Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

With the global rules-based order collapsing, the United Nations faces an existential crisis as the United States leads other countries in defunding and withdrawing from key agencies such as the World Health Organization.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) may soon join the endangered list.

On March 26, its 166 member states will meet for their 14th Ministerial Conference over three and a half days in Cameroon. Dubbed a “reform ministerial”, this is unlike any since the WTO was established in 1995.

Whether the organisation will survive these “reforms” is uncertain. Whether it should survive will be even more controversial.

This biennial ministerial conference occurs against a backdrop of war, accelerating climate change, geopolitical polarisation, coercive unilateral trade sanctions, fractured supply chains and competition to control critical mineral resources.

But none of that will be addressed.

Instead, reform proposals driven by its more powerful members – carefully curated through an unorthodox process over the past year – are being pushed ahead without a consensus of members and despite repeated objections from a number of developing countries.

The US agenda

Significantly, the Trump administration has not formally withdrawn from the WTO. Instead, the US has demanded reforms that would legitimise the use of tariffs against other countries and shield its actions from challenge via the WTO’s dispute system.

It repeated those demands three days before the meeting, asserting “the current global order in international trade, overseen by the WTO, is untenable and unsustainable”.

Middle powers such as New Zealand, Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom – so-called “friends of the system”, whose economies are premised on the WTO’s free-trade model – are supporting this process.

New Zealand Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay has been reappointed vice-chair. As a minister-facilitator he will be responsible for steering through the reform agenda.

New Zealand’s ambassador to the WTO, Clare Kelly, has been chairing the Dispute Settlement Body, which the US has paralysed by blocking the appointment of new judges.

She will merely “update” members at the meeting, with no discussion of revitalising the appeal process (or the hotly disputed weaponisation of tariffs by the US) on the agenda.

Next year, the ambassador will chair the WTO General Council in charge of implementing the reform agenda.

Changing the rules

Three items dominate the first two days of a packed program. Their titles sound relatively innocuous, but the intent is to rewrite the fundamental tenets of the WTO: multilateralism, most-favoured-nation treatment, consensus decision-making, and development.

“Decision-making” aims to dilute the multilateral model that accords all states an equal voice irrespective of their relative size or wealth.

Article Ten of the Marrakesh Agreement which established the WTO – its constitution – mandates decision-making by consensus. Reformers have proposed an alternative of “responsible consensus” which will make it easier to push through preferred outcomes.

Multilateral negotiations involving all WTO members will give way to deal-making among groups of countries. This plurilateral approach will allow more powerful members to negotiate on their favoured topics and marginalise developing countries’ priorities.

Under “development and industrialisation”, the aim is to limit how countries define their own level of development. “Special and differential treatment” would simply allow them more time to adopt the rules that already apply to (and work for) developed countries.

This would ignore calls by developing countries for genuine reform to support industrialisation in ways that help their own economies.

“Levelling the playing field” is essentially about China, which the US asserts has now gained an unfair advantage since joining the WTO.

The US wants new rules to restrict state support for industry and to limit the application of most-favoured-nation treatment that ensures all WTO members are treated the same.

In practice, these reforms will fall most heavily on state-supported industrialisation in poorer countries, not China. Meanwhile, the unlevel playing field on agriculture, which allows the US and European Union to maintain massive subsidies, remains off the agenda.

Developing countries left out

The meeting agenda is inseparable from the process. Six facilitators from countries aligned to the reform agenda will oversee breakout groups at the meeting that poorer countries will struggle to engage in.

The facilitators’ summary reports will be consolidated into a “single takeaway” document, which ministers are asked to endorse. This will inform the next “facilitated” implementation phase at the WTO headquarters in Geneva.

The agenda provides little time for collective discussion by all members, corrections or alternative reform proposals. Nonetheless, the US has advocated for an even quicker and more streamlined process.

Nor is the US alone in seeking to remake the WTO. Many of the EU’s demands mirror those from Washington, with the middle powers in support. It’s likely the reform agenda will be endorsed at the Cameroon meeting and continue back in Geneva.

Many developing countries fear their own priorities, which have been supported by previous formal mandates, are now effectively gone. With their voices further marginalised, they will need to assess whether they even have a future at the WTO.

– ref. A crucial meeting aims to remake the WTO to fit the new global order – https://theconversation.com/a-crucial-meeting-aims-to-remake-the-wto-to-fit-the-new-global-order-278963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

When I was a doctoral candidate at Oxford, I spent much of my time working in the papyrology rooms. Usually, my only company was the curator, a kind and learned Sardinian woman who is now a professor at the University of Milan.

One day, the news was that a famous novelist was coming to visit the Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection. “Have you heard of him?” the curator asked.

I had, but I’d never read his work.

“He has asked to be given a tour of the collection.”

The name of the famous novelist was Yann Martel, author of the Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi. He said that he was researching a new book, in which Oxford’s papyrus collection would feature prominently.

Review: Son of Nobody – Yann Martel (Text Publishing)

Several years after Martel’s visit to Oxford, that book has now appeared. Son of Nobody is about a Canadian scholar named Harlow Donne who wins a one-year fellowship to go to Oxford to work on papyri with the eminent scholar Franklin Cubitt.

To take up the “unbelievable opportunity” of the fellowship, Harlow has to leave behind his wife and daughter in Canada. The relationship is already, as he says, “on the rocks”. The news about the fellowship sets off a full couple’s argument:

And so it started, as it always did, with the appearance of a single pinpoint of resentment that called forth another pinpoint, then another and another, tit for tat, until, out of nothing, in the evening quiet of a bedroom, shimmered the complete outline of a domestic dispute, a bright constellation of infinite acrimony.

The argument establishes the main tension in the novel. There is Harlow, the scholar, far away pursuing his interests and career ambitions, and there is his wife and daughter back in Canada, becoming estranged. The whole book is addressed to his daughter, Helen.

The Psoad

At Oxford, Harlow is set to work on a bunch of papyrus fragments given to him by Cubitt. Two weeks after beginning this work, he discovers fragments of an epic poem containing the name Psoas, the “son of nobody”, a character from the Trojan War. He ends up finding 81 more fragments of the “Psoad” (the poem about Psoas).

One of the most interesting aspects of Martel’s novel is its format. Each page is divided in two, with a line dividing the separate parts. At the top, we have Harlow’s translation of the Greek fragments of the Psoad, written as poetry. At the bottom, there is Harlow’s commentary on the text, written in prose. The commentary alternates between the poem and Harlow’s personal reflections on his life.

The format is interesting, but it brings some difficulties. Vladimir Nabokov pulled off the combination of scholarly commentary and personal reflection in his novel Pale Fire. So how does Martel fare?

At the beginning, Harlow’s personal reflections deal mostly with his work at Oxford, but they turn to other aspects of his life as his marriage continues to break down. The reflections are supposedly written for his daughter to read, so it’s awkward that he includes love scenes with his wife as well. Harlow emerges as a twisted and difficult character, not likeable enough to feel pity for.

The poem itself is probably the best part of the book. Even so, it reads as little more than an attempt to imitate the language of epic poetry, and the scholarly commentary on the text tends to be banal. At most, it gives a brief line of explanation, followed by a quotation from the Iliad or the Odyssey as a comparison, or a basic discussion of mythology.

Harlow almost never compares lines from the Psoad with lines from ancient texts other than the Homeric poems, nor does he display much evidence of wide and deep reading in ancient or modern literature. This is surprising for an alleged classical scholar. What we get instead are comments influenced by pop culture. For example, one character in the poem is said be “a Marlon Brando of the ancient world”.

Puzzles and implausibilities

Some of the explanations in the commentary are also oddly misplaced. Martel includes mention of bananas in the epic poem, with Harlow’s comment that bananas were introduced to the Mediterranean “sometime in the fourth century BCE”. In fact, bananas were probably first brought there by Arabs at least a thousand years later, in the seventh century CE, during the period of Islamic conquests.

For a papyrologist, mention of bananas would suggest that the poem on the papyrus is not archaic at all, since bananas were unknown in ancient Greece and no poets of this period refer to bananas. But nothing is made of this in the novel.

There are some puzzling and implausible aspects of Martel’s depiction of other characters. Franklin Cubitt is a clichéd version of an Oxford don. He wears tweed, speaks in a posh accent, confuses Americans with Canadians, and threatens students with a cane.

He is described at the beginning of the novel as “one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri”, but later we are told he is “an economic historian by training, not a classicist”. There is no chance that someone who is not a trained classicist would become a “foremost” scholar of papyri.

Similarly, Harlow is working on a PhD. We are told he is a complete “newbie” to papyrology who has never edited a text before. The odds that such a novice would be given an epic poem in fragments to edit on his own are impossible.

You could say it’s just a novel, so these implausibilities don’t matter. But even if you overlook the mistakes and the clichés about academic life, the main story, in which Harlow describes the breakdown of his marriage for his daughter, is self-involved and contrived.

It is good that Martel wants to draw attention to the world of Oxyrhynchus and the fascinating process of editing and reconstructing ancient texts on papyrus. But I can’t help but conclude that Son of Nobody needed more work before publication. It seems to me like a first draft of an interesting idea, not a polished final product. This is a pity, because there was plenty of potential in the novel’s premises.

– ref. Ancient texts and marital breakdown: Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody descends into implausibility – https://theconversation.com/ancient-texts-and-marital-breakdown-yann-martels-son-of-nobody-descends-into-implausibility-276857

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

This is the point of absurdity we have reached: on March 15, US President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post, asserted that American news organisations were running AI-generated Iranian propaganda, and should be charged with treason for the dissemination of false information. One of the instances he cited was coverage of Iranians at a rally to support new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, which he said was totally AI-generated, and the event never took place, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The most powerful man in the world is making large and important claims, one palpably false, the others without offering any evidence, and it seems few if any people take him seriously. Then he blithely threatens to charge unnamed people with treason, which in the United States is potentially a capital offence, and again it is not clear anyone takes him seriously. Despite the all-but-universal dismissal of his statements, he will probably suffer no political consequences. It is just another drop in an ocean of unaccountability.

One reason it will pass with negligible consequences is that these accusations have become so commonplace. Republicans have long railed against the “liberal” news media, but the Trump administration has brought such attacks to a new level of intensity.

In 2017, his first year in office, Trump denounced “fake news” and called the media the enemy of the American people. He said he had a “running war” with the media, and described journalists as “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth”.

Trump’s standard response to a question he doesn’t want to answer is to call the reporter (especially female reporters) a nasty person, or to denounce the organisation they work for. Recently his response to a US ABC reporter’s question was that her employer “may be the most corrupt news organisation on the planet. I think they’re terrible.”

As the war with Iran threatened to become more politically contentious, the administration has trained its rhetorical sights on the media. Trump endorsed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threat to revoke broadcast licences of “the corrupt and highly unpatriotic media”:

They get billions of Dollars of FREE American airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in news and almost all of their shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings.

Far more than any of his predecessors, Trump concerns himself with individuals and media organisations. For example, he thought Netflix should dismiss one of its board members who had worked for his Democrat predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden: “Netflix should fire, racist, Trump deranged Susan Rice IMMEDIATELY.”

A history of legal action

Trump has gone beyond rhetorical denunciations, however. He is the first US president, in recent times at least, to sue a news organisation. His targets so far have included the Pulitzer Prize Board, the Des Moines Register and its pollster Ann Selzer, the Wall St Journal, the New York Times, Penguin Random House and the BBC.

Without exception, his writs have no legal merit. (He has already lost suits against the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN). They are a means of harassment or perhaps just a threat: Trump sued CBS in 2024 over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Initially CBS said the case had no merit. However, in July 2025 it agreed to settle for $16 million.

The agreement came amid CBS parent company Paramount’s $8.4 billion merger with Skydance, which received regulatory approval weeks later. Stephen Colbert, host of its top-rating night show, called it “a big fat bribe”. Three days later Colbert’s show was cancelled, which the network said was purely a financial decision.

Trump congratulated himself in a post on his Truth Social site under the headline “President Trump is reshaping the media”. He listed 12 media organisations and individuals who are “gone”, such as CNN reporter Jim Acosta and Colbert. Then he listed a dozen “reforms”, such as CNN having new ownership. He finished the post with the word “Winning”.

Apart from the president, the most enthusiastic member of the cabinet in harassing the media is former Fox News presenter, now secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. Last year he announced that journalists who solicited unauthorised military information would have their access revoked and be deemed a security risk. Fifty-five out of 56 accredited journalists refused to sign the new agreement. In March a judge ruled the policy was unconstitutional but the government has said it will appeal.

Recently, Hegseth thought photos of him were “unflattering”, so photographers were banned from his next two briefings.

So it is not surprising Hegseth has been a vocal critic of media coverage. He finished one recent tirade by saying: “The sooner David Ellison takes over [CNN], the better.”

Ellison at the wheel

What is new and alarming about this is the reference to Ellison. It follows one of the biggest corporate takeovers in history. Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, has just succeeded in taking over Warner Bros Discovery. CNN is part of the package Ellison has acquired.

David is the son of Larry Ellison, the sixth-richest person in the world, who founded Oracle, a wildly successful software company. After Trump became president, the Ellisons moved into media in a big way.

The family first attracted public prominence when it was a central part of Trump choreographing the formation of a US TikTok company. Biden, with the approval of Congress, had sought to ban the popular video-sharing platform because of worries about security with the Chinese company ByteDance. Instead, Trump, on his first day of this second term, started a process to make it US-based, to remove the security risk.

In the end, Ellison’s Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX became the three managing investors, each holding a 15% share in the new company. The Chinese company ByteDance retained 19.9% of the joint venture. Oracle would also handle all the software aspects. All up, a very Trump-friendly outcome.

The Ellisons next attracted attention in July 2025, when their niche media company Skydance merged with Paramount to form Paramount Plus. This made them the owner not only of one of the biggest film studios but also of TV network CBS. The consequences for CBS news have already been far-reaching.

Ellison began by pledging to end the company’s “diversity equity and inclusion” initiatives. He appointed as ombudsman the former head of a conservative think tank and named Bari Weiss, a centre-right advocate, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

An early controversy hit with a CBS 60 Minutes episode on a notorious prison in El Salvador, where the US government is sending migrant detainees. Although it was cleared through all the normal internal processes, the story was blocked at the last minute in what the reporter called an act of censorship. It was shown four weeks later.

Six out of 20 evening news producers have left CBS, with one, Alicia Hastey, saying the kind of work she came to do was increasingly impossible, as stories were now evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared “we love America” should be the guiding principle for the relaunch of CBS Evening News. Putting this into practice, the new anchor of the evening news, Tony Dokoupil, finished one program by saying “[Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, we salute you”.

Ellison’s early acquisitions were dwarfed by the recent battle between Paramount Plus and Netflix to take over Warner Bros Discovery, which Paramount finally won in February 2026. Paramount’s final, winning offer valued the company at US$111 billion (A$159 billion), paying US$31 (A$44) per share. Months earlier, Netflix’s original offer was US$19 (A$27) per share. Assuming the deal goes through, Paramount will carry an estimated US$90 billion (A$128.6 billion) of debt, but it will also have a conglomerate of media-related holdings like no other company in history.

Despite the size of the takeover, which has several implications for reduced competition, commentators are confident it will achieve regulatory approval. This is principally because in the Trump era there is a strong, shall we say, transactional flavour about when regulation is enforced and when not. Trump has described the Ellisons as “two great people”. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing.”

Media monsters

In the 1950s, looking at the way Australian newspaper companies came to control the new commercial radio and television stations, journalist Colin Bednall referred to “media monsters”. Around 1990, British media commentator Anthony Smith wrote a book titled The Age of Behemoths, looking especially at the way large corporations such as News Corp had gone international.

But both were talking about media pygmies compared with the new mega-corporation owned by the Ellisons. Apart from their software business and extensive real estate holdings, they now have a central player, TikTok, in social media. They own two of the biggest five US movie studios, they have two of the biggest five streaming services, they have large entertainment producing corporations in Discovery, Warner Bros and CBS, and they own two of the most important TV news services – CBS and CNN.

This gives them the usual commercial advantages over smaller newcomers trying to break in. It also means the news services are owned by a conglomerate that has many other interests, including some that demand negotiation with the government.

In trying to understand the moment we are living through, it is often difficult to disentangle what is of momentary significance and what of lasting importance. What are egomaniacal histrionics that will fade into history with Trump? And which signal ongoing threats to the fabric of democratic institutions?

The unprecedented media empire built by the Ellisons will not disappear, no matter who wins the next election.

– ref. Trump is remaking the US media in his own image – and smashing accountability with it – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-remaking-the-us-media-in-his-own-image-and-smashing-accountability-with-it-279107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vidya Mani, Associate Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia; Cornell University

The disruptions from the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran spread quickly to commercial aircraft, shipping lanes and the world’s energy supply. Those repercussions have already hit fuel costs, including for motorists, truckers and fishermen, and are set to spread even more widely, to packaging, household goods, appliances, medicines and electronics.

I study global supply chains and how they interconnect and depend on each other around the world. There are several ways in which U.S. consumers will begin to feel the pinch of the war. Some of those effects have to do with domestic commerce, and some are a result of the interwoven nature of global trade, where raw materials from one place are shipped somewhere they are manufactured into specific items that are then transported to consumers.

Rising costs in the US

There are three main categories in which costs will begin to rise.

Fuel shortages and freight surcharges: From March 2-16, 2026, the average nationwide price of U.S. regular gasoline rose from US$3.01 to $3.96 per gallon, while diesel fuel rose from $3.89 to $5.37. Diesel prices matter to consumer costs because diesel engines power trucks, farm machines, construction equipment, fishing vessels and many of the vehicles that carry domestic freight. When items become more expensive to harvest, build and ship, diesel costs spread quickly into grocery, household and building material prices.

Chemicals, fertilizer and packaging: QatarEnergy has said Iranian attacks on the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export plant at Ras Laffan and another plant in Mesaieed, both in Qatar, forced the company to stop producing LNG and associated products on March 2. Two days later, the company declared that it could not fulfill its contracts due to extreme external pressures that would require many years to recover from. The affected products included urea, polymers and methanol, used to make fertilizer, plastics, detergents, packaging and other consumer goods. Reduced production and closed transit routes are also affecting supplies of aluminum and helium produced in the Gulf countries.

Factory slowdowns abroad: When shipping slows and energy costs rise, factories abroad face higher operating costs. As a result they ration production, diverting energy supplies to producing a narrow range of high-value products that can absorb these costs. Diversions of shipment traffic and fewer transportation routes lead to delivery delays. Economic research shows that shipping-cost increases also raise import prices, producer costs and consumer inflation.

Air cargo and delivery delays: Early in the conflict, several countries, including Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, closed their airspace to all traffic. Later advisories warned of risks to planes over neighboring countries as well, except for limited corridors. Those closures affected 20% of global air cargo capacity, raising the risk of delays for higher-value cargo such as medicines, aircraft components and electronics.

Global disruptions

About 80% of the oil and 90% of the LNG moving through the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, is destined for Asian markets. With strait shipments stopped, consumer electronics and manufacturing hubs in China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are drawing on their energy reserves and inventories. But those supplies will run out in a few months. Reduced manufacturing capacity can be expected to cause shortages and higher costs for textiles, chemicals, consumer goods, electronics, appliances, auto parts and fertilizer-intensive industries.

Europe is less directly dependent than Asia on Hormuz shipments, but it is still vulnerable to high LNG prices, increased shipping costs and diesel fuel shortages. Europe has also already faced shortages of heating oil and other fuels as a result of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The strait carried about 7% of Europe’s LNG inflows in 2025, and higher costs for energy, ship fuel, freight and insurance can ripple through global trade. For the U.S., that matters because Europe supplies industrial equipment, precision components, medical technology and specialty chemicals sold to businesses and directly to consumers.

African economies are especially exposed to fuel and fertilizer shocks. Large volumes of fertilizer pass through Hormuz, and higher energy and fertilizer prices threaten crop yields and food systems across most of Africa. As a result, U.S. prices can rise for coffee and chocolate – much of which originates in Africa – as well as critical minerals for electric vehicles, energy storage and high-tech equipment.

Coming home to Americans

This war is not a distant geopolitical shock for U.S. households. It reaches everyday life through fuel, freight, fertilizer, petrochemicals and global supply chains through factories that produce consumer goods.

Some mitigation is possible: 32 nations will be releasing more than 400 million barrels of oil to the global market over the next few months. There are pipelines and alternative ports in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that, if they remain undamaged and uninterrupted, can handle potentially 40% of the 20 billion barrels per day that was passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Combined with a temporary easing of sanctions on Russian oil, limited shipments to India and China through the Strait of Hormuz and the March 23 announcement of a five-day pause on U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, it is possible to head off the worst-case scenario.

But these measures cannot fully replace the strait’s normal oil and LNG shipment volume. And if oil production, refining and shipment locations continue to be targeted, recovery can be expected to stretch into many months. The likely result is broader inflation, prolonged shortages and longer waits for goods of all sorts, including food and packaging as well as electronics and appliances.

– ref. Soaring gas prices and disrupted supply chains will ripple out to increase costs in every store and sector of the economy – https://theconversation.com/soaring-gas-prices-and-disrupted-supply-chains-will-ripple-out-to-increase-costs-in-every-store-and-sector-of-the-economy-278349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of Westminster

The BBC has appointed former Google executive Matt Brittin as its new director general. Brittin will replace outgoing director general Tim Davie. He resigned last year in the wake of revelations about the editing of a Panorama documentary about Donald Trump and board disagreements over how it should be handled.

Brittin’s appointment comes at a critical moment, as the broadcaster prepares to renew its royal charter. This is the constitutional basis for the BBC’s existence, which sets out its mission and public purposes. It is traditionally renewed once a decade to make sure the BBC keeps up to date with political and technological changes.

Because the renewal process is run by the government of the day, it can involve difficult conversations with ministers who – while acknowledging the BBC’s independence – can insist on major changes. Despite some challenging political environments, each charter renewal has generally resulted in an evolution from previous years. The BBC has moved from radio to TV, from analogue to digital and online.

But this time around feels more existential. In a world dominated by American streamers and online platforms owned by tech billionaires, the government has proposed a range of options for the BBC’s future that raise fundamental questions, in particular about its funding and governance.

The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, announced the government’s intention to make the charter permanent to avoid the risk of political interference. Following a period of consultation, the government will publish firmer proposals in the autumn, with the new charter signed off by the culture secretary early next year.

This was a significant victory for the BBC, which argued for a permanent charter in its own response to the government consultation. It also called for changes to how appointments are made to the BBC board, to avoid any suggestion of government influence. This was perhaps influenced by the circumstances of Davie’s departure.

Read more: The political meddling that led to BBC crisis – and how to stop it in the future

There are three key pieces of context that make this review so important.

First, it is quite possible that the broadcast signal will be switched off in the next charter period. The government is now considering options for the distribution of TV, which will require upgrading existing infrastructure if the current terrestrial system is to continue into the 2040s. Given that households are moving to broadband via smart TVs and other devices, broadcasters have expressed a clear preference for an earlier switch-off to avoid the cost of running two distribution systems.

At that point, the BBC ceases to be a broadcaster (except perhaps via radio) and becomes a public service content provider. It will have to compete not just with powerful streamers like Netflix, but with platforms like YouTube. A tech background like Brittin’s will arguably help the BBC in this new competitive environment. But he will need an experienced deputy with the kind of journalistic background required to deal with the (inevitable) editorial controversies that the BBC will face.

Second, the notion of a TV licence fee has become increasingly anachronistic in the digital world. There is greater pressure – especially in a cost-of-living crisis – for a more progressive payment system that takes better account of ability to pay.

The government has ruled out a German-style household tax and funding through general taxation, but not advertising or the idea of top-up subscription (where a “premium” is charged for content beyond a basic tier). It is also considering a reformed licence fee.

Third, the current political environment is more volatile than it has been for decades. Nigel Farage has made his contempt for the BBC abundantly clear, as well as his party’s determination to cut its funding by half. The charter renewal is an opportunity to insulate the BBC from longer term attempts to undermine or dismantle it.

Protecting the BBC

Critics may want to see a downsized BBC. But in a media world dominated by US-based tech billionaires and entertainment behemoths – and where disinformation poses serious risks to democracy – the broadcaster is more necessary than ever.

It is not only the most trusted news brand in the UK, but provides billions in investment to Britain’s creative industries. And, it is a vital element of Britain’s soft power in an unstable geopolitical environment.

The new charter must therefore guarantee the BBC’s independence. No parliament can tie the hands of its successors. But the next charter can ensure there are obstacles to any government determined to inflict damage on the BBC.

Nandy’s announcement of a permanent charter is an important first step, guaranteeing the BBC’s long-term existence. While it would of course be seriously weakened by a major funding cut, the institution itself would survive and could be revived by a subsequent government.

That permanent charter could be accompanied by a much more independent process of appointing a chair and non-executive directors, to insulate the BBC from political influence. A recent report from the British Academy, examining how other countries manage their public broadcasting systems, drew attention to Germany’s model. There, an independent body is charged both with protecting the independence of German public broadcasters and independently setting the level of funding.

A second area of fundamental reform would be a funding system that provides for universal payment, but is not linked specifically to television and makes some allowance for ability to pay. An evolution from the current licence fee – one possibility floated by the government – would provide the BBC with a more secure and sustainable funding base, along with options to provide discounts for struggling households.

The BBC’s future is now in the hands of a government that appears to appreciate its continuing importance to Britain’s cultural and democratic life. We will soon find out whether this government is up to the job of a much-needed radical renewal.

– ref. Matt Brittin: BBC’s new director general appointed at an existential moment for the broadcaster – https://theconversation.com/matt-brittin-bbcs-new-director-general-appointed-at-an-existential-moment-for-the-broadcaster-278453

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger S. Seymour, Professor Emeritus of Physiology, Adelaide University

Insects first took to the skies about 350 million years ago, some 200 million years before birds first flapped their wings.

By the end of the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, some flying insects had become gigantic. Huge dragonfly-like insects called griffinflies had wingspans of 70cm – five times the size of the largest modern dragonflies.

These giant insects lived in a time when Earth’s atmosphere contained more oxygen than it does today: around 30%, compared with the modern 21%.

Because large flying insects lived in a time of high oxygen levels, scientists have proposed that they required these high external oxygen levels to power the rapid burn of energy during flight.

In new research published today in Nature, we studied the muscles of dozens of modern flying insects and made a surprising discovery: there is no reason the griffinfly could not survive in today’s atmosphere.

The structure of the insect flight respiratory system

Flying takes more energy than running or swimming, because a flapping flier must constantly work against gravity to remain in the air.

Consequently, the flight muscles use a lot of oxygen, and the rate of oxygen consumption increases roughly in proportion to the weight of the flier. The highest rate of oxygen consumption per gram by any known tissue occurs in a flying bee.

Oxygen is supplied to insect flight muscles through the “tracheal system”, a tree-like branching system of air-filled tubes that lead to the smallest branches, called “tracheoles”, where oxygen moves into the muscle tissue.

Each tracheole is a dead end, which means oxygen delivered to the muscle travels primarily by diffusion. First it diffuses through the air inside each tracheole, and then through the muscle tissue itself.

The old hypothesis

In modern insects, oxygen levels near the oxygen-consuming mitochondria that power the flight muscle are very close to zero. This implies that the structure of the tracheal system was just adequate to supply sufficient oxygen.

A larger insect would need a greater supply of oxygen, which would mean a greater driving force for diffusion, which in turn means more oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

The idea that the structure and function of the insect tracheal system limits body size has prevailed for the past 30 years and appears in educational textbooks.

Our interest in the theory arose 15 years ago, when we looked at thin slices of the flight muscle of locusts. The tracheoles appearing between and within the muscle fibres were few and took up only about 1% of the area, compared with the mitochondria that were occupying about 20%.

New evidence

We initially thought all an insect had to do to increase its oxygen delivery would be to increase the number of tracheoles. After all, this is where oxygen is supplied to the mitochondria.

To be sure the locust was not exceptional and to properly understand the effect of body size, we measured 44 species of flying insects of different body masses and metabolic rates. The project required five years and 1,320 transmission electron micrographs.

But the results were essentially the same: the tracheoles occupied only about 1% of the cross-sectional area of the flight muscles regardless of body size. In contrast, the blood-filled capillaries in the flight and cardiac tissue of some birds and mammals occupy about 10% of the area.

This shows there is plenty of scope to increase the number and volume of tracheoles without weakening the muscle. So the structure of the tracheal system is not an important constraint on body size.

Evidence from developing insects shows insects can grow more tracheoles in flight muscle in lower oxygen levels, and they pass this trait to their offspring. The conclusion is that the body size of flying insects has never been limited by the structure or function of their tracheal systems.

There is no physiological reason why insects the size of griffinflies could not fly in today’s atmosphere. And yet they don’t exist today.

The simpler reasons may be that larger animal species are more prone to extinction than smaller ones – and 300 million years ago, the griffinfly had no bird or mammal predators to watch out for.

– ref. Giant dragonflies once roamed Earth’s skies. New research upends the textbook theory of why they went extinct – https://theconversation.com/giant-dragonflies-once-roamed-earths-skies-new-research-upends-the-textbook-theory-of-why-they-went-extinct-278997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Associate Professor of Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

Australians are among the most anxious in the world about artificial intelligence (AI).

This anxiety is driven by fears AI is used to spread misinformation and scam people, anxiety over job losses, and the fact AI companies are training their models on others’ expertise and creative works without compensation.

AI companies have used pirated books and articles, and routinely send bots across the web to systematically scrape content for their models to learn from. That content may come from social media platforms such as Reddit, university repositories of academic work, and authoritative publications like news outlets.

In the past, online scraping was subject to a kind of detente. Although scraping may sometimes have been technically illegal, it was needed to make the internet work. For instance, without scraping there would be no Google. Website owners were OK with scraping because it made their content more available, according with the vision of the “open web”.

Under these conditions, scraping was managed through principles such as respect, recognition, and reciprocity. In the context of AI, those are now faltering.

A new online landscape

Many news outlets are now blocking web scrapers. Creators are choosing not to use certain platforms or are posting less.

Barriers are being put in place across the open web. When only some can afford to pay to access news and information, then democracy, scientific innovation and creative communities are all harmed.

Exceptions to copyright infringement, such as fair dealing for research or study, were legislated long before generative AI became publicly available. These exceptions are no longer fit for purpose in an AI age.

The Australian government has ruled out a new copyright exception for text and data mining. This signals a commitment to supporting Australia’s creative industries, but leaves great uncertainty about how creative content can be managed legally and at scale now that AI companies are crawling the web.

In response, the international nonprofit Creative Commons has proposed a new voluntary framework: CC Signals.

Creative Commons licences allow creators to share content and specify how it can be used. All licences require credit to acknowledge the source, but various additional restrictions can be applied. Creators can ask others not to modify their work, or not to use it for commercial purposes. For example, The Conversation’s articles are available for reuse under a CC BY-ND licence, which means they must be credited to the source and must not be remixed, transformed, or built upon.

How would CC Signals work?

The proposed CC Signals framework lets creators decide if or how they want their material to be used by machines. It aims to strike a balance between responsible AI use and not stifling innovation, and is based on the principles of consent, compensation, and credit.

Simplistically, CC Signals work by allowing a “declaring party” – such as a news website – to attach machine-readable instructions to a body of content. These instructions specify what combinations of machine uses are permitted, and under what conditions.

CC Signals are standardised, and both humans and machines can understand them.

This proposal arrives at a moment that closely mirrors the early days of the web, when norms around automated access (crawling and scraping) were still being worked out in practice rather than law.

A useful historical parallel is robots.txt, a simple file web hosts use to signal which parts of a site can be accessed by the bots that crawl the web and look for content. It was never enforceable, but it became widely adopted because it provided a clear, standardised way to communicate expectations between content hosts and developers.

CC Signals could operate in much the same spirit. But, as with any system, it has potential benefits as well as drawbacks.

The pros

The framework provides more nuance and flexibility than the current scrape/don’t scrape environment we’re in. It offers creators more control over the use of their content.

It also has the potential to affect how much high-quality content is available for scraping. Without access to high-quality data, AI’s biases are exacerbated and make the technology less useful.

The framework might also benefit smaller players who don’t have the bargaining power to negotiate with big tech companies but who, nonetheless, desire remuneration, credit, or visibility for their work.

The cons

The greatest challenge with CC Signals is likely to be a practical one – how to calculate, and then enforce, the monetary or in-kind support required by some of the signals.

This is also a major sticking point with content industry proposals for collective licensing schemes for AI. Calculating and distributing licence fees for the thousands, if not millions, of internet works that are accessed by generative AI systems around the world is a logistical nightmare.

Creative Commons has said it plans to produce best-practice guides for how to make contributions and give credit under the CC Signals. But this work is still in progress.

Where to from here?

Creative Commons asserts that the CC Signals framework is not so much a legal tool as an attempt to define “manners for machines”. Manners is a good way to look at this.

The legal and practical hurdles to implementing effective copyright management for AI systems are huge. But we should be open to new ideas and frameworks that foreground respect and recognition for creators without shutting down important technological developments.

CC Signals is an imperfect framework, but it is a start. Hopefully there are more to come.

– ref. ‘Manners for machines’: how new rules could stop AI scrapers destroying the internet – https://theconversation.com/manners-for-machines-how-new-rules-could-stop-ai-scrapers-destroying-the-internet-278669

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Lecturer in Law, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney

When the Queensland Dolphins ran onto the field in mid-April 2024, the rugby league team’s jerseys bore the logo of Alternaleaf – a “plant medicine” clinic.

Earlier that week, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) had commenced Federal Court proceedings against Alternaleaf’s parent company, alleging 226 other advertising offences.

By the next game, players had taped over the logo.

The law is clear. Advertising prescription medicines directly to consumers in Australia is prohibited – including on football jerseys, websites, social media, and on posters or banners.

Any promotion of medicinal cannabis products to the public – including euphemisms such as “plant medicine” – is also a breach.

But suppliers and prescribers of medicinal cannabis are flouting the rules.

A 2025 study analysed 54 Australian medicinal cannabis provider websites. The authors found nearly half were violating at least two TGA guidelines.

Common violations included using cannabis imagery, unsubstantiated health claims, and patient testimonials.

Researchers also identified self-assessment tools that may “coach” patients on qualifying conditions – with some clinics positioning access as fast and hassle-free.

One company ran more than 170 social media ads in a single month, many reaching users as young as 18.

Take our quiz

Here’s a mock-up of a medicinal cannabis website. It’s fictional, but it highlights the many ways clinics can breach laws or guidelines designed to prohibit direct-to-consumer advertising of medicinal cannabis.

It’s based on the types of issues researchers have documented, past TGA infringement notices and current websites promoting medicinal cannabis.

Some breaches are more obvious than others.

Let’s get started

Click (or touch) the elements of the website below you think breach laws or TGA guidelines about medicinal cannabis promotion.

But to keep you on your toes, we’ve thrown in some red herrings – elements of the website that are actually OK.

Can you spot all ten breaches?

Well done if you found all ten breaches in our fictional website.

But if you can spot them, why are so many medicinal cannabis clinics, social media posts and traditional media accused of breaking the advertising rules?

Since 2023, the TGA has issued more than A$2.3 million in fines for medicinal cannabis advertising breaches. It has commenced three Federal Court proceedings. None have yet resulted in a judgement.

In July 2025, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) said it was concerned about emerging business models that appear to use “aggressive and sometimes misleading advertising” to target vulnerable people.

Some clinics and prescribers churning through scripts

Ahpra told the ABC it had taken action against 57 practitioners and is investigating 60 more. Concerns include consultation times of between “a few seconds and a few minutes”. Some prescribers wrote more than 10,000 scripts in six months.

The agency and the TGA are now sharing prescribing data to identify outliers – even without receiving complaints.

Medicinal cannabis prescriptions have skyrocketed in Australia, mostly for legal but unapproved products we don’t even know work or are safe. In this series, experts tease out what’s fuelling the rise of medicinal cannabis, the fallout, and what needs to happen next.

Later in 2025, organisations representing GPs, other doctors and pharmacists wrote jointly to the health minister in New South Wales calling for a crackdown on rogue medicinal cannabis prescribing.

Among their concerns were “vertically integrated” cannabis clinics – where the telehealth prescriber sends the script to a dispensary owned by the same company – hasty telehealth consultations, and how medicinal cannabis was promoted.

The organisations cited Ahpra data showing one pharmacist had dispensed 959,000 cannabis products in a single year.

Too easy?

Australia has become one of the world’s largest markets for medicinal cannabis. In the first half of 2024 alone, Australians spent more than $400 million on these products.

But the evidence suggests this boom has been built, at least partly, on marketing that Australian law was designed to prohibit.

Enforcing these laws has proven difficult. The TGA is a small agency that assesses alleged breaches according to the risk they pose. This means first-time or low-level breaches often only attract a warning known as a “regulatory obligations letter”.

In the medicinal cannabis sector, that approach appears to have been exploited. Widespread, repeat breaches suggest some operators have concluded the risk of a warning is worth taking.

– ref. This medicinal cannabis website bends the rules. Take our quiz to see why – https://theconversation.com/this-medicinal-cannabis-website-bends-the-rules-take-our-quiz-to-see-why-270685

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

New Zealand’s latest quarterly energy report shows electricity production was above 90% renewable and emissions from generation fell to the lowest level on record.

But it also shows New Zealand’s oil consumption, which had fallen markedly after the COVID pandemic, has crept back up to reach its highest quarterly level in five years.

Oil now comprises its highest quarterly share of New Zealand’s overall energy emissions on record.

Of the total carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, 77% were from oil (mostly used for transport), 12% from industrial and domestic gas usage, 6% from coal, and just 5% from electricity generation.

Developing a coordinated energy strategy to reduce oil dependence would not only provide an effective climate response, but also protect New Zealand from recurring oil price and supply shocks.

The previous government had committed to a comprehensive strategy to transition to a renewable energy system in New Zealand’s first emissions reduction plan in 2022.

But the current government’s focus has shifted on energy security and it aims to boost energy supply by importing liquefied natural gas.

Missed opportunities to reduce oil dependence

Parts of New Zealand’s economy, particularly inflation and tourism, remain strongly linked to the price of oil.

During two previous periods of high oil prices, New Zealand missed the chance to weaken the country’s dependence on oil.

The 1978 oil shock was a severe hit to the economy; New Zealand’s oil consumption did not recover to its previous level until 1990.

The soaring oil prices hit New Zealand at a time of extensive government control of the economy under the National government of Robert Muldoon, whose “Think Big” strategy included building an experimental plant to produce petrol from natural gas.

This was intended to build energy independence, but unfortunately it proved to be costly and ineffective.

The 2008 financial crisis also involved extreme oil price spikes and a prolonged recession. Oil consumption did not recover until 2015. One planned response was to introduce fuel economy standards for new cars – a form of regulation already in place in most OECD countries.

Had these standards been put in place and gradually strengthened over time, New Zealand would now be in a much better place, with less pollution and less economic dependence on oil.

However, a change in government in late 2008 led to the cancellation of the planned standards. New Zealand now uses nearly twice as much transport oil per capita as the UK, where such standards have been in place since 2001.

New law changed NZ’s trajectory

The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act of 2019 was a turning point. Before that, total fossil fuel emissions were flat or trending up. Afterwards, a wave of investments in renewable electricity, in the decarbonisation of industry and in low-emission transport turned the trend around.

This was perhaps not just due to the specifics of the act, which includes five-yearly carbon budgets, but to strong pro-climate signalling from the government of the day.

A critical mass of society, from car buyers and dealers to New Zealand’s biggest companies, were investing to take steps away from fossil fuels.

Under the current government, both messaging and policy have changed. As Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has repeatedly stressed, New Zealand’s main climate tool is now the emissions trading scheme (ETS). However, this now covers only 35% of net emissions and is not an effective way to reduce oil use.

At the current price of NZ$40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, the ETS adds only nine cents per litre to the price of petrol. Given New Zealand’s high car dependency, this has virtually no effect on existing drivers or on car buyers.

How to cut oil use in transport

In New Zealand, 80% of oil goes into air and land transport. An oil transition plan really means a transport plan.

There is a known way to turn off the tap on oil. The “avoid, shift, improve” framework is supported by three decades of experience.

Changing work patterns such as shorter work weeks and working-from-home arrangements can help avoid unnecessary travel. Better infrastructure for walking and cycling and public transport helps to shift transport and dramatically reduce oil use.

The remaining private vehicle travel can be improved through electrification. This requires a combination of incentives and stronger emissions standards, as the International Energy Agency reinforced this week.

At present, New Zealand is still moving in the wrong direction. Over the past decade, the total distance driven by light vehicles increased by 20%, while the distance driven by utility vehicles is up 55%.

Each utility vehicle has 50% higher carbon emissions than a (fossil-fueled) passenger car. These trends have outweighed the improvements from the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles.

There is a limit to how quickly New Zealand’s fleet can realistically be electrified. For a country with the world’s highest rate of car ownership, mass purchasing of new cars is not a good transport solution by itself.

But in any event, phasing out fossil fuels is required for a safe future and should happen in ways that build energy resilience and independence.

– ref. Driving in the wrong direction: why NZ’s oil consumption is at a 5-year high – https://theconversation.com/driving-in-the-wrong-direction-why-nzs-oil-consumption-is-at-a-5-year-high-278524

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zahra Shahhoseini, Research Fellow in Public Health, Monash University

Around the world, communities are battling more extreme weather events. That includes residents in the path of Cyclone Narelle, which is threatening to form again over Western Australia.

But another concerning trend is that natural disasters are increasingly arriving in clusters, not in isolation.

Fires, storms, floods and heatwaves are are no longer neatly separated by season or geography. They are more often occurring together or are affecting different parts of the country at the same time.

Scientists describe these as compound or overlapping hazards. This is where two or more natural disasters happen simultaneously or in close succession. And they often affect the same places.

So how can we prepare for overlapping disasters? And what does it mean for our emergency services?

The danger of multiple disasters

International research suggests people are most at risk when a new disaster strikes and they haven’t yet recovered from an earlier event. To understand risk, it helps to understand these three terms:

• hazard, which is the dangerous event itself
• exposure, which refers to the people and things that could be affected
• vulnerability, which is a measure of how susceptible to harm people and things are.

When disasters overlap, all three components of risk will likely increase.

Overlapping hazards are different from so-called cascading hazards. Cascading hazards refer to when an initial event triggers a series of system failures. These failures often cause infrastructure breakdowns and social disruption, both of which can actually be worse than the original disaster event.

An example of this is the 2011 Tōhoku disaster in Japan. In this case, an earthquake triggered a tsunami which then inundated the Fukushima nuclear plant. These cascading hazards led to a nuclear crisis, mass evacuations, and long-term contamination. So it was the consequences of the earthquake, not the earthquake itself, that caused the most harm.

Overlapping hazards are often harder to manage. One reason is it’s hard to coordinate public warnings when multiple disasters strike. For example, a bushfire warning might instruct people to evacuate immediately, but a simultaneous flash flood may block the very roads needed to escape.

Overlapping hazards also stretch our emergency resources, often across multiple fronts at once. And recovery from one event is frequently interrupted by the next. This is why we can no longer rely on current disaster response frameworks, which tend to be built around isolated events.

A history of overlapping hazards

In Australia, we are fairly used to dealing with overlapping disasters.

In January this year, inland bushfires were burning in Victoria’s west under hot, dry conditions. Meanwhile, an intense coastal storm was brewing in that same region. This saw emergency operations move from fire suppression and evacuation to flood rescue, as flash flooding inundated sections of the Great Ocean Road and washed vehicles into the ocean.

In December 2025, Western Australia was hit by a tropical cyclone that caused flash flooding and widespread power outages. Within days, authorities were issuing fire danger warnings as a heatwave swept across the state’s southeast.

In late 2024, severe hail and flash flooding arrived in the aftermath of a bushfire in New South Wales’ Yass Valley. Residents barely had time to recover from the initial fire.

Research examining more than five decades of insurance losses shows Australia experiences the most overlapping hazards in December, January and February. This is when bushfire, tropical cyclone and severe storm seasons overlap. This makes summer the most high-risk period, particularly for disaster-prone regions.

When disasters converge

In Australia, natural disasters most often come in three combinations:

• heatwaves alongside drought
• heat followed by heavy rain
• strong winds combined with heavy rain.

Heatwaves and drought often occur together because dry soils reduce evaporation and push temperatures higher. This creates persistent hot and dry conditions, increasing the risk of bushfires. These hot conditions also put pressure on the agriculture and health care sectors. Recent Australian research suggests this combination of heatwaves and drought will only become more common and extreme.

In Australia, heavy rainfall is more likely to come after a heatwave. This is because extreme heat alters atmospheric conditions in a way that means subsequent rain often falls in shorter, heavier bursts.

Strong winds and heavy rainfall often occur together, most commonly when tropical cyclones develop. East coast lows, a type of intense weather system that usually forms off Australia’s eastern coast, may also create the right conditions for these overlapping hazards.

The role of climate change

Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”, increasing the likelihood of extreme events occurring together or in rapid succession. Research shows extreme weather is becoming more frequent and intense.

In Australia, we have already recognised this trend, creating national frameworks to deal with a rising number of simultaneous, and often large-scale, disasters.

But sound policy does not guarantee effective emergency management. As the risk of overlapping hazards increases, we must actively involve communities in disaster planning. Through education programs and clear messaging, we can help them understand how disasters may combine. We can also give them strategies to make decisions when weather conditions change rapidly.

In our changing climate, overlapping hazards will only become more common. So there’s no better time to help our communities and first responders prepare.

– ref. Australia must brace for clusters of natural disasters, not just isolated fires and floods – https://theconversation.com/australia-must-brace-for-clusters-of-natural-disasters-not-just-isolated-fires-and-floods-272333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Panza, Associate Professor, Economic History, The University of Melbourne

On October 6 1973, the Yom Kippur War – mainly involving Egypt, Syria and Israel –triggered one of the biggest energy crises of the 20th century. Eleven days later, several Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced they would stop selling oil to countries supporting Israel and would cut production.

The effect was immediate. Within a few months, global oil prices quadrupled.

After decades of price stability, the world faced a severe shortage. Petrol stations ran dry, with some displaying a red flag to signal empty pumps; drivers queued for hours.

In parts of the US, fuel was rationed by licence plate number. By March 1974, time spent waiting in line had raised the cost of petrol by around 50%, because drivers were also “paying” through lost time — hours that could otherwise have been spent working.

Across Europe, governments imposed fuel-saving measures. The Netherlands and West Germany introduced car-free Sundays, while Britain cut speed limits to reduce petrol consumption.

Today, as the United States and Israel continue a widening war against Iran, energy markets have again reacted: disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for global oil, have pushed prices above US$100 per barrel, echoing the supply shocks of the 1970s.

These pressures make it timely to revisit 1973 and why its effects were so economically severe.

When OPEC gained influence

The scale and persistence of the 1973 oil shock reflected not just the embargo itself, but how it interacted with the economic system at the time.

One important shift was that the US stopped being the world’s main “backup supplier” of oil. For decades, American production had been large enough that output could increase when global supply tightened, but production peaked around 1972.

Without this buffer, markets became far more sensitive to disruptions. At the same time, oil-producing countries in the Middle East gained political leverage by coordinating production through OPEC, strengthening their influence over prices.

Moreover, the international monetary system that had kept postwar inflation under control had collapsed in 1971. This agreement, known as Bretton Woods, had tied currencies to the US dollar. The result was that oil prices, like most commodity prices, were already rising before the embargo began.

Inflation surged, and so did wages

Higher oil prices pushed up the cost of almost everything. Transport became more expensive. Electricity bills increased. Businesses faced higher production costs and passed these costs onto consumers.

Inflation surged across many advanced economies. Workers tried to protect their living standards by asking for higher pay. In many countries, strong labour unions negotiated big wage increases to keep up with rising prices.

Expectations made the shock worse: fearing shortages, firms and households stocked up, reducing available supply and pushing prices even higher.

At the same time, economic growth slowed sharply. Factories produced less, unemployment rose and investments fell.

The economic consequence of this shock was a decade of stagflation: high inflation amid stagnating growth.

Governments tried several ways to respond. Some countries, such as the US, introduced price controls to limit how much petrol companies could charge. Others, such as the UK and France, imposed rationing rules to manage shortages.

Trouble for central banks

Central banks also faced difficult choices: raising interest rates could reduce inflation by slowing borrowing and spending. But higher rates also risked pushing the economy deeper into recession.

During the 1970s, many central banks including the US Federal Reserve struggled to strike the right balance. The Fed kept cutting interest rates to support the economy, but this only added to inflation.

The result was an “inflationary psychology” where expectations of higher prices become self-fulfilling.

The world today has stronger defences against an oil shock. Central banks now have clear mandates to keep inflation low and the credibility to act quickly. Research suggests the economic impact of oil price shocks has declined over time because wages adjust faster, central banks act decisively to keep inflation in check, and oil now makes up a smaller share of the economy.

Recent shocks confirm this transformation: the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy prices and inflation, but did not trigger a deep recession.

There is another difference as well. Today, high oil prices may encourage investment in renewable energy, and have the potential to accelerate the shift toward cleaner energy sources.

Modern economies are better prepared

The events of 1973 still offer an important lesson.

The damage caused by an energy shock depends not only on the size of the disruption but also on the economic environment in which it occurs. In the 1970s, heavy dependence on oil, rigid wage systems and uncertain economic policy amplified the crisis.

Modern economies are better prepared. Constraints on energy supply, however, remain real and the disruption to the Strait of Hormuz highlights this uncertainty. The duration and objectives of the current conflict remain unclear, and uncertainty itself is costly to businesses and the economy.

History is therefore less useful for prediction than for perspective. The size of a supply shock is only one piece of the puzzle; what matters is the system it hits, how long the shock persists and how it affects expectations.

– ref. This is how the 1970s oil shock played out. There are lessons for the economy today – https://theconversation.com/this-is-how-the-1970s-oil-shock-played-out-there-are-lessons-for-the-economy-today-278876

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zainab Darbas, PhD Candidate, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

In 2004, a largely anonymous team of Australian video game developers released a prototype video game titled Escape from Woomera.

In this 3D adventure, the player takes on the role of Mustafa, an Iranian refugee fleeing violent repression who is being held in a virtual re-creation of the (now-shut) Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre.

Mustafa is facing deportation back to Iran – which will mean almost certain death. He and the player must escape.

Escape from Woomera was one of the first Australian video games ever to receive government funding to support its development. In 2003, the creators received a A$25,000 grant from the national arts body, the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia).

The game itself, and the fact it was awarded public funding, were highly controversial. They sparked conversations about what kind of art the government should fund, and why. Should the goal be to nurture new artistic talent? Or to preserve Australian-made content? Or build profitable industries?

More than two decades on, Australia has a robust ecosystem of video game development supported by grant programs across the country. My research looked at the scope and structure of these programs and examined how they affect game developers.

My findings reveal that the structures of funding programs emphasise generating profit and growing the video game industry. This is at odds with the approach taken by many game developers, who view themselves as artists, and their games as a cultural form.

This fundamental mismatch is a source of tension for game developers who rely on public funding to support their work.

Competing priorities of public funding

I read through more than 50 annual reports, strategic documents and other materials from Australian arts funding bodies to analyse funding policies for Australian video games.

The documents emphasised the economic potential of the video game industry, frequently citing growth rates, expenditure figures and returns on investment as justification for continuing to fund game development. However, they also promoted Australian video games as complex, experimental and culturally valuable.

This shows how funding agencies juggle competing priorities. While they value games with artistic merit that contribute to the cultural landscape, agencies must also demonstrate that their public funding programs generate financial returns.

These agencies’ economic priorities heavily influence how public funding programs are structured – which can make them seem highly formal and business-like.

Company or community?

This formality creates difficulties for game developers, whose work practices are often artistic, informal and adaptive. I interviewed 11 game developers to understand their experiences with public funding.

They generally held positive sentiment towards the funding available to them, describing it as a “lifeline”, “fantastic” and “awesome”. Several developers spoke highly of the range of funding programs available for projects of various scope.

At the same time, they had criticisms. They found the application processes for public funding overly formal, forcing them to adapt their artistic practices to a rigid, business-like structure. As one interviewee explained:

If you want to go for funding, you’re talking about needing to start a company. You need to get a lawyer. People don’t know that.

Tensions were particularly acute around providing diversity information. Most funding applications ask applicants to submit information about diversity, equity and inclusion in a highly formalised format.

The developers I spoke to felt “icky”, “gross”, “weird” and “uncomfortable” while completing these forms, describing them as “tokenising”, “dehumanising” and “impersonal”. As one interviewee said:

The language it asks you to use is so corporate, you know, and it’s like, who is this talking to? Who is this for? And the answer is always a company. I’m not a company, I’m a person.

More than just products

The interviewees recommended several changes funding agencies could make to improve their application processes. They could, for instance:

• provide example funding applications and information sessions to help guide applicants

• provide more feedback on both successful and unsuccessful applications

• allow more flexible formats for submitting the required documentation, especially for diversity information

• provide venue space and smaller, more accessible funding options for developers to run events for skill-sharing and community support.

These changes would signal to game developers and the wider public that our public institutions value video games as more than just money-making products.

Australian-made games such as Untitled Goose Game and Cult of the Lamb – which have achieved international critical success in recent years – wouldn’t exist without public funding.

Yet many video game developers struggle to find options for secure public funding. And when it isn’t available, they are forced to take a chance on over-saturated crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter.

It’s important that public funding programs work to support game developers on their own terms, so they can keep creating excellent games that enrich our cultural landscape.

– ref. Are video games art or products? This tension lies at the heart of Australia’s gaming industry – https://theconversation.com/are-video-games-art-or-products-this-tension-lies-at-the-heart-of-australias-gaming-industry-275314