nation, so a Coalition vs Labor two-party estimate is still relevant.

By respondent preferences, the Coalition led Labor by 56–44, a one-point gain for Labor. Labor led One Nation by 53–47.

The graph below shows that the two Redbridge polls taken since late July have been Labor’s worst by respondent preferences. I first introduced this graph last Tuesday.

NSW Resolve poll

The New South Wales state election is in March 2027. A Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal August and September Resolve polls from a sample of 1,100, gave Labor 29% of the primary vote (steady since July), One Nation 25% (steady), the Coalition 24% (up one), the Greens 11% (steady), independents 5% (down three) and others 5% (up one).

No two-party estimate was given, but analyst Kevin Bonham estimated Labor led the Coalition by more than 55–45. Optional preferential voting in NSW helps Labor due to the split right vote.

In a three-way preferred premier question, Labor incumbent Chris Minns had 27%, Liberal leader Kellie Sloane 15% and One Nation state leader Mike Newman 8%. Minns had led Sloane by 36–16 in July.

By 63–19, respondents supported NSW’s gun reforms.

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/2026/09/21/labor-and-albanese-slump-to-new-lows-in-newspoll-but-labor-improves-in-a-demosau-poll/

Keith Rankin, 18 September 2026 – The KiwiSaver policies of both National and Labour are deeply problematic for a number of reasons. It is Labour which seems to be more intent on gaslighting and scapegoating employers; but my critique is also applicable to National, which is showing tendencies of becoming dirigiste according to some commentators (eg National supermarket shock: Why the ‘party of business’ has taken a hard left turn – Audrey Young, NZ Herald, 17 Sep 2026).

Labour’s policy is particularly tone deaf, in that it explicitly seeks to mine employers – to extract revenue from them, especially small and medium size businesses in hospitality and retail etc – without acknowledging that that’s what they are doing, and facilitating the flows of New Zealand wealth towards the darlings of the world’s equity markets; such as the Magnificent Seven. At least regular taxes get recycled back into the domestic economy, rather than leaving the country.

National is more of an equal opportunity miner than Labour; rhetorically seeking to extract more, in equal proportions from employers and employees. In reality, the burden of today’s financial mining is shared between all stakeholders in an ordinary business; regardless of the language used by the policy advocates. Extracting ever more value from businesses represents additional cost; not relief during cost crisis. The explicit contract – signed for us rather than by us when compulsion is present – is that the extracted revenue will be returned, with compound interest, to employees decades into the wildly uncertain future.

It’s worse than I have described above. It’s a policy to further drain an already substantially leaking domestic economy. New Zealanders desperately need their income, today, for their own needs.

We need to remind ourselves of some very basic economic principles.

Economy 101 Basics – The Circular Flow ‘valves’ which serve as ‘policy levers’

When I learned and later taught Economic Principles, the introductory concept of basic macroeconomics was the circular flow of income and spending. Basically the market economy works as flows of spending, production, and income. (GDP – gross domestic product – is computed by measuring these ‘flow’ measures; indeed we have statistics for GDP based, separately, on each of these measures.) Circular flow analysis, while not fashionable among today’s economists, remains a highly valid and intuitive way for lay people and economists to understand upturns and downturns.

The economy is in balance when the spending intentions (especially but not only of households) match up with production intentions (of business firms); production for sale, by definition, creates income. The circular flow is about income being spent, and spending in turn generating production and income; it’s a feedback process. It is widely accepted that optimal policy is for some growth rather than pure balance; principal policy targets are three percent realeconomic growth and two percent inflation, adding up to five percent nominal annual growth.

In the global economy, there are two forms of ‘leakage’ (unspent household income): saving and taxation. And two forms of ‘injection’ (production induced by financial borrowing or asset liquidation): investment spending by firms, and spending by governments. In individual countries’ economies – national economies – there is an additional injection (export sales) and an additional leakage (import purchases). These six forms of injection and leakage are all normal flows; issues arise when they change from normal stable patterns.

Some of these economic ‘valves’ may be understood in net terms. Thus consumer borrowing is a form of dis-saving; of negative saving. And welfare benefit payments are understood as dis-taxation; ie, as negative taxation.

Thus we note that net taxation is tax revenues minus cash benefits; an increase in benefit payments is equivalent – in circular flow terms – to a reduction in taxes. And we note that deficit spending by governments is an injection, identified in the 1930s by Keynes as the most powerful of injections into an anaemic economy; equivalent, in the more extreme cases, to giving a bleeding patient a blood transfusion or giving a diarrhetic person electrolyte-laden fluid. We may say that a failing economy is haemorrhaging; or some other comparable metaphor.

We may think of the ‘body economic’ as the physiological infrastructure through which nutrients flow. Leakages (of nutrients) weaken (ie shrink) the economy unless they are balanced by injections. To sustain a growing economy, injections should slightly exceed leakages.

These six forms of ‘injection’ and ‘leakage’, serving as the valves of the economy, represent the government’s levers to politically manage ‘the economy’; just as doctors manage patients through prescriptions of nutrition, exercise, medicines, or surgery. Some levers can be pulled or pushed directly by governments. Other policy levers work indirectly, relying on incentivised responses of households and business firms. (The Reserve Bank also has its own very blunt and poorly understood lever; interest rates, widely believed to represent the price of money.)

Policy Stimulus versus Policy Constriction

Policy ‘doves’ have a bias (ie leaning) towards stimulatory circular-flow political management, and policy ‘hawks’ have a bias towards constrictive circular-flow policy. Economic liberals claim to have a bias towards zero political management of these levers; which means they prefer that inflationary booms and recessionary busts work themselves out, no matter how long it takes. Hawkish policies also rely to a degree on a process of eventual self-correction. Hawks and liberals tend to accuse doves of short-termism.

The present New Zealand government is arguably the most hawkish that this country has ever had; and the economists who influence policymaking are also unusually hawkish at present. (Myself, I would be classed as a policy dove; though that does not mean I’m an advocate of unmitigated economic growth.) The only contenders for a more hawkish previous government would be the National Government of 1990 to 1993, and the Reform-United Coalition Government in 1931 and 1932.

Stimulus takes place in a country’s economy when there is an increase in injections or a decrease in leakages. Constriction – collective austerity – takes place when there is an overall decrease in injections or increase in leakages. New Zealand’s major economic problem today is that it is too constricted, too anaemic, meaning that many people – but not economic liberals – are arguing for some form of stimulus to revive it. The kinds of stimulus most favoured by policy hawks are ‘tax cuts’ and export incentives.

Let’s look at the six valves in turn; valves which serve as policy levers.

For the entire last quarter-century, the New Zealand economy has received a substantial external stimulus through the export valve. This has impacted on – and continues to impact on – New Zealand mainly in the form of rising market prices for the commodities which New Zealand sells to the rest of the world. This stimulus represents remarkably good fortune, and is not a result of any recent cleverness on the part of New Zealand businesses or New Zealand governments. This accumulated export stimulus is comparable to the stimulus Norway received from North Sea oil; New Zealand has indeed been a ‘lucky country’, arguably more so than Australia. (Australia may have managed its luck better.) Some countries’ governments offer export incentives as a stimulus; generally New Zealand doesn’t, although it promotes exports through free-trade agreements and the like.

An export-based economy does best when the export revenues take the ‘scenic route’ though the body economic (and geographic and demographic), rather than the direct route from exports to imports; just as the corporeal body works best when the nutrients take the scenic route through all the different anatomical bits, and not the direct route from the mouth to the large bowel.

The New Zealand economy has incurred a huge counter-stimulus from the import valve. Generally, the humongous import leakage has exceeded the generous export stimulus. Thus, ‘net exports’ has been a counter-stimulus for New Zealand; perhaps more so this year with higher petrol and diesel prices, though import volume growth is well down. The main drivers from 1985 to 2025 of the very high levels of imports have been both an overvalued New Zealand dollar –caused in large part by the speculative carry trade from 1985 to 2020 – and fortuitously rising export receipts.

We note that the direct restriction of imports is a valid way to stimulate a country’s economy; though not a fashionable way. Most capitalist countries recovered in the late 1930s – from the Great Depression – through import-restricting policies reviving domestic markets; this is not widely acknowledged by economists today. New Zealand, however, largely recovered from that depression before it moved in December 1938 to restrict imports; though the rationing of imports from 1938 did help to stimulate New Zealand’s post-war infrastructure growth.

New Zealand’s recovery in the mid-1930s came from other sources: essentially currency devaluation in 1933, and the early recovery of the British market facilitated by Britain’s 1931 devaluation and its evolving system of empire tariff protection. Also from an easy monetary policy in 1936, following the creation of the Reserve Bank in 1934, enabling large-scale government and private investment in housing.

The investment valve works mainly through business confidence, and represents capital rather than current spending. Increased capital spending (debt- or equity-funded) is undertaken to generate future benefits rather than present benefits. In the simple circular flow description, investment spending is undertaken by business firms. Government investment on infrastructure and housing is also an important stimulus, which is covered in basic textbooks mainly under the government spending valve (see below).

The investment valve was emphasised by John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 General Theory. Keynes coined the term ‘animal spirits‘, meaning that businesses could become spontaneously optimistic prior to an increase in spending on their products. One could say that at present, in the global economy, there’s high animal spirits in the AI industry. A few years ago, there were high animal spirits in the military-hardware industry; but now that ‘big-gun’ industry is driven by actual sales rather than by anticipation.

Business surveys in New Zealand suggest that business confidence remains low (albeit uneven) in New Zealand. The reporting of business confidence is problematic, because, when business confidence is very low, it may nevertheless be increasing. We tend to report whether it is increasing or decreasing, not whether it is high or low. On balance, business confidence in New Zealand today is acting as a constriction or counter-stimulus on the New Zealand economy. The business investment valve works through increased business borrowing (or spending of retained earnings, or sharemarket floats); generally, by businesses incurring more debt or other liabilities which they plan to service out of future sales.

Looking at the saving valve, high levels of saving are a leakage; by definition, more saving means less spending. Saving means ‘non-spending’. So, a choice by households to decrease present spending leads to a process of austerity or constriction – a diminished flow making the national waka (‘economic ship’) leak more, not less; a set of choices more appropriate for an obese economy than for a lean economy. More saving can only be beneficial in: (a) an overstimulated economy; or (b) in an economy where the extra saving is matched by more spending through one of the other valves, where extra leakage is matched by extra stimulus.

We may note that a policy making it easier for people to withdraw KiwiSaver money before savers are aged 65 is a form of stimulus; it’s dissaving when people respond to that incentive, and spend their savings early. A policy to raise the ‘retirement age’ to say 67 is a leakage policy (a counter-stimulus), in that it means that more savings – savings of 65 and 66 year-olds – are deducted from the circular flow. We note that many New Zealand households counter the austerity of KiwiSaver by borrowing more funds (eg from credit cards, or parents) to pay for consumer goods otherwise unavailable to them.

Compulsory non-spending creates bad financial habits, by requiring households to counter this restriction by incurring more debt. Borrowing money to counter the austerity of forced saving is the antithesis of true financial literacy and freedom. KiwiSaver is a device through which ‘Kiwis’ become two-time customers of the finance industry, both by putting money into KiwiSaver accounts, and by borrowing more money to pay outstanding bills resulting from contractually-deducted savings.

The first-tier of extraction is the higher level of profits to financial businesses made possible by governments granting them a captive market. The second-tier is represented by the eventual destination of those funds.

Repaying debt is a form of saving; sometimes contractual saving, sometimes discretionary saving. Increased debt repayment is additional leakage from the circular flow of the economy; a counter-stimulus. Paying interest – servicing debt – is a funds transfer from debtors to creditors; that process amounts to a leakage from the circular flow – from the body economic – if the interest payments diminish overall spending, meaning that the recipients of that interest save it rather than spend it.

Reduced saving – dissaving – is a stimulus, and it can take place in ways we don’t often appreciate; for example, through increased consumer debt, increased withdrawals from savings’ accounts, retirement of term deposits, or from the sale of assets such as shares, bonds, gold, or real estate. The so-called wealth-effect, which provided buoyancy to the New Zealand economy in the late 2000s and in the 2010s, arose from households incurring more debt, borrowing more. More consumer debt secured against rising real estate prices, was the form of dissaving which kept the New Zealand economy in stimulus.

Additional spending through the government valve is a stimulus; ‘unfunded’ government spending is directly injected into the circular flow, unmatched by funding tax increases. This most likely happens through government borrowing, which initially increases government debt; debt which is serviced and repaid by the revived circular flow.

(Japan, with around 250% of GDP as government debt, has government deficits every year, yet its government-debt-to-GDP ratio is falling. Italy is even more striking. From 2020 to 2023 its government debt ratio fell from 154% to 134%, yet in each of those years its fiscal deficit- its additional borrowing – was between 7% and 10% of GDP. Subsequent to getting close to fiscal surplus, after 2023, Italy’s government debt increased to 137%. A government policy of ‘getting to surplus’ commonly increases that government’s indebtedness.)

Commonly, government spending is split – in an important accounting sense – into government investment (capital spending such as physical infrastructure), and government consumption (such as spending on administration, education, healthcare, military capacity, and on prisons and courts). The divide can be artificial; for example, education is often cited as the acquisition of human capital; though we should note that the actual purpose of human life is not simply to be an increasingly productive labour input into the national economy.

Conventionally, the main purpose of debt is to fund capital spending. As most government spending is properly understood as capital spending, governments should not be shy about debt finance. The boost to the circular flow from such spending induces substantial amounts of taxation revenue. But spending on wars of aggression should be financed through direct taxation; that would make capricious wars less popular. Bombing other countries does not generate government revenue in the way that boosting education and healthcare does.

New Zealand’s present predominant political-economy narrative is that more government borrowing and more government spending is in some sense ‘bad’. That narrative – which, in isolation, promotes anti-growth constriction rather than pro-growth stimulus – doesn’t adequately spell out where offsetting stimulus should come from. (Though, implicitly, the favoured offsetting stimulus is usually a mix of ‘tax cuts’ and private borrowing.)

The final ‘valve’ – the final policy lever in the body economic – is that of net taxation. Increases in taxation are constrictive; decreases in taxation are stimulatory to the extent that they are spent rather than saved. Under present taxation structures in most countries, the principal beneficiaries of taxation reductions are those households in the top income deciles. The stimulus of such tax cuts is blunted by the fact that people already with lots of purchasing power often do not spend much of their increased disposable income.

There’s a more nuanced (but very significant) problem. When already-rich people receive pecuniary windfalls, they spend extra on luxury goods rather than on wage goods. Wage goods are the kinds of goods and services purchased by everyone and produced at scale. Industrial capitalism is predicated on mass-production; on the process of keeping unit costs low through economies of scale. When we increasingly rely on the very rich to maintain the circular flow of spending and income, they buy personal services, luxury travel and hospo (‘hospitality’), and bespoke jewellery and fashionwear. When the new rich buy disproportionately more bespoke stuff, which is not produced at scale, increased luxury spending undermines the industrial system which made the lovers of luxury rich in the first place.

A more practical and equitable version of stimulus by reducing net taxes would be to raise benefits. This would be an easy matter if there is a UBI (or other form of universal income) in place; just borrow, raise the level of universal income payable, and collect the resulting income and expenditure taxation revenue. Otherwise, this stimulus is a complex matter of navigating disjointed social income mechanisms, such as Superannuation, Job-seeker Benefits, Student Allowances, Working for Families and/or Accommodation Supplements.

Today New Zealand needs a second stimulus, in addition to reliance on rising export prices. If New Zealand households increases their KiwiSavings, a constriction to the body economic, then New Zealand needs an extra additional stimulus to counter what would otherwise be an increasingly leaking domestic economy.

A Fourth Pair of Valves

In relation to countries’ foreign transactions, there are two more ‘valves’ – opportunities for leakage or injection – in addition to exports and imports: foreign financial inflows and outflows. These are commonly called ‘foreign investment‘, but they are quite different from the investment valve described above.

When New Zealanders sell assets (especially financial assets such as shares or bonds) to foreigners, it’s an inflow to New Zealand’s circular flow; a stimulus, an injection, for New Zealand. The must ubiquitous example for New Zealand was this country’s participation in the carry trade from 1985 to 2020; it was the carry trade which caused New Zealand to have permanent annual deficits on net exports, despite highly favourable export prices.

When New Zealanders buy such assets from foreigners, it’s an outflow from New Zealand’s circular flow; a counter-stimulus, an anti-stimulus. An increase in purchases of foreign assets represents a domestic leakage. This is what both Labour’s and National’s KiwiSaver policies promise to do; they promise to haemorrhage the present New Zealand economy.

There’s a counterpoise. When assets generate a yield – for example, interest – there is a flow in the opposite direction. An increase in interest (and similar) payments to foreigners represents a leakage; an increase in interest payments from foreigners represents an injection. This last part today relates to present yields from international financial investments made in the past. Interest payments to foreigners are treated in the accounts as equivalent to imports; interest receipts are treated as exports.

KiwiSaver foreign financial investments are expected to compound overseas for decades. Meaning that the advertised counter-inflows into the New Zealand economy are expected to peak in the 2060s. And those inflows might not happen. British and French holders of Russian bonds in 1914 did not receive any interest at all, let alone compound interest; rather, they received practically noting at all on the liquidation of their ‘investments’.

(We should note that much of the present portfolio of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund – New Zealand’s sovereign wealth fund – is equivalent today to such Russian bonds in the 1900s. And on the matter of compound interest, I heard last Monday Sam Stubbs (of Simplicity Finance) – refer Sam Stubbs reacts to Labour’s KiwiSaver policy, RNZ 14 Sep 2026 – mentioning “the power of compound interest” in his argument that Labour needs to extract even more than it is promising to do; Stubbs’ comments were divorced from the economic growth fundamentals which make the real realisation of compound interest possible in some circumstances.)

These transactions – relating to financial capital crossing international borders, crossing from one currency into another – are neither leakages nor injections for the world as a whole. For the global economy, there are just four circular flow ‘valves’: investment (in its economic rather than its financial meaning), saving (meaning ‘non-spending’), spending by governments, and taxation by governments.

When the global circular flow is in some semblance of balance, more saving by Kiwis means more spending by some other party – in New Zealand or overseas. Such other parties may be households, businesses, or governments.

KiwiSaver Compulsion

Both Labour and National are advocating larger KiwiSaver deductions which will become fully compulsory; today KiwiSaver deductions are only compulsory for the majority of the population who have previously opted in. This makes such deductions tantamount to a tax which is paid to funds’ managers rather than to the Treasury.

The basic (fiscal) social contract is that income-shares extracted by the collective (ie government) as taxes are paid to the collective, for the purpose of collective well-being.

Tax-equivalent extractions paid to funds’ managers break this social contract. They represent the worst of both worlds. These circular flow leakages from households do not go to government; in all likelihood they don’t facilitate business investment either. Increased net investment requires positive ‘animal spirits’; significantly positive business confidence. These income deductions largely go into the pockets of people selling assets, funding the consumption of upper income decile households; with perhaps half of these already-rich consumers not being New Zealand residents.

Bernard Hickey’s recent Kaka podcast on YouTube – Hickey being a widely respected independent financial journalist in New Zealand – contains a chart (8′ into podcast) labelled “61% of KiwiSaver contributions invested overseas”. The chart shows a big jump in overseas ‘investments’ in June 2026 compared to March 2026. Hickey goes on to note that “it’s worth remembering here that that’s a large chunk of money which will no longer be invested or spent into the New Zealand economy … we are looking at [61% of] $24 billion dollars. … When you withdraw that money from New Zealand circulation it needs to be replaced by something else, or you’ll get a depression [my emphasis] or at least a contraction in your GDP.” That’s three percent of New Zealand’s present GDP; a massive counter-stimulus.

Much of this substantial circular flow leakage represents purchases of assets on the world’s primary markets; meaning that it will be spent as new business spending (especially by the Magnificent Seven who are the darlings of the world’s sharemarkets – such as SpaceX building rockets to fly to Mars and AI hyperscaling, or Super PAC election bribery in the United States, including the huge Crypto-funded PAC Fairshake and the Leading the Future AI sponsored Super PAC mentioned on Al Jazeera’s Let’s Focus, What makes these midterms so pivotal? 15 Sep 2026, from 7′ into video). And on hyperscaling, note this What’s at stake in AI’s trillion-dollar gamble? David Rotman, MIT Technology Review, 15 Sep 2026.

In other words, New Zealand’s KiwiSaver contributions are increasingly ‘feeding the beast’; or the ‘beasts’ that are United States’ big tech in particular and the world’s stockmarket bubble in general. A growing number of financial commentators see a major global financial crash coming soon; compulsory levies which feed the beast – such as KiwiSaver deductions – forestall such a crash, but only exacerbate it when it happens.

A small part of this new ‘foreign investment’ by New Zealand households will be advanced to foreign governments seeking to boost their national economies. Much new government borrowing – especially in the Global South – is non-discretionary; it’s to keep ‘the lights on’ or the schoolteachers paid. While many poor countries’ governments borrow money from the world’s financial markets, often at excessive interest rates, the poorest countries – and the richest countries – are net ‘foreign investors’. Funds are increasingly leaving New Zealand because of the lack of domestic borrowers willing and able to compete for these funds; New Zealand is increasingly behaving like a poor country lacking investment opportunities outside of the export-oriented sector.

So

A lack of domestic borrowing in New Zealand – except for distress borrowing by overstressed households, and speculative borrowing – is the missing piece of the New Zealand narrative. Too many New Zealand businesses are practically insolvent – a balance-sheet recession – and central government chooses to minimise borrowing, preferring to preside over an increasingly leaky body economic; favouring a sinking waka with a bit of top-end glitter over a proud sailing waka.

KiwiSaver expansion increasingly represents the symptoms of a failing economic nation. But New Zealand is changing fast; and will recover, as an increasingly Asian nation state, hopefully still with its underlying personality intact.

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.

By Pita Ligaiula in Savusavu

Pacific media leaders and journalists from across the region will tackle press freedom, newsroom survival, artificial intelligence, anti-corruption, climate change and the future of journalism when the Pacific Media Summit gets underway in Savusavu today.

Fijian Media Association (FMA) general secretary Stanley Simpson told PACNEWS the summit comes at a critical time as media organisations across the region face growing pressure from misinformation, disinformation, new technology and declining traditional advertising revenues.

“Newsrooms are not just fighting for their independence, they are fighting for their survival,” Simpson said.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific meda reports

The 8th Pacific Media Summit, organised by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and hosted by the Fijian Media Association, will bring together regional media practitioners, researchers and leaders to discuss press freedom, media sustainability, climate and disaster reporting, artificial intelligence, digital inclusion and inclusive media leadership.

Simpson said the discussions would focus on how newsrooms can respond to technological change without losing the basic principles of independent journalism.

“We have really consulted widely about all the challenges facing both the big and small countries of the region, the challenges faced by newsrooms, brought about by the new technology, but also how we maintain the basics, the independence of the media,” he told PACNEWS.

The summit theme, “Reaching the Remote: Media and Digital Innovation for a Connected Blue Pacific,” reflects the need to ensure media and digital developments reach communities beyond capital cities.

Closer to communities
Simpson said Savusavu in Fiji was deliberately chosen as the venue to put the discussions closer to communities experiencing some of the challenges being discussed.

“We have come to Savusavu to talk about this, a place that is facing these challenges, as opposed to holding these meetings in a capital city where we may be far removed from the challenges we are aiming to overcome,” he said.

He said the growth of digital platforms and AI was also putting pressure on the traditional business models that have sustained news organisations.

“Many of the traditional ways of the media staying alive through advertising is under threat now with the digital spaces and AI,” Simpson said.

The summit will also examine how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used by newsrooms to improve coverage while maintaining editorial independence and journalistic standards.

Simpson said high-profile regional speakers would contribute to discussions on the future of Pacific media, including researchers working on AI and its application in newsrooms.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is expected to deliver the keynote address on Wednesday, while Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica will also attend.

Other speakers include former Fiji President and Tui Macuata, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, who will address climate change.

Established media figures
Established Simpson said many of the region’s established media figures including PINA president Kalafi Moala, Johnson Honimae, John Woods, Leilani Reklai, Katalina Tohi and Solomone Finau — continued to contribute to the fight for media freedom, independence and professional standards.

“Some of these names we’ve heard for many years, and still contributing, still fighting the cause of media freedom, media independence, and better standards to tell the stories of our people,” he said.

For the Fijian Media Association, Simpson said hosting the summit also carried significance after years of pressure on the country’s media sector.

“We’ve come through a long period of suppression and struggle and facing hostility. And this is perhaps a symbolic event where we can declare that we are back,” he said.

He urged regional delegates to use the summit for frank discussions on the direction of Pacific journalism.

“We really have to have honest discussions about what needs to be done and where the region needs to go,” Simpson said.

He said the summit’s focus on technology and connectivity should not come at the expense of the core principles of journalism.

“Using new technologies that we have, but essentially keeping to the basics of journalism — accuracy, fair and balanced,” he said.

Simpson said the discussions in Savusavu could help shape the direction of Pacific media for years to come.

“This is where we set the direction for the next, I would say, five to 10 years for Pacific media,” he said.

Pita Ligaiula is a journalist with Pacnews. Republished from Pacnews.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/pacific-media-summit-to-set-direction-for-next-decade-of-pacific-media/

COMMENTARY: By Tracy Campbell

There is something grotesque about taking one of the greatest intellectual achievements in human history — a technology capable of translating languages, modelling proteins, accelerating scientific discovery, assisting doctors, educating children and placing an astonishing repository of human knowledge at an ordinary person’s fingertips — and harnessing it to the ancient government business of deciding who may be killed.

States hardly needed technological assistance with that.

For as long as states have made war, they have assassinated, disappeared, tortured and executed.

• READ MORE: Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
• The controversial documentary NAZA: 10 reasons to defend this whistleblower war on Gaza film
• Other AI killing in Gaza

They have acted on rotten intelligence, mistaken civilians for enemies, bombed the wrong houses and buried the innocent alongside the intended target.

Humanity has accumulated centuries of law in an attempt to restrain that capacity for violence.

Now we have given it an algorithm.

A +972 Magazine investigation into Israel’s “Lavender” system used in the Gaza genocide describes an AI-assisted process that marked tens of thousands of Palestinians as suspected militants for potential assassination. Six Israeli intelligence sources described enormous target lists, scant human scrutiny and predetermined tolerances for civilian deaths.

Significance of Lavender
The significance of Lavender reaches far beyond one system, one military, or one war.

Artificial intelligence does not hate anyone. It has no territory to conquer, no frightened electorate to appease, no flag to salute and no enemy it wants dead.

It cannot decide that one nationality, ethnicity or political movement is hateful. It cannot lust for revenge.

Humans supply the malice

And AI offers governments a hideous new possibility: not merely to make lethal decisions, but to industrialise them.

A human life can become data, the data a probability, the probability a classification and the classification a target. Somewhere along that progression, the unique, precious universe of a living person — somebody’s child, parent, lover, neighbour — disappears into a machine-generated assessment which can be processed thousands of times faster than any human being could properly investigate the people concerned.

That isn’t intelligence replacing human cruelty — it is human cruelty acquiring computational power.

Recreated in machinery
Alan Turing wondered whether machines could think. John McCarthy gave artificial intelligence its name. Claude Shannon helped establish the mathematics on which our information age was built. Marvin Minsky devoted much of his life to understanding whether intelligence itself could be recreated in machinery.

They helped begin an intellectual adventure of almost preposterous ambition: to understand intelligence sufficiently well that we might reproduce some part of it.

Today Demis Hassabis speaks of developing AI to benefit humanity. Dario Amodei leads Anthropic, founded around the problem of making immensely powerful AI safe.

Sam Altman heads OpenAI, whose stated mission is to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity.

Surely this cannot be what benefiting humanity was supposed to mean.

AI may help us understand disease, proteins, climate, mathematics, language and perhaps eventually the nature of intelligence itself. Yet the same extraordinary capacity to detect patterns across quantities of information beyond the reach of a human mind can be turned towards finding patterns in a population and deciding which people resemble the people a state wants dead.

And therein lies another danger.

Human judgement, evidence
When a human intelligence officer says, “I believe this person is a combatant,” we understand that a human being has made a judgment and can demand the evidence behind it.

When a machine assigns a probability, the mathematics can lend the conclusion an entirely undeserved aura of objectivity. But an algorithm cannot cleanse dubious intelligence, discriminatory assumptions or corrupted data merely by processing them at enormous speed.

Nor can it assume responsibility.

The analyst can point to the algorithm. The commander can point to the analyst. The politician can invoke the demands of war. The engineer can say the machine was only an advisory tool.

The machine, magnificently innocent of everything, points nowhere.

That is why human responsibility must remain absolute. I would go so far as to say that any use of AI in warfare should be prohibited.

Artificial intelligence must never become moral laundering for state violence. A computer-generated confidence score does not acquire the moral weight of evidence merely because mathematics produced it.

10,000 suspicions
Processing 10,000 suspicions in the time a human being could properly investigate 10 does not make those suspicions more reliable. It merely makes killing scalable.

Turing did not ask whether machines could think so that governments could think less.

Human beings have finally built machines capable of doing things our ancestors could scarcely have imagined.

If one of the achievements of artificial intelligence is that it enables us to kill people faster, we will not have taught machines something new.

We will simply have taught them something terribly old.

Tracy-Moana Campbell is an employment relations advocate based in Masterton and an activist on Palestinian human rights. She had a commercial orange grove in Lebanon 10km from the Israeli border in 2005-2011. Israel bombed her oranges in 2006. It is a war crime to destroy civilian food sources. This commentary was originally a social media post but has been republished with the author’s permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/gaza-genocide-we-made-machines-that-think-then-corrupted-them-for-industrialised-slaughter/

With the Opportunity Party on the cusp of the 5% threshold to make it into parliament after the November 7 election, its signature “tax reset” proposal deserves close attention.

The policy is essentially a universal basic income (or “citizen’s income”), with a range of supplementary payments replacing current welfare benefits and NZ Super, funded by a land tax.

Opportunity presents its reset as a solution to New Zealand’s welfare problems. But is it really?

Most universal basic income (UBI) proposals fall down on two major design problems. They fail to provide enough income for all but the simplest household types. And they typically require implausibly high income tax rates to pay it.

Opportunity’s policy aims to get around the first problem by including additional payments on top of the UBI.

As well as an annual tax-free income of NZ$19,400 there would be add-ons for disability ($6,000), housing (average $6,500 for singles, $10,500 families), sole parents ($9,500), over-65s ($10,000 for singles, $5,250 for a couple) and children ($6,750 to $18,250 each, depending on age).

The package would replace all existing main benefits, NZ Super, the accommodation supplement, Working for Families tax credits, Best Start and paid parental leave.

The proposal gets around the second problem of higher income taxes by funding the UBI and add-ons with a tax on the unimproved value of land: 1.75% annually on urban land, and 0.5% on rural land.

This means only relatively minor tweaks to the income tax schedule would be needed. The top marginal tax rate of 39% would stay.

But there are drawbacks to both these solutions.

Little help for the poorest

Although Opportunity downplays it, much of the existing welfare apparatus would still be necessary.

True, there would be no work testing. But a range of other eligibility tests would continue: health status for the disability supplement; relationship status for the sole-parent add-on; cost verification for the housing allowance; and shared-care rules for the child allowances.

Moreover, all these add-ons are targeted, so would require income testing. Individually, the supplements may be justified. But collectively they raise an obvious question: if all this is needed, why bother with the UBI?

A second and more serious problem is that the proposal helps the worst off the least, namely beneficiaries on below-poverty-level incomes. To propose such a major change to the tax/benefit system and yet do so little to address welfare poverty suggests a blind spot around the biggest problems facing the current system.

This is highlighted in the graph below which compares Opportunity’s proposals with current policy for two family types: a single person alone, and a sole parent with one young (two-year-old) child.

The horizontal axis shows different levels of earnings from nil to $200,000. The vertical axis shows the household’s in-the-hand income after taking account of income taxes, benefits, the citizen’s income and add-ons.

For simplicity, the current accommodation supplement and Opportunity’s housing add-on are excluded. While the absolute values are different, the broad picture is the same for other household types.

For all annual gross incomes above about $20,000, both households are clearly better off under Opportunity’s proposal (before considering the land value tax).

The exact amount varies depending on income. But for earnings over about $30,000, these single-adult households would typically gain $11,000 or more – enough for a homeowner to pay land value tax on land worth up to around $650,000. The amount is considerably higher for couples because each person receives the citizen’s income.

However, gains from Opportunity’s plan are much smaller (and in some cases negative) for people with little or no market income – that is, all beneficiaries and many superannuitants. A single adult with no income gains just $27 a year – 52 cents a week.

If they supplemented their citizen’s income with a few hours’ work, they would actually be worse off than under current rules.

The situation is slightly better for the sole parent household in this example. If they had no other income, they would be $2,869 better off under the tax reset (less if they work a few hours on top of the UBI).

Again assuming no effect from the land value tax, a person on a disability benefit with no other income is between $3,324 better off and $984 worse off, depending on how much disability allowance they currently receive. A single superannuitant with no other income gains just $532 a year.

These effects seem intentional. Rather than prioritising poverty reduction, Opportunity’s citizen income package has been designed to more or less match current welfare payments, with the bigger gains higher up the income distribution.

Problems with a land value tax

The land value tax does have some positives. Land taxes are economically efficient and relatively hard to avoid, and a land value tax would be an incentive for more intensive land use.

Arguably, reducing New Zealand’s heavy reliance on income taxes and GST by switching some revenue gathering from income to wealth could also be seen as an advantage.

But there would be some serious losers.

Introducing the tax would almost certainly be associated with a large fall in land values. A significant number of homeowners could suddenly face the risk of negative equity.

Paying a tax bill that would likely be more than $10,000 annually on an average home would be near impossible for many superannuitants, beneficiaries and others.

There are ways to mitigate some of these problems. But even leaving the politics of taxation aside, implementing a new land tax would be fraught.

Perhaps the fundamental problem with Opportunity’s proposal is that it attempts to construct a UBI-based welfare system broadly within the current level of total tax revenue.

The result is a structure that does little for those at the bottom of the income distribution and yet retains many of the current targeting complexities.

An alternative UBI package could produce better outcomes for those relying on benefits. But that would require higher total tax revenue, making its political feasibility even less likely.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/opportunitys-tax-reset-could-benefit-many-households-but-does-little-for-the-poorest/

School holidays mean more free time and less structure.

School drop-offs and pick-ups disappear, bedtimes may shift, and families may need to organise childcare, travel or visits with extended family to fill out the days. It means everyone in the household is adjusting to changes in how each day looks.

So how can parents and carers create routines that give children some predictability without turning the holidays into another timetable?

Why do routines matter?

At its core, a routine is about predictability.

Routines mean children gradually learn what to expect. They begin to understand the sequence in which things take place, the cues that signal what comes next and what is likely to happen when they follow familiar routines. In other words, the pattern of the routine helps set expectations of what the day will look like.

When children know what is likely to happen, it can make it easier for them to navigate everyday life. Consistent routines, responses, and boundaries also provide them with opportunities to practise skills such as managing emotions, behaviour and attention.

Flexibility is important

This doesn’t mean every minute needs to be planned. Predictability and flexibility can coexist. What matters is children have enough consistency to know what to expect, while families can adapt when circumstances change.

There is also no single “best” family routine. Families have different work arrangements, cultural traditions, caregiving arrangements and children’s needs. A good routine is one that is predictable enough for children and sustainable for the family.

Why are school holidays challenging?

Family members’ routines often change during the school holiday period, which can lead to feelings of unfamiliarity and uncertainty.

First, the structure provided by school disappears. This means children suddenly have a lot more free time. For parents, this can mean taking leave from work, arranging childcare or changing their usual working arrangements.

Second, holiday planning can create disagreements between adults. They might disagree on questions, such as “which grandparents should we visit?” Parents may also disagree about rules, including screen use.

Third, children may respond differently to the same environment. While some children may enjoy the freedom and spontaneity of school holidays, others may find changes to their usual routines unsettling. This means parents and carers should pay attention to how their own children respond and adjust routines accordingly.

So how can families build a holiday routine that works?

Plan and negotiate in advance

If possible, discuss arrangements before the holidays, particularly when extended family or multiple households are involved. Compromise may be necessary, such as alternating which grandparents the family visits each year.

You can also involve older children in planning. Giving them a voice can help them understand the reasons behind decisions and develop their own planning skills.

If children have homework or other school tasks, decide when this will happen during the holiday period, rather than leaving it until the last minute. Think ahead about how you will transition back to the school routine.

Keep some normality

Maintaining a few familiar anchors can help children transition to the school holiday routine without it feeling too rigid. Identify the things that matter most to your family, such as family movie time or weekly visits to the grandparents. Keep these relatively consistent. You might also decide to maintain similar times for meals, wake-ups and sleep, or planned activities, such as going for a daily walk.

At the same time, leave space for spontaneous activities and remember that a holiday routine should work for parents and carers too.

Focus on what you can control

For families with shift-working parents, shared custody or children moving between households, identical routines may not be realistic. Instead, focus on creating predictability during the time children are with you, and communicate with other caregivers where possible.

For example, a parent who works different shifts might make reading a bedtime story a regular part of their time together, even if it sometimes happens in the morning rather than at night.

Ask for help when you need it

Parenting does not have to be managed alone. Evidence-based parenting programs, including online programs, can help parents build confidence and develop strategies for managing everyday family life.

Remember, school holidays don’t need to be completely structured. Children need time to relax, play and be spontaneous.

The goal is not to recreate school at home. It is to create enough predictability that children know what to expect, while keeping enough flexibility for families to enjoy the holidays together.

Tianyi Ma is an affiliate of the Parenting and Family Support Centre, which is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program. This program is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) is a private company licensed by Uniquest on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. The author of this report has no share or ownership of TPI. TPI had no involvement in the study design, or analysis or interpretation of data.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/school-holidays-are-coming-heres-how-families-can-keep-some-sort-of-routine/

Do you remember how old you were when you got your first period? And whether it was considered early, late or about average?

Some parents are reportedly overhauling lunchboxes, shampoos and doing all they can to attempt to delay their child’s periods, so they don’t “grow up too early”.

But are periods actually getting earlier? And is this anything to worry about? Let’s look at what the science says – and whether parents can actually impact the timing.

When do periods start and has this changed?

Girls begin puberty between the age of eight and 13 years. Breast development, known as thelarche, is the first sign. Menarche, the first menstrual period, follows 1.5 to three years later.

The evidence suggests girls are entering puberty a little earlier.

A global review found thelarche began, on average, about three months earlier per decade from 1977 (10.5 years) to 2013 (9.6 years) but this varied across the world.

In Australia, the average age of menarche is about 12.9, but it’s unclear how this has changed over time.

In the United States, the average age of menarche fell from 12.5 years among those born from 1950 to 1969, to 11.9 years among those born from 2000 to 2005.

But the researchers asked the women to remember when their periods began. This risks inaccurate recollection, or recall bias, if participants can’t remember their age when they got their first period.

The typical range for periods to start is nine to 15 years and depends on factors such as ethnicity.

What if puberty starts earlier?

Precocious puberty means breast or pubic hair development before age eight in girls, not simply an early period. About 3% of children show signs before age eight.

If your child has breast or pubic hair development or a first period before they’re eight, take them to your family doctor for a check up.

Only a small proportion of girls – around 0.2% – have an underlying medical issue causing precocious puberty that requires treatment.

How does puberty start?

Puberty is triggered by the hypothalamus, a region at the base of the brain, when it releases gonadotopin-relaseasing hormones (GnRH). This causes the chain reaction of chemical messengers for puberty.

The hormones reach the pituitary gland in the brain, which triggers luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). These hormones stimulate the ovaries to produce oestrogen and progesterone.

Genetics, body weight, diet, physical activity, environmental factors and family circumstances may all influence when these hormones are triggered.

Genetics

Some 400 genes and genetic markers are associated with the timing of the first period, so we can see how variable this can be.

A study of around 370,000 Icelandic women found that of the factors that contribute to the variance in the age at menarche, genetic signals account for around 25%.

Another study estimated the age of menarche was half attributed to genes and half to other factors.

Body weight

In more economically advanced countries, trends toward earlier puberty have correlated with changes in body weight.

This is often attributed to excess calorie intakes, but also with reduced physical activity in children.

Higher body mass index, based on weight in relation to height, predicts earlier thelarche and menarche, while earlier puberty may promote later weight gain.

But while this looks like a neat cycle, shared biological and social factors may affect both, making cause and consequence difficult to separate. Early menarche may be a risk marker rather than a cause of obesity.

Diet and exercise

Studies have found nutritional deficiencies – of proteins, essential amino acids, calories and essential fatty acids, as well as some micronutrients such as iron and zinc – can delay the onset of puberty.

Girls who play a lot of sport or dance at a young age sometimes have delayed periods. This may be a result of low energy availability, which can delay triggering the hormones that start puberty.

Restricting food or encouraging excessive exercise can delay periods because the body lacks energy – this can be harmful.

Environmental chemicals

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are associated with the disruption of hormones during puberty and puberty timing.

In Australia, many have been banned, phased out or limited. This includes polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), bisphenol A (BPA) and certain phthalates.

Some endocrine-disrupting chemicals are still found in personal care products such as shampoo, as well as in plastic bottles, containers and elsewhere in the environment.

But an association between earlier puberty and endocrine-disrupting chemicals doesn’t mean swapping every plastic container or shampoo bottle will postpone a period. We’re all exposed to them to some degree.

Family circumstances

Finally, social and family circumstances may also play a role in determining the age of menarche, with studies linking father absence and earlier menarche.

But financial strain, maternal stress and family disruption are difficult to separate, so the link may be related to these other factors.

What does this all mean?

Parents can’t control when their child’s period starts. No particular “clean” diet or exercise regimen is proven to safely delay normal puberty. And when it comes to plastics, reducing exposure is reasonable but you can’t control this entirely.

Puberty isn’t something to fear. A girl’s first period is an opportunity for parents to help her understand her body, prepare for what’s coming, learn how to manage periods and let her know when to seek help for pain.

Getting a first period doesn’t mean a girl is now ready for dating, having sex, or “losing innocence” in general. It doesn’t mean she has to “grow up”, dress differently, or stop enjoying her childhood.

Menarche is just a biological process, preparing the body for maturity. It means the body is healthy and doing what it’s supposed to do. And happens at different times for everybody.

Jodie Avery receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Shae Maple receives funding from an Australian government Research Training Program scholarship and a Healthy Development Adelaide and Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation PhD Excellence Award.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/are-girls-getting-their-periods-earlier-and-can-parents-do-anything-about-it/

If you’re renting a house or apartment, you’re probably all too familiar with rent tech: online systems and apps for searching and applying for properties, paying rent and logging maintenance requests.

These platforms collect, use and circulate an enormous amount of data from and about renters. Renters generally have no choice but to use the platforms, and little say over the data they are required to provide.

Many of these platforms now also incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to automate communications with renters and optimise property manager workflows. In my interviews with renters, many have told me they find using rent tech systems “dehumanising”.

I am investigating the impact of rent tech for my PhD research, which has also helped inform a new report from the non-profit Consumer Policy Research Centre. Surveying rent tech platforms across Australia, we found a grim situation: while protections for renters are improving in Victoria after recent changes to the law, the same can’t be said elsewhere.

Deceptive designs and dubious claims

The report notes widespread use of deceptive or manipulative design tactics (known as “dark patterns”) by rent tech platforms.

We found several attempts to trick renters into handing over more data than necessary. Even where it’s not mandatory to provide certain pieces of information, renters are sometimes pushed and nudged to give it or shamed when they don’t.

This aligns with a landmark ruling from the privacy commissioner in April. The commissioner found that one rental application platform, 2Apply, was collecting too much personal information from renters, and doing so in an unfair way.

The commissioner looked at the platform’s “online choice architecture”: its design, structure and way of presenting information. The commissioner found it was unfairly pressuring renters into handing over more information than they would otherwise.

Though the commissioner only investigated 2Apply, she called for other rent tech providers to improve their practices. The findings in our new report suggest this has not happened.

Our research also found one platform using a dubious “personality questionnaire” as part of the rental application process, which claimed to screen applicants based on “agreeableness”. Some platforms also compelled renters to pay for unnecessary add-ons, such as joining a rewards program with questionable value, or for data storage programs.

Rent tech practices are improving in Victoria, but lagging in other states

In March, Victoria introduced new laws to limit the questions that can be asked on a rental application form. The laws also ban charging renters third-party fees for things like rent payment or ID checks.

We examined platforms before and after these new rules came into effect. We found the changes to Victorian rental laws led to an improvement in practices across many of the major platforms. Paid ID verification has been removed, and the application process has become streamlined, with fewer invasive or unnecessary questions.

However, when we checked the application processes in other states, the improvements disappeared. Outside of Victoria, the same old data-harvesting practices continue.

Despite the improvements in Victoria, we found rent tech platforms may be circumventing the new laws by asking for additional personal information outside the rental application process. This suggests rent tech companies may continue invasive data practices unless something makes them stop, such as stronger Australia-wide regulations.

No choice

Renters have very little choice over which rent tech platforms they use, and minimal control over what happens to the data they are required to provide.

Opting out is becoming increasingly difficult. Online rental listings often provide no alternative but to use an online platform to apply for a property.

This is made worse by the significant imbalance of power in the private rental sector and the ongoing rental crisis. Renters are presently particularly vulnerable to unfair practices.

In 2023, consumer advocacy organisation CHOICE found 41% of renters were pressured to use a rent tech platform. Renters also can’t simply decide to use a different platform to the ones implemented by real estate agencies.

Renters are also not provided clear information about what is happening with their data. While reviewing privacy policies and terms and conditions for the new report, I found they are mostly vague and often contradictory. They use broad, technical language and terminology that makes it incredibly hard to understand what is happening with renter data.

Some of the privacy policies list concerning uses of personal information that renters might not reasonably expect, like sharing renter data with debt collectors and financial product providers.

Need for further improvements

Housing is a basic necessity. Renters have little choice but to engage with rent tech, regardless of unfair practices or privacy concerns.

What can be done to improve the situation for renters? One place to start would be some guidance for the real estate industry with regards to best practices when choosing and implementing rent tech. The peak body for real estate professionals would be well placed to do this work.

However, the most meaningful improvement will require more changes to Australian privacy law and state-based rental laws, as well as rigorous enforcement.

Industry experts interviewed for the new report agreed that real estate agencies – including those that operate as small businesses – ought to be required to comply with privacy laws.

Currently, small businesses are exempt from the Privacy Act. Since July, some aspects of real estate operations now have some privacy obligations under new anti-money-laundering rules, but this does not apply to rental property management. This means that privacy protections for the renting part of real estate businesses remain patchy across Australia.

The federal government is currently proposing reforms to the Privacy Act. Protections that benefit renters across Australia shouldn’t be left out.

Samantha Floreani receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a scholarship from the Australian Urban and Housing Research Institute.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/personality-tests-dodgy-reward-programs-ai-bots-how-rent-tech-platforms-make-renting-a-dehumanising-experience/

Australia’s migration debate is at fever pitch, with both the government and One Nation announcing policies on the subject in the past week.

In the case of the latter, commentators have drawn parallels between Pauline Hanson’s approach and immigration policy in Canada, albeit with big caveats.

The Canadian example has been mentioned by politicians numerous times as a case study for what Australia should be doing. Those politicians, however, would have been disappointed by the government’s migration policy, as there was little Canadian influence to be seen.

What exactly is Canada doing to manage migration, and what lessons does its experiment have for Australia?

Looking in the wrong places

Much of Australia’s migration policy discussion focuses on the wrong number: net overseas migration, or NOM.

It’s a useful statistic. It measures migrant arrivals minus departures, giving us a rough measure of how migration changes the population.

But that does not make NOM a good policy target. It combines the movements of Australians, New Zealanders, permanent migrants and many different kinds of temporary migrants. And because it is the difference between two large flows (arrivals and departures), it can change dramatically when their timing gets out of sync.

That is exactly what happened after COVID. Border closures suppressed both arrivals and departures. When borders reopened, arrivals recovered first. Departures took longer. The result was an extraordinary post-pandemic “migration splash” across the rich world: NOM surged and then fell as arrivals and departures gradually realigned.

Trying to manage the migrant population by targeting volatile NOM flows is a bit like trying to fill a bath to the right level by precisely controlling the tap, without looking at how much water is in the tub.

So what’s Canada doing?

Canada has begun to reverse that logic.

Its temporary resident population grew extraordinarily quickly after COVID, reaching about 7.6% of the total population at its 2024 peak.

The government responded by making the size of the temporary population itself a policy target. It now wants non-permanent residents to make up less than 5% of the population by the end of 2027.

That has required substantial changes. Canada has planned for 385,000 new temporary arrivals in 2026 and 370,000 in each of the following two years. International student flows have fallen particularly sharply. Permanent migration, meanwhile, is being held at 380,000 a year.

But Canada is not simply “cutting immigration”. It has changed the logic of migration planning. Instead of managing temporary migration as a series of flows across the border, it is managing the size of the temporary population already living in the country.

It’s doing this by reducing new temporary arrivals, tightening pathways that prolong temporary status, relying on more departures as visas expire, and moving some temporary residents into permanent status — levers Australia can control, too.

And in Canada, the temporary migrant stock is falling: from a peak of about 3.15 million in October 2024 to around 2.56 million by April this year.

What are the consequences?

This approach has both promise and pitfalls.

Slower population growth is reportedly helping to push down asking rents in several major Canadian cities.

But it is also weakening demand for new housing, which can discourage construction. Canada’s experiment therefore suggests that reducing population pressure can buy time, but cannot substitute for building more homes.

There are economic trade-offs, too. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office found that an earlier version of the plan would reduce aggregate Gross Domestic Product (GDP), because Canada would have fewer workers and consumers. But GDP per person would be higher, and wages modestly higher.

So far, fears of widespread worker shortages have not materialised. Canada currently has around three unemployed people for every job vacancy. And it has managed to retain temporary workers in shortage areas, such as health care, construction and the food processing industry, as well as in some rural regions.

Public attitudes are also interesting. The proportion of Canadians saying immigration was too high rose from 22% in early 2023 to 54% in late 2024, before falling to 47% a year later. Over roughly the same period, the share saying the government was on the wrong track in managing immigration also fell.

That does not prove the policy restored public confidence. But it suggests confidence depends not only on the migration level itself, but also on whether governments appear able to manage it.

There is another reason to focus on the stock of migrants already in the country.

Temporary migrants are temporary in law, but not necessarily in their effects on society. They work, rent homes, pay taxes, use infrastructure, form relationships and become part of communities. Many remain for years while moving through successive temporary visas.

Yet their legal status remains conditional. That creates practical and ethical problems. How should governments plan for people officially considered temporary, but living in the country for years? How does temporary status increase vulnerability to exploitation? And how can people be expected to identify with and belong to a society in which they are effectively living on borrowed time?

For countries such as Australia and Canada – which have historically seen themselves as countries where migrants settle, not just pass through – this raises an even bigger question: what proportion of the population should live for extended periods in temporary status? A stock target at least forces us to answer it.

What’s in a number?

But why 5%? There is no obvious reason why 5% is the right number. When Canada first announced the target, the government explicitly described it as a “starting point”, to be refined through consultation rather than derived from any demonstrated economic or demographic optimum.

Australia should decide what level makes sense here. Part of that exercise is technical. Different temporary population levels have consequences for labour supply, economic growth, housing, infrastructure and government finances.

But economic modelling cannot answer the whole question. Do we want to be more like the United Arab Emirates, where more than 70% of the population are temporary migrants? Or more like Japan, where the share is closer to 2%?

Australia will fall somewhere between these extremes. But we need a level-headed national debate about what scale of temporariness best reflects our values. That is not simply an economic question.

The key is to choose the number openly and rigorously, rather than let it emerge by accident from separate visa settings.

Then comes the second question: how do we keep the temporary population near that level?

The maths is simple. The temporary population stabilises when temporary net migration roughly matches the number of temporary residents becoming permanent.

Government, therefore, needs to control the main levers: how many temporary migrants enter, how long they can stay, whether departures occur when visas expire, and how many people move from temporary to permanent status.

It’s not too late

Australia can already do these things. We simply have not tried to use them together to manage the temporary population as a whole.

Canada increasingly is. Its temporary and permanent migration plans are now explicitly connected, and it is accelerating permanent residence for up to 33,000 temporary workers already in the country.

Australia could build on that approach. Despite already unveiling its migration plan, the government can still set a target range for the temporary population.
It then needs to monitor it closely and keep temporary migration broadly stable. That would reverse the current cart-before-horse approach to migration planning.

Canada has given us a live migration policy experiment. It’s not too late for Australia to learn from it.

Alan Gamlen receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/canada-is-managing-migration-without-taking-a-sledgehammer-approach-heres-how-australia-can-too/

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s bold move to have Canada join the European Union (EU) as an “associate member” has led to discussion of Australia following in Canada’s footsteps. After all, Australia has been represented in the Eurovision song contest since 2015, so why not join the EU?

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell, who has done more than many of his predecessors in getting Australia closer to a free-trade agreement with Europe, hasn’t ruled it out. He told The Sydney Morning Herald.

The world is dividing into protectionists and free traders. It’s indisputable that Australian prosperity of the last 50 years has all been about our engagement with the world.

When it comes to potential new arrangements with Europe, Farrell was quoted as saying he’s open to all possibilities. He has done some excellent spade work winning over the support of key countries like France in forging the EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The deal was agreed in March but has yet to be ratified on either side.

And a top EU official, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, said she expected nations including Australia and New Zealand would want to deepen their relationship with the EU.

So why the sudden interest in Europe?

Why Europe matters

First, size matters. As a bloc, the EU’s economy is the world’s second biggest. It’s smaller than America’s but, at $US23 trillion (A$32.3 trillion) annually, it is still bigger than China’s.

And with the Trump administration increasingly hostile towards Canada and other long-standing allies, no wonder Canada and Australia are seeking out new deals with friendlier players such as the EU.

Second, the Brexit effect. Before Brexit, Aussie exporters would go to London and base all their business there. In fact, when I was working as chief economist at Austrade, our trade commissioner in Frankfurt, Germany, used to complain about Australians’ “Europhobia”. He was referring to exporters travelling to Britain to set up shop, basing themselves in London, and doing most of their business there and never crossing the English channel to approach the European market.

This is still the case, in fact. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over 6,600 Australian exporters sell goods to the UK, which is twice the number exporting to Germany and more than three times that of France.

Third, Australia and the EU have seemingly gotten over their obsession with agricultural protectionism. Relations with Europe haven’t been helped by some historical animosity over contentious trade issues, such as the extravagant agricultural subsidies paid within the EU. These have been seen as going against the interests of Australian farmers.

The new free-trade agreement gives Australian farmers preferential access to the EU in beef, sheep, dairy and horticulture products. It also gives Australian financial services, education and other service providers greater market access to the EU.

However, the Nationals believe it doesn’t go far enough for farmers, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Nationals leader and trade spokesman, Matt Canavan, raised the possibility of blocking the agreement in the Senate.

How we got here

US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in 2025 followed China’s unilateral tariffs on Australian wine, barley, timber and other products in 2023. These trade wars have led to the realignment of trading interests as nations have shifted exports away from the US and China and boosted trade with other regions.

As Trump’s trade belligerence towards Canada has escalated in recent weeks, Carney made the first overtures to the EU, which were met with a warm reception and the offer to become the bloc’s first “associate member”.

But what would “associate membership” of the EU actually mean for Australia? Would we get trade concessions without being harmed by European red tape? After all, the EU was originally a customs union – a common market.

The European project began with the best of intentions. It was set up to prevent another war between France and Germany, and to create lasting peace and economic stability in Europe. This has largely been achieved.

But as the European project evolved, it became a question of how far to take a customs union. It was expanded to include a common currency, central bank and foreign policy. But as much as European unity is desirable, it has its limits. National identity still trumps it.

As journalist Mark Kenny once noted, “Australia can enter the Eurovision song contest, but Europe can’t.”

Before such a proposal can go anywhere, there’s the free-trade agreement to ratify. The Nationals’ Canavan sees an opportunity to disrupt the deal and win back some One Nation voters with a bit of anti-globalist populist rhetoric.

In Farrell’s defence, it could be said that while not perfect, the deal will deliver more for Australian farmers than ever before. And it will be a platform for more gains in future.

And then, associate membership in the EU in the future? It is not clear what this would entail, as there is no official provision in the treaty yet. It may mean limited market access, but not much else.

A comprehensive trade deal might be the best outcome for now. The true irony might be that Trump may turn Australia’s long-standing Europhobia into giving us Eurovision.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/after-the-eus-offer-to-canada-could-australia-also-embrace-a-eurovision/

With chances of further sensational hydropower tunnel rescues dimming, the devastating ice-rock avalanche in August at the Nepal-Tibet border and catastrophic floods downstream are no longer making global headlines.

But now is the time to pay careful attention to community-centred lessons from past disasters as complex planning decisions are made about recovery and reconstruction that will shape long-term outcomes.

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority recently released a Rapid Disaster Needs Assessment (RDNA) highlighting many of the challenges facing disaster-affected Nepalis, including the approximately 33,000 who have lost their homes.

As Nepal prepares long-term recovery and risk-reduction strategies, we offer insights from our collaborative research about post-disaster reconstruction and displacement following Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, as well as ongoing mountain hazards, to highlight areas of concern for the country’s affected communities.

Policies and funding must protect people’s livelihoods and rights while the global community must meet Nepal’s demands for climate justice and reparation. A focus on the climate impact may help reduce long-term risk and vulnerability, but must proceed in tandem with in-depth engagement with affected communities, including many Indigenous Peoples, to determine what their immediate future will look like.

Rebuilding livelihoods amid risk

The destruction of entire villages, road-bridge networks and economic hubs raises major reconstruction challenges for Nepali communities and households.

After the 2015 earthquake that left more than 800,000 houses in need of reconstruction, most homeowners received small grants to rebuild through an “owner-driven reconstruction” model.

But families affected by the current disaster may find little point in rebuilding their homes if there are no nearby roads, schools or economic opportunities. For many farmers, the land that underpins their agricultural livelihoods has been washed away.

The RDNA rightly states that “household recovery … depends on the restoration of connected services and access,” which in turn requires viable terrain.

Some households may find that upcoming technical assessments deem their land too hazardous to rebuild on. As in past disasters, “integrated settlements” are being discussed to collectively resettle displaced communities.

But our research has shown that integrated settlements set up after the 2015 earthquake struggled most when livelihood needs and caste-ethnic relations among resettled communities weren’t prioritized.

Relocation away from hazards like landslides and floods may reduce exposure, but it doesn’t address other forms of risk, including economic precarity and inequality.

Any approach to rebuilding will first require beneficiary identification: who is entitled to compensation or support, and on what basis? The RDNA acknowledges that “building ownership alone does not identify all households requiring assistance” and notes the challenges with verification, especially when documents are permanently lost.

These are important lessons from the post-earthquake experience, when property ownership was the primary criteria for reconstruction grants, leaving many affected people ineligible. This created additional vulnerability through a disaster recovery process that was meant to help them.

Governance and local autonomy

Nepal’s 2015 constitution devolved significant legal responsibility for disaster risk-reduction and management to provincial and municipal governing bodies.

But in the initial days after the recent flash floods, affected local authorities understandably had limited capacity to oversee disaster response, with the Nepal army leading search-and-rescue efforts directed by the central government. It’s now time to refocus on local capacity and aspirations.

Each municipality will likely have different preferences and priorities for reconstruction, relocation and restoration. These will depend on the specific disaster impacts experienced in their jurisdictions and the cultural and economic dynamics of their constituencies.

A one-size-fits-all recovery approach mandated by the federal government following a “one-door” policy is unlikely to succeed fully. Instead, needs-based, municipality-specific plans should be negotiated carefully in relation to relevant federal, provincial and municipal policies.

The RDNA says “no household survey, key informant interviews, focus groups, structured community consultation, or detailed engineering assessment was undertaken” to prepare its initial report three weeks after the flood.

Such person-to-person learning is the necessary next step. Affected Indigenous Peoples and local communities must not be treated as simply informants for central government programs, but rather as political entities with the capacity to lead assessment and craft policy.

The dangers of riverside development

The Bhotekoshi-Trishuli floods swept over homelands of the Tamang community and other Indigenous Peoples whose identities are deeply connected to place. Indigenous nationalities comprise approximately 38 to 90 per cent of the population in nine of the 15 affected municipalities.

Even when relocation would offer greater physical safety, many Indigenous participants in our post-earthquake research said they didn’t want to move away from their ancestral territory.

At the same time, many communities in Nepal have long histories of mobility. The populous, disaster-affected market towns on the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli riverbanks reflect historic downhill and river-centred migration trends linked to national development planning and hydropower investment.

The disastrous consequences of ad hoc, river-centric development in the Himalayas cannot be clearer.

When rivers are conceived only as corridors for economic development, roads, services and opportunities become concentrated in flood- and landslide-prone areas. People migrating for work find themselves exposed to levels of risk they cannot mitigate.

It remains an open question what responsibility Nepal’s hydropower sector will take for worker compensation and regional rebuilding.

Rather than reconstruction in the same risky locations, there should be a systems-wide rethink of settlement and development patterns.

Those who moved to take advantage of riverside economies might consider moving uphill once again if connectivity and collective needs are appropriately addressed and resourced. Ultimately, people should not have to choose between place-based attachment and safety, or between traditional territory and economic opportunities.

Ways forward

Rampant development in known hazard zones is creating untenable risks for communities globally.

With financial support from the international community and private sector corporate social responsibility, Nepal has an opportunity to show the world how to reconsider economic development in relation to climate and geohazard risks and in consultation with communities and local governments. This will also require a reframing of transboundary geopolitical relationships.

Rather than “building back better,” as the mantra goes, Nepal can build back differently by upholding human-centred values, emphasizing sustainability, recognizing the inequitable distribution of risk and its causes, and prioritizing communities’ autonomy over their futures.

Members of the Sajag-Nepal research partnership, including Jeevan Baniya, Katie Oven, and Mukta S. Tamang contributed to this article.

Sara Shneiderman has received past funding from the UKRI GCRF-funded Sajag-Nepal project (Grant numbers: NE/T01038X/1, NE/T009772/1 and NE/T009713/1) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (890-2016-0011).

Amy Leigh Johnson has received past funding from the UKRI GCRF-funded Sajag-Nepal project (Grant numbers: NE/T01038X/1, NE/T009772/1 and NE/T009713/1), the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (9312), and National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (1626755).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/nepal-could-show-the-world-how-to-recover-sustainably-from-a-major-disaster/

British Columbia has endured another extreme drought with damaging impacts seen across the province: a watershed emergency declared by the Syilx Okanagan Nation, 70 per cent water use reductions for agricultural producers in Vernon, regulatory orders to protect salmon and explosive wildfires driven by severe drought conditions.

Playing out year over year, the chaotic cycle of drought crises has become a familiar experience for British Columbians. We argue it’s the result of provincial water management that continues to treat drought as a short-term seasonal emergency rather than the year-round, persistent problem it has become.

A recent report by our team and collaborators at the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project examined B.C.’s drought past, present and future. We provide insights about how drought is changing, gaps in provincial government drought response and the reforms needed to build a more drought-resilient future.

B.C. continues to set new records for drought severity, extent and duration. In 2023, severe drought hit approximately 85 per cent of the province. And, increasingly, droughts arrive in spring and persist into winter, creating continuous, multi-year droughts.

Recent droughts have resulted in massive fish die-offs, farmers experiencing 50 per cent less production and loss of livestock, communities (like Dawson Creek, McBride and the Sunshine Coast) in months-long states of emergency, and increasing conflicts over scarce water.

While the 2023 drought was unprecedented, climate change projections indicate this type of extreme event will likely occur once every three years (or more often) in the coming decades.

Drought is not just a water problem

Climate change and fundamental shifts to hydrology are key drivers of drought. But drought and water scarcity (when there is not enough water to meet ecological and human needs) are also shaped by human decisions about land and water, like whether water is over-allocated, wetlands are drained or forests are clear-cut. Community planning and choices about land and water management influence how much of a buffer we have and our ability to adapt to drought and scarcity.

Read more:
Clear-cut logging is making floods worse. But it’s not just about how many trees are cut

The provincial water management system is based on a fundamental assumption of water abundance and does not serve today’s water scarcity and drought realities. Although the B.C. government has improved some aspects of drought management, its overall approach is reactive and rooted in an assumption of water abundance.

B.C. lacks essential water and drought management foundations, including systematic water-use measuring and monitoring, and progress has stalled on implementing proactive tools under the Water Sustainability Act.

Solutions exist and communities are already leading the way by monitoring flows, implementing innovative local drought strategies, restoring wetlands and voluntarily reducing water use. Yet, communities face limited resources and lack a robust provincial framework for long-term drought adaptation.

Three steps governments can take

Relying on short-term water use restriction orders fails to address the root causes of low flows and increasingly drives community conflicts.

By reviewing international best practices and specific responses in drought-stricken countries, we developed a comprehensive reform agenda for the B.C. government to shift from crisis response to proactive action. Just as there is no single cause of drought, neither is there one solution. Here are critical steps the provincial government can take:

Setting the policy and knowledge foundation for the change ahead.

We emphasize the need to fully implement B.C.’s Water Sustainability Act, which includes several useful tools, including developing regional water sustainability plans to prepare governments and communities as they adapt to drought.

Shifting water mindsets and promoting water conservation and efficiency.

Business-as-usual is no longer possible. The provincial government needs to support key sectors, including agriculture, small drinking water systems, tourism and industry, to develop forward-looking strategies to adapt to new water realities.

In tandem, B.C. must rapidly scale up water conservation strategies. This should start with increasing industrial water rates to incentivize water conservation and create resources for watershed resilience, and expanding water metering.

Accelerating watershed planning and local drought governance.

Communities must plan and make decisions that reflect their unique hydrological, cultural, and economic realities. Starting in high-risk watersheds, the provincial government can accelerate and resource watershed plans and regional watershed boards to create enduring adaptive watershed-level solutions.

The choice is not whether B.C. will face more droughts. It is whether we will continue chasing crisis after crisis or start building resilience before drought arrives.

Deana Machin is affiliated with the First Nations Water Caucus of British Columbia.

Oliver Brandes through the University of Victoria’s POLIS Project receives funding from the BC Real Estate Foundation, The Sitka Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/how-to-tackle-persistent-drought-lessons-from-british-columbia/

“I don’t want the pain to define me. I want me to define me.”

This was how one employee described working with chronic pain in interviews conducted in 2021 by one of us, Duygu Biricik Gulseren, and co-researcher Kevin Kelloway. The employee wanted colleagues to understand their experience without pain becoming the centre of every conversation.

For many workers living with chronic pain, disclosure is complicated. Some interviewees worried that revealing their pain would make them seem less capable or put their jobs at risk. Yet keeping it hidden can make it harder to explain why previously manageable tasks suddenly become difficult.

When pain persists or recurs for longer than three months, it’s generally considered chronic pain. Many people continue working while experiencing it, and may have chronic pain-related needs. As Duygu’s earlier work argues, understanding these needs requires looking at how employees experience their jobs and what they need to participate fully.

Our new research examines the role supervisors play in shaping that experience. The findings suggest supportive leadership may help employees’ psychological well-being, but this pathway weakens as pain becomes more intense.

Pain is not only about intensity

Two concepts are key to understanding our results. Pain intensity describes how much pain hurts, while pain interference describes how much pain disrupts activities. At work, interference can mean difficulty concentrating, completing physical tasks or interacting with others.

The distinction is important because working conditions can affect how the pain limits activities, even when its intensity changes little.

In Duygu’s earlier interviews mentioned above, employees described adjusting their pace, rescheduling meetings or changing tasks to reduce pain’s impact. But those options depended on how much control their jobs allowed.

The interviews also showed why standard solutions may miss the mark. Employees all have different needs, even when they have similar conditions. Sitting aggravated one person’s back pain, while standing was difficult for another. Understanding what helps requires listening to the person doing the job.

How supervisors affect experiences

For our recent study, we followed 195 full-time employees in the United Kingdom who were living with chronic pain. Participants worked in occupations ranging from nursing and construction to office management and information technology, and completed three surveys one month apart.

We asked about pain intensity, psychological well-being, pain interference at work and supervisors’ transformational leadership behaviours. This type of leadership includes taking employees’ needs seriously, expressing confidence in employees and encouraging them to approach problems in new ways.

Employees who reported more of these leadership behaviours tended to report better psychological well-being a month later. Better well-being, in turn, predicted less pain interference at the final survey. The analyses accounted for initial well-being and pain interference, as well as age.

However, this pattern depended on pain intensity. We found evidence of this pathway among employees reporting lower and average levels of pain intensity within our sample, but not higher intensity. That does not establish that leadership is unhelpful for people experiencing severe pain; it suggests this pathway has limits.

Supportive leadership has limits

We did not find evidence that supervisors’ leadership behaviours directly predicted less pain interference later, once psychological well-being and other factors in the model were taken into account.

Instead, the pattern we observed was indirect: supportive leadership was associated with better psychological well-being, which in turn predicted less interference from pain at work.

Because this was a survey study, it cannot establish cause and effect. Other working conditions, such as flexibility, could help explain the pattern. The findings therefore suggest a possible pathway through psychological well-being, rather than showing that managers’ actions directly reduce pain interference.

One possible explanation is that supportive relationships help people maintain the emotional resources needed to handle work alongside pain. When pain is more intense, those resources may be harder to sustain.

Support requires action

For managers, the findings highlight the importance of everyday interactions. Showing employees their contributions are important, taking their needs seriously and inviting ideas about problems can help sustain well-being while they manage pain.

However, these behaviours should accompany practical workplace support. An encouraging conversation cannot make an unsuitable workstation comfortable or create recovery time in a rigid schedule.

We recommend asking employees what would make their work more manageable. Depending on the job and person, this might involve adjusting tasks, hours, duties or equipment. Managers should revisit arrangements as needs change.

We also recommend responding to requests without judgment. An employee’s ability to complete a task one day should not become grounds for dismissing difficulties on another. Fluctuating needs call for ongoing conversations.

Flexibility also needs to extend beyond office jobs. Working from home is rarely an option on a construction site or hospital ward. Employers should consider adjusting tasks, staffing or breaks.

Organizations need to give supervisors the resources and authority to respond. Access to accommodations, leave and health benefits should be part of the broader response, including when needs exceed what a supervisor can address alone.

The goal should be to make work more manageable for people living with pain. Encouraging employees to feel positive while leaving avoidable barriers in place would miss that goal. Supportive leadership should be part of a workplace prepared to act on what employees need.

Nick Turner receives research funding from Cenovus Energy Inc., the Ken Croft Chair in Management, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Duygu Biricik Gulseren has received funding from SSHRC and Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business for this study.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/living-with-chronic-pain-at-work-supportive-managers-can-help-but-they-cant-solve-everything/

In May 2026, the Alberta government enacted Bill 25, an An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms.

On its surface, the legislation is wrapped in the reassuring vocabulary of modernization. It promises to strengthen accountability, improve efficiency, promote neutrality and complete the transition to digital administration for provincial exams.

But many education researchers who study curriculum policy will tell you curriculum is never neutral.

Under Bill 25, the Alberta government has codified a grammar of subtraction — a series of small, procedural changes that go largely unnoticed but carry profound, cumulative consequences.

In considering these changes, we must ask a painful but necessary question: Does this systematic silencing constitute institutional betrayal?

What the law enacts

What the law writes into the record is a script for what we are permitted to value, see and say.

American writer Nicholson Baker has documented the historic transition from physical library card catalogues to online databases — and how digitization often reframes the destruction of material relations as simple progress.

When a library catalogue was described as a simple storage facility rather than a site of exploration, it too became obsolete in the name of progress. Sorting and retrieval became automated and replaced active human navigation with algorithms.

In doing so, we lost the closeness of the physical encounter, the slow cataloguing labour of librarians and the institution’s collective memory.

Today, physical markers that anchor belonging are being systematically dismantled, much like the library catalogue.

This time, in Alberta, flagpoles are under attack. Bill 25 decrees that no flags other than the Canadian and Alberta flags may be displayed at public schools, unless specifically permitted by ministerial regulation or approved in writing by the minister following a formal request from a school board.

The provincial government said in August this portion of the bill is being delayed to ensure a successful transition.

But Bill 25 has also introduced subtle shifts in language that change how we come to understand our relations with each other.

Editing out ‘belonging’

To understand how institutional power operates, we must look to what anthropologist Laura Nader has called controlling processes.

Power does not always announce itself with a heavy hand; more often, it organizes compliance through appeals to order, harmony and common sense. It normalizes itself by making political choices appear like simple administrative necessity to maintain societal harmony.

Consider the preambular changes introduced by Bill 25. The legislation amends the Education Act by striking out the longstanding commitment to “welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environments that respect diversity and nurture a sense of belonging and a positive sense of self.”

In its place, the government has substituted a much narrower mandate: “A safe and caring environment that fosters and maintains respectful and responsible behaviours.”

This is not a harmless semantic edit. It’s a profound shift in the relational landscape of schooling. “Belonging” and “diversity” are relational and democratic concepts and require us to negotiate differences, to expand our circles of care and to recognize the unique identities of our students. “Behaviours,” in contrast, are administrative targets. You monitor a behaviour, as well as code and manage it and enforce compliance.

By stripping our schools’ educational mandate of the language of “diversity” and “belonging,” and seeking to restrict the permitted symbols that can fly in our schoolyards, the government is arguably enacting a curriculum of silence.

By replacing relational belonging with behavioural management, the messy, democratic reality of the classroom has been marginalized. This teaches students and educators that compliance, not community or democracy, is the ultimate goal of public education.

Regulating visibility

The same logic of subtraction is set to be stamped onto the physical schoolyard.

A flag is a powerful symbol. Flying a Pride flag, a Treaty flag or a Métis flag is an act of public recognition. It signals to marginalized students that their histories, their griefs and their identities matter.

When the Alberta government requires an administrative permission slip approved by the minister for these symbols of inclusion while treating others as normal, it constructs a hierarchy of visibility.

The message to marginalized youth is clear — their presence is conditional, highly regulated and safest when kept invisible. Students learn public life is safest when difference is unspoken and unsung.

Managing through silence, erasure

This institutional habit of managing the ordinary through silence and erasure is not unique to public education.

For example, in research I conducted alongside my colleagues Shannon Moore and Tim Skuce, we investigated the hyper-masculine, exclusionary culture of elite men’s ice hockey where silence is not merely a passive state but an active form of discipline to preserve a specific brand of hockey.

This research shed light on how institutional silencing renders some people’s experiences invisible, and so again I wonder: Is being silenced a form of institutional betrayal?

Carly Parnitzke Smith and Jennifer Freyd, who is the founder and president of the Center for Institutional Courage, have defined and conceptualized the framework of institutional betrayal. Institutional betrayal refers to “wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution,” and this includes failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals committed in the context of the institution.

Confronting with deliberate friction

We depend on our institutions for our children’s education, our sense of national identity and our livelihoods.

We often, consciously or unconsciously, do not see the betrayal. We normalize what are presented as unfortunate realities of the current culture and political leadership.

But once the habit of noticing erodes, we lose the capacity to name what is disappearing.

To resist the systemic reproduction of domination, we must practice deliberate friction — the refusal to let subtraction become common sense. It’s the work of keeping institutions messy, relational and historical.

It means demanding that our schools conduct curricular loss assessments before they automate, restrict or centralize. It means asking before a change: What capacity is being removed? Whose history is being rendered invisible? Whose labour is being forgotten?

We must refuse the quiet scripts that trade human care for behavioural compliance. We must remind our institutions that their moral and ethical obligation is to protect, care and to honour the individuals who depend upon them.

Teresa Anne Fowler has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Concordia University of Edmonton.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/albertas-education-reforms-tell-students-public-life-is-safest-when-differences-are-hidden/

Australia’s population is projected to reach 39.3 million in 2065-66 but its rate of growth will have slowed, according to the Intergenerational Report (IGR) released Monday.

The projected number in 40 years’ time compares with a current population of about 27.9 million.

The IGR projects population growth slowing from an average of 1.4% a year over the last 40 years to 0.9% a year over the coming four decades. This is 0.2 percentage points lower growth compared with the projection period of the last report, issued in 2023.

In 2062–63 the projected population would be 1.8 million lower than projected in the 2023 IGR.

In a Monday speech launching the report, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will say that by the mid 2060s: “People live longer, healthier lives, families have fewer kids, and that will make the population grow more slowly, to less than 40 million in forty years”.

He elaboprated on News24 on Sunday:“We do acknowledge in the IGR that we expect fertility rates to fall further and faster than we anticipated even three years ago. That’s actually one of the biggest influences over the next 40 years or so. Almost half the decline in fertility rates is actually because fewer people are having three or more kids. And what that reflects is mums having fewer kids later in life. That’s what’s playing out in the fertility rates.”

Population level projection across intergenertational reports

Chalmers says in his speech the report’s projections also show living standards will have risen and people will retire with much larger superannuation accounts than they do now.

A major change in this report compared with the 2023 one is the central place it gives artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has met Apple executive chairman Tim Cook in Silicon Valley on the first leg of his visit to the United States, where he will attend the United Nations and spruik Australia’s case for one of the non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council for 2029-30.

The PM and Cook canvassed AI as well as what Apple is doing about safety online, and Australia’s social media ban for under 16s and its proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation.

Later Albanese told the ABC Cook regarded the work Australia had done on social media as “world leading”. The prime minister will use Australia’s lead on the under 16s ban and its Duty of Care initiative in his campaigning for the Security Council spot.

Albanese said he hoped this week’s talks between US Predident Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping would see “positive engagement” on managing AI.

Australia supports guardrails. But Trump has made it clear he regards AI as a central element in the competition between the US and China and does not want to see its development slowed in any way.

“Individual leaders will speak for themselves. What I do is I speak for Australia’s national interests, and Australia’s national interests are served by us engaging, by us recognising that there are risks which need to be mitigated,” Albanese told a news conference at Apple Park.

“That is something that we will continue to pursue, and something that is common. The discussions that I’ve had with leaders already in the lead-up to this week’s [UN] meeting, I think you’ll see some statements this week emerge as well from nations that recognise that we need to work together and cooperate.”

In his IGR address Chalmers says the Australian economy will be twice as big as at present in 40 years’ time. While the budget will be under strain, it will be better placed than in the last report, he says, in a speech extract released ahead of delivery.

“Our industrial base will be dominated by services, powered by cleaner energy, completely transformed by technology.”

The world is expected to be more fragmented and uncertain.

Chalmers says the report shows Australia better placed than peer countries “in almost every regard”.

But is is living in a world that is becoming more dangerous, unpredictable, unequal, and divided. “These are not just individual threads but part of a bigger fraying of that intergenerational promise of better times.”

Chalmers quotes writer and activist James Baldwin who said if people were denied participation in the American Dream, “by their very presence they will wreck it”.

I know this was the 1960s, not the 2060s, the US not Australia, but it still speaks to a truth on every page of this analysis and in every corner of the Commonwealth.

If people are unmoored economically, generationally, they feel disconnected from, and disregarded in, our politics. At worst that’s what we’re seeing now, at best it’s what’s at stake.

Accelerating change is putting more pressure on people. It’s eroding trust in the institutions of our democracy. It’s exacerbating the strain felt by younger generations in particular.

The division in politics now is not between those who accept this and those who don’t. But between those who prey on it and pick on it and politicise it and catastrophise it – and those who seek to alleviate it.

The responsibility that we embrace today and every day is to respond to the pressures of the here and now – and plan so that the accelerating pace of change is accompanied by the accelerating pace of opportunity.

Chalmers confirmed on Sunday that the IGR assumed growth for productivity at 1.2% annually, despite the fact it has been flat for years.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/20/australia-set-for-39-million-people-by-mid-2060s-but-slower-population-growth/