Keith Rankin, 14 October 2026 – Last weekend, the political leader of ACT New Zealand, David Seymour, announced his party’s fiscal policy for the 7 November election. The policy announced represents the epitome of the dominant elite narrative in New Zealand in particular and the Euro West in general. That narrative is best called ‘financial mercantilism’. The word ‘mercantilism’ is a conjunction of ‘merchant’ and ‘capitalism’.

Narrative versus Ideology

‘Neoconservatism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ are ideologies which have much in common. The word ‘neoconservative’ is more prominent in the United States; reflecting United States elite culture – the neocons – a particular American brand of imperialism and partisan pre-Trump ‘Republicanism’ (distinct from generic ‘republicanism’). An ideology is a package of beliefs about what ‘should be’ or ‘could be’.

In New Zealand, David Seymour, I think, would happily call himself a ‘neoliberal’ but not a ‘neoconservative’. Neoliberals, while having a near-identical economic philosophy to neoconservatives – called economic liberalism, formerly known as laissez-faire – would class themselves as ‘socially liberal’; neoconservatives as ‘socially conservative’. (Thus Christopher Luxon very much fits the bill as a ‘neoconservative’, though he does not embody the overt eurosupremacism – the ‘rightful’ hegemony of the West – characteristic of American ‘neocons’.)

Mercantilism is both a narrative about what the elite world is (as opposed to what someone might wish it to be), and a prescription for success within that world. That prescription may be best summarised as ‘mining money’.

The concession to liberal ideology is a preference for ‘competitive’ mining; though competitive miners might themselves be mined by their owner-class ‘higher-ups’. The essence of economic liberalism is the primacy of the private property rights of the owner-class; a legality principle which ACT and Seymour keep coming back to.

Money Mining

Whether running a mining business, some other business, a government, a school, or a hospital – financial mercantilists mine their resources (including their labour and their suppliers) to maximise monetary profit or to otherwise minimise their costs. And they mine their customers. Customer-mining techniques include hard-sell advertising, peddling addictive products, peddling insecurity narratives with technological solutions, and offering ‘free’ products in ways that “if something is free, you’re not the customer; you’re the product“.

It is apparent in the United States that insurance companies mine their policy-holders; exploiting inelastic demand for insurance products (meaning high premiums), while finding any opportunity they can to minimise their payouts on claims. It applies to social insurance, too; that’s a mercantilist frame for social welfare.

Trade Mercantilism

Mercantilism, as understood in the political economy literature, is ‘trade mercantilism’, an ideology of nationalist economic imperialism through trade ‘success’; where trade success is defined as a long-term experience of trade surpluses – making money through excess exports – by a nation state in which big business and executive government act as a ruling coalition. (The most famous mercantilist enterprise in world history was that of the Dutch East India Company, which – incidentally – ‘discovered’ and named New Zealand.)

Donald Trump is an unreconstructed trade mercantilist. And, in this century, China is understood as the world’s most successful mercantilist nation; with a history of trade surpluses – especially as a physically large country – translating into an ability to wield geopolitical power.

In global economic and political history, the third quarter of the second millennium was (literally and figuratively) the ‘golden era’ of trade mercantilism; the era of the establishment of euro-imperialism over the world, in which the rivalrous European nations dominated world trade by fair means and foul (mostly foul). So it was a period in which European nations fought against each other to dominate the non-European world, and fought the non-European world to establish their dominance over it.

The final struggle of that trade-mercantilist epoch took place through the eighteenth century and culminated with the final defeat in 1815, by a British-led alliance, of Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. That tussle can rightfully be called World War Zero. It ushered in 99 years of geopolitical Anglo-supremacy over the world; from 1815 to 1914.

The American Revolutionary War of 1776 to 1783 was a part of this geopolitical struggle, in which the American ‘Rebels’ teamed with the French super-state to inflict Great Britain’s major defeat within a war in which Britain eventually prevailed. It took until 1917 before the Americans had fully aligned with Great Britain – Britain becoming the United Kingdom in 1801.

The American Revolutionary War was very much a product of the virulent trade-mercantilist ideology which dominated those times. The British establishment – especially the English – saw its then ‘colonies’ as economic machines which would ‘mine money’ for the landed and mercantile elites of England. Trade mercantilism was actually a class-based nationalist project; much narrower than a project from which the nation as a whole could benefit. The American settlers wanted to create their own mercantilist project; and not be subsumed into the English project as mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. (And of course, especially but not only in the first industrial revolution, the British working class were themselves heavily mined.)

After 1815, and especially after the 1840s – under the leadership of the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent France – trade mercantilism morphed into financial mercantilism. Britain’s early form of financial mercantilism came to be understood as free-trade imperialism. (And note Bernard Semmel’s 1970 book The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism 1750-1850.)

Financial Mercantilism is a False Narrative rather than an Ideology

The core tenet of mercantilism is that money equals wealth, and the central metaphor for money is ‘gold‘.

‘Mercantilism’ is understood, by anyone who knows how to use that word, to be a false narrative; a King Midas narrative; as that king discovered, you cannot eat gold. Just as it is practically false to assert that base metals can be transmuted into gold, and that such a creation – were it possible – could be called ‘wealth’. It follows therefore, that any measure of success derived from a mercantilist narrative must itself be meaningless if not false.

We note that money, in any form, is never actually wealth. It is a set of ‘claims’ on wealth; promises. Economic wealth is resources priced in accordance with their capacity to produce (ie augment) present or future sustenance and happiness. Money – unlike land, machines, human labour – does not produce anything; though, through its circulation, it does lubricate the processes of production and enjoyment. Hoarded money does not even do that. (Money may provide psychic wealth to those who have it, but that must be offset by the psychic poverty of those who do not have it.) A society with an inflated or compounded set of financial assets is not wealthy. Asset inflation is not wealth. Nor can a society with too many dollars and not enough sense be called wealthy.

In trade mercantilism, the winning nation would be the nation that made – effectively mined, where ‘mined’ best translates as ‘extracted’ rather than ‘dug up’ – the most money. British mercantilism began, in earnest, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth with its royal sponsored anti-Spanish piracy in the Caribbean Sea and with its Irish ‘plantations’. Mercantilism began as a sanctioned criminal enterprise.

So, mercantilism is the narrative which equates wealth with the accumulation of money as extracted or otherwise expropriated profit. Money is understood as a ‘stock of wealth’ or a ‘store of value’ – rather than as a circulating medium. It’s a narrative – not an ideology – in that its adherents believe the representation of money as wealth is truth rather than aspiration. The mercantilist narrative is that imperial or national or class or individual success is achieved by ‘making money’; making more money than one’s rivals.

Thus financial mercantilism is a ‘financial race’ which can utilise the ‘equality of opportunity’ trope; each person starts with the same amount of money (possibly zero), and the individual winners – the ‘gold’ medallists – are the people or nations who make the most money.

Re nations as rivalrous competitors, we may think of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. The biggest fastest boat gains ‘line honours’. The most successful little boat may gain ‘overall honours’ (aka ‘handicap honours’), which are equivalent to population-adjusted success.

(Liberal competition, by the way, has ‘win-win’ outcomes, in which everyone gets something they want; the principal principle here is called ‘comparative advantage’. Mercantilist competition – ie rivalrous competition – is ‘win-lose’, meaning that for every winner there are one or more losers. In economic science, this kind of competition is called game-playing, and it is quite plausible in some game simulations that all game-participants lose. Modern geopolitical games can easily take this ‘lose-lose’ form. In political economy, gaining the upper hand in illiberal – ie mercantilist – competition, is called ‘competitive advantage’.)

Various tropes – ‘getting ahead’, the ‘property ladder’, ‘compound interest’, ‘nest egg’ – all relate to financial mercantilism as applied to individuals or households. In financial mercantilism, money is an ‘end’; whereas in normal market-based life, money is a means. Mercantilists seek to hoard their money. Normal people spend their money, interpreting their prosperity through the enjoyment of what they buy, rather than from holding a portfolio of assets.

In financial mercantilism, liabilities (such as debt) are ‘anti-money’. Financial mercantilist success, when applied to governments, is to have hold less ‘net debt’ than other nations’ governments. For households, success is to have more ‘net assets’ than other households.

Geo-mercantilism

So, mercantilism is akin to a race or a game – or, to use a golf analogy, akin to match-play. A race-to-the-bottom is a valid mercantilist tactic; you win by defeating your rivals, and not simply by gaining a high score. To win is to be better off in relative terms, though not necessarily in absolute terms. You can ‘win’ a war by incurring 1.1 million casualties compared to your opponents’ 1.2 million casualties.

Geopolitics today – or should I say ‘geo-mercantilism’ – is like a set of regional contests which will eventually set up a USA-China grand-final. If the planet gets trashed in the process, in the run-up to the grand-final, then that’s OK; the point is to establish a winner at ‘the end’. The United States adopts a belligerent tone, much as Great Britain did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; whereas China adopts a defiant tone.

ACT New Zealand’s financial mercantilism

Re ACT’s Fiscal Plan Cuts the Waste to Grow the Country, press release, Scoop 11 October 2026, the first phrase to note is “truth-telling”. ACT is working to a narrative which it believes to be ‘truth’. The next expression is “cut waste”. This is not about the environment; this is ‘financial waste’, which means the minimisation of government outlays such as expenditure and transfer payments. “Grow the economy” means to extract more financial assets for the national balance sheet.

(In financial mercantilism, spending is essentially waste, though may be excused if it can be classed as ‘investment’. Hence, the culture of mercantilists – such as religious puritans – is parsimonious. There are also Epstein-type mercantilists, who make very much money and also spend very much, but seeing their spending as investment; for example, investing in power-networks.)

In the ACT press release, “Balance the books with no new taxes” means to stem ‘public-to-private money flows’ – government spending, social security, superannuation – even more than curbing ‘private-to-public’ flows such as taxes. There is no concept of price-based public economics, such as government borrowing when the price is right; capitalists follow price signals, mercantilists don’t. Governments are expected to be price-insensitive and austere. ACT’s financial mercantilism is a game played by financially wealthy private organisations and households to ‘get ahead’; or, more pertinently today, to not get behind.

“Taxpayers know the Government has too much debt”, ACT says. Well, this recent video The Global Debt Crisis is just a Side Show…This is the Main Event by George Gammon shows that public debt levels, per se, make no difference to a country’s economic ‘performance variables’. Gammon compares countries with governments with high debt (Japan), medium-high debt (US), and low debt (Australia). The performances were practically identical. Australia’s debt was given as 51% of GDP – and Australia has a much higher GDP per capita than New Zealand. Most measures of New Zealand’s government debt in 2026 are between 40 and 49%, lower than Australia’s despite the low GDP denominator. As I heard on RNZ recently, New Zealand has a public debt ‘problem’ that most countries would be envious of. (Private debt in New Zealand is another matter.)

We note The only thing NZ has to fear is…fear of debt itself, 23 July 2026, by Bernard Hickey. Hickey says, “For a PM who professes confidence about the country’s future and is eager for ‘growth, growth, growth’, Christopher Luxon is remarkably fearful about using the tools at his disposal to generate that growth.” This applies even more to David Seymour, who wants to cut public debt in dollar terms, by $12.4 billion in four years, and seems to be not satisfied with reductions to public debt relative to GDP. I suspect that Seymour does understand that he’s embarking on a crusade that is not conducive to growth, despite the title of ACT’s policy document.

(It was ‘The Communists’ who most vehemently sought to pay off public debt; most prominently Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1980s. Arguably, Romania has still not recovered from Ceaușescu’s ravagings, just as New Zealand Inc remains structurally bankrupt from the ravagings in the 1990s of our ‘greatest ever’ financial mercantilist, Ruth Richardson. But see this – ‘Bankrupt’ Western Governments Need ‘Ruthanasia’ – on CNBC from 8 September 2010, as Europe’s austerity crisis was just getting underway.)

Government deficits worldwide constitute one of the great macroeconomic stabilisers. Public debt levels are stable in both Japan and Australia. Sound fiscal management, for non-boom non-bust years, is to have a fiscal deficit – as a percentage of GDP – that is as close as possible to the rate of nominal economic growth. For New Zealand for the last year, that would be a deficit of 4.8% of GDP; not a surplus. (In boom years, fiscal deficits will be and should be smaller than five percent; in bust years, fiscal deficits will be and should be greater than five percent. Governments need never run fiscal surpluses; when they do run surpluses, there is likely to be something unsustainable or otherwise wrong in the private sector.)

Usury: Making Money from Money

The centrepiece of David Seymour’s financial policy is the very usury that led to Christianity breaking away from Judaism almost exactly 2,000 years ago; as documented in the New Testament. Until the Reformation of 500 years ago, the central ethic of Christianity was its disavowal of the practice of leveraging money in order to extract more money.

Such usurious sentiment is summarised in ACT’s desire to “boost KiwiSaver, [and] cryptocurrency adoption”. This is particularly epitomised – and clearly enunciated by David Seymour in last night’s ‘multiparty’ leaders’ television debate – in ACT’s policy to not tax compounding interest income, so that it can compound at a higher exponential rate, ‘creating’ magical sums of dollars decades into the future. (Refer Election 2026: Here’s how the multi-party leaders’ debate unfolded, Joel MacManus for The Spinoff, 13 October 2026.)

In the televised debate, the first thing said by any party leader was Seymour (in his priority statement, and not in response to a question) saying “We’ll take tax off your KiwiSaver returns. People need to be able to save for their retirement, and the biggest impediment to that is that when you put your money away it starts compounding but the government takes its share every year, and the cost of that compounded over years is enormous.”

(We note from the larger document that ACT wants to “gradually increase the superannuation age” [from 65 to 67], following a somewhat less gradual age-formula than most other proposals. Presumably, Seymour favours using the same formula to raise the age in which KiwiSaver funds may be accessed. Treasury would like the ‘retirement age’ – which means the KiwiSaver access age as well as the pension entitlement age – to be gradually raised to 72; refer Retirement age will rise to cover superannuation cost, investment company predicts, RNZ 13 February 2026.)

We note that ACT’s clear policy around compound interest is that interest rates should be comfortably above the inflation rate. And we note that ACT, in its press release, fails to mention economic growth. (Though there is an allusion to growth in the title of main document, as if the elimination of waste is itself a recipe for magical growth. Wellington has eliminated much of its ‘human waste’ since 2023 – meaning ‘wastefully-employed humans’, referencing “the size of the bureaucracy”; ie not meaning sewage, although there is that too – but has not yet grown up like an entrepreneurial phoenix from the litter of restructuring.)

Only financial mercantilists – not economists – can conceive of compound interest independent of commensurate economic growth. (Adherence to financial mercantilism is tantamount to adherence to a cult.) Compound interest is fully, literally, and explicitly predicated on exponential growth – the inflation of savings’ balances. So, the expectation is that those exponentially adjusted credit balances will be realised through future transfers of real wealth, as extractions from those who have experienced compounding debit balances. It is a policy of exponentially compounding inequality.

ACT: “Stop kicking the can down the road on hard issues like Superannuation”

What is ACT’s mercantilist vision of retirement living? We note that Seymour’s principal vision is based on exponentially compounded interest, whereby a few nominally rich ‘rentier’ retirees – having rented out their money for above-inflation returns – may live well in retirement, extracting large lump sums or annuities from those who have incurred debit interest compounded at even higher exponential rates; and even these savers might not be allowed to retire until they are 72 year-olds.

(It’s practically impossible to have above-inflation compound-interest returns for forty years in a capitalist economy. Either there is a bout of significant inflation within that time – which favours debtors over creditors, acting as a debt-stabilising correction – or the economy breaks completely, as in the Great Depression and the ensuing World War, leading to a financial levelling event. Such events hit – in percentage wealth losses – the surviving rich harder than the surviving poor.)

Under ACT’s policy, most of us aged under 60 will have to wait until they are 67 years-old before they can get a universal pension; a pension which will probably be indexed at the lower of average wages or average prices. Or they will have to go through an intrusive bureaucratic process to apply for their retirement pension. ACT has much to say about bureaucracy, but very little to say about the cruel and wasteful bureaucratic procedures which entrench the welfare poverty traps faced by the lower classes.

The mercantilist narrative is that a person’s worth lies in their compounding savings’ balances. This story posits that working class people, serfs, slaves, livestock and robots are all very much the same thing; dispensable economic resources which incur maintenance costs.

We note that ACT’s greatest political achievement so far has been the legalisation of euthanasia in Aotearoa New Zealand, as acknowledged in the television debate. What happens to most racehorses when their working careers are over?

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.

A shipwreck off the coast of Turkey is the oldest shipwreck in the world, our team of archaeologists believes.

There’s little left of the ship itself but based on clues from its cargo – including pottery vessels – a research team I was part of has tentatively dated the wreck to around 2700–2400 BCE.

That’s about 4,500 years ago. Prior to this discovery, the world’s oldest shipwreck was a wreck off the coast of Dokos, in Greece, thought to have been from about 4,200 years ago.

Much work remains to be done to finesse the conclusions, and a paper outlining the results is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Yet the discovery could transform our understanding of ancient Mediterranean connections during the Early Bronze Age.

Here, and perhaps even earlier, lie the foundations of extensive trade routes as we know them today.

Searching for clues

Associate Professor Hakan Öniz of Akdeniz University, Antalya, has worked along this coastline for decades excavating ancient shipwrecks.

Acting on clues from local seafarers, Öniz found a shipwreck in shallow waters off Kekova, west of Antalya in Turkey, in 2024. Earlier this year, he contacted me and asked if I would help date some of the pottery vessels found on this wreck.

As an archaeologist specialising in desert sites, this was a singular experience. New technology, water-logged methods of excavation and laborious conservation techniques were the new normal. Yet there is always room for learning new skills in life.

Of the ship itself there is now nothing to see, owing to underwater exposure. Yet the research team has now estimated the ship and its cargo dates to around 2700–2400 BCE. However, the precise dating is still under consideration. Earlier or later dates on either side of this initial determination are also possible.

A time capsule of ancient trade

This discovery promises to re-write our understanding of early trade networks from around 4,500 years ago.

The ship is a “missing piece” in the story of networks, trade and commodity exchange in the wider eastern Mediterranean. This era includes the pyramid age of Giza and its mighty pharaohs.

What remains under the sea is a time capsule of ancient trade.

Although its direction was not known, the boat was evidently travelling along the coast of southern Turkey.

Now resting on the seabed between two islands, it is apparent the ship likely sought refuge in the lee waters during a storm. One could imagine the terror of the sailors – possibly coastal people from the Levant region – as their ship crashed against the rocks.

While timbers from the ship disappeared long ago, the remains of its precious cargo were embedded in the rocky slope along the Kekova coast.

Divers worked over the past four months to extract its pottery from barnacles clinging to the rocky underwater slope.

A closer look at pottery

Pottery is like plastic: it never goes away and just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Yet humble pottery vessels hold many clues about the past.

In this case, the cargo included large ceramic storage vessels or amphorae which once contained products from regions of the eastern Mediterranean.

The pots were large ovoid, flat-based jars with two handles, many featuring a raised horizontal clay “belt” around the widest part of the jar.

Through these vessels was possible to ascertain many pieces of information. This includes the likely origin of the jars and the contents exchanged across the region.

Importantly, the shape and manufacturing technique of the pots themselves help us date the cargo. By extension, this includes also the date of other pottery, and the ship itself.

The bigger picture

Compared to later periods, trade and exchange in the eastern Mediterranean during the third millennium (3000–2000 BCE) is poorly understood.

Maritime voyages during the that period are known from Egyptian texts, pottery vessels and raw materials from ancient tombs.

Around the same time as this ship struck the rocks, the ancient Egyptians were trading in the eastern Mediterranean through the port of Byblos in Lebanon.

Commodities such as cedar, tin/lead, oils, tree resins, lapis lazuli and silver, all materials that Egypt lacked, were imported by the Egyptian state.

Recent scientific research also reveals that silver was acquired by the Egyptian state around 2600 BCE. Analyses showed this silver was acquired from the Lavrion mines east of modern Athens.

While it is unlikely Egyptian ships made this journey, boats like the Kekova ship may have used the route as part of an extended international maritime network.

And what was in the jars? Remarkably there were still residues visible to the naked eye. Again, scientific analyses are pending, but could be some of the products mentioned in the Egyptian texts, possibly olive oil, wine or tree resin.

The ship may have acquired its pottery from several ports on their journey. Our best assessment at this stage of research is that some of the “belted” jars (or clays used to make them) may have originated in the Central Jordan Valley.

The coast of southern Turkey is littered with ancient shipwrecks. While maritime archaeology is a relatively recent phenomenon, some of the world’s most famous wrecks have been discovered there. Who knows what other secrets these waters hold.

The research on which this article is based was led by Associate Professor Hakan Öniz, head of the Division of Mediterranean Underwater Cultural Heritage Research, and the Department of Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Faculty of Art at the Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey.

Karin Sowada 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/2026/10/14/worlds-oldest-shipwreck-discovered-off-coast-of-turkey/

The hardest disease to care for when I was training as a pediatrician in the late 1970s was cystic fibrosis, a disease in which abnormally thick mucus secretions block the lungs’ airways and make it progressively harder to breathe.

Back then, there was no treatment for the disease itself. All we had was physical therapy to clear mucus from the lungs, and drugs to dilate the airways and aid breathing. We used high doses of antibiotics to treat chronic pneumonia – drugs that also generated dangerous antibiotic-resistant infections that not only made the disease progressively harder to treat but also posed a threat to other people. At the same time, we also had to manage co-occurring conditions, including diabetes, malnutrition and heart failure.

Worse, these efforts did not work. In 1979 the median age of death from cystic fibrosis was 15. While all young deaths are tragic, caring for children with a progressive, inevitably fatal disease that denied emerging adolescents the promise of adulthood was especially heartbreaking.

Cystic fibrosis treatment changed dramatically after 2012, when the biotech company Vertex Pharmaceuticals launched the drug Kalydeco (ivacaftor), followed by additional cystic fibrosis drugs Orkambi (lumacaftor/ivacaftor) in 2015, Symdeko (tezacaftor/ivacaftor) in 2018, Trikafta (elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor) in 2019 and Alyftrek (vanzacaftor/tezacaftor/deutivacaftor) in 2024.

Now, the median survival age for a child with cystic fibrosis born today in the United States is 66 years. Mary Vought, the former wife of the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, stated that their daughter, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, “can live likely a full life because of this miracle drug,” and that “it is very, very, very hopeful.”

Cystic fibrosis treatments are not miracles; they required decades of research funded by a combination of public and private investments. The largest contributor to this work was the National Institutes of Health, which funded much of the pivotal research required to understand the genetics and biology of the disease. Only with this knowledge was it possible to begin searching for drugs to treat cystic fibrosis.

Ironically, the federal funding that was so critical to developing these drugs is now threatened by policies that were initially proposed by the Office of Management and Budget. Those policies, which would increase political control over federal research grants, limit peer review and curtail research on certain topics, were temporarily blocked by Congress. But several federal agencies are still pursing portions of this agenda, including the NIH.

NIH laid the foundation for treatment

My colleagues and I examined the role that federal funding from the National Institutes of Health has played in developing cystic fibrosis treatments. We found that NIH funding supported more than 6,200 published research papers on the biology of cystic fibrosis in the 27 years before Kalydeco was approved in 2012.

Some of these publications describe celebrated milestones in understanding the biology of CFTR – the gene that causes cystic fibrosis – or the disease process. Others describe the studies necessary to replicate, refute or refine these advances and ensure the necessary scientific rigor to successfully discover and develop new drugs.

Overall, we identified US$3.2 billion in NIH funding for basic research on cystic fibrosis from 1985 to 2012 and approximately $940 million in funding for applied research on potential drugs. This funding complemented at least $200 million in investments from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for the discovery or development of these drugs as well as undisclosed spending by Vertex to develop and commercialize these products.

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation acknowledged the essential role of the NIH in a 2025 letter to Russell Vought and other Trump administration leaders, writing that “ensuring that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is fully functional is critical for furthering our knowledge of the biology of CF and advancing CF therapeutic development.”

What will it take to produce future miracles?

Developing groundbreaking drugs requires a long-term, sustained commitment from the public, from the government and from industry.

FDA-approved drugs are typically based on 20 to 30 years of basic research in the lab and eight to nine years of human testing in the clinic. This work is supported, at least in part, by an average of $1.4 billion in NIH funding and as much as a reported $1.4 billion in industry funding per drug.

Russell Vought and his family have benefited from the commitment that scientists, advocates, legislators and industry leaders have placed into developing treatments that now offer patients with cystic fibrosis a normal life. A similar commitment can help find cures for patients who don’t respond to available drugs and to provide cures for cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia and other conditions.

This commitment to research is currently under threat from Trump administration proposals that would reduce NIH funding, research, training and global research collaboration. Protecting or expanding federal funding for basic research instead can help lead to innovative therapies for countless patients.

Fred D. Ledley has received research funding for related research from the National Biomedical Research Foundation, Institute for New Economic Thinking, West Health, and the National Pharmaceutical Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/cystic-fibrosis-patients-got-their-miracle-drug-thanks-to-federal-research-funding-new-trump-administration-rules-may-cut-future-miracles-short/

Drug companies gave at least A$7.7 million over ten years to Australia’s major political parties, our new study shows. But weaknesses in federal disclosure laws mean nobody knows the true figure.

We also show there are discrepancies in what drug companies say they’ve given and what parties say they’ve received, adding to the confusion.

Our findings matter because donations to political parties are a key strategy many companies and industries use to seek favourable decisions about policy and regulations.

Our findings, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, come at a time when the federal government is facing considerable pressure from the Trump administration and international drug companies about drug pricing.

What we did

The pharmaceutical industry spends large amounts on election campaigns and lobbying in the United States. But no-one has analysed this industry’s donations to Australian political parties until now.

So we analysed data from the Australian Electoral Commission’s Transparency Register that covered donations to major Australian federal political parties from 2015 to 2024.

The register required both political parties and donors to disclose donations of $12,800 or more at the start of our study, but this increased gradually to $16,300 by 2024.

We looked at contributions from the industry group Medicines Australia and its 37 core pharmaceutical company members during the period we studied, mainly local subsidiaries of international pharmaceutical companies. We didn’t look at donations from all member groups or non-member pharmaceutical companies.

We downloaded both Donor Returns (what companies disclosed they’d donated) and Party Returns (what parties reported they’d received).

We then adjusted annual totals for inflation to the equivalent of 2024 values. Minor parties were excluded and Liberal and National Parties’ totals were combined as the Coalition.

What we found

Over the years we studied, Medicines Australia and its core members reported contributing almost $7.7 million dollars to Labor and the Coalition.

Company and political party reports differed. Companies reported giving the Coalition $3.89 million but the Coalition reported receiving $1.64 million. Companies reported giving Labor $3.81 million but Labor reported receiving $4.76 million. The two parties reported receiving contributions from 19 companies, but only 13 reported making contributions.

One explanation for these discrepancies is that it’s voluntary to disclose contributions below the threshold level.

Labor appeared to do this routinely, while the Coalition did not. Another complexity is that company reports include state and federal contributions, whereas the party reports only include federal ones.

Donations increased over time but were fairly steady overall, with the party in government generally receiving slightly more than the opposition, according to reports from donors.

We saw no funding surges during election years. The purpose of most contributions wasn’t clear as there was no requirement for this to be disclosed. But the regularity and consistency of the amounts given by many companies suggest they may be corporate party membership fees or fees to attend events.

Overall, pharmaceutical companies seem to donate about as much to Australian major political parties as some industries that make health-harming products.

For example, the alcohol industry made an estimated $14.3 million in political contributions over 22 years. But unlike these industries, pharmaceutical companies contribute steadily across major parties rather than strategically around political events. This may help secure ongoing political access and relationships.

What needs to change?

From January 2027, major changes to federal political funding and disclosure laws are due to come into effect following last year’s amendments to the Electoral Act 1918.

These changes include lowering the disclosure threshold to $5,000 and capping donations at $50,000 per calendar year from a specific donor to a specific recipient. Disclosures will need to be speedier, and there will be greater emphasis on compliance with reporting.

These changes are still flawed. For example, a disclosure threshold of $5,000 is high enough for substantial contributions to go unreported. But if implemented, these changes could go some way towards addressing issues we identified.

However, the future of these changes is uncertain due to a High Court challenge.

Read more:
Parliament has passed landmark election donation laws. They may be a ‘stitch up’ but they also improve Australia’s democracy

What’s the wider context?

The Australian government is currently facing significant pressure on drug pricing from the Trump administration, which says lower prices in other countries cause higher prices in the United States.

In response, companies are demanding higher prices from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Given the high price of many new medicines and ongoing pressures on the PBS, pharmaceutical industry political donations are of public interest as a potential source of influence. But problems with the federal disclosure and transparency rules make it hard to know what is happening.

So political activities of the pharmaceutical industry need closer scrutiny. The industry’s political contributions are modest compared to amounts these companies spend on funding of health consumer groups and health professionals. But even relatively small contributions, resulting in access to political decision-makers, can have strategic value and generate substantial influence.

Government expenditure on PBS medicines was $19.1 billion in 2024–25, with patients contributing $1.7 billion.

With this sort of money at stake, the public deserves to know more about potential sources of industry influence on decisions surrounding how much the Australian government pays for medicines.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of our coauthors Daniel Moses and M. Mofizul Islam to the research on which this article is based.

Deborah Gleeson has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia.

Barbara Mintzes receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She has acted as an expert witness for Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration and for Health Canada within the last 3 years. She is a member of Association Mieux Prescrire and Health Action International and is General Secretary of the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB).

Cassandra de Lacy-Vawdon does not have any current research funding. Previously, she received Australian government Research Training Program Scholarship, and a Monash Graduate Excellence Scholarship provided by Monash University. She is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia and the Australian Health Promotion Association.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/its-no-secret-drug-firms-donate-to-political-parties-but-its-still-a-secret-exactly-how-much-and-why/

A rapidly warming world means more frequent and intense bushfires. And in Australia, the strengthening El Niño could create the conditions for fierce fires this summer.

To protect our communities, Australia must take a proactive approach to bushfire preparedness, response and recovery. But this doesn’t just depend on firefighters or equipment. Reliable, accessible and consistent data is vital to keeping communities safe.

Fire agencies across Australia are increasingly adopting new technologies that track where fires start and how they spread. However, much of this data is spread across different databases, organisations and jurisdictions, making it difficult to access when bushfires break out.

Our recent research interrogates why Australia needs a national bushfire database and maps out what it could look like.

Bushfires do not respect borders

Bushfires burn across borders, impacting countless communities far beyond where they first ignite. Australia’s current approach to collecting bushfire data fails to reflect this.

Bushfire data is recorded and managed by different organisations – including state emergency and land management services – each with their own systems, processes, standards and technical terms. With siloed databases, agencies and communities struggle to coordinate during bushfires.

During the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, residents on the border of two jurisdictions witnessed a devastating bushfire sweep through their communities. However, conflicting state guidelines around labelling fires meant locals couldn’t tell whether incoming warnings were about a new blaze or the one they were already watching.

The Australian government has since acknowledged just how dangerous data fragmentation can be. The 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements and the 2020 New South Wales Independent Bushfire Inquiry both spotlighted the lack of centralised, accessible bushfire data as a major challenge. These findings have prompted initiatives such as the CSIRO’s National Bushfire Intelligence Capability.

What we studied

Our latest research makes a case for a national database, built on trustworthy, standards-based AI technologies like knowledge graphs.

To understand how such a database might work, we looked abroad. We systematically reviewed national bushfire databases, including Europe’s Forest Fire Information System. Under this system, European Union countries and neighbouring nations each collect specific types of information – including data on fire danger, burnt areas and weather forecasts – using a set of shared definitions. This allows authorities to compare fire activity and risk across national borders.

In the United States, the National Emergency Response Information System brings together data from multiple existing systems on a shared digital platform. State-based agencies – including the National Interagency Fire Center and National Weather Service – still own their information but share additional data with the national system.

These examples show national coordination doesn’t require bushfire databases to be completely centralised. Instead, it relies on interoperability – the capacity for different systems to communicate and exchange information effectively.

Technical infrastructure is key to making an Australian bushfire database work. This includes metadata that sets out rules that govern the database and a controlled vocabulary that contains a standardised list of terms and definitions. Both ensure data is collected and interpreted in a consistent way.

Read more:
Yes, the Australian bush is recovering from bushfires – but it may never be the same

Barriers remain

Our research suggests data ownership, privacy, governance, funding and ongoing maintenance are among the main obstacles to establishing an Australian bushfire database.

We spoke to a range of experts from the emergency sector. They advocated for a national bushfire database, saying it would improve risk management, strengthen coordination and help agencies get resources to where they are most needed.

However, many raised data discoverability as a key concern. Vast amounts of valuable bushfire data already exist, but emergency responders may not know where to find it or who maintains it. They also expressed concerns about who would oversee the system and how responsibilities would be distributed.

Other agencies worry strict national standards could limit what practical actions they can take in local contexts. Any national system must be built on trust and collaboration between different agencies and jurisdictions. Relying on shared technology is simply not enough.

From national to local

Beyond coordination, a national database could help Australia more fairly distribute bushfire management resources and facilitate the sharing of expertise, equipment and systems. Some agencies or jurisdictions may struggle to fund or develop these systems by themselves.

Local knowledge is crucial to making any national database work. Local communities can often identify at-risk landscapes and vulnerable groups that are not reflected in formal databases. First Nations peoples have used fire to care for Country over millenia. A national database informed by local and Indigenous knowledge systems would offer invaluable insights about fire behaviour, local ecosystems and cultural burning practices.

As the next bushfire season nears, the need for a national bushfire database grows ever more urgent. Collaboration and long-term federal funding are key to making it a reality.

Read more:
Australia can expect far more fire catastrophes. A proper disaster plan is worth paying for

Nader Naderpajouh received research funding for this project from Natural Hazard Research Australia (NHRA).

Matt Duckham received funding for this research from Natural Hazards Research Australia (NHRA). Matt also co-leads the Victoria Disaster Research Alliance (VDRA).

Raghad Emran and Soniya Rijal do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/australia-urgently-needs-a-national-bushfire-database-heres-what-it-could-look-like/

NAZA, a confronting new documentary by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, exposes how killing civilians in Gaza is a calculated, bureaucratic and disturbingly routine military practice.

Set against everyday life in Tel Aviv, a city just kilometres away from the site of genocide, the documentary’s horror lies not in what we see, but what we hear in the chilling accounts of those who made it possible.

Killing as a calculation

Directed by two of the four filmmakers behind Oscar-winning No Other Land (2024), this 77-minute documentary builds on years of investigative reporting by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, which also produced the film.

At its centre are interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel conducted between 2023 and 2025. Their accounts reveal how artificial intelligence, surveillance technologies and military procedures were used to identify targets and authorise attacks in Gaza following October 7 2023.

The film’s title itself is telling. NAZA is a military acronym for the Hebrew nezek agavi, meaning “collateral damage”. It describes the estimated number of civilians expected to die in an attack. Human lives, including children’s, are reduced to calculations: 10, 15 or 50 NAZA.

We hear the soldiers describe Gaza become a “factory of targets”. Another acknowledges that an AI tool he developed had been used to kill thousands.

Their chilling logic extends to deciding when people should be killed. One soldier explains why targeting Palestinians inside their homes at night, at times by hacking their children’s phones, is preferable to attacking them elsewhere.

“You feel like God because you know everything about them.”

Building on Abraham’s earlier investigation into Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza, the documentary also explores how language can distance those conducting warfare from its human consequences.

Military terms such as “collateral damage”, “target” and “operational necessity” obscure the people behind the numbers. They make civilian deaths seem like an unavoidable consequence, even as they are being anticipated.

The violence we hear, the lives we see

Much of the documentary unfolds at night. Interviewees appear as shadowy figures against the illuminated city.

Szor’s camera moves slowly across residential buildings, observing Israeli women putting their children to bed, cleaning after dinner, or practising yoga.

In one disturbing sequence, the camera glides upwards along a pristine, modern apartment building in Tel Aviv, as a soldier describes how Palestinian homes are identified and coded for bombing.

The chirping of crickets punctuates the rooftop conversations between Abraham and the soldiers.

This seemingly insignificant background sound becomes metaphorically ear-piercing – evoking the calm and safety of Tel Aviv while, about 60 kilometres away, atrocities take place. NAZA makes this short distance between violence and normality almost unbearable.

One soldier describes killing people, taking a lunch break, killing again, then going out with friends. Another recalls how “enjoyable” carrying out a “mission” can be.

Powerful insider testimony

As a piece of investigative war journalism, NAZA’s greatest strength is its access. Military institutions tightly control information about targeting decisions and civilian casualties, so securing testimony from those directly involved is a significant undertaking.

Abraham and Szor spent nearly three years identifying sources and gaining their trust, with some taking months to agree to be interviewed. Some spoke out of guilt or shame, hoping to expose wrongdoings. Others appeared motivated by professional pride in their military work.

The sources remain anonymous. Although this makes sense, it does present a journalistic challenge, as audiences are left to rely on the filmmakers’ verification and investigative groundwork.

Abraham’s questioning is persistent, often following a similar pattern across interviews. He asks how decisions were made, what soldiers knew, and whether they understood the consequences.

At one point, he challenges an interviewee’s suggestion that his colleagues were not motivated by hatred of Arabs, pointing out that these same people had killed extraordinary numbers of them. He is met with silence.

Soldiers describe burning Palestinian homes with leftover olive oil found in those very homes, and destroying buildings as quickly as possible before international pressure intensified.

“We erased history”, one says.

As expected, the Israeli military has rejected the allegations and questioned the verifiability of the anonymous accounts.

Some of this response is included in NAZA, which is important. At the same time, responsible journalism doesn’t mean giving official denials and detailed insider testimony equal weight.

As media studies scholars understand, the much bigger and more important journalistic task in this context is to assess competing claims against available evidence.

Whose testimony counts?

NAZA’s most consequential editorial choice is its overwhelming reliance on Israeli voices. Palestinians appear largely through descriptions of their suffering, surveillance records and images of destruction, rather than as people narrating their own experiences.

This choice serves a clear investigative purpose. The film seeks to expose the machinery of violence through those who operate it, not retell the carnage through its victims.

Yet it also raises a longstanding problem in mainstream (and predominantly Western) conflict journalism: the tendency to privilege powerful institutional sources when establishing what happened.

After more than an hour into the documentary, we finally hear the human cost. NAZA closes with a Palestinian father desperately searching for his wife and children beneath the rubble, crying out to his missing son: “Sa’id! I told you to look after your sisters!”

Normalising genocide

NAZA is a powerful example of documentary war journalism that moves beyond the consequences of a genocide to investigating the decisions that produce them. In my work, I call this perpetrator-centric peace journalism.

NAZA’s lasting contribution is not simply that it documents violence. Much of what it investigates has been previously reported, mainly by Palestinian journalists assuming extraordinary personal risk.

Its distinctive achievement, rather, lies in using the documentary form and insider testimony to confront public denial.

It exemplifies how, in war reporting, the most revealing testimonies can come not from those who suffer the violence, but from those who carry it out.

NAZA is showing in Australian cinemas now.

Ayesha Jehangir has recently received funding from the University of New South Wales (2025) and the Journalism Education & Research Association of Australia (JERAA) (2026) for projects not related to this article.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/naza-harrowing-documentary-shows-how-killing-in-gaza-became-just-another-days-work/

Every year, the upper Zambesi River breaks its banks and spreads across the wide Barotse floodplains in Zambia.

These seasonal wetlands are famed for their exceptional richness of species, from birds to unique cichlid fish.

But there are signs of profound upheaval. Native fish and invertebrate populations have fallen, river plants are being devoured and river banks hollowed out from within.

Every Australian knows common myna birds are bad, rabbits are worse and feral cats kill native animals unchecked.

But how do we decide what makes an introduced species “good” or “bad” – and will we ever concede that some species are here to stay?

The culprit will be familiar. As the flood eases and the dry season begins, the shallow muddy pools left behind teem with redclaw crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus), a freshwater crayfish native to the tropics in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Many Australians call these “yabbies”, as they do other medium-sized Cherax crayfish.

It might seem bizarre that an Australian species has become an invasive pest overseas. The flow of introduced species usually goes the other way. But these yabbies were forged in the intense crucible of the Australian climate. Unfortunately, they may be all but unstoppable in the Zambesi – and many other water bodies around the world.

Built for a harsh landscape

Over 100 species of freshwater crayfish are found in Australia. Many are remarkable. The giant Tasmanian crayfish (Astacopsis gouldi) is the largest crayfish in the world across both fresh and salt water, while burrowing crayfish species spend most of their lives in burrows, marked by chimneys of clay.

Of Australia’s ten freshwater crayfish genera (groups of species), the Cherax species are arguably the toughest.

They evolved to survive in Australian billabongs, ephemeral lakes left behind when a river changes course. These lakes can dry up and refill at times, causing a brutal wet-dry cycle.

Cherax species became adapted to survive in deeply inhospitable habitats, such as water with virtually no dissolved oxygen. They can burrow deeply and enter a dormant state for months to years before better weather arrives. A single female can produce several broods a year, with up to 1000 eggs in each brood.

They are aggressive generalists, eating everything from detritus and aquatic plants to fish, invertebrates and even each other.

As climate change brings more extreme weather, tough species such as the redclaw are better equipped to survive than local species who may have evolved in a kinder climate.

How did redclaws get to southern Africa?

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, redclaws were exported to aquaculture facilities across Africa, Europe, Asia and South America. Farmers liked them for their hardiness, adaptability and rapid growth.

Their striking blues and reds made them popular in the global aquarium trade, creating a second major pathway for their spread.

It was all but inevitable that redclaws would escape containment and make it into local rivers. Some escaped aquaculture ponds during hurricanes or by being accidentally released. Others were pets released into waterways.

In the wild, the humble redclaw multiplied. Soon, there were signs of devastating shifts in local waterways.

We don’t know exactly how redclaws got into the Zambesi. During the 1990s, redclaws began to be spotted in the river. Their numbers soon surged – and native plant, fish and invertebrate species suffered.

Redclaws are now on the doorstep of pristine, highly sensitive ecosystems such as Botswana’s famous Okavango Delta. They are already present in South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park. Fishers in Zambia report significant falls in their catch. They can spread 6 kilometres in an average year – and up to 49km/year during flooding seasons.

Escapee redclaws are also moving through Central America and parts of Southeast Asia. Amazingly, redclaws are also considered an invasive species in parts of Western Australia.

Many Australians think fondly of yabbies (likely derived from “yabidj/yapitj”, the name used by several First Nations groups in southern Australia). How could they become pests?

Australia’s long geographic isolation meant its unique species evolved in a closed system. They often lack the competitive edge to survive against aggressive invaders from other continents. As a result, it’s rare for Australian wildlife to become invasive pests overseas.

But as our freshwater crustaceans show, there are exceptions.

Common yabbies pose another threat

The redclaw isn’t alone. Australia’s common yabby (Cherax destructor) has also escaped aquariums and aquaculture farms to quietly colonise rivers and lakes in parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. Endemic to the rivers of the Murray-Darling basin, it can tolerate water temperatures between 1°C and 35°C and survive in many habitats. This helps it outcompete many native crayfish.

Worse, Cherax destructor is susceptible to and can carry strains of lethal crayfish plague, meaning it can spread the pathogen to highly susceptible species in Europe. The plague is an aquatic mould native to North America, which infects the host’s cuticle (shell) and can lead to mass mortality events.

In Australia, Cherax species co-evolved with native predators such as Murray cod, platypus and rakali who naturally keep their populations in check.

Overseas, local predators are not always able to provide these checks and balances. Australian yabbies find it easy to bully and outcompete smaller, less aggressive native crustaceans and fish. They do particularly well in degraded rivers or lakes where native species are already struggling.

What can be done?

It’s nearly impossible to eradicate redclaws and yabbies once they are breeding in a major river system.

Traps often catch the larger adults, which can inadvertently trigger a population boom by freeing up food and territory for juveniles left behind.

In response, ecologists and conservationists are shifting tactics. In southern Africa, community harvesting programs train locals to catch and sell “redclaws” for food, suppressing numbers while generating income.

In Europe, aquaculture hatcheries are deploying more effective physical barriers to halt escapes, alongside biological controls such as stocking waterways with large, predatory native fish.

Efforts like these, may keep redclaw numbers down in the Zambesi. But the yabbies are likely there to stay.

What the story of Australia’s pest yabbies tells us is that an organism that seems harmless or even struggling in its home habitat can sometimes become an environmental super-weapon when dropped into an ecosystem unequipped to fight it.

Moving species across borders has long been done for short-term economic gain. But as the plague of yabbies in the Zambesi shows, it’s ecological roulette.

Rachael King 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/2026/10/14/hordes-of-yabbies-are-trashing-rivers-in-africa-how-did-this-happen/

When scientists talk about scavengers, you might imagine an animal sniffing out or stumbling across a carcass, eating as much as possible, and slinking away.

But like all foods, a dead animal holds a variety of macronutrients – carbohydrates, lipids (fats), and protein – all within the same carcass, or meal. Just as an egg has a high-protein white and a higher fat yolk, carcasses are similar.

Scavengers are typically thought of as unfussy scroungers that will eat whatever is available, but our new research suggests this isn’t the case. So, which part of the carcass does a hungry dingo, wedge-tailed eagle, or red fox eat first?

How animals feed

We know that many species – mostly herbivores or animals in a lab context – choose foods to meet their nutritional targets. Like a bodybuilder aiming to hit a protein goal, wild spider monkeys and orangutans choose foods that allow them to maintain a stable intake of protein.

While there’s no reason a similar phenomenon should not exist in wild carnivores, there is little to no data on the feeding choices of carnivores. This lack of data is due to the logistical challenges in tracking them as they can be very elusive, and typically have large home ranges.

Scavengers offer scientists a great model for examining how animals decide what to eat. If different parts of a carcass offer different nutritional rewards, then scavenging may be less like eating leftovers, and more like choosing from a buffet.

To find out, we monitored the carcasses of 40 eastern grey kangaroos in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales over a summer and a winter, with camera traps recording all activity. Three common and important scavengers in this area are dingoes, wedge-tailed eagles and red foxes. We took note of the kangaroo body parts they fed on, and how long they fed each time.

When eagles first arrived at an intact carcass, we found they consistently chose to feed at the head and abdomen, while dingoes targeted the tail most often. Foxes, on the other hand, were completely outcompeted in choosing a “favourite” body part – dingoes and eagles consistently beat them to the resource and so foxes were limited to the scraps.

This finding was not entirely surprising, because dingoes and eagles are classified as apex scavengers. This means they are the dominant species in their respective communities, and structure the ecosystem around them. As apex scavengers, they arrive to carcass sites very quickly and can consume large amounts of biomass rapidly. And because they arrived first and consumed their preferred parts, foxes had less choice.

When considering the choices our apex scavengers made, it became clear they targeted areas high in fat. Kangaroos are generally extremely lean animals, but they do carry concentrated fat in a few key places – around the base of the tail, surrounding the internal organs, and within the brain.

But carcasses are also changing in composition as they decompose. While high fat areas were targeted early on, scavengers shifted their preferences over time. Most notably, eagles shifted their feeding to more protein-dense areas, such as the muscly hindlimbs of the kangaroo.

Choosing the right food

When we looked at what happened across seasons, we found something very interesting. Both dingoes and eagles increased their feeding on the abdomen in winter compared to summer. Cooler conditions and the lack of alternative food may increase the importance of fats in a scavenger diet. This could also explain why there was a such a strong preference for fat-rich areas when the apex scavengers first discovered the carcasses.

It used to be thought that wild animals foraged to eat as much as possible for the least amount of energy expenditure. However, we now know they have to balance different nutritional requirements. This is known as nutritional geometry. It explains how animals choose what to eat to get the right balance of nutrients they need. Essentially, they have an inbuilt tracker to ensure they don’t eat too much or too little of any one macronutrient.

More than just competition

Our research shows scavengers make informed decisions about what to eat from a carcass – they seem to prioritise fat-rich body parts before shifting to other areas. But the availability of such parts depends on who has first access.

So the next time you see roadkill, remember it’s probably a site for complex interactions as scavengers vie to get to their preferred part of the buffet.

Niraj Meisuria is a committee member of the Australasian Wildlife Management Society. He is also a member of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, the Ecological Society of Australia and the Wildlife Disease Association.

Thomas Newsome receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is president of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales and a member (and past president) of the Australasian Wildlife Management Society. He is also a member of the Australian Mammal Society and the Ecological Society of Australia

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/australian-scavengers-dont-just-eat-everything-and-slink-away-they-approach-a-carcass-like-a-buffet/

If you visit Mount Jacques-Cartier in Québec’s Gaspésie National Park, you can expect to climb through a forest of spruce and fir trees along a trail lined with bunchberry flowers. As you approach the peak, the trees get shorter and disappear at the alpine zone, where the climate is harsh and plants cling to the ground.

But this island in the sky — like dozens of other alpine summits in the northern Appalachians region — is changing. Research by my colleagues and me, using 41 years of satellite imagery of mountains across the northeastern United States and Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula, shows that these mountains are slowly greening.

Why is this happening? And what does it mean for the future of the plants that live where the cold and wind are too extreme for trees to survive?

Life in the northeastern alpine zone

Scientists have been studying alpine plants in the northern Appalachians since the 1784 Belknap-Cutler expedition to Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

Later botanists such as M.L. Fernald documented the exceptional plant diversity of Québec’s Chic-Chocs Mountains.

They found plants that can live where it’s cold, cloudy, rainy or snow-covered, and almost unimaginably windy.

At Petit Mont Sainte-Anne, gusts can reach up to 250 kilometres an hour. Mount Washington famously recorded a 371 km/h wind in 1934, and dangerously high winds are commonplace.

In winter, these winds pick up ice particles and blast them against any plants outside the shelter of a rock or snowdrift. Plants on these mountains must be hardy, and some are found nowhere else on Earth.

Changes on the ground

Recently, botanists and ecologists have reported changes in the northern Appalachian Mountains. My colleague, terrestrial ecologist Jordon Tourville, found the treeline is advancing upward on Mount Katahdin and Mount Washington. Surveys of Mount Bigelow’s alpine zone showed increases in trees and small shrubs.

Those studies are important, but they cover individual mountains in varying time periods with varying methods. To see the big picture, we needed to step back.

We obtained and processed hundreds of images from Landsat satellites from 1984 to 2024 covering every alpine summit in the region. Building reliable datasets of greenness wasn’t easy. It required careful calibration across generations of satellites.

We also had to solve the problem of observation frequency bias. In the 1980s, Landsat-5 collected fewer images per season than newer satellites do. This increase in observation frequency means that we’re statistically more likely to capture images of peak-summer greenness today than back in 1984. That could create the appearance of a false upward trend in greenness.

To account for this, we built statistical models for each summit quantifying how greenness fluctuates seasonally. By comparing the satellite observations to these models, we were able to make better calculations of each year’s maximum greenness. This eliminated the problem of sparse data in the past, giving a high-quality estimate of actual greening.

What the images show

We detected significant greening at approximately 70 per cent of alpine sites in the northern Appalachian Mountains, or 88 per cent of the alpine area. Québec’s McGerrigle Mountains and the nearby Maine mountains are changing fastest.

This greening is occurring in the interior of alpine zones, not just along the treeline. It’s not just the forest slowly expanding upward, but ecological changes throughout the alpine zone.

One obvious cause is climate warming. Alpine greening has been observed elsewhere in the world; a warmer climate allows less cold-tolerant plants to out-compete hardy but slow-growing ones.

Other factors may be involved. The same carbon dioxide that warms the atmosphere can act as fertilizer for plants. So does nitrogen emitted by fossil fuel power plants. Invasive plant species carried to mountain peaks on hikers’ boots may crowd out native species if the warming climate lets them gain a foothold.

Greening means that the rare plants on these summits could be overwhelmed by faster-growing species taking advantage of environmental changes. Research in Europe shows increasing rates of local extinction of high-elevation alpine plant species as lower-elevation plants move in.

Some positive findings

A silver lining for the northern Appalachians is that in the windiest, most exposed locations, our satellite data seem to show greening is slower or non-existent. The region’s fierce winds may protect some of its alpine plant communities from these environmental changes.

On heavily visited alpine summits, summit stewards and other environmental education efforts are helping plants by reducing trampling of the tundra by hikers. That’s a form of greening that is beneficial.

Satellite imaging is a powerful tool for alpine ecologists, but it doesn’t replace fieldwork. We still need to climb mountains and study the plants directly. But by showing what’s happening at the regional scale, we can help scientists contextualize their field studies and understand how those might extrapolate more widely.

From climate warming to atmospheric nitrogen deposition, our environmental challenges cross borders. This study demonstrates a similarly broad approach to understanding how those changes are shaping the lives of the tiny plants that live on northern Appalachian peaks.

Jonathan W. Chipman receives funding from the Dartmouth College William H. Neukom Institute for Computational Science, the Schmidt Sciences Humanities and AI Virtual Institute, and the US National Institutes of Health. He is a current member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Green Mountain Club, and the Adirondack Mountain Club.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/in-the-northern-appalachian-mountains-warmer-weather-is-making-alpine-regions-greener/

The first time my home security system flagged me as an animal, I was sitting at my patio table with my morning coffee a few years ago. I figured it was a glitch. A few months later, it happened again as I walked across the yard to catch the afternoon sun.

More recently, while I was on vacation, the same system logged my South Asian teenaged neighbour, whom I’d hired to cut the grass, as an animal too. This has never happened to my husband, who is white. Two racialized people appear to produce one pattern.

My son, who is in elementary school, also told me he couldn’t chat with a friend online. I had parental controls set up on the platform, and the age verification had read his friend, a Black boy the same age, as much older than him and blocked them from communicating.

This is no longer a glitch, I realized. We have a real problem.

I keep returning to these moments following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first Canada Investment Summit, which asked the world’s largest investors to put money into Canadian advanced technology. Energy, critical minerals, defence and technology are the four things Canada is selling, yet nobody on the summit agenda appeared to ask whose faces these systems fail to recognize.

As a Canada Research Chair examining how bias shapes technologies adopted by the criminal justice system, I wonder: Can we trust these systems built to keep us from harm when they can’t reliably tell us apart from wildlife? Can we trust these systems that reinforce the adultification of Black boys?

Algorithms that cause harm

Canada recently released a national AI strategy, premised on AI for all. While this is well intended, “for all” is hard to imagine when systems read me, or anyone with darker skin, as something other than human.

The strategy recognizes that “biases built into algorithms can cause harm to vulnerable communities,” but it stops short of acknowledging how that harm erodes trust in these systems among racialized people in particular.

Some may question the focus on race. However, it’s necessary when system errors keep reproducing long-standing stereotypes that cast Black and brown bodies as animalistic, or Black children as older than they are. And this matters as AI-powered surveillance cameras become more popular in Canada.

Read more:
Is someone watching you? Facial recognition tech is here and Canada offers little privacy protection

Support for AI in policing

Take policing. Canadian law enforcement agencies remain among the most trusted institutions in this country. That trust, however, has always been lower among Black and Indigenous people.

I was surprised, then, when my national study on public perceptions of AI in Canadian policing across racial groups found that 60 per cent of Black and 62 per cent of South Asian respondents supported AI in policing, even at a potentially high financial cost, compared to only 46 per cent of white respondents.

Furthermore, white respondents were more likely than Black and Indigenous respondents to rate transparency, ethical safeguards, regulation and public input as important.

Read quickly, that might look like indifference among racialized people. But perhaps white respondents expect transparency and ethical conduct by the police, whereas for Black and Indigenous respondents, those principles have historically been absent. Their support is conditional on meaningful demonstration rather than a stated promise.

Read more:
As ICE’s tech-enabled dragnet and surveillance expand, activists are fighting back with data of their own

Bias is not a moral footnote

Where these racial groups did agree, in my research, was on government regulation of AI in policing. Every group rated it as important, suggesting that Canadians see AI as a viable public safety tool, but want real accountability.

Trust is the variable that decides whether these systems earn legitimacy, but whose trust does the government seek? The federal AI Strategy Task Force did not include any Black members until a prominent legal scholar pushed for one. Now there is one single Black voice advising the country on a technology whose failures may affect an entire community.

The government is right to push for more home-grown technology, since much of what enters Canadian institutions is built abroad and trained on populations that look nothing like our own. But building in Canada has to mean building with people at the table who are empowered to ask hard questions. While this does not guarantee better systems, it can create the conditions for real oversight and measured deployment instead of legal repercussions later.

So, as Ottawa goes looking for billions over the next five years with advanced technology on the pitch list, bias cannot be a moral footnote. It must be central to the agenda. We need to ask upfront who these systems are most likely to fail, how we will know and what it will take to address those failures.

If we don’t, Canada risks not only perpetuating bias but eroding its citizens’ trust. People like me would like to sit in their own backyard without being mistaken for wildlife. That’s a low bar for a country that says it’s building technology for all.

Kanika Samuels-Wortley receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Research Chair program.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/my-own-security-system-flagged-me-a-black-woman-as-an-animal/

Artificial intelligence (AI) can now flag people who may be at elevated risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) years before they disclose the violence or seek help for it within the health-care system.

But what happens when a health-care system appears to know something about a survivor they haven’t chosen to reveal?

In a recent study, a research team led by researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston trained AI models using routinely collected electronic health record data to identify patients at risk of IPV. On average, the models identified risk of IPV more than three years before patients enrolled in a hospital-based domestic abuse intervention program.

At first blush, this may sound like a revolutionary breakthrough in care for people who have experienced IPV. If health-care providers can identify patients at elevated risk of IPV victimization, they might be able to offer support or resources before survivors even disclose the abuse.

The findings, however, have their limits: the models were developed using data from female patients at a single U.S. academic health centre, though the researchers did validate the models in three other patient cohorts. The researchers noted that “careful performance evaluation on the more general population of female patients should be conducted before implementing the models for clinical use.”

However, viewed through a trauma- and violence-informed lens, the promise of early detection raises a critical question: what happens to a person’s agency when the health-care system can flag their potential risk of IPV before they choose to disclose their experiences?

A trauma- and violence-informed approach

Trauma- and violence-informed care is an approach that recognizes how trauma, inequity and systemic violence shape people’s health. These experiences also shape people’s relationships with health-care providers and the systems they work in.

The approach emphasizes principles of safety, choice, collaboration, connection and capacity-building. Those principles matter in the context of IPV because disclosure is complex.

For someone experiencing IPV, deciding when, how and whether to disclose depends on a range of factors. Among them are safety concerns, financial dependence, distrust of social services, fear of not being believed and concerns their children will be taken away.

In some cases, staying silent about abuse is a survival strategy women use to keep themselves and their children safe.

Relying on AI to detect abuse risks taking control away from survivors, removing their freedom to decide when and how to discuss their trauma with a clinician.

Read more:
Domestic violence disclosure schemes may not improve safety for victim-survivors of intimate partner violence

The risk of missed opportunities

While AI may create new opportunities to identify potential IPV victimization, it may also create new ways to miss it.

If health-care systems become over-reliant on AI-generated risk assessments, the absence of an “AI flag” could discourage providers from asking whether a patient is experiencing violence. This is especially concerning because a survivor’s disclosure often depends on a health-care provider creating a safe space for them to share.

Research on clinical decision-support systems has already highlighted concerns about automation bias — the tendency of clinicians to over-rely on automated recommendations, even when those are wrong.

If AI is used to detect IPV, that’s all the more reason to ensure these tools supplement — not replace — clinical judgment. They should also support meaningful conversations between health-care providers and patients.

Detecting IPV is different from responding

This points to a crucial distinction: detecting IPV is not the same as responding to it, especially in a trauma- and violence-informed way.

An assumption worth interrogating is whether using AI to identify people who may be experiencing IPV actually improves their outcomes.

One of the researchers who developed and tested the AI tool has said its goal is not to pressure patients into disclosure. Rather, the aim is to help clinicians communicate compassionately with patients and connect them with support and resources.

What exactly happens once a patient is flagged by AI systems, however, remains unclear.

Is the clinician trained to respond to a disclosure of IPV, especially in a trauma- and violence-informed way? Are appropriate services that align with the needs of the victim-survivor available and accessible?

Even if algorithms can flag a patient who is at an elevated risk of IPV, victim-survivors will likely still encounter the same gaps in services, safety planning and other resources that already exist today.

Therefore, while health systems might become better at identifying IPV, that does not inherently mean they will be better at addressing it.

Where do we go from here?

Ultimately, interacting with the health-care system and health-care providers still represents a critical window for IPV victim-survivor intervention and support.

But creating conditions in which victim-survivors can choose to disclose abuse safely is very different from having AI infer that violence may be occurring before they have chosen to share that information.

From a trauma- and violence-informed perspective, questions about AI’s predictive accuracy are only one piece of the puzzle. Any implementation of AI-based IPV risk detection must also be evaluated against principles of safety, choice, collaboration, connection and capacity-building.

Before these tools reach clinics, those who design and deploy them need to consider who gets to decide when a survivor’s story is told.

This question is particularly important because IPV is often marked by coercion and control. For someone living with IPV, the ability to decide when, how and whether to talk about it should not be taken lightly. A tool that takes that choice away from them, however well-intentioned, falls short of truly survivor-centred care.

Eden Hoffer receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Karen A. Campbell receives research funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/ai-can-predict-intimate-partner-violence-before-survivors-disclose-but-should-it/

Canada has made digital sovereignty a priority in areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and telecommunications. But one important part of its digital infrastructure has received far less attention: the operating systems running government computers.

Why does the federal government depend so heavily on software from a foreign company? And could Canada reduce that dependence by developing its own alternative?

My new study argues that Canada could save millions over the next decade by adopting a national, free and open-source operating system.

Such a move could also give Canada greater control over its digital infrastructure and reduce its reliance on technology providers from the United States amid growing trade tensions.

Why operating systems matter

Governments around the world are increasingly concerned about who controls their data, infrastructure and software. This is known as “digital sovereignty” and it has become a central focus of global policy.

Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures helped bring these concerns to public attention. Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, revealed extensive U.S. government surveillance, including the collection of communications data.

The U.S. later passed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, which permits American authorities to compel U.S.-based providers like Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta to disclose data within their control, even when it’s stored abroad. This means that even storing data with American companies in Canada does not place it beyond the reach of the U.S. government.

Yet Canada’s sovereignty debate has focused disproportionately on cloud computing, AI and 5G infrastructure. It has paid much less attention to operating systems, despite their role as the foundation on which computers and other applications run.

Microsoft Windows accounts for 63.75 per cent of the Canadian desktop market, and the Canadian government spends more than $250 million annually on Microsoft to run its operating systems every year. This is not only a recurring fiscal dependency on a single foreign vendor, but it’s also a potential security risk.

Loss of trust in the U.S.

These concerns have taken on greater urgency as relations between Canada and the U.S. have deteriorated.

Polling reported by Politico found that 60 per cent of Canadians say they can “never trust Americans the same way again” while 63 per cent believe the U.S. creates more problems than it solves.

A separate poll found that 60 per cent view the U.S. as an unreliable and unsupportive ally and as of 2026, 78 per cent no longer consider the U.S. an ally following the U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2025 tariff regime, annexation rhetoric and controversial claims about how trade works.

Read more:
Sovereign AI? Anthropic shutdown reveals Canada’s weakness

More recently, proposals in Florida to tax Canadian snowbirds without representation have added to concerns about how Canadians are treated in the U.S.

Research suggests that declines in political trust can be durable and difficult to reverse. This damage to the Canada-U.S. relationship is likely to outlast the politicians responsible for it. Against this rupture, Canada’s reliance on U.S. technology providers deserves closer scrutiny.

The open-source alternative

Canadians already have alternatives to Windows available. One of the best-established is Linux, a free and open-source operating system used across personal computers, servers and other devices.

Linux powers the world’s fastest supercomputers and is widely used by most Fortune 500 companies and internet service providers.

Free and open-source software (FOSS) allows people and organizations to inspect, use, modify and redistribute source code under licences that permit those activities.

FOSS dominates software development, with one estimate suggesting 70 to 90 per cent of modern software solutions include open-source components.

Canada could develop its own national Linux-based operating system by building on Debian, an existing open-source operating system, instead of starting from scratch. This would allow the government to inspect and modify code, manage its own updates and maintain the system over time.

Lessons from other countries

Canada wouldn’t be the first country to pursue greater control over its operating systems and software.

China has developed operating systems including Kylin and openKylin, while Russia has developed Astra Linux. India has developed BOSS Linux, while France’s Gendarmerie nationale has deployed GendBuntu. South Korea has developed alternatives including Gooroom, HamoniKR and TmaxOS. These countries have all saved themselves millions of dollars by switching to their own operating systems.

Germany offers another model, which is particularly well-suited for Canada. Its Centre for Digital Sovereignty, known as ZenDiS, was established in 2022 to help public administrations reduce their dependence on individual technology providers.

Germany has also pursued initiatives such as LiMux, a municipal Linux migration, and the use of LibreOffice, a free and private office suite with no forced AI use.

What would a Canadian operating system cost?

Switching an entire government to an open-source operating system is not cost-free. My proposal is to establish a Canadian Free and Open Systems Foundation — a Crown not-for-profit modelled on Germany’s ZenDiS, alongside a three-phase implementation roadmap and five policy recommendations targeted at relevant institutions.

My study estimates this could cost $23 million to $43 million over two years (compared with an estimated $49 million to $62 million for ZenDiS).

Canada could also reduce costs by seconding staff from the Canadian Digital Service, Shared Services Canada and the Communications Security Establishment. It could also leverage existing NSERC Alliance and Mitacs programs.

My study estimates that the gross 10-year savings of switching operating systems would be between $700 million and $1.13 billion.

Canada could easily recoup its investment costs through government savings alone and earn a large return on investment. Schools, universities and Canadian businesses would receive additional benefits by switching away from the licensing costs associated with U.S. operating system providers. Such a shift could deliver better performance, cost savings and stronger national security.

Joshua M. Pearce has received funding for research from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Mitacs, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition, his past and present consulting work and research are funded by the United Nations, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, many non-profits and for-profit companies in the energy and solar photovoltaic fields. He has written extensively on open source issues. He has no direct conflicts of interest.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/canada-could-save-millions-by-developing-its-own-operating-system-instead-of-relying-on-microsoft-windows/

Over the past month, the Labor government, the Coalition and One Nation have all announced new migration policies. Although they differ in some respects they have one feature in common: a focus on net overseas migration (NOM).

If the parties were pursuing evidence-based plans, they would model what level of migration is in the national interest based on Australia’s economic and social needs. Instead, NOM, which is essentially an accounting outcome, is treated as a basis for policy.

But are there any good ideas within these policies, and is one approach superior? Let’s compare them.

One Nation

One Nation’s policy has been very fluid.

But the party has settled on NOM being “net-negative” for three years before rising to 130,000. How much net-negative is unstated.

These targets for NOM are not justified by any modelling of their impact on the labour force, housing and infrastructure.

Instead, there is a lot of empty political rhetoric that, in the words of former Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein, blames migration for “every economic and social problem confronting Australians”.

One Nation has announced specific changes to numbers on the various temporary visas, including heavily restricting international students.

The Coalition

The new Coalition policy states NOM would fall to 100,000 in its first two years in government before rising to 130,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four.

Like One Nation, the Coalition’s NOM targets are not justified by any modelling of their impacts on the problems they aim to solve. And like One Nation, the proposals are accompanied by a lot of empty rhetoric.

After four years, the Coalition proposes “to maintain the migration rate as a share of the population below the average under the Howard government”. This ignores the fact that, during the term of the Howard government, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) applied three very different definitions to the calculation of NOM.

If the two definitions that ABS applied to NOM from 1996 to 2005 were in place today, NOM would be considerably lower than it is. This is because vastly more temporary migrants are now counted into NOM than would be the case if the 1996–2005 definitions were used today.

The Coalition’s plans to cut the numbers on graduate and bridging visas would cut around 475,000 workers from the Australian labour force, 216,000 of whom are skilled (based on applying 2021 Census employment characteristics to 2026 numbers).

This at a time when an estimated two million baby-boomers have retired, and when Australia’s labour market has become increasingly dependent on workers with temporary visas, especially in sectors such as aged care, construction and horticulture.

Read more:
The Coalition’s migration policy rests on a series of false premises

Labor

Labor in government tried for a long time not to have a target number for NOM.

However, led by the prime minister and the very real prospect that NOM will fall to the level of the Treasury long-run forecast before the next election, Labor has adopted the Treasury forecast as its policy position for NOM.

This number, 235,000 per year, derives from basic research conducted by Treasury’s Centre for Population in 2020 during the term of the Morrison Coalition government. Treasury has stuck with this forecast for six years, even though there have been considerable changes in the management of temporary migration since 2020.

It’s ironic that Labor is now defending a forecast originally made by the Coalition.

The permanent program

Labor and the Coalition share the same policy on the permanent intake: 185,000 per year. They differ on the number of humanitarian migrants (Labor 20,000 and Coalition 10,000).

For One Nation, permanent migration appears not to exist because there is no mention of it.

The Coalition does not clarify how a continuing permanent migration program of 185,000 per year harmonises with its much lower and changing levels of NOM.

With even more severe cuts to NOM, this could be a bigger issue for One Nation if we knew what its policy was. It is incumbent on One Nation to address permanent migration policy.

None of the three parties has proposed ending the egregious and illegal practice of capping the number of permanent visas issued to partners of Australian citizens.

Managing temporary migration

In a potentially more positive direction, both the Coalition and One Nation have specified changes to the management of the various temporary visas. Immigration Minister Tony Burke made some less radical changes in his recent speech to the National Press Club.

All three parties agree undergraduate students should not be permitted to bring family members with them. Labor has already implemented this change.

Both One Nation and the Coalition propose to eliminate the graduate visa except for a small number of elite students.

Read more:
The Coalition’s migration changes would slash international student enrolments

Reacting to labour demand, all three parties are seeking to increase numbers on the temporary skilled visa. In the absence of the graduate visa, the temporary skilled visa would become all-important in the recruitment of permanent skilled migrants.

This is a positive direction as the skills which migrants hold are much more closely related to labour demand than the courses being studied by international students. They also come from a much wider diversity of countries than students.

One Nation, however, has made the very bad mistake of proposing that temporary skilled visa holders will not be allowed to bring their families.

These people are part of international labour markets. They have choices. They will not come to Australia on a four-year temporary visa without their families.

All three parties want to move to much smaller numbers on bridging visas. The cut proposed by the Coalition is from around the present 400,000 to 40,000. They say they can achieve this by not permitting temporary migrants (other than working holiday makers) to apply for another temporary visa onshore.

This ignores the fact that 133,000 of the people presently on Bridging Visa A are applicants for permanent visas.

One Nation’s target for bridging visas is 300,000, which most commentators would say is still unacceptably high.

The post-2028 election numbers on bridging visas will be highly dependent on the legacy number at the time of the election. This is in Labor’s hands.

All three parties wish to eliminate 80,000 so-called “unlawful non-citizens”. Big (metaphorical) sticks are proposed, but not guns.

Former migration administrator, Abul Rizvi, correctly says this is very much easier said than done. Alone among the three parties, One Nation has said there will be no amnesty for this cohort.

What should be done

All these announcements have been made in the absence of comprehensive information on the employment of temporary residents and their impacts on housing and other aspects of infrastructure. This information will become available from the results of the 2026 census, for which there is no published release date as yet.

The sensible approach to take in this situation is to not make drastic changes until proper research is conducted. This could and should be done by whatever government is elected in 2028, but this is likely to be a vain hope.

Politicking about temporary migration in lieu of reliable data will inevitably be ill-informed.

Peter McDonald received funding for migration research from federal government agencies up to 2013.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/australia-has-3-competing-migration-policies-the-problem-none-are-based-in-evidence/

More than a third of Australian teachers say they plan to leave the profession before retirement, while a further third say they are unsure of their career plans.

High levels of stress and burnout are cited as key factors behind teaching turnover. A 2025 Australian study found 90% of teachers reported severe levels of stress, while rates of depression and anxiety symptoms were more than double the national average.

High levels of distress and turnover don’t just affect teachers. They disrupt student learning and place further pressure on school systems, particularly in disadvantaged communities.

But teachers with higher wellbeing tend to have stronger relationships with students and better outcomes in the classroom.

So, supporting teachers’ wellbeing is crucial for retaining teachers, while also promoting high-quality teaching and learning.

How can we do this? Our new research provides some clues.

What we already knew

Many efforts to support teachers have focused on reducing stress and managing burnout through approaches such as stress-management training. But supporting teacher wellbeing means more than stepping in once they are already overwhelmed and ready to leave the profession.

So there is growing attention on how to create the personal and environmental conditions that enable teachers to thrive, rather than simply addressing problems once they arise.

In our research, we focus on positive psychology interventions because they aim to help teachers stay well, motivated and fulfilled in their work, despite the pressures they face. These can involve mindfulness, resilience training, social-emotional learning (involving emotional skills and care for others), gratitude practices, or several approaches at once.

Previous reviews of positive psychology interventions for teachers suggest they are often associated with positive effects. But the evidence remains fragmented.

Our research

Our research aimed to make sense of this confusion through a scoping review.

We wanted to understand what’s being done around the world to proactively improve teacher wellbeing, what outcomes are being measured, whether these approaches appear to work, and how they might be better implemented.

In total, we reviewed 247 studies spanning 25 years of research across 42 countries, including the United States, China, England, Australia and Canada.

What did we find?

The most frequently identified approaches, and those most consistently associated with improvements in wellbeing and reduced stress and burnout, were:

• Socio-emotional learning: this combines emotional skills and compassion training to help teachers regulate their emotions, build relationships with others, and create more supportive classrooms for themselves and their students.

• Mindfulness-based approaches: these develop self-awareness, attention to the present moment and a non-judgemental attitude towards thoughts and emotions.

• Combined wellbeing approaches: these target different areas of teachers’ wellbeing, including their emotions, relationships, sense of purpose and professional growth. Examples include using personal strengths at work, expressing gratitude to colleagues and focusing on what gives their work meaning.

What does this mean overall?

These interventions typically aimed to strengthen self-regulation skills, enhance teacher self-efficacy (belief in their teaching capabilities), and cultivate positive relationships with students and colleagues to promote wellbeing and resilience.

However, the studies we examined varied widely in their design and often relied on self-reported, short-term outcomes. This highlights the need for more rigorous research into whether these benefits last over time.

What can we do to prevent burnout?

Three practical messages stand out from our findings.

1. Mindfulness matters

Mindfulness was an important component of many teacher wellbeing interventions, but it is often misunderstood as simply a “stress-reduction technique” or formal meditation.

Mindfulness is about how we pay attention and how we relate and respond to what shows up in our minds. For a teacher, this might mean noticing early signs of frustration or stress during a difficult classroom interaction, pausing before these feelings escalate, and choosing a more considered response.

Limited time and difficulty applying mindfulness during the school day were common barriers in the studies we reviewed. Given this, schools could help teachers develop brief, informal mindfulness practices during their daily routines.

2. Relationships matter

Our review suggests relationships are central to teacher wellbeing. Supportive colleagues can make even the toughest days feel more manageable and the good days even more rewarding. Positive relationships with students can provide a powerful sense of purpose and remind teachers of the difference they make.

How teachers relate to themselves matters, too. Having self-compassion means recognising difficult days and mistakes are part of being human, rather than allowing them to become reasons to question your worth or ability as a teacher.

In practice, strengthening relationships could mean improving how teachers communicate and connect through skills such as active listening (fully concentrating on what someone is saying), taking other people’s perspectives and classroom management (the strategies teachers use to manage behaviour and learning).

Schools could also create space for teachers to openly share struggles with difficult student behaviour, parent interactions and other common challenges. This can help cultivate a sense of belonging, remind teachers they’re not alone in these experiences and work through solutions collaboratively.

3. Of course, working conditions also matter

Wellbeing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Supporting teachers also means being realistic about the expectations placed on them, addressing excessive workloads and creating a school culture where staff wellbeing is genuinely prioritised.

This includes considering how teachers’ work is designed and organised, rather than simply giving teachers more strategies to cope with increasing demands.

For individual teachers, this could involve taking a more active role in the shape of their work through job crafting. This involves making changes to your job, of your own initiative, to make it more meaningful.

For school leaders and policymakers, this could mean removing unnecessary demands, while giving teachers a meaningful say in how their work is designed and how their wellbeing is supported. One obvious example is reducing administrative work, which teachers’ consistently say takes them away from their students and contributes to their stress levels.

However, no two schools face exactly the same challenges. Approaches such as co-design, where teachers work alongside school leaders to identify problems and shape solutions, can help ensure changes reflect the needs and realities of each school.

Read more:
Our research shows how ‘job crafting’ can help teachers manage and enjoy their stressful work

The research mentioned in this article was conducted by The University of Western Australia and The Kids Research Institute.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/school-teachers-are-burning-out-at-alarming-rates-how-can-we-help-keep-them-happy-in-their-jobs/

When a massive environmental disaster strikes, do societies simply collapse and disappear? Or do people find a way to adapt, rebuild and recover?

As a researcher studying ancient societies and their environments, these aren’t just academic questions to me – they can also offer useful perspectives on our own climate-threatened future.

To understand how human communities handle cataclysmic shocks, my colleagues and I looked back 7,300 years. We investigated what happened to the prehistoric Jōmon hunter-gatherer populations after they were hit by the Kikai-Akahoya eruption in Japan – the largest volcanic eruption since the end of the last ice age.

This enormous underwater volcanic eruption was utterly devastating, blasting out of the seabed without warning, battering the Japanese islands with powerful earthquakes and massive tsunamis. The eruption pumped volcanic ash high up into the atmosphere which then rained down and blanketed the landscape in metre-deep layers of toxic dust.

This volcanic ash choked coastlines, destroyed inland rivers and killed off lush forests for decades. Near the epicentre of the eruption, the environmental destruction lasted for centuries, utterly destroying local food systems. For the Jōmon hunter-gather people who relied on harvesting natural resources in the wild, this had catastrophic and enduring shocks on their food security.

For a long time, archaeologists have debated what happened to communities during the aftermath. Some have argued that it led to a total apocalypse where all human life abruptly ended. Others have insisted on total continuity, suggesting people just pushed through.

Our new research moves past this rigid, binary debate. By tracking population levels across different regions of Japan before and after the blast, we uncovered a much more complex and fascinating story.

We initially assumed that thicker ash meant higher population declines. The data partially backed this up, showing major loss of life near the eruption. But our research has revealed some real surprises.

Forager populations closest to the epicentre were actually already declining before the volcano ever blew. So the disaster compounded preexisting vulnerabilities among these small groups of people who survived by moving around a lot to gather sufficient resources, such as plants, nuts and wild game.

In contrast, population levels actually boomed after the eruption in certain areas quite close to the destruction. Survivors didn’t just sit there and perish; they migrated away from the worst-hit zones into safer regions.

Inland survivors quickly moved to coastal areas where marine ecosystems recovered faster, shifting their entire economy to survive. The Jōmon people appear to have reacted and also adapted quite rapidly.

Paradoxically, populations living far away from the volcano (where people should have been safe) stagnated or declined after the eruption. This was probably due to a volcanic winter, where ash clouds blocked the sunlight, reducing plant growth and also animal numbers on which the Jōmon hunter-gatherers relied on for their main food supplies.

Surviving the apocalypse

What do these prehistoric responses mean for us today?

The core insight of our research is the vital role of human agency. True resilience isn’t about perfectly maintaining the status quo or seamlessly continuing as if nothing happened. Rather than causing total collapse, this ancient disaster triggered a complex mix of migration, adaptation and recovery.

Survivors chose to move. They forged entirely new social networks, innovated new economies, and found creative, resourceful ways to thrive in a permanently altered world.

By studying these ancient disasters, we generate a more dynamic vision for modern resilience. Survival is not a fixed state. The lessons of the Jōmon people remind us that our future in the face of climate shocks and other disasters won’t only be decided by environmental conditions, but also by our collective social actions and capacity for making decisions.

Peter Jordan receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR) and European Research Council (ERC)

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/14/what-an-ancient-volcanic-eruption-teaches-us-about-resilience-today/