Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Teresa Ubide, ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Igneous Petrology/Volcanology, The University of Queensland
An enormous plume was seen stretching several kilometres into the sky from the mountain on the island of Sicily, which is the largest active volcano in Europe.
While the blast created an impressive sight, the eruption resulted in no reported injuries or damage and barely even disrupted flights on or off the island. Mount Etna eruptions are commonly described as “Strombolian eruptions” – though as we will see, that may not apply to this event.
What happened at Etna?
The eruption began with an increase of pressure in the hot gases inside the volcano. This led to the partial collapse of part of one of the craters atop Etna.
The collapse allowed what is called a pyroclastic flow: a fast-moving cloud of ash, hot gas and fragments of rock bursting out from inside the volcano.
Thermal camera images show the eruption and flows of lava down the side of Mount Etna. National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, CC BY
Next, lava began to flow in three different directions down the mountainside. These flows are now cooling down. On Monday evening, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology announced the volcanic activity had ended.
Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, so this eruption is reasonably normal.
What is a Strombolian eruption?
Volcanologists classify eruptions by how explosive they are. More explosive eruptions tend to be more dangerous, because they move faster and cover a larger area.
At the mildest end are Hawaiian eruptions. You have probably seen pictures of these: lava flowing sedately down the slope of the volcano. The lava damages whatever it runs into, but it’s a relatively local effect.
As eruptions grow more explosive, they send ash and rock fragments flying further afield.
At the more explosive end of the scale are Plinian eruptions. These include the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, described by the Roman writer Pliny the Younger, which buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under metres of ash.
In a Plinian eruption, hot gas, ash, and rock can explode high enough to reach the stratosphere – and when the eruption column collapses, the debris falls to Earth and can wreak terrifying destruction over a huge area.
What about Strombolian eruptions? These relatively mild eruptions are named after Stromboli, another Italian volcano which belches out a minor eruption every 10 to 20 minutes.
In a Strombolian eruption, chunks of rock and cinders may travel tens or hundreds of metres through the air, but rarely further. The pyroclastic flow from yesterday’s eruption at Etna was rather more explosive than this – so it wasn’t strictly Strombolian.
Can we forecast volcano eruptions?
Volcanic eruptions are a bit like weather. They are very hard to predict in detail, but we are a lot better than we used to be at forecasting them.
To understand what a volcano will do in the future, we first need to know what is happening inside it right now. We can’t look inside directly, but we do have indirect measurements.
For example, before an eruption magma travels from deep inside the Earth up to the surface. On the way, it pushes rocks apart and can generate earthquakes. If we record the vibrations of these quakes, we can track the magma’s journey from the depths.
Rising magma can also make the ground near a volcano bulge upwards very slightly, by a few millimetres or centimetres. We can monitor this bulging, for example with satellites, to gather clues about an upcoming eruption.
Some volcanoes release gas even when they are not strictly erupting. We can measure the chemicals in this gas – and if they change, it can tell us that new magma is on its way to the surface.
When we have this information about what’s happening inside the volcano, we also need to understand its “personality” to know what the information means for future eruptions.
Are volcanic eruptions more common than in the past?
As a volcanologist, I often hear from people that it seems there are more volcanic eruptions now than in the past. This is not the case.
What is happening, I tell them, is that we have better monitoring systems now, and a very active global media system. So we know about more eruptions – and even see photos of them.
Monitoring is extremely important. We are fortunate that many volcanoes in places such as Italy, the United States, Indonesia and New Zealand have excellent monitoring in place.
This monitoring allows local authorities to issue warnings when an eruption is imminent. For a visitor or tourist out to see the spectacular natural wonder of a volcano, listening to these warnings is all-important.
Teresa Ubide 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.
Samoa’s Parliament has been formally dissolved, and an early election is set to take place within three months.
After months of political instability and two motions of no confidence, Prime Minister Fiāme Naomi Mata’afa said she would call for the dissolution of Parliament if cabinet did not support her government’s budget.
MPs from both the opposition Human Rights Protection Party and Fiāme’s former FAST party joined forces to defeat the budget with the final vote coming in 34 against, 16 in support and 2 abstentions.
Fiāme went to the Head of State and advised him to dissolve Parliament, and her advice was accepted.
This all came from a period of political turmoil that kicked off shortly after New Year.
A split in the FAST Party in January saw Fiāme remove FAST Party chairman La’auli Leuatea Schmidt and several FAST ministers from her cabinet.
In turn, he ejected her from FAST, leaving her leading a minority government.
Minority government defeated Earlier this year, over a two-week period, Fiāme and her minority government defeated two back-to-back leadership challenges.
On February 25, with La’auli’s help, she defeated a no-confidence vote moved by Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, 34 votes to 15.
Then on March 6, this time with Tuilaepa’s help, she defeated a challenge mounted by La’auli, 32 votes to 19.
Parliament now enters caretaker mode, until the election and the formation of a new government.
Samoa’s Electoral Commissioner said his office has filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court, seeking legal direction and extra time to complete the electoral roll ahead of an early election.
A hearing on this is set to be held on Wednesday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Papua New Guinea minister has raised concerns about “serious issues” at the PNG-Indonesia border due to a lack of proper security checkpoints.
Culture and Tourism Minister Belden Namah, who is also the member for the border electorate Vanimo-Green, voiced these concerns while supporting a new Biosecurity for Plants and Animals Bill presented in Parliament by Agriculture Minister John Boito.
He said Papua New Guinea was the only country in the Pacific Islands region that shared a land border with another nation.
According to Namah, the absence of proper quarantine and National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) checks at the border allowed people bringing food and plants from Indonesia to introduce diseases affecting PNG’s commodities.
Minister Namah, whose electorate shares a border with Indonesia, noted that while the PNG Defence Force and police were present, they were primarily focused on checking vehicles coming from Indonesia instead of actively patrolling the borders.
He clarified the roles, saying, “It’s NAQIA’s job to search vehicles and passengers, and the PNGDF’s role is to guard and patrol our borders.”
Namah expressed concern that while bills were passed, enforcement on the ground was lacking.
Minister Namah supported the PNG Biosecurity Authority Bill and called for consistency, increased border security, and stricter control checks.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kay Cook, Professor and Associate Dean Research, School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education, Swinburne University of Technology
The Commonwealth ombudsman has released his long-awaited report into the “weaponisation” of the child support program.
He has identified widespread financial abuse throughout the system. This includes parents not making payments, lying to reduce their income and being abusive or violent to stop ex-partners seeking help.
The ombudsman has found Services Australia, which administers the scheme, is not using its available powers to stop the abuse and force ex-partners to support their children. As a result, 153,000 parents have a combined A$1.9 billion in unpaid child support.
The report adds to the growing evidence the child-support scheme is failing families, especially women. The system hasn’t been working for a very long time, if it ever did.
Ombudsman’s report
More than 1.2 million separated parents have child-support arrangements for an estimated one million children. Some 84% of parents receiving payments are women.
According to the report, 32% of complaints about the child-support scheme reported it was being weaponised by ex-partners. This figure only includes people who were persistent enough to proceed all the way to the ombudsman.
In addition, these complainants were women who braved possible repurcussions from ex-partners, who may be abusive. Given the context of fear, the statistic is undeniable.
Ombudsman Iain Anderson has found the abuse is being made worse by the tax system, which calculates income assuming all support payments have been made, even if they haven’t.
Preventing weaponisation is really important because child support is all about children – vulnerable children – who need to be financially supported while they are growing up.
The same problems with the tax system were identified by a report earlier this year by the Inspector General of Taxation and Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen.
Toothless tiger
The report finds Services Australia, the government agency responsible for Centrelink, is acting in an “unfair and unreasonable” manner by not using its available powers to enforce payments.
This passive approach is unfair. It allows some paying parents to manipulate the system to avoid their financial responsibility in raising heir children largely without consequences.
The report recommends Services Australia:
publicly outline its plan to tackle financial abuse through the child support system
introduce a range of measures to enforce child support payments
refine data collection approaches
review its Lodgement Enforcement Program
support its staff to undertake training on financial abuse through the child-support system
review its change of assessment process.
The report notes the legislative provisions underpinning Services Australia are also “unfair and unreasonable”.
Recommendations for government action include
amending legislation to overcome legal roadblocks to enforcing child support payments
providing the ombudsman with a comprehensive progress report within the next 12 months.
Circuit breaker
There have been countless reviews calling to rebalance the system in the interests of women and children.
Yet there has been scant action to date. Indeed our survey of 540 women exposed the scale of the problem for the first time.
This new ombudsman’s report might be the final push to action that the government needs due to its timing and specifics.
First, both Minister for Women Katy Gallagher and newly appointed Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek have acknowledged the need for change.
The 2024 women’s budget statement acknowledged child support was being abused. An internal review had been taking place to examine how the child support, family tax benefit and taxation systems are being weaponised.
Second, the ombudsman’s report draws on Services Australia data to shed light on the issue. Much of this information has not previously been made public. Some statistics have been reluctantly released due to dogged questioning in Senate Estimates over many years by the new Greens leader, Larissa Waters.
The ombudsman used his legislative powers to request and obtain information from Services Australia, as well as attending its offices to furnish his report. The data adds substantial weight to the findings.
A safer system
Many of the root problems with the child-support program stem from reforms brought in during the Howard era, compounded by the welfare to work measures which targeted single parents.
Immediately after separation can be the most dangerous time for women. Perpetrators can use mandatory government systems, such as child support, to financially control and harm ex-partners and their own children.
Kay Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council in the form of a Discovery Project grant on, ‘Prioritising women’s financial safety: Developing institutional interventions for intimate partner financial abuse’.
She is a member of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee.
Adrienne Byrt 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.
One in three men (32%) aged 18 to 57 years report using emotional abuse towards a partner. One in ten (9%) say they have used physical violence.
These are some of the statistics from the latest report of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health – the Ten to Men study.
The report also shows 2% of men have engaged in sexual abuse towards an intimate partner. Overall, among the 120,000 men surveyed, one in three (35%) said they’d used a form of violence towards an intimate partner in their adult life.
The findings give us important new insights into men’s use of partner violence. It is among the first Australian studies to explore the factors linked with men’s use of partner violence in a large, general community sample.
Being a longitudinal study – which surveys the same men at different points in time – also gives unique insights into the onset of intimate partner violence.
And crucially, it points to some key priorities for policy and programs to prevent this violence.
Which men use partner violence?
Young men (aged 18–24) reported the lowest rates of using violence towards an intimate partner.
As the report notes, this is not surprising, as younger men will have had less time in intimate relationships.
Importantly, the use of intimate partner violence increased over time for all age groups between the two surveys.
This suggests previously non-violent men can still start to use intimate partner violence later in their lives. However, it is worth noting that some men’s understanding and willingness to disclose use of violence may have also improved since the earlier survey.
A crucial result of the Ten to Men report is that men’s use of violence does not differ meaningfully according to demographic background.
It didn’t matter whether men were from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds, whether they had high or low incomes, whether they lived in cities or regions, and whether they were heterosexual or not. The overall rate of using intimate partner violence was the same.
This is a highly important finding as it shows us that we cannot assume intimate partner violence is more or less likely among particular regions, classes, sexualities or cultures.
What factors contributed to violence?
Perhaps the most important findings from the report are the crucial roles mental health, social connections, and positive relationships with fathers and father-like figures, play in men’s risk of using partner violence.
While much research has shown that mental health is linked with men’s likelihood of using violence, this study goes further. Because it surveyed men at different points in time, it can tell us that men who were depressed or experiencing suicidal thoughts in the earlier survey (2013), were more likely to report the onset of using partner violence in the later survey (2022).
This was not the case for men with other mental health concerns, such as anxiety diagnoses, nor for measures of men’s overall life satisfaction.
Another important trend was found for social supports and connection. Those men who described feeling that they had social support around them “all of the time” in the earlier survey, were less likely to have started using intimate partner violence by the time of the later survey.
Receiving affection from a father or father-like figure when growing up was also associated with significantly less risk of using partner violence in later life.
The findings of the Ten to Men report really point to a need for violence prevention and early intervention with men at different points in their life.
For example, programs that support men’s parenting and positive father-child emotional connection not only have a role to play in violence prevention, but are known to have beneficial outcomes for children’s development more generally.
Part of these programs often involves breaking down traditional and rigid ideas about gender roles that place more responsibility for emotional caregiving with mothers than with fathers.
Supporting men’s mental wellbeing is also crucial. Research has long shown many men experience barriers to seeking help and support for mental health, partly due to expectations of men as needing to be “tough”, “independent” and “resilient”. These expectations can cause shame and fear in turning to others for support.
Programs such as The Man Box have further shown how such rigid gender expectations can have a negative impact on men and boys’ mental wellbeing, as well as their risk for using violence.
We need to continue to break down the barriers to men’s access to mental health and wellbeing supports. Yet the Ten to Men findings also suggest knowledge of how to identify and work with people using violence, or at risk of using violence, may be especially important among health and mental health practitioners.
Much of our policy addressing intimate partner violence talks about accountability and improving responses to men’s use of violence. And it is urgent that we respond to – and not make excuses for – men’s use of violence.
But there is a lot more we could be doing to work with men throughout their lives before they use violence.
Supporting men’s positive parenting relationships, breaking down rigid gender expectations, encouraging men to connect socially and seek support, as well as identifying men at risk, all have a role to play in ending partner violence.
Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA). Anastasia teaches family violence specialist casework in the Graduate Certificate in Domestic & Family Violence at RMIT University.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Sansom, Research Associate, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University; Research Associate, Centre for Healthy Ageing, Murdoch University
Have you ever noticed how some people bounce out of bed after just a few hours of sleep, while others can barely function without a solid eight hours?
Take Margaret Thatcher, for example. The former British prime minister was known for sleeping just four hours a night. She worked late, rose early, and seemed to thrive on little sleep.
But for most of us, that kind of sleep schedule would be disastrous. We’d be groggy, unfocused, and reaching for sugary snacks and caffeinated drinks by mid-morning.
So why do some people seem to need less sleep than others? It’s a question that’s fascinated scientists for years. Here’s what we know so far.
Natural short sleepers
There is a small group of people who don’t need much sleep. We call them natural short sleepers. They can function perfectly well on just four to six hours of sleep each night, often for their entire lives.
Generally they don’t feel tired, they don’t nap, and they don’t suffer the usual negative consequences of sleep deprivation. Scientists call this the natural short sleep phenotype – a biological trait that allows people to get all the benefits of sleep in less time.
In 2010 researchers discovered genetic mutations that help explain this phenomenon. Natural short sleepers carry rare variants in certain genes, which seem to make their sleep more efficient.
More recently, a 2025 study assessed a woman in her 70s with one of these rare mutations. Despite sleeping just six hours a night for most of her life, she remained physically healthy, mentally sharp, and led a full, active life. Her body, it seems, was simply wired to need less sleep.
We’re still learning about how common these genetic mutations are and why they occur.
Not everyone who sleeps less is a natural short sleeper
But here’s the catch: most people who think they’re natural short sleepers aren’t. They’re just chronically sleep-deprived. Often, their short sleep is due to long work hours, social commitments, or a belief sleeping less is a sign of strength or productivity.
In today’s hustle culture, it’s common to hear people boast about getting by on only a few hours of sleep. But for the average person, that’s not sustainable.
The effects of short sleep build up over time, creating what’s known as a “sleep debt”. This can lead to poor concentration, mood swings, micro-sleeps (brief lapses into sleep), reduced performance and even long-term health risks. For example, short sleep has been linked to an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke).
The weekend catch-up dilemma
To make up for lost sleep during the week, many people try to “catch up” on weekends.
This can help repay some of the sleep debt that has accumulated in the short term. Research suggests getting one to two extra hours of sleep on the weekend or taking naps when possible may help reduce the negative effects of short sleep.
However, it’s not a perfect fix. Weekend catch-up sleep and naps may not fully resolve sleep debt. The topic remains one of ongoing scientific debate.
A recent large study suggested weekend catch-up sleep may not offset the cardiovascular risks associated with chronic short sleep.
What’s more, large swings in sleep timing can disrupt your body’s internal clock, and sleeping in too much on weekends may make it harder to fall asleep on Sunday night, which can mean starting the working week less rested.
Increasing evidence indicates repeated cycles of irregular sleep may have an important influence on general health and the risk of early death, potentially even more so than how long we sleep for.
Ultimately, while moderate catch-up sleep might offer some benefits, it’s no substitute for consistent, high-quality sleep throughout the week. That said, maintaining such regularity can be particularly challenging for people with non-traditional schedules, such as shift workers.
So, was Thatcher a true natural short sleeper?
It’s hard to say. Some reports suggest she napped during the day in the back of a car between meetings. That could mean she was simply sleep-deprived and compensating for an accumulated sleep debt when she could.
Separate to whether someone is a natural short sleeper, there are a range of other reasons people may need more or less sleep than others. Factors such as age and underlying health conditions can significantly influence sleep requirements.
For example, older adults often experience changes in their circadian rhythms and are more likely to suffer from fragmented sleep due to conditions such as arthritis or cardiovascular disease.
Sleep needs vary from person to person, and while a lucky few can thrive on less, most of us need seven to nine hours a night to feel and function our best. If you’re regularly skimping on sleep and relying on weekends to catch up, it might be time to rethink your routine. After all, sleep isn’t a luxury – it’s a biological necessity.
Peter Eastwood has previously received funding from Research Funding Organisations (e.g. NHMRC, MRFF, NHRIF, Raine Study) and has been a consultant for several sleep-related biomedical device companies. He is currently involved in several initiatives with the World Sleep Society, including its Global Sleep Health Taskforce.
Kelly Sansom 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.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi has spent his career turning barriers into creative inspiration.
Working under travel bans, house arrests and periodic detention, he had made powerful films that show everyday life in Iran through quiet moments, daily struggles, and small talk on streets under surveillance. He shows people who are restricted by repressive rules, yet who hold onto hope – albeit fragile.
Although Panahi is banned from making films in Iran, he has managed to make a new film “underground” almost every two years. He recently stood triumphant as he received the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his thriller It Was Just an Accident (2025).
The 2025 Sydney Film Festival’s retrospective Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion provides a valuable opportunity to look deeper into Panahi’s work, and understand how he makes impossible cinema possible through his unique position.
A slice of life under censorship
Panahi is one of Iran’s most important filmmakers – both because of the international recognition he has received, and because of the symbolic power he has gained through his fight for freedom of speech.
His form of storytelling is rooted in the tradition of Iranian “social films”: dramas and melodramas focusing on everyday, ordinary life.
He blends this tradition with the style and aesthetics of late director Abbas Kiarostami (who he worked with for some years), using elements such as long sequences, vehicles as a recurring motif, and self-reflexive approaches to storytelling.
Panahi’s films not only focus on daily life, but treat cinema as part of that life. In other words, the filmmaking process becomes part of the narrative.
He sometimes places himself within his films. In No Bears (2022), he plays a version of himself to explore the complexities of trying to tell a story while battling surveillance, the threat of exposure, and extreme cultural dogma.
Panahi’s films feature characters rarely seen other works. For instance, in the short film Hidden (2020), the protagonist is a young woman who must perform out of sight due to restrictions on female voices in public.
Similarly, in 3 Faces (2018), a girl from a small village sends a video to a famous actress, begging for help to study acting because her family won’t allow her.
And Offside (2006) follows a group of girls who try to enter a football stadium by dressing up as boys to watch a World Cup qualifying match – highlighting Iran’s historical ban on women attending men’s football matches.
Cinema as reality
Panahi’s films try and look behind the curtains to construct a filmic representation of daily life in Iran. In doing so, they often blur the line between fiction and reality.
In The Mirror (1997), a young actress suddenly stops acting and refuses to follow the script. Although this moment is not actually unscripted, it challenges the viewer’s sense of what is real and what is performed. The film turns into a kind of documentary as the cameras follows the girl on her journey home.
His work also investigates how external forces can shape one’s internal world. In Closed Curtain (2013), a man hides his dog inside a dark house as dogs are viewed as “impure” by the public authorities.
Halfway through the film, Panahi himself appears – again in the form of a filmmaker facing bans. While the film remains fictional, Panahi’s presence turns the narrative into a reflection on cinema and lived experience.
We also see this approach in his subversive documentary This Is Not a Film (2011). Forced into house arrest, and facing a 20 year ban on filmmaking, Panahi films himself inside his apartment while exploring what it means to be banned from filmmaking – and whether filmmaking is possible without a crew or script.
The tragedy in small hurts
Panahi’s films are full of small moments that build into bigger truths – part of the heritage of Iranian social cinema.
In The Circle (2000), different women move through Tehran facing rules that limit their freedom. At the end, the film loops back to its start, showing how their problems don’t end, but simply repeat.
In Crimson Gold (2003), co-written with Abbas Kiarostami, a deliveryman is repeatedly humiliated throughout his daily life because of his social status. The film begins by showing the man attempting to rob a jeweller, before taking his own life – then moves backward to show how he built-up enough despair to commit the act.
The real shock isn’t the act itself, but everything that led to it.
Vehicles as a safe space
Vehicles are everywhere in Panahi’s work: mobile spaces reside on the boundary between public and private life.
In Taxi (2015), Panahi plays a cab driver whose taxi becomes a small stage for passengers to share their stories and opinions.
In No Bears (2022), although Panahi is largely confined to a rural village setting, cars and motorbikes function as transitional spaces between different zones of privacy and publicity.
Nothing onscreen is unintentional
Panahis’s work resists simplistic ideas of the oppressed and the oppressor. These are not just stories about a heroic artist against an authoritarian state. They prompt us to ask: who really benefits from this binary? And what deeper political and cultural dynamics are at play?
And he does this by using the restrictions imposed on him – and even his silence – as narrative tools. Censorship becomes part of the creative process. Not an obstacle, but a resource.
Habib Moghimi 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.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the health sector. Since the 2024 budget, Health NZ has faced several reductions across its workforce. Nurses and rest home workers were also among the 33 pay equity cases stopped to save nearly NZ$13 billion over four years.
Industrial unrest could well be a feature of the next 18 months and an influence on the current government’s fortunes.
My ongoing research with union leaders, to be published later this year, maps out how they could emerge as a major force mobilising public opinion ahead of the 2026 general election – and how using “soft power” rather than just strikes could be key to success.
This research is part of an international project looking at health sector union strategies in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The power of unions
Public sector unions have the power to influence change thanks to their concentrated membership in certain sectors, and their ability to cause significant disruptions with strikes. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation, for example, represents 77% of the registered nurse workforce.
But the potential power of New Zealand’s public service unions is tempered by their members’ commitment to the needs of the people they serve – for example, ensuring sick people still receive care.
Public service unions also need support from the public, given the state is their ultimate employer. This means unions first have to use the soft power available to them before deciding to strike.
For unions, soft power includes using employment rules and laws (“institutional” sources of power), alliances with groups representing people who use the sector’s services (“coalitional” sources), and messaging (“ideational”).
In the fight over pay equity, for example, unions are using institutional means (equal pay legislation) to fight for increased wages. They are also building coalitions with groups that use their services, and are articulating a clear case of fairness and efficiency to build wider support.
Even some lobby groups, such as Aged Care Association which represents aged-care facilities, have publicly supported union efforts towards pay equity, recognising the need for higher wages to address labour shortages.
Many people in the public service such as nurses face a tension between industrial action while still meeting their commitment to caring for New Zealanders. Hannah Peters/Getty Images
But unions representing doctors and nurses say the government is “just treading water”, identifying 4,800 vacancies in the current plan.
According to the unions, gaps include one in five senior hospital doctor positions and a quarter of hospital shifts lack sufficient nurses or midwives (the government has disputed these figures).
The situation is exacerbated by Australia and other countries actively recruiting for healthcare staff. Rising living costs also make New Zealand a less attractive proposition to new migrants.
Recent surveys by other major health unions focus on the impact of staff shortages on worker wellbeing and patient care. The scientific and technical union APEX reports a “workforce in survival mode” and the Public Service Association talks of “healthcare in crisis”.
In the care sector, members of trade union E tū have detailed how chronic understaffing leads to work intensification and insufficient time to care for residential or home-based clients.
A battle of messaging
The unions’ message is one of a vicious circle where staff shortages increase workloads in already demanding jobs, accelerating the number of departures and damaging the provision of care.
Addressing this, unions argue, requires better pay and more staff, including investment to grow the domestic pipeline of healthcare staff over the longer term.
The government’s message, however, refers to past blowouts, fiscal discipline and the need for more private sector involvement, and longer hours to meet its targets.
The question for unions is whether they will be able to get their messaging out to voters more effectively than the government.
In general, the profile of healthcare workers in people’s lives can create a more sympathetic message. Unions have also begun a coordinated strategy to unify and actively engage members as a platform for political outreach.
Campaigns such as the nurses union “Marangi Mai” (Rise Up) and E tū’s “Transforming Care” speak to workers more effectively than remote and protracted equal pay negotiations.
Finally, legal action and protests marshal media attention.
Cases filed under employment and health and safety laws expose “good employer” obligations and the need to ensure safe working conditions. “Informational pickets”, market stalls and alliances with user groups also get the message out, as do short sharp work stoppages.
Amid the ongoing debate around healthcare and what the sector needs, it is clear unions will need to use soft power tactics as well as strikes to advocate for workers. The strategies implemented in the public sector may also provide a road map for private sector workers considering their own actions.
Jim Arrowsmith 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology in the College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University
His gaze softens as he draws closer to you. With one hand around your waist and the other cradling your jaw, he pulls you in. You look into his eyes, and notice his pupils have grown large and hungry.
So the story goes in every other romance novel, where enlarged pupils are commonly enlisted as imagery to indicate sexual arousal. And it’s not unusual to read advice online suggesting dilated pupils are a sure sign someone you like also likes you back.
But what does the science say?
In fact, it’s true: our pupils really do tend to grow large when we’re aroused. Here’s why.
What is the pupil?
The pupil is an opening in the iris (the coloured part of the eye) which directs light through the eyeball and onto the retina.
The black colour of the pupil is the colour of the inside of your eye. Surrounding the pupil are two tiny muscles of the iris which are under separate control.
The muscle around the edge of the pupil acts like a sphincter. When stimulated by the parasympathetic nervous system (sometimes known as the “rest and digest” system), it contracts to close down the pupil.
On the outside of the sphincter, another muscle acts like the springs holding the trampoline mat.
When stimulated by the sympathetic nervous system (the “fight or flight” system), it shortens to enlarge the pupil.
There are two different mechanisms to make the pupils dilate.
The first is by direct sympathetic nervous system stimulation causing the pupil to dilate (enlarge). This is triggered when you need or want to:
fight
flee
feed
fornicate
get a “fix” (of illicit drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine)
The second is by stopping the signals of the parasympathetic nerves going to the sphincter muscle of the pupil. This is triggered when you need or want to focus (number 6).
Together, these are sometimes known as “the six f’s”.
Overall, the study found men’s pupils dilate strictly according to their sexual preferences, and women’s pupils dilate more variably.
The study found that heterosexual men’s pupils dilated more in response to erotic imagery of women, and gay men’s pupils dilated more in response to erotic imagery of men.
However, lesbian women’s pupils also dilated more in response to erotic imagery of men, and heterosexual women’s pupils dilated for erotic imagery of men and women.
A pupil of 5 millimetres is abnormal for situations in bright light. Could it be that we’re attracted to the types of pupils we’ve seen before in the relative darkness of an intimate setting?
The idea of large pupils being attractive isn’t new. During the Renaissance in Italy, women used eye drops made from a poisonous plant called Atropa belladonna (belladonna means “beautiful woman” in Italian) to make their pupils dilate. This gave them a wide-eyed, “seductive” look (it also, unfortunately, was rather dangerous).
The plant contains a chemical called atropine, which is still (safely) used today by ophthalmologists and optometrists to dilate the pupils for eye exams or surgery.
Getting in sync
Pupil dilation also plays a role in social and interpersonal interactions. Studies have found administration of oxytocin (a hormone associated with bonding and trust) enhances pupil responses to emotional expressions, suggesting increased sensitivity to social cues.
Pupil dilation synchrony between people has been linked to better teamwork and mutual attraction, reflecting shared arousal states.
This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as “pupil mimicry” or “pupil contagion”, aligns with other autonomic synchronisations such as heart rate.
It all goes to show that so much of connection and attraction is subconscious.
Various substances and medical conditions can also affect pupil size. Stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, anticholinergics (often used to treat Parkinson’s disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and certain medications such as phenylephrine (Sudafed PE), and benzodiazepines such as alprazolam (Xanax) can all cause pupil dilation.
So too can illicit drugs such as cocaine, ketamine, MDMA, LSD and cannabis.
Anticipation of rewards, emotional conflict, and processing of emotionally charged stimuli – such as scary movies or certain trigger sounds – also lead to increased pupil size.
Anxiety, pain, and even conditions such as fibromyalgia have also been linked to dilated pupils.
Context is everything
It is crucial to emphasise pupil dilation doesn’t automatically mean someone is aroused. Interpreting pupil dilation requires context, and you can’t assume big pupils means the person is attracted to you.
Verbal consent and other behavioural cues are essential.
If you’re wondering if the other person likes you, why not just ask?
Amanda Meyer is affiliated with the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists, the American Association for Anatomy, and the Global Neuroanatomy Network.
Monika Zimanyi is affiliated with the Global Neuroanatomy Network
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 3, 2025.
In her memoir, Jacinda Ardern shows a ‘different kind of power’ is possible – but also has its limits Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Teaching Fellow in Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Imagine getting a positive pregnancy test and then – just a few days later – learning you’ll be prime minister. In hindsight, being willing and able to deal with the
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What parents and youth athletes can do to protect against abuse in sport Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fanny Kuhlin, PhD candidate in Sport Management (Sport Science), Örebro University Ron Alvey/Shutterstock From the horrific Larry Nassar abuse scandal in United States gymnastics to the “environment of fear” some volleyball athletes endured at the Australian Institute of Sport, abuse in sport has been well documented in
Astronomers thought the Milky Way was doomed to crash into Andromeda. Now they’re not so sure Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruby Wright, Forrest Fellow in Astrophysics, The University of Western Australia Luc Viatour / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA For years, astronomers have predicted a dramatic fate for our galaxy: a head-on collision with Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbour. This merger – expected in about 5 billion years
Is the private hospital system collapsing? Here’s what the sector’s financial instability means for you Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne lightpoet/Shutterstock Toowong Private Hospital in Brisbane is the latest hospital to succumb to financial pressures and will close its doors next week. The industry association attributes the psychiatric hospital’s closure to insufficient payments from and delayed funding
Trump’s steel tariffs are unlikely to have a big impact on Australia. But we could be hurt by what happens globally Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott French, Senior Lecturer in Economics, UNSW Sydney Shestakov Dymytro/Shutterstock Just one day after the US Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated the Trump Administration’s Liberation Day tariffs of between 10% and 50% on nearly every country in the world, Trump announced tariffs on all US imports of
Tax concessions on super need a rethink. These proposals would bring much needed reform Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Murphy, Visiting Fellow, Economics (modelling), Australian National University fizkes/Shutterstock The federal government has proposed an additional tax of 15% on the earnings made on super balances of over A$3 million, the so-called Division 296 tax. This has set off a highly politicised debate that has often
The surprising power of photography in ageing well Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tricia King, Senior Lecturer in Photography, University of the Sunshine Coast Marcia Grimm Older adults are often faced with lifestyle changes that can disrupt their sense of place and purpose. It may be the loss of a partner, downsizing their home, or moving to residential aged care.
What birds can teach us about repurposing waste Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Farrier, Professor of Literature and the Environment, University of Edinburgh Some birds use deterrent spikes to make their nests. Chemari/Shutterstock Modern cities are evolution engines. Urban snails in the Netherlands and lizards in Los Angeles have developed lighter shells and larger scales to cope with the
Human Rights Watch warns renewed fighting threatens West Papua civilians Asia Pacific Report An escalation in fighting between Indonesian security forces and Papuan pro-independence fighters in West Papua has seriously threatened the security of the largely indigenous population, says Human Rights Watch in a new report. The human rights watchdog warned that all parties to the conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law,
Will surging sea levels kill the Great Barrier Reef? Ancient coral fossils may hold the answer Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jody Webster, Professor of Marine Geoscience, University of Sydney marcobriviophoto.com In the 20th century, global sea level rose faster than at any other time in the past 3,000 years. It’s expected to rise even further by 2100, as human-induced climate change intensifies. In fact, some studies predict
Pro-Trump candidate wins Poland’s presidential election – a bad omen for the EU, Ukraine and women Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia Poland’s presidential election runoff will be a bitter pill for pro-European Union democrats to swallow. The nationalist, Trumpian, historian Karol Nawrocki has narrowly defeated the liberal, pro-EU mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, 50.89 to 49.11%. The Polish
Australia’s latest emissions data reveal we still have a giant fossil fuel problem Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Lovell, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below 2005
What is retinol? And will it make my acne flare? 3 experts unpack this trendy skincare ingredient Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurence Orlando, Senior Lecturer, Product Formulation and Development, Analytical Methods, Monash University Irina Kvyatkovskaya/Shutterstock Retinol skincare products suddenly seem to be everywhere, promising clear, radiant and “youthful” skin. But what’s the science behind these claims? And are there any risks? You may have also heard retinol can
Pasifika recipients say King’s Birthday honours not just theirs alone By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist, Iliesa Tora, and Christina Persico A New Zealand-born Niuean educator says being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list reflects the importance of connecting young tagata Niue in Aotearoa to their roots. Mele Ikiua, who hails from the village of Hakupu Atua in Niue, has been named a
Eugene Doyle: Writing in the time of the Gaza genocide COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle I want to share a writer’s journey — of living and writing through the Genocide. Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank. Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel
Decades of searching and a chance discovery: why finding Leadbeater’s possum in NSW is such big news Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Until now, Victorians believed their state was the sole home for Leadbeater’s possum, their critically endangered state faunal emblem. This tiny marsupial is clinging to life in a few pockets of mountain
In Bradfield, the election is not yet over. What happens when a seat count is ultra close? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Orr, Professor of Law, The University of Queensland Election day was over four weeks ago. Yet the outcome in one House of Representatives remains unclear. That is the formerly Liberal Sydney electorate of Bradfield. In real time, you can watch the lead tilt between Liberal hopeful,
Is there a right way to talk to your baby? A baby brain expert explains ‘parentese’ Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Herbert, Associate Professor in Developmental Psychology, University of Wollongong 2p2play/Shutterstock You might have seen those heartwarming and often funny viral videos where parents or carers engage in long “talks” with young babies about this and that – usually just fun chit chat of no great consequence.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Teaching Fellow in Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Imagine getting a positive pregnancy test and then – just a few days later – learning you’ll be prime minister. In hindsight, being willing and able to deal with the unexpected would become the hallmark of former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s political career.
She had always stood out as a leader, but her tumultuous political journey followed none of the predictable pathways. Readers of her memoir will relive what this was like, from her feelings about motherhood through to meeting world leaders.
Review: A Different Kind of Power – Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House)
The title of her book promises more than just that, however. Many people hope for a different kind of leader, but what personal qualities or strengths do such leaders need? More generally, can the personal qualities that contribute to great leadership be learned and applied by others?
The answer seems to be a qualified yes. Since leaving office, Ardern has become something of a global influencer. But as her career pivots towards celebrity appearances and international agencies, her memoir also serves as a leadership manifesto – especially for women, or aspirants of any gender, who suffer self-doubt.
The limits of empathy
In her formative years, working as an assistant to Labour leader Helen Clark, Ardern relates how she let political opponents get under her skin. Was she “too thin-skinned” for politics? She soon learned “you could be sensitive and survive”. Better still, she could use her sensitivity as a strength.
But “it is different for women in the public eye”, she writes. Derogatory terms were used against her, such as the “show pony” epithet coined by a senior woman journalist. There were questions about whether she had “substance”. These things could undermine people’s belief in her competence – perhaps even her own self-belief.
What she did about this is instructive. Lashing out at jibes and cartoon images would make her look “humourless and too sensitive”. The “trick” was to respond in a way that would “take the story nowhere”. She became adept at that, deflecting comments aimed at putting her down.
This also meant being a feminist but not using feminism as her ideological platform. Other than admonishing a TV presenter that it was “unacceptable” for him to ask whether a sitting prime minister could take maternity leave, she generally let others do the outrage and avoided becoming an even bigger target for culture warriors.
But A Different Kind of Power asks the question: different from what? Ardern’s political career has been a challenge, if not a rebuke, to leaders who indulge in egotistical, competitive, always-be-winning behaviour. Need one even mention Donald Trump?
Instead, Ardern offers kindness and empathy. The approach showed its true strength in the days following the terrorist atrocity in Christchurch in 2019. At a time when anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments were growing, Ardern embraced the victims. “They are us”, she declared. Emotions that could have generated a cycle of blame were guided by her towards sharing of grief and aroha.
Like any political virtue, though, empathy has limitations: it touches those whose suffering commands our attention, but it is partial. Effective social policy also requires an impartial administration and redistribution of resources. Leaders must ensure public goods are delivered equitably to those in need, which calls for rational planning.
And sometimes a national emergency may call for actions that feel unfair or insensitive to some.
Pandemic politics
COVID-19 was that emergency. It created deep uncertainty for governments, and there was no “kind” pathway forward. The Ardern government did an exemplary job, saving many lives, and the Labour Party was rewarded at the 2020 election with an unprecedented 50% of the party vote. But Ardern’s retelling of that time is surprisingly brief, especially given her pivotal role.
She put herself daily at the centre of it all, patiently explaining the public health responses. During this battle with a virus, however, she couldn’t inoculate against the political consequences and shifts in public opinion.
As the pandemic wore on, many New Zealanders whose businesses had been shut down, who had been isolated in their homes, who had difficulty returning home from abroad or who’d been ostracised for not getting vaccinated, weren’t feeling much empathy or kindness from their government. And they felt they were being silenced. This sentiment grew far beyond the activists who had made themselves heard on parliament grounds in early 2022.
Ardern refused to meet with those protestors. “How could I send a message that if you disagree with something, you can illegally occupy the grounds of parliament and then have your demands met?”
But she (or a senior minister) could have heard their demands and explained why they couldn’t be met. Her refusal to listen left the field open to veteran populist Winston Peters, who exploited the opportunity, launching his campaign to return to parliament – in which he now sits and Ardern doesn’t.
While vaccine mandates were a key concern for protestors, it’s disappointing that, to this day, Ardern blames the dissenters, as if they were “not us” – kicked out of the “team of five million”. She attributes the dissent solely to their “mistrust”. Refusing to listen – not just to protestors, but to deeper shifts in public opinion – would cost Labour dearly.
Induced by the pandemic fiscal stimulus, inflation peaked at 7.3% in June 2022. By that time, two switches had occurred: the National Party was ahead in polls and a majority were saying the country was heading in the wrong direction. In January 2023, then, Ardern resigned as prime minister. She believed, probably correctly, that it would be “good for my party and perhaps it would be good for the election”.
Power and parenthood: Jacinda Ardern with her partner Clarke Gayford and their baby daughter, 2018. Getty Images
The toll of leadership
But she also reveals in her memoir that a cancer scare influenced the decision – a false alarm, but a sign perhaps that the job was taking its toll. Her leaving could “take the heat out of the politics”, she reasoned. And anyway, she was tired, stressed and losing her patience.
The leadership change to Chris Hipkins – and a devastating cyclone – boosted Labour’s polling for a while. But their 1,443,545 party votes in 2020 fell to 767,540 in the October 2023 election.
Hundreds of thousands of voters had turned their backs on the Labour Party, and the COVID response wasn’t solely to blame. There were also controversial or failed policies – such as restructuring water services, a proposed unemployment insurance scheme, and Māori co-governance initiatives – that were ruthlessly exploited by the political opposition. These were all initiated under Ardern, although unmentioned in her memoir.
Her book is more about subjective self-doubt and empathy. She doesn’t critically examine her own policies. Nor does she express empathy for those who felt disadvantaged or excluded by them – granting as always that emergency measures had been necessary. And, as she heads further into an international career, there’s no expression of empathy for those who now need it most, be they children in Gaza or refugees in South Sudan.
It’s disappointing Ardern doesn’t define key words: empathy, leadership or power, for example. There are different ways to understand them, and definitions carry assumptions. But she’s not addressing academics or political analysts. Her audience is primarily American – a much larger and more lucrative market than her home country. With the Democrats struggling to find direction and leadership after last year’s losses, Ardern – who poses no threat to anyone’s political ambitions there – offers some inspiration.
Some may fault it for avoiding those harder questions about her time at the top, but Ardern’s memoir interweaves an authentically retold personal story with high political drama. It tells of one woman’s struggle with morning sickness, childbirth, breastfeeding and motherhood, even while taking on huge public responsibilities and media exposure. It’s still amazing how she managed to do all that.
I was a personal acquaintance of Jacinda, when she was a list MP in Auckland Central.
This abuse in elite sport sport has been particularly visible but it is not just happening at the top level. Abusive and harmful practices are happening in all sports, at all ages and at all competition levels.
While sport can have many wonderful benefits for young people, it can also have a dark side, one where abuse can flourish, leading to serious psychological and physical harm.
A 2022 Australian study showed 82% of children had experienced physical, psychological or sexual abuse during their time participating in community sport. This makes the abuse prevalence similar to that found in elite sport environments.
The line between abuse and acceptable behaviour is blurred more in sport than in many other environments.
For example, in school, it would be unacceptable for a teacher to scream at a child who performed poorly on a test but in sports, screaming is a commonly used strategy by a coach to correct a young athlete’s behaviour.
The following quote from an elite-level gymnast in an ongoing research project demonstrates how athletes often learn to accept abusive behaviours as necessary for their performance:
(He) was a strict coach. He spoke loudly […] but I’m a gymnast, I need that. I don’t know if everybody needs that but if I did something really bad, he screamed at me and this kind of gave me motivation to push myself more, so for me this type of coaching style was really good.
Challenges and changes
The “win-at-all-costs” mentality in many sports is also problematic.
When winning is everything, abusive practices are not seen as a problem to be stamped out but rather as legitimate strategies to motivate and toughen up the participants.
Athletes are not the only ones who normalise these practices. Parents, coaches and administrators might also come to tolerate, accept or even celebrate abusive behaviours and cultures as a “natural” part of sport.
This means experiences of abuse may flourish in such environments.
Thankfully, some sports organisations have in recent years made significant changes to reduce the likelihood of abuse and deal with cases as soon as they arise.
Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), for example, is implementing national policies for safeguarding and whistleblowing, where abuse and harmful behaviour can be reported.
SIA has also recently co-developed a course with other leading sport agencies to help coaches working with young athletes better navigate the complexities of physical, emotional and psychological development.
While these are potentially steps in the right direction, researchers have pointed out that similar efforts have achieved mixed results and there are no guarantees of athlete safety.
Parents may therefore rightly ask what they might do to protect their child(ren) from abuse and maximise the positive gains from participating in sport.
This involves being informed about training times and competition schedules, training content, coaching style and behavioural expectations.
Parents should also be welcomed to watch their children’s training sessions at any time and unannounced.
Denying parents information or access to facilities have been identified as a potential risk factors.
The right for inclusion also refers to decision-making. Sport is often hierarchical with authoritarian leadership styles, which are significant risk factors for abuse in sports.
So it is important children and their parents are provided with spaces and opportunities to have a say in matters related to their (child’s) sporting participation.
Secondly, young athletes and their parents/caregivers should be made aware of the policies and safety measures put in place to keep children safe.
If these are not clearly communicated, parents/caregivers are encouraged to ask what actions a club has put in place.
If protection and prevention are not developed, or considered limited or ineffective, parents are recommended to raise their concerns.
Lastly, parents should be conscious of the “win-at-all-costs” mentality found in many sports and consider how this can lead to abusive practices being accepted as a “natural” part of sport.
By staying informed, involved and attentive, parents can play a powerful role in supporting safer sporting environments for all children.
Natalie Barker-Ruchti is affiliated with Safesport Sweden.
Fanny Kuhlin, Jessica Lee, and Steven Rynne 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.
Last month, Google announced SynthID Detector, a new tool to detect AI-generated content. Google claims it can identify AI-generated content in text, image, video or audio.
But there are some caveats. One of them is that the tool is currently only available to “early testers” through a waitlist.
The main catch is that SynthID primarily works for content that’s been generated using a Google AI service – such as Gemini for text, Veo for video, Imagen for images, or Lyria for audio.
If you try to use Google’s AI detector tool to see if something you’ve generated using ChatGPT is flagged, it won’t work.
That’s because, strictly speaking, the tool can’t detect the presence of AI-generated content or distinguish it from other kinds of content. Instead, it detects the presence of a “watermark” that Google’s AI products (and a couple of others) embed in their output through the use of SynthID.
A watermark is a special machine-readable element embedded in an image, video, sound or text. Digital watermarks have been used to ensure that information about the origins or authorship of content travels with it. They have been used to assert authorship in creative works and address misinformation challenges in the media.
SynthID embeds watermarks in the output from AI models. The watermarks are not visible to readers or audiences, but can be used by other tools to identify content that was made or edited using an AI model with SynthID on board.
Several AI companies, including Meta, have developed their own watermarking tools and detectors, similar to SynthID. But these are “model specific” solutions, not universal ones.
This means users have to juggle multiple tools to verify content. Despite researchers calling for a unified system, and major players like Google seeking to have their tool adopted by others, the landscape remains fragmented.
A parallel effort focuses on metadata – encoded information about the origin, authorship and edit history of media. For example, the Content Credentials inspect tool allows users to verify media by checking the edit history attached to the content.
However, metadata can be easily stripped when content is uploaded to social media or converted into a different file format. This is particularly problematic if someone has deliberately tried to obscure the origin and authorship of a piece of content.
There are detectors that rely on forensic cues, such as visual inconsistencies or lighting anomalies. While some of these tools are automated, many depend on human judgement and common sense methods, like counting the number of fingers in AI-generated images. These methods may become redundant as AI model performance improves.
Logical inconsistencies, such as extra fingers, are some of the visual ‘tells’ of the current era of AI-generated imagery. T J Thomson, CC BY-NC
How effective are AI detection tools?
Overall, AI detection tools can vary dramatically in their effectiveness. Some work better when the content is entirely AI-generated, such as when an entire essay has been generated from scratch by a chatbot.
The situation becomes murkier when AI is used to edit or transform human-created content. In such cases, AI detectors can get it badly wrong. They can fail to detect AI or flag human-created content as AI-generated.
AI detection tools don’t often explain how they arrived at their decision, which adds to the confusion. When used for plagiarism detection in university assessment, they are considered an “ethical minefield” and are known to discriminate against non-native English speakers.
A wide variety of use cases exist for AI detection tools. Take insurance claims, for example. Knowing whether the image a client shares depicts what it claims to depict can help insurers know how to respond.
Journalists and fact checkers might draw on AI detectors, in addition to their other approaches, when trying to decide if potentially newsworthy information ought to be shared further.
Employers and job applicants alike increasingly need to assess whether the person on the other side of the recruiting process is genuine or an AI fake.
Users of dating apps need to know whether the profile of the person they’ve met online represents a real romantic prospect, or an AI avatar, perhaps fronting a romance scam.
If you’re an emergency responder deciding whether to send help to a call, confidently knowing whether the caller is human or AI can save resources and lives.
Where to from here?
As these examples show, the challenges of authenticity are now happening in real time, and static tools like watermarking are unlikely to be enough. AI detectors that work on audio and video in real time are a pressing area of development.
Whatever the scenario, it is unlikely that judgements about authenticity can ever be fully delegated to a single tool.
Understanding the way such tools work, including their limitations, is an important first step. Triangulating these with other information and your own contextual knowledge will remain essential.
T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliated researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society.
Elif Buse Doyuran receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.
Jean Burgess receives funding from the Australian Research Council including the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), and from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Council.
Older adults are often faced with lifestyle changes that can disrupt their sense of place and purpose. It may be the loss of a partner, downsizing their home, or moving to residential aged care. And these changes can come with loss of identity, uncertainty, disconnect and isolation.
But what if I told you a simple camera could help alleviate some of these pains? I’ve been working with older adults for the past decade, using photography as a way of connecting with place, and the results have been transformational.
The value of creative ageing
Research has shown arts engagement can significantly enhance the mental wellbeing and overall health of older adults.
But while creative ageing programs are expanding, there are still many barriers to participation, including cost, accessibility, participants’ self-doubt, and a lack of skilled facilitators.
This highlights a need for more inclusive approaches that use familiar tools – and that’s where photography comes in. Photography is a multi-sensory embodied practice. It allows us to be mindful, slow down, and look for beauty in everyday life. It can also prompt us to see the world differently.
Specifically, we explored the impact of photography as not so much a structured “art activity”, but as a practice of connecting to place and other people through group photo walks.
Over the past 18 months we’ve been working with several groups of older adults who live in aged care and community settings. We found that framing the world through a lens can powerfully transform a photographer’s relationship to the environment, and their sense of agency within it.
This practice of intentional “seeing” creates opportunities for discovery in even the most familiar surroundings.
As one aged care resident, Kathleen, put it:
It’s given me a new sense of enjoyment and purpose and changed how I look at both life and seeing places in here that I’ve never seen before.
An image by Kathleen shows some colourful flowers in a window.
Easy, meaningful and social
So what makes photography particularly suited to older adults? Our research highlights some key factors.
It’s accessible and familiar
Photography has become one of the most democratic of creative pursuits. Most people carry a camera via their phone or tablet and know how to operate it. Older adults are no exception.
This familiarity removes common barriers, such as the need to learn a new skill, and instead builds on existing knowledge. This makes photography an ideal creative expression; it requires no special training or equipment, and there is little room for doubt one’s capability.
It’s meaningful
Unlike many other creative activities offered to pass time, photography constitutes a meaningful activity for older adults. According to research, “meaningful” activities for older adults are those that are enjoyable, engaging, suited to individual skills, related to personal goals, and connected to identity.
Photography can be exploratory, fun, and deeply personal. The outcomes can be shared with others, discussed, displayed and privately revisited, allowing connection to one’s self and the surrounding world.
Seeing the familiar differently
Photography honours a photographer’s life experience and perspectives. Each photograph becomes both a creative expression, and validation, of their unique viewpoint – and allows them to see the world through new eyes.
During group photo walk sessions held for my research, participants expressed delight in sharing the same experience of visiting a familiar place, while capturing their own distinct vision of it.
When we returned to discuss the sessions, the group formed collective narratives, with each person adding their own unique contribution. Photography offers social and community connection while celebrating individual creativity and perspective.
The different versions of Russell Anderson’s “iDIDIT!” sculpture on a walk on the Sunshine Coast.
Different images of Russell Anderson’s ‘iDIDIT!’ sculpture, taken on a walk on the Sunshine Coast.
Being outside in the world
While photography can be done anywhere, most people will head outside when exploring with a camera. This was particularly important for people living in aged care, who often didn’t venture out into the gardens.
One participant, Margaret, was relearning how to walk after a stroke, and enjoyed our creative walks together.
Margaret’s photograph of the mystery resident knitter’s work in the gardens.
She grew more confident with each walk, her purpose being to see parts of the residential aged care facility that she’d never accessed and photographed before. Going outside with a camera allowed her to connect to her new home.
Putting it into practice
The beautiful thing about photography is that anyone can do it, and there is no right or wrong. You can simply start by slowing down and looking for interesting shadows, textures, or details.
For those working with older adults, photography is an adaptable, low-cost activity that works across various settings and abilities. You can do it indoors, from a wheelchair, sitting on a wheelie walker, or while getting some exercise.
Photo walks, in particular, are a great way for photographers to share experiences and connect.
Focusing on various shadows can be a fun activity to do while on photo walks. Tricia King
The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr Daniel Wadsworth and Dr Leah Barclay for work which has supported some of the research in this article.
The federal government has proposed an additional tax of 15% on the earnings made on super balances of over A$3 million, the so-called Division 296 tax. This has set off a highly politicised debate that has often shed more heat than light.
Yet back in 2009, the wide-ranging Henry Review of the tax system cogently identified the three main problems with the super tax system and recommended reforms to fix them. The Henry Review recommendations, after some updating, are a better, more comprehensive solution than the controversial Division 296 tax.
The three problems are:
tax concessions for contributions are heavily skewed to high income earners
with an ageing population, it is unsustainable to keep the retirement phase tax-free
the system is so complex that most people do not fully understand it.
Let us look at the main Henry Review recommendations and then see how the proposed Division 296 tax stacks up. Unlike some super tax systems, our system does not tax super pension payments, so the two key issues are how we tax contributions and earnings.
Tax concessions are skewed to high income earners
Employers pay workers in two ways.
First, they directly pay a cash salary that is taxed under a progressive income tax scale. The effective marginal tax rates, including the Medicare levy, rise in steps with income from 18% through to 32% (for the average wage earner), 39% and 47%.
Second, employers pay a contribution on workers’ behalf into their superannuation fund. From July 1, under the superannuation guarantee charge (SGC), this contribution will rise to 12% of cash salary. The contribution is taxed at a flat 15% when it is made into a fund, regardless of what income tax bracket the worker is in.
The way contributions are taxed is a massive concession for high income earners. They pay 47% tax on additional cash salary – but only 15% on their super contributions. In contrast, low income earners receive a tiny concession because the contributions tax rate of 15% is only just below their usual effective marginal tax rate of 18%.
The Henry Review recommended that instead, everyone should receive the same rate of tax concession as the average wage earner. This is how that idea would work today.
First, super contributions would be taxed in the hands of employees alongside their cash salary, rather than this tax being deducted by the super fund as is currently the case. Second, everyone would receive the same tax offset calculated as 17% of their contributions as their super tax concession.
One side effect of this Henry recommendation is that the average wage earner would now be paying the 15% contributions tax out of their own pocket, instead of the super fund paying this tax on the member’s behalf.
However, this loss of cash income can be avoided by tweaking the Henry recommendation.
Under my modified recommendation, the superannuation guarantee rate would be reduced to 10%, employers would be encouraged to fully pass on their savings from this by increasing wages by 1.8%, and the tax offset rate would be lifted to 20%. These policy settings would maintain both cash incomes and super balances for the average wage earner.
Pension mode should not be tax-free with an ageing population
In accumulation mode, the current system taxes fund earnings at 15%, with a lower effective rate of 10% on capital gains. However, after you retire and your account changes from accumulation mode to pension mode, the tax on earnings stops and your pension benefits are also tax-free.
The Henry Review recommended that earnings should continue to be taxed in pension mode in the same way as in accumulation mode. That way, retirees make a contribution to income tax revenue, which is important with an ageing population. A uniform earnings tax would also simplify what is an overly complex super tax system.
The Henry Review also recommended the earnings tax rate be reduced to 7.5% because long-term saving through superannuation is desirable. However, that proposal is probably unaffordable today because of the budget deficit.
The proposed change is just a patch-up job
The proposed Division 296 tax further complicates the tax system by introducing a third tax treatment for earnings, whereas the Henry Review simplifies the system with a uniform earnings tax. The complexities of Division 296 can be seen from the 304-page explanatory memorandum.
The new tax also raises less revenue than the Henry Review recommendations yet we are experiencing a structural budget deficit. The new tax is more open to avoidance than the Henry recommendations. The new tax also does nothing to address the problem that tax concessions for contributions are heavily skewed to high income earners.
Taxing unrealised capital gains under the new tax may cause financial hardship for some retirees who are asset rich but income poor. The $3 million threshold for the new tax is not indexed, unlike all of the other super tax system thresholds.
Overall, the proposed Division 296 tax is best seen as a rough attempt to counteract past policy errors that allowed excessive contributions into super.
The federal government should first address the main problems with the super tax system by implementing the Henry Review recommendations, suitably updated. Then, a considerably reworked Division 296 tax could potentially play a useful supporting role.
Chris Murphy 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.
Just one day after the US Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated the Trump Administration’s Liberation Day tariffs of between 10% and 50% on nearly every country in the world, Trump announced tariffs on all US imports of steel and aluminium will increase from 25% to 50%.
He told the rally of steel workers in Pennsylvania the increase would come into effect Wednesday US time.
Trump said the increase “will even further secure the steel industry in the United States.” But Australia’s trade and tourism minister, Don Farrell, called them “unjustified and not the act of a friend” and “an act of economic self-harm that will only hurt consumers and businesses who rely on free and fair trade.”
There was hope Australia would obtain an exemption from the original tariffs introduced in February. But it now seems clear Trump is intent on applying the tariffs across the board. And, unlike the Liberation Day tariffs, these are unlikely to face significant legal challenges.
So, how will the steel tariffs affect Australians? To understand this, it is important to understand how it will affect the US and its other trading partners.
Only about 10% of Australia’s steel and aluminium exports, and less than 1% of its overall production, goes to the US. Australia’s own BlueScope Steel’s North Star mill in Ohio is actually set to benefit from the tariffs.
But most Australians will feel the effects of the tariffs through the indirect effects on US manufacturing and America’s trading partners.
Impact on the US
We know a lot about how US manufacturing will be affected because this has all happened before. In 2002, George W. Bush imposed tariffs of 8%-30% on steel products, before withdrawing them less than two years later. And Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium in his first term.
Further, while these tariffs were only in place for a short time, the affected US industries took years to recover, and many never have.
The same thing happened with the tariffs from Trump’s first term, where any gains in steel and aluminium production were more than offset by losses in metal-consuming industries.
For Australians, this means many products we buy from the US are going to get more expensive. This includes vehicles and aircraft as well as machinery and medical equipment used by Australian producers. And if the past is a guide, many products will simply become unavailable.
Effects on trading partners
While Australia does not export large amounts of steel and aluminium to US, other countries do. The higher tariffs will further depress the Canadian and Mexican metals industries, which can affect Australian industry in several ways.
First, if North American consumers are buying less of everything, that reduces demand for Australia’s exports, both directly and indirectly as the reduced spending makes is way down the supply chain.
Australia exports very little steel to the US so is less likely to be hurt by the direct impact of the tariffs. IndustryViews/Shutterstock
Second, the affected metals manufacturers will look for other markets for their products. Canada is not likely to flood Australia with cheap aluminium, but it may, for example, displace some of our exports to South Korea. And this is happening as the OECD is warning of excess steel capacity, driven in part by China’s outsized steel subsidies.
But this is not all bad news for Australians. While local steel and aluminium producers will suffer from the diversion of supply from the US, a temporary fall in prices would offer some relief after the post-pandemic rise in building and infrastructure costs.
Retaliatory tariffs
On top of all these effects are the effects of retaliatory tariffs by other countries, as the EU has already threatened. Like the US tariffs, these tariffs will make consumers on both sides poorer, reducing demand for Australian exports. But they will open new markets as well. For example, China’s retaliatory tariffs on US almonds have caused a boom in Australian exports.
The big question for Australia is how this will affect the price of iron ore, by far our largest export. So far, we have not seen major price swings. But if the latest salvo in Trump’s trade war causes the global economy to slow significantly, or if China backs off its steel subsidies, this could change.
State of uncertainty
And perhaps the most significant impact of the latest change in US tariff policy is the effect of ongoing uncertainty over US and global trade policy. Trade policy uncertainty reduces international trade flows and chills business investment.
Whether a business is considering a venture dependent on an input that will be affected by tariffs or, like BlueScope’s Ohio steel mill, might stand to benefit from US tariffs, the uncertainty over what the policy will be tomorrow, let alone five years from now, will make any company hesitant to commit major funds.
With Donald Trump able to upend the global steel industry again at any moment, buyers will be thinking twice before investing billions of dollars, which is bad news for nearly everyone, not least of which the residents of Whyalla, who await the fate of a major local employer.
Scott French 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.
Toowong Private Hospital in Brisbane is the latest hospital to succumb to financial pressures and will close its doors next week. The industry association attributes the psychiatric hospital’s closure to insufficient payments from and delayed funding negotiations with private insurers.
Meanwhile, the future of Australia’s second-largest provide hospital provider, Healthscope, remains uncertain, after its parent company went into receivership last week.
Healthscope’s 37 private hospitals are being kept afloat with a A$100 million loan and will continue to operate for now. But the hospitals will be sold to repay lenders, so their future depends on who buys and what the new owners decide to do.
Across the board, private hospitals are struggling with soaring costs for staff and supplies, while private health insurance isn’t paying enough to cover these expenses.
These underlying issues will not disappear magically. More private hospitals will face similar financial troubles and some will be forced to close. But we’re unlikely to see the collapse of the entire private sector.
A mix of public and private
Australia operates a unique public-private health-care mix, with around 700 public and 647 private hospitals.
Public hospitals are largely government-owned and provide free care, funded by taxes. Private hospitals are owned and managed by private organisations, some of which are non-profit.
The private health-care sector plays a large role in Australia, providing 41% of all hospitalisations, however 74% are same-day stays.
Private hospitals are often smaller than public hospitals, without emergency departments, focusing on simpler, same-day care, and are more likely in cities. Some 83% of private hospitals are in metropolitan, 9% in regional centres and 8% in rural towns.
In contrast, 27% of public hospitals are in the major cities, 57% in regional areas and 16% in remote areas.
The role of private health insurance
Access to private hospitals requires private health insurance.
In 2022-23, the total A$21.5 billion was spent on private hospitals. Private health insurance covered about 45% ($9.7 billion), which comes from members’ premiums. Patients contributed 11% ($2.4 billion) in out-of-pocket costs.
The government contributed a substantial 37% ($8 billion) mainly through Medicare. This is separate from the additional $8 billion the government provides annually as rebates to individuals for buying private health insurance.
A key issue is this rebate money doesn’t directly flow to private hospitals, leaving them vulnerable in negotiations with insurers, as we saw with Toowong Private Hospital.
Evidence suggests these rebates might not be the most effective government investment. Experts, including me, have argued for direct funding into hospitals instead.
So, as more private hospitals face troubles, what does this mean?
Less choice and access for patients
Patients will experience less choice and potentially harder access for specific types of care.
In larger metropolitan areas with numerous private and public hospitals (including private wings in public hospitals), patients might switch to other private facilities or seek care as private patients in public hospitals.
However, in smaller or rural areas with limited or no other private hospitals, choice diminishes significantly. In this case, you will need to reconsider whether you need to buy private health insurance.
Currently, people earning over $97,000 (or families over $194,000 face an additional Medicare Levy Surcharge if they don’t hold private health insurance.
This policy is not fair to those who have no access to private hospitals and should be changed.
While there might be slightly longer waits in the short-term for elective surgeries due to shifting patient loads, our analysis suggests this won’t be a major long-term problem. The primary constraint for wait times is often personnel, not facilities.
If private hospitals close, doctors and nurses could potentially shift to public hospitals, helping to alleviate staffing shortages and reduce overall wait times.
Impacts for the public system
The impact on public emergency departments will be minimal, as most private hospitals lack them.
Many private hospital admissions are same-day and for simpler procedures. So public hospitals and remaining private hospitals (that are not operating at full bed capacity) should be able to absorb this extra demand in the long run, if they can attract more staff previously employed (or even facilities) in the closing private hospitals.
These hospitals will also receive additional revenue for these additional procedures.
Public hospitals should be able to absorb the extra demand. Shutterstock
Consequently, the effect on public hospital wait times for most conditions should not be substantial.
However, some complex, long-stay, or specific mental health cases (such as those from Toowong) may be hard to absorb without additional supply of specialists and funding.
What about health budgets?
In areas where patients are absorbed into existing public hospital capacity or other private facilities, the direct impact on the health budget would be minimal.
With more patients, the remaining private hospitals may gain more power to negotiate better funding contracts with insurance companies and achieve better supplier costs through economies of scale.
In areas where private hospitals (or public hospitals offering private care) cease to be viable, and people drop their private health insurance cover to use public hospitals, the government would pay more directly into public hospitals. However, this increased cost would be partially offset by reduced expenditure on private health insurance rebates.
Patients would also save money on premiums and out-of-pocket costs in private hospitals, though they would lose the choice of private care.
Ultimately, where a private model isn’t financially sustainable, the government or taxpayers often end up bearing the cost anyway.
Investing more directly in public hospitals in these areas, rather than relying on inefficient rebates, could be a more effective solution.
Yuting Zhang has received funding from the Australian Research Council (future fellowship project ID FT200100630), Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, National Health and Medical Research Council and Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has not received funding from for-profit industry including the private health insurance industry.
For years, astronomers have predicted a dramatic fate for our galaxy: a head-on collision with Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbour. This merger – expected in about 5 billion years – has become a staple of astronomy documentaries, textbooks and popular science writing.
But in our new study published in Nature Astronomy, led by Till Sawala from the University of Helsinki, we find the Milky Way’s future might not be as certain previously assumed.
By carefully accounting for uncertainties in existing measurements, and including the gravitational influence of other nearby galaxies, we found there is only about a 50% chance the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in the next 10 billion years.
Why did we think a collision was inevitable?
The idea that the Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course goes back more than a century. Astronomers discovered Andromeda is moving toward us by measuring its radial velocity – its motion along our line of sight – using a slight change in the colour of its light called the Doppler shift.
But galaxies also drift sideways across the sky, a movement known as proper motion or transverse velocity. This sideways motion is incredibly difficult to detect, especially for galaxies millions of light years away.
Earlier studies often assumed Andromeda’s transverse motion was small, making a future head-on collision seem almost certain.
What’s different in this study?
Our study did not have any new data. Instead, we took a fresh look at existing observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia mission.
Unlike earlier studies, our work incorporates the uncertainty in these measurements, rather than assuming their most likely values.
We simulated thousands of possible trajectories for the Milky Way and Andromeda trajectories, slightly varying the assumed initial conditions – things such as the speed and position of the two galaxies – each time.
When we started from the same assumptions the earlier studies made, we recovered the same results. However, we were also able to explore a larger range or possibilities.
We also included two additional galaxies that influence the future paths of the Milky Way and Andromeda: the Large Magellanic Cloud, a massive satellite galaxy currently falling into the Milky Way, and M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, which orbits Andromeda.
The new study took into account the gravitational effect of the Triangulum Galaxy, which orbits Andromeda. ESO, CC BY
These companion galaxies exert gravitational tugs that change the motions of their hosts.
M33 nudges Andromeda slightly toward the Milky Way, increasing the chance of a merger. Meanwhile, the Large Magellanic Cloud shifts the Milky Way’s motion away from Andromeda, reducing the likelihood of a collision.
Taking all of this into account, we found that in about half of the simulated scenarios, the Milky Way and Andromeda do not merge at all within the next 10 billion years.
What happens if they do – or don’t – collide?
Even if a merger does happen, it’s unlikely to be catastrophic for Earth. Stars in galaxies are separated by enormous distances, so direct collisions are rare.
But over time, the galaxies would coalesce under gravity, forming a single, larger galaxy – probably an elliptical one, rather than the spirals we see today.
If the galaxies don’t merge, they may settle into a long, slow orbit around each other – close companions that never quite collide. It’s a gentler outcome, but it still reshapes our understanding of the Milky Way’s distant future.
Other galaxies show examples of three future scenarios for the Milky Way and Andromeda: galaxies passing in the night, a close encounter, a full collision and merger. NASA / ESA
What comes next?
The biggest remaining uncertainty is the transverse velocity of Andromeda. Even small changes in this sideways motion can make the difference between a merger and a near miss. Future measurements will help refine this value and bring us closer to a clearer answer.
We don’t yet have a definitive answer about our own galaxy’s future. But exploring these possibilities shows just how much we’re still learning about the universe – even close to home.
Ruby Wright receives funding from the Forrest Research Foundation.
Alexander Rawlings receives funding from the University of Helsinki Research Foundation and the European Research Council.
Modern cities are evolution engines. Urban snails in the Netherlands and lizards in Los Angeles have developed lighter shells and larger scales to cope with the heat island effect, where temperatures can be several degrees above the surrounding area.
Artificial light makes an artificial dawn, shifting the time when birds sing, and has prompted urban bridge-dwelling spiders to develop an attraction to light, whereas ermine moths are losing theirs altogether. A mutation in the so-called “daredevil gene”, also found in downhill skiers and snowboarders, is making urban swans bolder and more tolerant of humans.
Our urban environments are pushing many species to reimagine their bodies and behaviours to suit municipal living; but some are also reimagining our cities. There’s lots to learn from how nature adapts to city life.
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Anti-bird spikes are a hostile architecture for wildlife, designed to keep messy nature away from buildings. Yet, crows and magpies in Rotterdam, Antwerp and Glasgow strip the spikes away and use them to make their nests.
It’s difficult to imagine finding ease in a nest that has all the comfort of a tangled ball of wire, but the birds occupy them contentedly, improvising shelter from materials intended to exclude.
Evolutionary biologists call this process “exaptation”. For example, feathers originally evolved to keep bird-like dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx warm. These feathers were adaptations to colder temperatures and only later repurposed, or exapted, to allow flight.
Exaptation places repurposing at the heart of evolution; what if we were to design our homes on the same basis?
Repurposing waste
The Waste House is a two-storey model home in Brighton, made almost entirely from household and construction waste. When I visited the Waste House while researching my book, Nature’s Genius: Evolution’s Lessons for a Changing Planet, I loved the sense of possibility found in a staircase made of compressed paper or carpet tiles lapped like slates round its outside walls.
But what lingered most vividly were the little windows built into the inside walls, showing what materials they’d used as insulation: old duvets and bicycle inner tubes, and in one window a library of DVDs. One of these was a copy of Groundhog Day – a film where the same day repeats on an endless loop.
Built in 2013–14 behind the University of Brighton’s faculty of arts building, Waste House is made from construciton and household waste. Hassocks5489/Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-ND
We’re similarly stuck in a rigid pattern of extraction, consumption and waste that plays again and again, day after day. But rather than a loop, this pattern is stubbornly linear, with hundreds of millions of tonnes of usable materials flowing into the dead end of landfill every year.
The problem is that so much of what we make is designed with a single use or purpose in mind. We tend not to think about what a material or an object could become at the end of its life. But exaptation teaches us to stop seeing things as they are, and instead imagine their potential to be something new.
In Edinburgh, Pianodrome is a performance space that’s assembled entirely from old pianos. Audiences climb staircases made of soundboards, clutching bannisters that were piano lids and rest their heads against seatbacks conjured from reclaimed keyboards. Destined for landfill, these instruments have instead found a new life as space for people to gather and perform.
But like all exapted features, their new life hasn’t erased the old. Pianodrome’s makers left the strings of the old piano harps in place, buried in the heart of the structure. Just as feathers still keep flighted birds warm, and spikes that kept birds from buildings help crows and magpies to protect their nests from predators, whenever a performance takes place inside it, pianodrome resonates like one giant instrument.
An exaptive approach could help birth a circular economy, taking us out of this damaging loop of extraction and consumption, and finding value in what we currently discard. Leaving materials to waste imposes a barrier, a limit on what could be. But the birds who build their nests from anti-bird spikes teach us that what was once a barrier can become a shelter.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
David Farrier 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.
An escalation in fighting between Indonesian security forces and Papuan pro-independence fighters in West Papua has seriously threatened the security of the largely indigenous population, says Human Rights Watch in a new report.
The human rights watchdog warned that all parties to the conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, also called the laws of war.
The security forces’ military operations in the densely forested Central Highlands areas are accused of killing and wounding dozens of civilians with drone strikes and the indiscriminate use of explosive munitions, and displaced thousands of indigenous Papuans, said the report.
The National Liberation Army of West Papua, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, has claimed responsibility in the killing of 17 alleged miners between April 6 and April 9.
“The Indonesian military has a long history of abuses in West Papua that poses a particular risk to the Indigenous communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“Concerned governments need to press the Prabowo [Subianto] administration and Papuan separatist armed groups to abide by the laws of war.”
Operation Habema The Indonesian military escalated its ongoing operations, called Operation Habema, in West Papua’s six provinces, especially in the Central Highlands, where Papuan militant groups have been active for more than four decades.
On May 14, the military said that it had killed 18 resistance fighters in Intan Jaya regency, and that it had recovered weapons including rifles, bows and arrows, communications equipment, and Morning Star flags — the symbol of Papuan resistance.
Further military operations have allegedly resulted in burning down villages and attacks on churches. Papuan activists and pastors told Human Rights Watch that government forces treated all Papuan forest dwellers who owned and routinely used bows and arrows for hunting as “combatants”.
Information about abuses has been difficult to corroborate because the hostilities are occurring in remote areas in Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga, and Pegunungan Bintang regencies.
Pastors, church workers, and local journalists interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that Indonesian forces had been using drones and helicopter gunships to drop bombs.
“Civilians from the Korowai tribe community, known for their tall treehouse dwellings, have been harmed in these attacks, and have desperately fled the fighting,” said the Human Rights Watch report.
“Displaced villagers, mostly from Intan Jaya, have sought shelter and refuge in churches in Sugapa, the capital of the regency.”
Resistance allegations The armed resistance group has made allegations, which Human Rights Watch could not corroborate, that the Indonesian military attacks harmed civilians.
It reported that a mortar or rocket attack outside a church in Ilaga, Puncak regency, hit two young men on May 6, killing one of them, Deris Kogoya, an 18-year-old student.
The group said that the Indonesian military attack on May 14, in which the military claimed all 18 people killed were pro-independence combatants, mostly killed civilians.
Ronald Rischardt Tapilatu, pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of the Land of Papua, said that at least 3 civilians were among the 18 bodies. Human Rights Watch has a list of the 18 killed, which includes 1 known child.
The daughter of Hetina Mirip said her mother was found dead on May 17 near her house in Sugapa, while Indonesian soldiers surrounded their village. She wrote that the soldiers tried to cremate and bury her mother’s body.
One evident impact of the renewed fighting is that thousands of indigenous Papuans have been forced to flee their ancestral lands.
Seven villages attacked The Vanuatu-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) reported that the military had attacked seven villages in Ilaga with drones and airstrikes, forcing many women and children to flee their homes. Media reports said that it was in Gome, Puncak regency.
International humanitarian law obligates all warring parties to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Civilians may never be the target of attack.
Warring parties are required to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, shops, and schools. Attacks may target only combatants and military objectives.
Attacks that target civilians or fail to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or that would cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to the anticipated military gain, are prohibited.
Parties must treat everyone in their custody humanely, not take hostages, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Free Papua Movement has long sought self-determination and independence in West Papua, on the grounds that the Indonesian government-controlled “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 was illegitimate and did not involve indigenous Papuans.
It advocates holding a new, fair, and transparent referendum, and backs armed resistance.
Vast conflict area Human Rights Watch reports that the conflict areas, including Intan Jaya, are on the northern side of Mt Grasberg, spanning a vast area from Sugapa to Oksibil in the Pegunungan Bintang regency, approximately 425 km long.
Sugapa is also known as the site of Wabu Block, which holds approximately 2.3 million kilos of gold, making it one of Indonesia’s five largest known gold reserves.
Wabu Block is currently under the licensing process of the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
“Papuans have endured decades of systemic racism, heightening concerns of further atrocities,” HRW’s Asia director Ganguly said.
“Both the Indonesian military and Papuan armed groups need to comply with international standards that protect civilians.”
These changes will have huge impacts on coastal ecosystems around the world, including coral reefs. To understand these future impacts, it can be useful to understand similar events from history.
Our new research, published today in Nature Communications, does just that. It reveals how the Great Barrier Reef in northern Australia responded to a dramatic rise in sea level some 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.
A hotly debated event
Several “meltwater pulse events” have been documented in the past. These occur when ice sheets disintegrate in a catastrophic fashion, resulting in a rapid surge in global sea levels.
One of these events, known as “meltwater pulse 1B”, remains hotly debated. It occurred roughly 11,500 years ago.
Early evidence from reef cores in Barbados suggested a sharp sea-level rise of approximately 14 metres between 11,450 and 11,100 years ago, with rates of roughly 40 millimetres per year.
Remarkably, this rate is about ten times faster than the current global rise.
However, this record conflicts with others, including from Tahiti and now from the Great Barrier Reef, which suggests a more gradual rise in sea levels.
Learning from geological archives
Somewhat paradoxically shallow-water reef systems can “drown” because corals, and other reef organisms, depend on light for photosynthesis. If the water gets too deep too fast, the reef will no longer keep up with the rise and it will drown.
But drowning can also occur due to other factors, such as increased temperature, sediment and nutrients, which can also add extra environmental stress to the reef – again making it more difficult to grow vertically and keep up with sea level rise.
Cores gathered from drowned fossil coral reefs preserved along the continental shelf edge of the Great Barrier Reef contain crucial information about historic corals, coralline algae and microbial reef structures known as microbialites. They offer a unique geologic time machine to better understand how past periods of rapid global sea level rise affected reef growth.
These geological archives also provide important clues about how ice sheets behaved in response to rapid global warming.
In 2010, an expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program used a geotechnical drill ship to sample below the seafloor and reconstruct the growth and demise of the Great Barrier Reef over the past roughly 30,000 years. Five distinct stages were identified in response to major global climatic and oceanographic disturbances.
In this new study, we focused on a key reef stage called Reef 4. It formed between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, just prior to the start of the modern reef as we know it.
We refer to this reef as the “proto-Great Barrier Reef”. Once a shallow-water barrier reef system, it now exists in a fossilised form at roughly 50 metres water depth and is now the home to deeper reef communtites in the mesophotic zone 30 to 150 metres below the surface.
The RV Great Ship Maya was used to recover fossil reef samples from the Great Barrier Reef in 2010. G.Tulloch/European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling/Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
An impressive ability to keep pace
Our study shows the Great Barrier Reef didn’t drown during meltwater pulse 1B. In fact, it continued to thrive with clear evidence of healthy, shallow-water reef assemblages (living in waters less than ten metres deep) persisting right through the rise in sea levels.
The reef not only survived but continued to grow upwards at rates between 4–6 millimetres per year. This rate of growth is comparable to modern healthy reef growth rates, demonstrating an impressive ability to keep pace.
We also calculated that the maximum possible sea-level rise during meltwater pulse 1B was between 7.7 and 10.2 metres over roughly 350 years. This equates to between 23 and 30 millimetres per year, but was likely less.
This is less than the Barbados estimate, and more consistent with observations from Tahiti where no sharp sea-level jump was found.
Importantly, this indicates that even the upper sea level rise bounds are within the survival limits of resilient reef systems such as the Great Barrier Reef – especially when environmental stressors, such as ocean warming, ocean acidification and sedimentation are low.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee recently expressed utmost concern about the current state of the Great Barrier Reef. Darkydoors/Shutterstock
Limits to a reef’s resilience
Although the Great Barrier Reef survived sea level rise roughly 11,000 years ago, the world was very different back then.
Coral reefs faced less stress from human impacts. And ocean temperatures were rising more slowly.
But today’s reefs are already struggling, with UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee recently expressing “utmost concern” about the state of the Great Barrier Reef in particular.
This is due to warming, acidification and pollution. And these additional challenges decrease reefs’ ability to cope with rapid sea-level rise.
Our findings suggest abrupt sea-level jumps of more than 11 metres are unlikely to occur without major instabilities in ice sheets. The fact that such collapses likely didn’t happen during meltwater pulse 1B offers some reassurance. But we’re in uncharted territory now, particularly with the Antarctic ice sheet displaying early signs of instability.
Our study also shows the Great Barrier Reef has been remarkably resilient, adapting to changing sea levels and continuing to grow even as the ocean rose rapidly. This resilience, however, had limits. Ultimately, the reef we examined drowned roughly 10,000 years ago, likely due to a combination of environmental stressors, including increased sediment flux. At this time the shallow water reef ecosystem migrated landward to form the modern Great Barrier, leaving behind only deeper, mesophotic reef communities.
The lessons from the past are clear: reefs can adapt to environmental changes but there are limits.
Protecting modern reefs will require more than understanding their past. It means reducing emissions and limiting other environmental stresses such as sediment and nutrient runoff where possible.
Jody Webster receives funding from the Australian Research Council and ANZIC IODP.
Juan Carlos Braga receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Spanish Government.
Marc Humblet receives funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Stewart Fallon receives funding from the Australian Research Council and ANZIC IODP.
Yusuke Yokoyama receives funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Japan Science and Technology Agency.
According to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the latest emissions data show “we are on track to reach our 2030 targets” under the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were “27% below 2005 levels”. That’s great news, right?
Well, yes and no. Australia continues to rely on changes in land use to compensate for emissions released into the atmosphere.
In other words, Australia’s plants are considered to be taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere now than in 2005. Their efforts are captured in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, which is the single largest reason for the significant reduction in Australian emissions.
Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%.
If Australia is serious about reducing emissions and tracking towards net zero by 2050, we need to tackle a series of inconvenient truths about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels feed into almost every aspect of our lives, not just cars and power plants. There are substitutes, but they are not easy to source – and they don’t come cheap.
How fossil fuel exports drive up emissions here and overseas
Australia is one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters. The coal, oil and natural gas we export is either burnt or combined with our sizeable iron ore exports to produce iron. But the greenhouse gases are released overseas, so they don’t count in Australia’s emissions data.
This is in line with our international commitments under the Paris agreement. But there is an argument to be made that even though Australia doesn’t burn those exports, we should acknowledge our central role in contributing to global emissions. We may need to account for these in future reporting.
Australia’s export emissions are likely to be triple that of our domestic emissions. These emissions have been increasing consistently over the last decade.
But the process of extracting fossil fuels and preparing them for export does show up in Australia’s domestic emission figures, through what’s called “fugitive emissions”. These fugitive emissions are the unavoidable leaks that occur when we pull fossil fuels out of the ground, store, transport and process them.
In the year to 2024, fugitive emissions accounted for 10.6% of our emissions, which is far greater than emissions from industrial processes (6.8%).
Disturbingly, recent analysis suggests fugitive emissions could be drastically underreported. Because these emissions are tricky to measure, they are often estimated on an average basis. This means reported values do not accurately reflect true releases.
When it comes to fugitive and export emissions, Australia is not on track to meet 2030 targets. Recent export-focused fossil project approvals such as the North West Shelf gas project suggest we might even be backtracking.
Chris Bowen on Insiders, Sunday June 1, 2025 (ABC News)
The transition to renewables
Closing dirty old coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy such as solar and wind power does cut emissions. The reduction in emissions from the electricity sector, down 23.7% on 2005 levels, is good news. But the difference is still small enough that seasonal variations from Tasmania’s hydro power plants can distort the annual figures.
At least there is a plan in place for the energy transition. Big, slow wheels are in motion.
Unfortunately the reality is we will need much, much more renewable energy in the future. Up to three times the current capacity of the National Electricity Market will be needed to cover future domestic energy requirements across electricity and other sectors out to 2050.
Significantly more would be required to generate enough additional green energy to also produce green value-added commodities.
Australia’s clean energy challenge
Discussions around transitioning from fossil fuels typically overlook how deeply they are embedded in our everyday lives.
Not just the fuel we use in our cars, but the roads we drive on. Not just the electricity we use to power our hospitals, but the steel used to build them and the pharmaceuticals we rely on.
Electricity can be used to make hydrogen from water through electrolysis. This hydrogen can then replace fossil fuels in manufacturing – making products such as green steel and ammonia for fertiliser.
When combined with non-fossil sources of carbon, hydrogen can also be turned into renewable fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel. It can be used to synthesise green versions of petrochemicals used in industrial processes such as ethanol, propylene and ethylene, which are currently sourced from fossil fuels.
This takes energy. Lots of it. Fortunately Australia has all the ingredients needed for a booming green industry – one that’s much broader than just renewable electricity.
Most people talk about green hydrogen in the context of energy storage or export. But it can also enable the transition away from fossil fuels in other sectors. The technology exists to make these chemicals and products, without the emissions and it’s slowly but steadily moving closer toward price parity.
If we can nail this switch to fossil-free alternatives to petrochemicals, Australia would be able to add value onshore, rather than exporting raw materials. For example, we could export iron, not iron ore. Methanol or ammonia, not hydrogen. Export the jumper, not the wool.
Heavy industry driven by renewables?
On Sunday, Bowen said he found some areas of the 2024 emissions figures “encouraging, like industrial emissions, way down and lower than 2021”.
Unfortunately, this result was partly due to a decline in manufacturing. Onshore manufacturing capability has been steadily decreasing, despite increased fossil fuel extraction.
Unless we ramp up green manufacturing – replacing fossil fuel exports with much needed renewable products and fuels – we will continue to bear responsibility, if not direct accountability, for large, exported emissions as well as onshore fugitive emissions.
And no amount of changes to land use can account for that.
The authors 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.
Poland’s presidential election runoff will be a bitter pill for pro-European Union democrats to swallow.
The nationalist, Trumpian, historian Karol Nawrocki has narrowly defeated the liberal, pro-EU mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, 50.89 to 49.11%.
The Polish president has few executive powers, though the office holder is able to veto legislation. This means the consequences of a Nawrocki victory will be felt keenly, both in Poland and across Europe.
With this power, Nawrocki, backed by the conservative Law and Justice party, will no doubt stymie the ability of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform-led coalition to enact democratic political reforms.
This legislative gridlock could well see Law and Justice return to government in the 2027 general elections, which would lock in the anti-democratic changes the party made during their last term in office from 2015–2023. This included eroding Poland’s judicial independence by effectively taking control of judicial appointments and the supreme court.
Nawrocki’s win has given pro-Donald Trump, anti-liberal, anti-EU forces across the continent a shot in the arm. It’s bad news for the EU, Ukraine and women.
A rising Poland
For much of the post-second world war era, Poland has had limited European influence.
This is no longer the case. Poland’s economy has boomed since it joined the EU in 2004. It spends almost 5% of its gross domestic product on defence, almost double what it spent in 2022 at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Poland now has a bigger army than the United Kingdom, France and Germany. And living standards, adjusted for purchasing power, are about to eclipse Japan’s.
Along with Brexit, these changes have resulted in the EU’s centre of gravity shifting eastwards towards Poland. As a rising military and economic power of 37 million people, what happens in Poland will help shape Europe’s future.
Impacts on Ukraine
Poland’s new position in Europe is most clearly demonstrated by its central role in the fight to defend Ukraine against Russia.
This centrality was clearly demonstrated during the recent “Coalition of the Willing” summit in Kyiv, where Tusk joined the leaders of Europe’s major powers – France, Germany and the UK – to bolster support for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
However, Poland’s unqualified support for Ukraine will now be at risk because Nawrocki has demonised Ukrainian refugees in his country and opposed Ukrainian integration into European-oriented bodies, such as the EU and NATO.
Nawrocki was also backed during his campaign by the Trump administration. Kristi Noem, the US secretary of homeland security, said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Poland:
Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country.
Trump also hosted Nawrocki in the Oval Office when he was merely a candidate for office. This was a significant deviation from standard US diplomatic protocol to stay out of foreign elections.
Nawrocki has not been as pro-Russia as some other global, MAGA-style politicians, but this is largely due to Poland’s geography and its difficult history with Russia. It has been repeatedly invaded across its eastern plains by Russian or Soviet troops. And along with Ukraine, Poland shares borders with the Russian client state of Belarus and Russia itself in Kaliningrad, the heavily militarised enclave on the Baltic Sea.
I experienced the proximity of these borders during fieldwork in Poland in 2023 when I travelled by car from Warsaw to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, via the Suwalki Gap.
This is the strategically important, 100-kilometre-long border between Poland and Lithuania, which connects the Baltic states to the rest of NATO and the EU to the south. It’s seen as a potential flashpoint if Russia were ever to close the gap and isolate the Baltic states.
Poland’s conservative nationalist politicians are therefore less Russia-friendly than those in Hungary or Slovakia. Nawrocki, for instance, does not support cutting off weapons to Ukraine.
However, a Nawrocki presidency will still be more hostile to Ukraine and its interests. During the campaign, Nawrocki said Zelensky “treats Poland badly”, echoing the type of language used by Trump himself.
Poland divided
The high stakes in the election resulted in a record turnout of almost 73%.
There was a stark choice in the election between Nawrocki and Trzaskowski.
Trzaskowski supported the liberalisation of Poland’s harsh abortion laws – abortion was effectively banned in Poland under the Law and Justice government – and the introduction of civil partnerships for LGBTQ+ couples.
Nawrocki opposed these changes and will likely veto any attempt to implement them.
While the polls for the presidential runoff election had consistently shown a tight race, an Ipsos exit poll published during the vote count demonstrated the social divisions now facing the country.
As in other recent global elections, women and those with higher formal education voted for the progressive candidate (Trzaskowski), while men and those with less formal education voted for the conservative (Nawrocki).
After the surprise success of the liberal, pro-EU presidential candidate in the Romanian elections a fortnight ago, pro-EU forces were hoping for a similar result in Poland, as well.
That, for now, is a pipe dream and liberals across the continent will now need to negotiate a difficult relationship with a right-wing, Trumpian leader in the new beating heart of Europe.
Adam Simpson 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.
A New Zealand-born Niuean educator says being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list reflects the importance of connecting young tagata Niue in Aotearoa to their roots.
Mele Ikiua, who hails from the village of Hakupu Atua in Niue, has been named a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to vagahau Niue language and education.
She told RNZ Pacific the most significant achievement in her career to date had been the promotion of vagahau Niue in the NCEA system.
The change in 2023 enabled vagahau Niue learners to earn literacy credits in the subject, and receive recognition beyond “achieved” in the NCEA system. That, Ikiua said, was about continuing to increase learning opportunities for young Niue people in Aotearoa.
“Because if you look at it, the work that we do — and I say ‘we’ because there’s a lot of people other than myself — we’re here to try and maintain, and try and hold onto, our language because they say our language is very, very endangered.
“The bigger picture for young Niue learners who haven’t connected, or haven’t been able to learn about their vagahau or where they come from [is that] it’s a safe place for them to come and learn . . . There’s no judgement, and they learn the basic foundations before they can delve deeper.”
Her work and advocacy for Niuean culture and vagahau Niue has also extended beyond the formal education system.
Niue stage at Polyfest Since 2014, Ikiua had been the co-ordinator of the Niue stage at Polyfest, a role she took up after being involved in the festival as a tutor. She also established Three Star Nation, a network which provides leadership, educational and cultural programmes for young people.
Last year, Ikiua also set up the Tokiofa Arts Academy, the world’s first Niue Performing Arts Academy. And in February this year, Three Star Nation held Hologa Niue — the first ever Niuean arts and culture festival in Auckland.
Niuean community members in Auckland . . . Mele Ikiua with Derrick Manuela Jackson (left) and her brother Ron Viviani. Image: RNZ Pacific
She said being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list was a shared achievement.
“This award is not only mine. It belongs to the family. It belongs to the village. And my colleagues have been amazing too. It’s for us all.”
She is one of several Pasifika honoured in this weekend’s list.
Cook Islander, Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples.
Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples. Image: Berry Rangi/RNZ Pacific
Lifted breast screening rates She has been instrumental in lifting the coverage rates of breast and cervical screening for Pacific women in Hawke’s Bay.
“When you grow up in the islands, you’re not for yourself – you’re for everybody,” she said.
“You’re for the village, for your island.”
She said when she moved to Napier there were very few Pasifika in the city — there were more in Hastings, the nearby city to the south.
“I did things because I knew there was a need for our people, and I’d just go out and do it without having to be asked.”
Berry Rangi also co-founded Tiare Ahuriri, the Napier branch of the national Pacific women’s organisation, PACIFICA.
She has been a Meals on Wheels volunteer with the Red Cross in Napier since 1990 and has been recognised for her 34 years of service in this role.
Maintaining a heritage craft She also contributes to maintaining the heritage craft of tivaevae (quilting) by delivering workshops to people of all ages and communities across Hawke’s Bay.
Another honours recipient is Uili Galo, who has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the Tokelau community.
Galo, of the Tokelau Aotearoa Leaders Council, said it is very gratifying to see his community’s efforts acknolwedged at the highest level.
“I’ve got a lot of people behind me, my elders that I need to acknowledge and thank . . . my kainga,” he said.
“While the award has been given against my name, it’s them that have been doing all the hard work.”
He said his community came to Aotearoa in the 1970s.
“Right through they’ve been trying to capture their culture and who they are as a people. But obviously as new generations are born here, they assimilate into the pa’alangi world, and somehow lose a sense of who they are.
“A lot of our youth are not quite sure who they are. They know obviously the pa’alangi world they live in, but the challenge of them is to know their identity, that’s really important.”
Pasifika sports duo say recognition is for everyone Two sporting recipients named as Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours say the honour is for all those who have worked with them.
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Eroni Clarke of the Pasifika Rugby Advisory group. Image: RNZ Pacific
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten, who is of Tongan heritage, has been involved with rugby at different levels over the years, and is currently a co-chair of New Zealand Rugby’s Pacific Advisory Group.
Annie Burma Teina Tangata Esita Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago.
While they have been “committed” to their sports loves, their contribution to the different Pasifika communities they serve is being recognised.
Luyten told RNZ Pacific she was humbled and shocked that people took the time to actually put a nomination through.
“You know, all the work we do, it’s in service of all of our communities and our families, and you don’t really look for recognition,” she said.
“The family, the community, everyone who have worked with me and encouraged me they all deserve this recognition.”
Luyten, who has links in Ha’apai, Tonga, said she has loved being involved in rugby, starting off as a junior player and went through the school competition.
Community and provincial rugby After moving down to Timaru, she was involved with community and provincial rugby, before she got pulled into New Zealand Rugby Pacific Advisory Group.
Luyten made New Zealand rugby history as the first woman of Pacific Island descent to be appointed to a provincial union board in 2019.
She was a board member of the South Canterbury Rugby Football Union and played fullback at Timaru Girls’ High School back in 1997, when rugby competition was first introduced .
Her mother Ailine was one of the first Tongan women to take up residence in Timaru. That was back in the early 1970s.
As well as a law degree at Otago University Luyten completed a Bachelor of Science in 2005 and then went on to complete post-graduate studies in sports medicine in 2009.
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Sina Latu of the Tonga Society in South Canterbury. Image: RNZ Pacific
She is also a founding member of the Tongan Society South Canterbury which was established in 2016.
Opportunities for Pasifika families On her rugby involvement, she said the game provides opportunities for Pasifika families and she is happy to be contributing as an administrator.
“Where I know I can contribute has been in that non-playing space and sort of understanding the rugby system, because it’s so big, so complex and kind of challenging.”
Fighting the stereotypes that “Pasifika can’t be directors” has been a major one.
“Some people think there’s not enough of us out there. But for me, I’m like, nah we’ve got people,” she stated.
“We’ve got heaps of people all over the show that can actually step into these roles.
“They may be experienced in different sectors, like the health sector, social sector, financial, but maybe haven’t quite crossed hard enough into the rugby space. So I feel it’s my duty to to do everything I can to create those spaces for our kids, for the future.”
Call for two rugby votes Earlier this month the group registered the New Zealand Pasifika Rugby Council, which moved a motion, with the support of some local unions, that Pasifika be given two votes within New Zealand Rugby.
“So this was an opportunity too for us to actually be fully embedded into the New Zealand Rugby system.
“But unfortunately, the magic number was 61.3 [percent] and we literally got 61, so it was 0.3 percent less voting, and that was disappointing.”
Luyten said she and the Pacific advisory team will keep working and fighting to get what they have set their mind on.
For Scoon, the acknowledgement was recognition of everyone else who are behind the scenes, doing the work.
Annie Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago. Image: RNZ Pacific
She said the award was for the Pasifika people in her community in the Palmerston North area.
Voice is for ‘them’ “To me what stands out is that our Pasifika people will be recognized that they’ve had a voice out there,” she said.
“So, it’s for them really; it’s not me, it’s them. They get the recognition that’s due to them. I love my Pacific people down here.”
Scoon is a name well known among the Palmerston North Pasifika and softball communities.
The 78-year-old has played, officiated, coached and now administers the game of softball.
She was born in the Cook Islands and moved with her family to New Zealand in 1948. Her first involvement with softball was in school, as a nine-year-old in Auckland.
Then she helped her children as a coach.
“And then that sort of lead on to learning how to score the game, then coaching the game, yes, and then to just being an administrator of the game,” she said.
Passion for the game “I’ve gone through softball – I’ve been the chief scorer at national tournaments, I’ve selected at tournaments, and it’s been good because I’d like to think that what I taught my children is a passion for the game, because a lot of them are still involved.”
A car accident years ago has left her wheelchair-bound.
She has also competed as at the Paraplegic Games where she said she proved that “although disabled, there were things that we could do if you just manipulate your body a wee bit and try and think it may not pan out as much as possible, but it does work”.
“All you need to do is just try get out there, but also encourage other people to come out.”
She has kept passing on her softball knowledge to school children.
In her community work, Scoon said she just keeps encouraging people to keep working on what they want to achieve and not to shy away from speaking their mind.
Setting a goal “I told everybody that they set a goal and work on achieving that goal,” she said.
“And also encouraged alot of them to not be shy and don’t back off if you want something.”
She said one of the challenging experiences, in working with the Pasifika community, is the belief by some that they may not be good enough.
Her advice to many is to learn what they can and try to improve, so that they can get better in life.
“I wasn’t born like this,” she said, referring to her disability.
“You pick out what suits you but because our island people — we’re very shy people and we’re proud. We’re very proud people. Rather than make a fuss, we’d rather step back.
“They shouldn’t and they need to stand up and they want to be recognised.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurence Orlando, Senior Lecturer, Product Formulation and Development, Analytical Methods, Monash University
Retinol skincare products suddenly seem to be everywhere, promising clear, radiant and “youthful” skin.
But what’s the science behind these claims? And are there any risks?
You may have also heard retinol can increase your risk of sunburn and even make acne worse.
For some people, retinol may help reduce the appearance of fine lines. But it won’t be suitable for everyone. Here’s what you need to know.
What is retinol?
Retinol is part of a family of chemical compounds called retinoids. These are derived from or related to Vitamin A, a nutrient essential for healthy skin, vision and immune function.
You can buy retinol in creams and other topical products over the counter.
These are often promoted as “anti-ageing” because retinol can help reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles and even out skin tone (for example, sun spots or acne scars).
It also has an exfoliating effect, meaning it can help unclog pores.
Stronger retinoid treatments that target acne will require a prescription because they contain retinoic acid, which is regulated as a drug in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom and Australia.
With age, the skin’s barrier becomes weaker, making it more prone to dryness, injury and irritation.
Retinol can help counteract this natural thinning by stimulating the proliferation of keratinocytes – cells that form the outer skin layer and protect against damage and water loss.
Retinol also stimulates the production of collagen (a key protein that creates a scaffolding that keeps skin firm and elastic) and fibroblasts (cells that produce collagen and support skin structure).
It also increases how fast the skin sheds old cells and replaces them with new ones.
Over time, these processes help reduce fine lines, fade dark spots and even out skin tone. It can also make skin appear clearer.
While effective, this doesn’t happen overnight.
You may have also heard about a “retinol purge” – a temporary flare of acne when you first start using topical retinoids.
Studies have found the skin may become irritated and acne temporarily worsen in some cases. But more research needs to be done to understand this link.
The idea of a retinol purge is popular on social media. TikTok, CC BY-NC-ND
So, is retinol safe?
At typical skincare concentrations (0.1–0.3%), side effects tend to be mild.
Most people who experience irritation (such as redness, dryness, or peeling) when starting retinol are able to build tolerance over time. This process is often called “retinisation”.
However, retinol increases the skin’s sensitivity to UV radiation (known as photosensitivity). This heightened reactivity can lead to sunburn, irritation and an increased risk of hyperpigmentation (spots or patches of darker colour).
For this reason, daily use of broad-spectrum sunscreen (SPF30 or higher) is strongly recommended while using retinol products.
Who should avoid retinol?
Teenagers and children generally don’t need retinol unless specifically prescribed by a doctor, for example, for acne treatment.
People with sensitive skin or conditions such as eczema (dry, itchy and inflamed skin) and rosacea (chronic redness and sensitivity) may find retinol too irritating.
Using retinol products alongside other skincare treatments, such as alpha-hydroxy acids, can over-exfoliate your skin and damage it.
Importantly, the active form of retinol, retinoic acid, is teratogenic (meaning it can cause birth defects). Over-the-counter retinol products are also not recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding.
Choose and store retinol products wisely
Since retinol is classified as a cosmetic ingredient, companies are not required to disclose its concentration in their products.
These are precautionary measures aimed to limit exposure for vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women, given the risk of birth defects.
It’s therefore recommended to use products that clearly state the retinol concentration is between 0.1% and 0.3%.
Retinol is also a notoriously unstable molecule that degrades with exposure to air, light or heat.
Choosing a product with airtight, light-protective packaging will help with potential degradation problems that could lead to inactivity or harm.
What’s the safest way to try retinol?
The key is to go low and slow: a pea-sized amount of a low-concentration product (0.1%) once or twice a week, preferably at night (to avoid UV exposure), and then the frequency and concentration can be increased (to a maximum of 0.3%) as the skin adjusts.
Wearing sunscreen every day is a must when using retinol to avoid the photosensitivity.
If you experience persistent redness, burning, or peeling, it’s better to stop using the product and consult your doctor or a dermatologist for personalised advice.
Laurence Orlando is affiliated with the Australian Society of Cosmetic Chemists.
Professor Ademi currently serves as a member of the Economics Sub Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee within the Department of Health, Australia which assesses clinical and economic evaluations of medicines submitted for listing on the PBS. She leads the global economics initiative for the Lp(a) International Task Force and Member of Professional Advisory Board of Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) Australia. Zanfina Ademi receives funding from FH Europe Foundation to understand the population screening for LP(a), globally. Received funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund not in relation to to this work, but work that relates to health economics of prevention and cost-effectiveness.
Zoe Porter 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.
I want to share a writer’s journey — of living and writing through the Genocide. Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank.
Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel and the US, I feel compelled to answer the call to support Palestine by doing the one thing I know best: writing.
I live in a paradise that supports genocide I am one of the blessed of the earth. I’m surrounded by similarly fortunate people. I live in a heart-stoppingly beautiful bay.
Even in winter I swim in the marine reserve across the road from our house. Seals, Orca, all sorts of fish, octopus, penguins and countless other marine life so often draw me from my desk towards the rocky shore. My home is on the Wild South Coast of Wellington. Every few days our local Whatsapp group fires a message, for example: “Big pod of dolphins heading into the bay!”
I live in Aotearoa New Zealand, a country that, in the main, is yawning its way through a genocide and this causes me daily frustration and pain. It drives me back to the keyboard.
I am surrounded by good friends and suffer no fears for my security. I am materially comfortable and well-fed. I love being a writer. Who could ask for more?
I write, on average, a 1200-word article per week. It’s a seven days a week task and most of my writing time is spent reading, scouring news sites from around the world, note-taking, fact-checking, fretting, talking to people and thinking about the story that will emerge, always so different from my starting concept.
I’m in regular contact with historians, ex-diplomats, geopolitical analysts, writers and activists from around the world and count myself fortunate to know these exceptional people.
This article is different, simpler; it is personal — one person’s experience of writing from the far periphery of the conflict.
I don’t want to live in a country that turns a blind or a sleep-laden eye to one of the great crimes against humanity. I have come to the hurtful realisation that I have a very different worldview from most people I know and from most people I thought I knew.
Fortunately, I have old friends who share in this struggle and I have made many new friends here in New Zealand and across the world who follow their own burning hearts and work every day to challenge the role our governments play in supporting Israel to destroy the lives of millions of innocent people. To me, these people — and above all the Palestinian people in their steadfast resistance — are the heroes who fuel my life.
Writing is fighting Most of us have multiple demands on our time; three of my good writer friends are grappling with cancer, another lost his job for challenging the official line and now must work long hours in a menial day job to keep the family afloat. Despite these challenges they all head to the keyboard to continue the struggle. Writing is fighting.
There’s so little we can all do but, as Māori people say: “ahakoa he iti, he pounamu” – it may only be a little but every bit counts, every bit is as precious as jade.
That sentiment is how movements for change have been built – anti-Vietnam war, anti-nuclear, anti-Apartheid — all of them pro-humanity, all of them about standing with the victims not with the oppressors, nor on the sideline muttering platitudes and excuses. As another writer said: “Washing one’s hands of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” (Paolo Friere) Back to the keyboard.
My life until October 7th was more focussed on environmental issues, community organisation and water politics. I had ceased being “a writer” years ago.
One day in October 2023 I was in the kitchen, ranting about what was being done to the Palestinians and what was obviously about to be done to the Palestinians: genocide. My emotions were high because I had had a deeply unpleasant exchange with a good friend of mine on the golf course (yes, I play golf). He told me that the people of Gaza deserved to be collectively punished for the Hamas attack of October 7th.
I had angrily shot back at him, correctly but not diplomatically, that this put him shoulder-to-shoulder with the Nazis and all those who imposed collective punishment on civilian populations. My wife, to her credit, had heard enough: “Get upstairs and write an article! You have to start writing!”
It changed my life. She was right, of course. Impotent rage and parlour-room speeches achieve nothing. Writing is fighting.
’40 beheaded babies survived the Hamas attack’ My first article “40 Beheaded Babies Survived the Hamas Attack” was a warning drawn from history about narratives and what the Americans and Israelis were really softening the ground for. Since then I have had about 70 articles published, all in Australia and New Zealand, some in China, the USA, throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and on all sorts of email databases, including those sent out by the exemplary Ambassador Chas Freeman in the US and another by my good friend and human rights lawyer J V Whitbeck in Paris.
As with historians, part of a writer’s job is to spot patterns and recurrent themes in stories, to detect lies and expose deeper agendas in the official narratives. The mainstream media is surprisingly bad at this. Or chooses to be.
Just like the Incubator Babies story in Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in Vietnam, reaching right back to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana in 1898, propaganda is often used as a prelude to atrocities. The blizzard of lies after October 7th were designed to be-monster the Palestinians and prepare the ground for what would obviously follow.
The narrative of beheaded babies promoted by world leaders, including President Biden, was powerfully amplified by our mainstream media; journalists at the highest level of the trade spread the lies.
I have to tell you, it was frightening in October 2023 to challenge these narratives. Every day I pored through the Israeli news site Ha’aretz for updates. Eventually the narrative fell apart — but by then the damage was done. Thousands of real babies had been murdered by the Israelis.
Never before have so many of my fellow writers been killedFollowing events in Palestine closely, it still comes as a shock when a journalist I have read, seen, heard is suddenly killed by the Israelis. This has happened several times. When it does I take a coffee and walk up the ridiculously steep track behind my house and sit high above the bay on a bench seat I built (badly).
That bench is my “top office” where I like to chew thoughts in my mind as I see the cold waves break on the brown rocks below. High up there I feel detached and better able to ask and answer the questions I need to process in my writing.
Why does our media pay little attention to the killing of so many fellow writers? Why don’t they call out the Israelis for having killed more journalists than any military machine in history? Why the silence around Israel’s “Where’s Daddy?” killing programme that has silenced so many Palestinian journalists and doctors by tracking their mobile phones and striking with a missile just when they arrive back home to their families? Why does “the world’s most moral army” commit such ugly crimes? Where’s the solidarity with our fellow journalists?
Is it because their skin is mainly dark? Is that why, according to Radio New Zealand’s own report on its Gaza coverage, New Zealanders have more in common with Israelis than we do with Palestinians? RNZ refers to this as our “proximity” to Israelis. They’re right, of course: by failing to shoulder our positive duty to act decisively against Israel and the US we show that we share values with people committing genocide.
Is this why stories about our own region — Kanaky New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and so on, get so little coverage? I have heard many times the immense frustration of journalists I know who work on Pacific issues. The answer is simple: we have greater “proximity” to Benjamin Netanyahu than we do to the Polynesians or Melanesians in our own backyard. Really?
Such questions need answers. Back to the keyboard.
Solidarity I try not to permit myself despair. It’s a privilege we shouldn’t allow ourselves while our government supports the genocide. Sometimes that’s hard.
There’s a photo I’ve seen of a Palestinian mother holding her daughter that haunts me. In traditional thobe, her head covered by her simple robe, she could easily be Mary, mother of Jesus. She stares straight at the camera. Her expression is hard to read. Shock? Disbelief? Wounded humanity? Blood flows from below her eyes and stains her cheek and chin. Her forehead is blackened, probably from an explosive blast. She holds her child, a girl of perhaps 10, also damaged and blackened from the Israeli attack. The child is asleep or unconscious; I can’t tell which. The mother holds her as lovingly, as poignantly, as Mary did to Jesus when he came down from the cross. La Pietà in Gaza.
Why do some of us care less about this pair? Where is our humanity that we can let this happen day after day until the last syllable of our sickening rhetoric that somehow we in the West are morally superior has been vomited out.
I’ll give the last word to another writer:
“Verily I say unto you, in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University
Until now, Victorians believed their state was the sole home for Leadbeater’s possum, their critically endangered state faunal emblem. This tiny marsupial is clinging to life in a few pockets of mountain ash and snow gum habitat in the Central Highlands of Victoria.
But a few days ago, seven grainy photos taken by a trail camera in New South Wales revealed something very unexpected: a Leadbeater’s possum hundreds of kilometres away in the wet forests of Kosciuszko National Park.
For decades, we and other researchers have sought proof this possum existed in these forests. Now we have it. This is a moment of celebration. But it also signals the importance of well-resourced biodiversity surveys in uncovering our most threatened species and large national parks for conserving them.
While this newly discovered population reduces the risk of extinction, it doesn’t change the decline and risk of extinction of its Victorian relatives – or the steps needed to safeguard them.
These photos from Kosciuszko National Park are the first proof that Leadbeater’s possum has a NSW population. NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, CC BY-NC-ND
Detected entirely by chance
In 2024, New South Wales threatened species ecologists Fred Ford and Martin Schulz set about looking for an entirely different species, the endangered smoky mouse. To find it, they set up a wide array of camera traps throughout wet forest areas of Kosciuszko National Park. A year later, they collected them and trawled through millions of photos.
Among all these images (including of smoky mice), there were seven which stunned them. A camera deployed near Yarrangobilly Caves captured a tiny possum scampering through leaf litter, holding its distinctive club-shaped tail erect. The possum looks around the monitoring site, showing its back and face stripes and heart-shaped face.
Experts at The Australian National University and Zoos Victoria verified the photos, setting the ecology world abuzz.
While we are delighted at this remarkable discovery, the detection is not a complete surprise.
Over three decades ago, this article’s lead author searched for Leadbeater’s possum around Yarrangobilly and many other parts of Kosciuszko National Park, guided by a bioclimatic model suggesting the cool wet forests in Kosciuszko National Park should suit the possum.
But detection cameras were not available then, and this possum is notoriously hard to spot. It’s tiny, nocturnal and spends its waking hours dashing through the dense understory of some of the world’s tallest forests looking for nectar, sap and insects.
Species experts from Zoos Victoria and Deakin University have also scouted parts of Kosciuszko National Park over the past decade, identifying potentially promising habitat.
In 2010 we got confirmation the possum had once occurred in the area, when jaw bones were identified among bones regurgitated by owls on the floor of a nearby cave.
But other bones from the cave floor date back an estimated 140–200 years. The bones were far from proof of a living population.
The possum’s existence remained an open question until these photos.
What does this mean for this possum?
We don’t know anything about this newly discovered Leadbeater’s possum population in NSW, other than the fact that it exists. Given the distance from the Victorian populations, we suspect that they may be genetically distinct.
In theory, the existence of a separate population 250 km away from the Victorian populations cuts the risk a single megafire or other catastrophe could push the species to extinction.
But while welcome, the discovery doesn’t reduce the need to urgently protect surviving Victorian populations, which remain highly threatened by bushfire, climate change, predation by cats, and the legacy of logging and land clearing.
In Victoria, some populations have dwindled as low as 40 animals and inbreeding is now a concern.
The possum typically relies on large old trees with hollows where it can breed and den. But these trees have substantially declined in Victoria over the past 150 years. Leadbeater’s possum also needs smaller trees for feeding and movement.
Surveys across the historical range of the species in Victoria since 2017 have failed to find any other hidden populations. Most surveys have found the habitat highly degraded from logging and fire.
In welcome news, the NSW Environment Minister announced the possum’s state conservation listing will be fast-tracked.
Of surveys and parks
Why did it take so long to find the possum? The main reason: a lack of resources preventing targeted investigations.
Even basic inventories of species have not been done across many of Australia’s important conservation areas.
Without well conducted surveys and monitoring, we are left overly reliant on chance detections for critical information. There could be other populations of imperilled species waiting to be rediscovered.
Properly managing our growing number of threatened species shouldn’t be based on luck. It should be enabled by adequate resources for threatened species recovery teams to discover, map, protect and manage threatened species and their habitat.
Trail cameras, call playback and environmental DNA sampling mean we can now survey large and remote natural areas with relatively little effort for long periods of time.
Big parks are essential
Kosciuszko National Park supports much more than Australia’s highest mountains. The huge park spans 690,000 hectares, much of it forest.
Many of our most imperilled species are hard to detect. Protecting extensive areas of good-quality habitat boosts the survival chances for these species, even if we don’t yet have proof of life.
With so little high-quality habitat left in Australia, proper protection through new national parks (including in Victoria) is vitally important for the possum and many other species.
Passive protection isn’t enough either – adequate funding is critical to stop the environmental condition of parks from declining, due to threats like invasive species and extreme fires.
The world still contains wonder
These seven photos have given ecologists and nature lovers a real boost to their spirits. As detection techniques improve, what else is out there waiting to be found?
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Leadbeater’s possum experts Dan Harley, Arabella Eyre, John Woinarski and Brendan Wintle to this article.
David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Government and the Victorian Government. He is a Councillor with the Biodiversity Council and a Member of Birds Australia.
Darcy Watchorn works for Zoos Victoria, a not-for-profit zoo-based conservation organisation. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australian Mammal Society, the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Royal Society of Victoria.
Jaana Dielenberg was employed by the now-ended Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, which conducted research on the Leadbeater’s possum in Victoria. She is a Charles Darwin University Fellow and is employed by the University of Melbourne and the Biodiversity Council.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 2, 2025.
Your smartphone is a parasite, according to evolution Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University vchal/shutterstock, The Conversation Head lice, fleas and tapeworms have been humanity’s companions throughout our evolutionary history. Yet, the greatest parasite of the modern age is no blood-sucking
As the NRL edges into Darwin, does the AFL need to be more proactive in the NT? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney The Northern Territory government recently announced the Dolphins, the NRL’s newest team that entered the league in 2023, would play a home game at TIO Stadium in Darwin every year from 2026 to 2028. The Dolphins
What is populism? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Moffitt, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University In 2017, in the wake of Brexit and Donald Trump’s first election win, populism was named the “word of the year” by Cambridge University Press. Almost a decade later, we might have thought the term’s popularity
Bougainville wants independence. China’s support for a controversial mine could pave the way Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna-Karina Hermkens, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Anthropology, Macquarie University Bougainville, an autonomous archipelago currently part of Papua New Guinea, is determined to become the world’s newest country. To support this process, it’s offering foreign investors access to a long-shuttered copper and gold mine. Formerly owned by the
Australia’s plan to protect its trade in war is flawed. We can’t do it with nuclear submarines Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Palazzo, Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney If war breaks out someday between the United States and China, one of the major concerns for Australia is the impact on its trade. Our trade routes are long and
Three years after the Jenkins report, there is still work to be done on improving parliament culture Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Maley, Senior Lecturer in Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University Three and a half years ago, then-sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins’ Set the Standard report was handed to federal parliament, commissioned after Brittany Higgins’ allegations of sexual assault in Parliament House, which
Police aren’t properly trained for mental health crises – but they’re often the first responders. Here’s what works better Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panos Karanikolas, Research officer, Melbourne Social Equity Institute, The University of Melbourne Rosie Marinelli/Shutterstock In an emergency, police are often the first called to the scene. But they are rarely equipped to deal with complex mental health crises. Following recent parliamentary inquiries and royal commissions there has
These 5 roadblocks are standing in the way of energy-efficient homes Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jaime Comber, Senior Research Consultant in Energy Futures, University of Technology Sydney Westend61, GettyImages We all want homes that keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, without breaking the bank. However, Australian homes built before 2003 have a low average energy rating of 1.8 stars
With interest rates on the way down, could house prices boom? Here’s what research suggests Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Jenny Evans/Stringer/Getty With the Reserve Bank of Australia easing monetary policy, interest rates are on the way down. Already this year, mortgage pre-approvals had begun to rise, suggesting many aspiring home buyers are excited by the prospect of
Scandalous mormons, dystopian Buenos Aires and Nicolas Cage down under: what to watch in June Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claudia Sandberg, Senior Lecturer, Technology in Culture and Society, The University of Melbourne As we head into a new month of streaming, here’s a fresh wave of TV ready to challenge, transport and entertain you. This month’s picks span genre and geography, from an eerie dystopian Buenos
How Israel manufactured a looting crisis to cover up its Gaza famine By Muhammad Shehada Since the onset of its genocide, Israel has persistently pushed a narrative that the famine devastating Gaza is not of its own making, but the result of “Hamas looting aid”. This claim, repeated across mainstream media and parroted by officials, has been used to deflect responsibility for what many human rights experts
PNG faces deadline for fixing issues with money laundering and terrorist financing ANALYSIS: By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent Papua New Guinea has five months remaining to fix its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) systems or face the severe repercussions of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list”. The FATF has imposed an October 2025 deadline, and the government is scrambling
Phil Goff: Israel doesn’t care how many innocent people, children it’s killing COMMENTARY: By Phil Goff “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.” This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister
You might have seen those heartwarming and often funny viral videos where parents or carers engage in long “talks” with young babies about this and that – usually just fun chit chat of no great consequence.
They’re often very sweet, and it’s lovely to see the babies’ faces lighting up at the sound of their mother or carer’s voice, or seeming to talk back. In one, the baby appears to reply in an accent strikingly similar to their carer’s:
So, what’s going on when we chat like this to babies? And is it better to chat to them in the tone and pace we’d use when talking to other adults, or is it OK to talk in a slower, higher pitched, sing-song voice?
Here’s what the research shows so far.
Talking to your baby matters
When you speak with your baby, they are exposed to a rich tapestry of sounds and movements. Can babies make sense of all this input?
Well, by the time they’re born babies are already highly experienced with their mother’s voice as well as other language sounds they’ve heard while in utero.
They also prefer to hear the story their mother read aloud regularly in the final weeks of pregnancy, compared to a different story – regardless of who is reading it.
So, although newborns are yet to understand the meaning of these words, they are already tuned in to the importance of language.
Given the vast exposure that most young babies have with their parent’s voice, passively listening to mum or dad talking is likely to be comforting.
Time spent together in close physical contact with a highly familiar person producing familiar sounds creates a safe, secure space rich in learning opportunities.
Babies can learn a lot about conversational style from just listening to and watching the way their parent communicates.
In fact, babies mimic their parents’ gestures, which can help build their vocabulary over time. The social context influences language skills.
Time spent in close physical contact with a familiar person producing familiar sounds creates a safe learning space for baby. Photo by Josh Willink/Pexels
What if I run out of things to say?
If you’re not a fan of monologuing to your baby, don’t worry. They’re not missing out.
In fact, constant exposure to long monologues by a parent is unlikely to provide the baby with a particularly supportive language environment for developing their understanding or production of words.
Adult language is extremely complex. It takes a lot of experience with language before a string of sounds like “Yourdadlikeschocolatemoltenlavacake” can be interpreted as individual words linked to people, objects, or concepts.
“Parentese” is characterised by the use of higher pitch sounds, elongated vowels, and a slower pace of speaking. Real words are presented in a sing-song, happy voice.
Time spent talking together in face-to-face interactions best supports language development. Tomsickova Tatyana/Shutterstock
Speaking ‘parentese’
Parentese is not the same thing as “baby talk”. Baby talk involves the use of nonsense words, and the modelling of incorrect speech sounds and grammar. A baby is not being supported to learn the word “water” if they are repeatedly presented with a nonsense label like “waa waa” for their drink.
One US study found that when parents were trained to use parentese with their infants at six and ten months, the infants showed an increase in babbling and said more words at 14 months, compared to infants of parents who did not receive this training.
Other research has shown consistent use of parentese in the early years can help build the complexity of children’s language skills at five years of age.
Learning to talk is not simply the product of hearing lots of words. In the first weeks of life, infants are already beginning to produce coos and murmurs that both parents and outside observers judge to be intentional vocalisations.
Try responding to these sounds by imitating them and then interpreting what your baby might be trying to say. This enables them to take a turn as a social partner in the conservation.
At the youngest ages, time spent talking together in face-to-face interactions best supports language development.
With age, babies become increasingly interested in the objects in their environment.
Try responding to your baby’s sounds by imitating them and interpreting what they might be trying to say. Halfpoint/Shutterstock
So, what should I do?
An effective way to boost language learning from about nine months of age is to notice what’s captured your baby’s attention and talk about that.
Try labelling and describing what your baby is looking at, playing with, pointing at, or babbling towards.
Research by colleagues and I found encouraging parents to engage in 15 minutes of this kind of talk a day with their 11-month-olds for a month was effective in promoting vocabulary growth at 15 and 18 months.
Overall, a rich language environment is created by engaging with your baby in a wide range of activities – via games, songs, and reading aloud – not just having focused conversations.
Jane Herbert has received funding for these projects: 2012-15: Does promoting parents’ engagement with their infants benefit language development?” Nuffield Foundation (approx. £200,000). D Matthews (PI, University of Sheffield), JS Herbert (University of Sheffield), and J Pine (University of Liverpool). 2011-12: Does promoting parents’ engagement with their infants benefit language development? British Academy Small Research Grant (£7,500). Co-PIs: D Matthews (University of Sheffield), JS Herbert (University of Sheffield), and J Pine (University of Liverpool).
Election day was over four weeks ago. Yet the outcome in one House of Representatives remains unclear. That is the formerly Liberal Sydney electorate of Bradfield.
In real time, you can watch the lead tilt between Liberal hopeful, Gisele Kapterian and her teal independent rival, Nicolette Boele. The difference between them has been as small as one vote. As of Monday, that had shifted to 12 votes in the Teal’s favour. Still too close even for Antony Green to call.
What are the processes for resolving ultra-marginal results? And, more broadly, what accountability is there for problems in campaigning or the running of the election, such as the allegation that voters in one NSW town were misled about how to vote?
First, to the Bradfield saga. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has until July 9 to declare the result. It then certifies a list of successful candidates, which it “returns”, attached to the original writ the governor-general used to formally begin the election.
Electoral challenges
Within 40 days of the writ being returned, any candidate or elector from the seat can “petition” its result. That’s not a petition calling for parliament to handle the matter. It means a formal pleading to the Court of Disputed Returns. For national elections, that means the High Court.
Remarkably few seats are challenged in Australia. On the happy side, this is because our election agencies are very professional. It’s also a matter of legal principle, arithmetic and resources.
To succeed in a challenge, you must show the outcome was likely to have been affected, by errors or breaches of the electoral act. With more than 100,000 voting in House of Representatives electorates, even a 0.5% margin means convincing a judge that a 500-vote lead was uncertain.
The last successful petition nationally was 12 years ago. The AEC admitted some lost ballots meant that the last couple of Western Australian Senate seats could have been different. The whole race had to be re-run.
In Bradfield, there’s no suggestion of impropriety. So it’s not like the last unsuccessful petition, from 2019, where the Liberals survived claims that misleading how-to-vote posters, directed at Chinese language speakers, might have affected the result.
Instead, the Bradfield loser would focus on disputed ballots. That would mean, for example, votes where their scrutineers noted some uncertainty. Such as whether a “1” was a “7”. A judge can then give a binding ruling on the intent of the ballot.
The loser might also try to find evidence of people being wrongly denied a ballot or wrongly issued one. The 40-day period to marshal evidence is strict.
Besides time limits, a challenger needs lawyers and risks paying the other side’s (and perhaps the AEC’s) legal costs if they lose the hearing.
Counts and recounts
Australian election counts are very thorough. This is in contrast to the United Kingdom, where local officials literally rush to be the first to declare, in the wee hours of Friday morning after voting closes at 10pm on a Thursday.
The figures we see on election night are “indicative” only, drawing on counts in thousands of polling places. Every ballot is transferred to a more central location, for official tallying. Ballots for weaker candidates are reviewed multiple times, as they pass on according to each elector’s preferences.
When a seat is ultra-close, the law permits a complete recount. AEC policy is to conduct one whenever the result is within 100 votes: in Bradfield, the initial result was a mere eight votes.
A losing candidate can also request a recount. Teal independent Zoe Daniel did that in her Melbourne seat of Goldstein, where Liberal Tim Wilson finished 260 votes ahead.
Recounts are resource intensive. So the AEC agreed to review all “1” votes for those candidates, and ballots put in the “informal” or invalid pile. Wilson finally won by 175 votes. A challenge to a margin of that size seems very unlikely.
Bad form or protest? Informal votes
What of votes that couldn’t be counted? We call these “informal”. Given turning-out to vote is compulsory – and the requirement to give preferences – Australia has long had a lot of informal ballots.
Upwards of half tend to be accidental, caused by people misnumbering the ballot or not understanding the rules. The highest rates are in seats with many new citizens from overseas, especially as long ballots of many of candidates is becoming common.
Votes that cannot be counted are called ‘informal’, and can be a source of dispute in a seat count. Shutterstock
Maybe more than half, however, are deliberate, intended as protests against the system or parties. These include blanks and those scribbled with (sometimes obscene) comments. As faith in parties has declined, informals have risen. Also, due to “automatic enrolment”, more people are enrolled than ever, including some who’d rather not be. Informal ballots this year reached 5.6% of turnout. For perspective, that’s up just 0.4%.
Voters in the small town of Missabotti in the New South wales seat of Cowper, however, were miffed to find their polling booth had a 45% informal rate. That’s quite an outlier, even for a seat where electors had to rank a dizzying 11 candidates.
There are allegations a polling official misled some electors, by telling them they only had to number “6” candidates for the House. That is the rule for the Senate, not the House.
As preferences are not mandatory at NSW state elections, it’s understandable voters may have heeded such advice rather than the actual rule on the ballot. Such an error would be embarrassing for the AEC. But it could hardly ground an election challenge: the Nationals held Cowper by almost 5,500 votes.
Does that mean there’s no accountability? Anyone affected does not get to vote again. But the AEC is investigating. And after every election, it is grilled by a parliamentary inquiry that the public can contribute to.
In the end, every vote should be sacred. In reality, elections are huge logistical events and nothing is perfect. But there are courts and inquiries to offer remedies and improve things for the future.
Graeme Orr 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.
