President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.
Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.
Trump’s goals for Golden Dome are likely beyond reach. A wide range of studies makes clear that even defenses far more limited than what Trump envisions would be far more expensive and less effective than Trump expects, especially against enemy missiles equipped with modern countermeasures. Countermeasures include multiple warheads per missile, decoy warheads and warheads that can maneuver or are difficult to track, among others.
Regardless of Golden Dome’s feasibility, there is a long history of scholarship about strategic missile defenses, and the weight of evidence points to the defenses making their host country less safe from nuclear attack.
I’m a national security and foreign policy professor at Harvard University, where I lead “Managing the Atom,” the university’s main research group on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policies. For decades, I’ve been participating in dialogues with Russian and Chinese nuclear experts – and their fears about U.S. missile defenses have been a consistent theme throughout.
Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have already warned that Golden Dome is destabilizing. Along with U.S. offensive capabilities, Golden Dome poses a threat of “directly undermining global strategic stability, spurring an arms race and increasing conflict potential both among nuclear-weapon states and in the international arena as a whole,” a joint statement from China and Russia said. While that is a propaganda statement, it reflects real concerns broadly held in both countries.
Golden Dome explained.
History lessons
Experience going back half a century makes clear that if the administration pursues Golden Dome, it is likely to provoke even larger arms buildups, derail already-dim prospects for any negotiated nuclear arms restraint, and perhaps even increase the chances of nuclear war.
My first book, 35 years ago, made the case that it would be in the U.S. national security interest to remain within the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which strictly limited U.S. and Soviet – and later Russian – missile defenses. The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the ABM Treaty as part of SALT I, the first agreements limiting the nuclear arms race. It was approved in the Senate 98-2.
The ABM Treaty experience is instructive for the implications of Golden Dome today.
Why did the two countries agree to limit defenses? First and foremost, because they understood that unless each side’s defenses were limited, they would not be able to stop an offensive nuclear arms race. If each side wants to maintain the ability to retaliate if the other attacks – “don’t nuke me, or I’ll nuke you” – then an obvious answer to one side building up more defenses is for the other to build up more nuclear warheads.
For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets installed 100 interceptors to defend Moscow – so the United States targeted still more warheads on Moscow to overwhelm the defense. Had it ever come to a nuclear war, Moscow would have been even more thoroughly obliterated than if there had been no defense at all. Both sides came to realize that unlimited missile defenses would just mean more offense on both sides, leaving both less secure than before.
In addition, nations viewed an adversary’s shield as going hand in hand with a nuclear sword. A nuclear first strike might destroy a major part of a country’s nuclear forces. Missile defenses would inevitably be more effective against the reduced, disorganized retaliation that they knew would be coming than they would be against a massive, well-planned surprise attack. That potential advantage to whoever struck first could make nuclear crises even more dangerous.
Post-ABM Treaty world
Unfortunately, President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, seeking to free U.S. development of defenses against potential missile attacks from small states such as North Korea. But even now, decades later, the U.S. has fewer missile interceptors deployed (44) than the treaty permitted (100).
The U.S. pullout did not lead to an immediate arms buildup or the end of nuclear arms control. But Putin has complained bitterly about U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. refusal to accept any limitation at all on them. He views the U.S. stance as an effort to achieve military superiority by negating Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
Russia is investing heavily in new types of strategic nuclear weapons intended to avoid U.S. missile defenses, from an intercontinental nuclear torpedo to a missile that can go around the world and attack from the south, while U.S. defenses are mainly pointed north toward Russia.
Similarly, much of China’s nuclear buildup appears to be driven by wanting a reliable nuclear deterrent in the face of the United States’ capability to strike its nuclear forces and use missile defenses to mop up the remainder. Indeed, China was so angered by South Korea’s deployment of U.S.-provided regional defenses – which they saw as aiding the U.S. ability to intercept their missiles – that they imposed stiff sanctions on South Korea.
Fuel to the fire
Now, Trump wants to go much further, with a defense “forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” with a success rate “very close to 100%.” I believe that this effort is highly likely to lead to still larger nuclear buildups in Russia and China. The Putin-Xi joint statement pledges to “counter” defenses “aimed at achieving military superiority.”
Given the ease of developing countermeasures that are extraordinarily difficult for defenses to overcome, odds are the resulting offense-defense competition will leave the United States worse off than before – and a good bit poorer.
Putin and Xi made clear that they are particularly concerned about the thousands of space-based interceptors Trump envisions. These interceptors are designed to hit missiles while their rockets are still burning during launch.
Most countries are likely to oppose the idea of deploying huge numbers of weapons in space – and these interceptors would be both expensive and vulnerable. China and Russia could focus on further developing anti-satellite weapons to blow a hole in the defense, increasing the risk of space war.
Already, there is a real danger that the whole effort of negotiated limits to temper nuclear arms racing may be coming to an end. The last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, the New START Treaty, expires in February 2026. China’s rapid nuclear buildup is making many defense officials and experts in Washington call for a U.S. buildup in response.
Intense hostility all around means that for now, neither Russia nor China is even willing to sit down to discuss nuclear restraints, in treaty form or otherwise.
A way forward
In my view, adding Golden Dome to this combustible mix would likely end any prospect of avoiding a future of unrestrained and unpredictable nuclear arms competition. But paths away from these dangers are available.
It would be quite plausible to design defenses that would provide some protection against attacks from a handful of missiles from North Korea or others that would not seriously threaten Russian or Chinese deterrent forces – and design restraints that would allow all parties to plan their offensive forces knowing what missile defenses they would be facing in the years to come.
I believe that Trump should temper his Golden Dome ambitions to achieve his other dream – of negotiating a deal to reduce nuclear dangers.
Matthew Bunn is a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control and a board member of the Arms Control Association. He is a member of the Academic Alliance of the United States Strategic Command and a consultant to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Have you been hearing about the dire wolf lately? Maybe you saw a massive white wolf on the cover of Time magazine or a photo of “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin holding a puppy named after a character from his books.
The dire wolf, a large, wolflike species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago, has been in the news after biotech company Colossal claimed to have resurrected it using cloning and gene-editing technologies. Colossal calls itself a “de-extinction” company. The very concept of de-extinction is a lightning rod for criticism. There are broad accusations of playing God or messing with nature, as well as more focused objections that contemporary de-extinction tools create poor imitations rather than truly resurrected species.
While the biological and philosophical debates are interesting, the legal ramifications for endangered species conservation are of paramount importance. As a legal scholar with a Ph.D. in wildlife genetics, my work focuses on how we legally define the term “endangered species.” The use of biotechnology for conservation, whether for de-extinction or genetic augmentation of existing species, promises solutions to otherwise intractable problems. But it needs to work in harmony with both the letter and purpose of the laws governing biodiversity conservation.
What did Colossal actually do? Scientists extracted and sequenced DNA from Ice Age-era bones to understand the genetic makeup of the dire wolf. They were able to piece together around 90% of a complete dire wolf genome. While the gray wolf and the dire wolf are separated by a few million years of evolution, they share over 99.5% of their genomes.
The scientists scanned the recovered dire wolf sequences for specific genes that they believed were responsible for the physical and ecological differences between dire wolves and other species of canids, including genes related to body size and coat color. CRISPR gene-editing technology allows scientists to make specific changes in the DNA of an organism. The Colossal team used CRISPR to make 20 changes in 14 different genes in a modern gray wolf cell before implanting the embryo into a surrogate mother.
While the technology on display is marvelous, what should we call the resulting animals? Some commentators argue that the animals are just modified gray wolves. They point out that it would take far more than 20 edits to bridge the gap left by millions of years of evolution. For instance, that 0.5% of the genome that doesn’t match in the two species represents over 12 million base pair differences.
Colossal, on the other hand, maintains that it is in the “functional de-extinction” game. The company acknowledges it isn’t making a perfect dire wolf copy. Instead it wants to recreate something that looks and acts like the dire wolf of old. It prefers the “if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck” school of speciation.
Disagreements about taxonomy – the science of naming and categorizing living organisms – are as old as the field itself. Biologists are notorious for failing to adopt a single clear definition of “species,” and there are dozens of competing definitions in the biological literature.
Biologists can afford to be flexible and imprecise when the stakes are merely a conversational misunderstanding. Lawyers and policymakers, on the other hand, do not have that luxury.
President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in December 1973. Associated Press
To be protected by the act, an organism must be a member of an endangered or threatened species. Some of the most contentious ESA issues are definitional, such as whether the listed species is a valid “species” and whether individual organisms, especially hybrids, are members of the listed species.
Colossal’s functional species concept is anathema to the Endangered Species Act. It shrinks the value of a species down to the way it looks or the way it functions. When passing the act, however, Congress made clear that species were to be valued for their “aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people.” In my view, the myopic focus on function seems to miss the point.
Despite its insistence otherwise, Colossal’s definitional sleight of hand has opened the door to arguments that people should reduce conservation funding or protections for currently imperiled species. Why spend the money to protect a critter and its habitat when, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, you can just “pick your favorite species and call up Colossal”?
Putting biotechnology to work for conservation
Biotechnology can provide real conservation benefits for today’s endangered species. I suggest gene editing’s real value is not in recreating facsimiles of long-extinct species like dire wolves, but instead using it to recover ones in trouble now.
For example, Colossal has also announced that it has cloned a red wolf. Unlike the dire wolf, the red wolf is not extinct, though it came extremely close. After decades of conservation efforts, there are about a dozen red wolves in the wild in the reintroduced population in eastern North Carolina, as well as a few hundred red wolves in captivity.
The entire population of red wolves, both wild and captive, descends from merely 14 founders of the captive breeding program. This limited heritage means the species has lost a significant amount of the genetic diversity that would help it continue to evolve and adapt.
In order to reintroduce some of that missing genetic diversity, you’d need to find genetic material from red wolves outside the managed population. Right now that would require stored tissue samples from animals that lived before the captive breeding program was established or rediscovering a “lost” population in the wild.
Recently, researchers discovered that coyotes along the Texas Gulf Coast possess a sizable percentage of red wolf-derived DNA in their genomes. Hybridization between coyotes and red wolves is both a threat to red wolves and a natural part of their evolutionary history, complicating management. The red wolf genes found within these coyotes do present a possible source of genetic material that biotechnology could harness to help the captive breeding population if the legal hurdles can be managed.
This coyote population was Colossal’s source for its cloned “ghost” red wolf. Even this announcement is marred by definitional confusion. Due to its hybrid nature, the animal Colossal cloned is likely not legally considered a red wolf at all.
Under the Endangered Species Act, hybrid organisms are typically not protected. So by cloning one of these animals, Colossal likely sidestepped the need for ESA permits. It will almost certainly run into resistance if it attempts to breed these “ghost wolves” into the current red wolf captive breeding program that has spent decades trying to minimize hybridization. How much to value genetic “purity” versus genetic diversity in managed species still proves an extraordinarily difficult question, even without the legal uncertainty.
Biotechnology could never solve every conservation problem – especially habitat destruction. The ability to make “functional” copies of a species certainly does not lessen the urgency to respond to biodiversity loss, nor does it reduce human beings’ moral culpability. But to adequately respond to the ever-worsening biodiversity crisis, conservationists will need all available tools.
Alex Erwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
It is not a good break-up. These were always two big beasts used to getting their own way. Two alpha males, if you like the evolutionary metaphor, trying to get along. And now the Donald Trump and Elon Musk relationship is in meltdown.
Who could forget that iconic image from just a few short weeks back? Elon Musk standing behind the seated the US president, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office, towering over him. Trump, his hands clasped, having to turn awkwardly to look up at him. That silent language of the body. Musk accompanied by his four-year old, a charming and informal image, or that great evolutionary signal of mating potential and dominance, depending on your point of view.
These were also clearly two massive narcissistic egos out in their gleaming open-top speedster. Musk was appointed special advisor to Trump, heading the Department of Government Efficiency, cutting excess and waste. The backseat driver for a while.
There were a lot of bureaucratic casualties already, road kill at the side of the highway as the sports car roared on with frightening speed. But things were always going to be difficult if they hit a bump in the road. And they did. Perhaps, more quickly than many had imagined.
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There were differing views on what caused the crash. Many pointed to the dramatic fall in the sales of Tesla, a 71% fall in profits in one quarter, and the inevitable impact on Musk’s reputation. And yesterday Tesla shares were falling even faster, as investors panicked. The attacks on Tesla showrooms couldn’t have helped either.
Others pointed to Trump’s proposed removal of the tax credit for owners of electric vehicles, or the political backlash in Washington over Space X’s potential involvement in Trump’s proposed “golden dome” anti-missile defense system.
However, according to former White House strategist Steve Bannon, what really caused the crash was when the president refused to show Musk the Pentagon’s attack plans for any possible war with China. There’s only so far being the president’s best buddy can get you. Bannon is reported as saying: “You could feel it. Everything changed.” That, according to Bannon, was the beginning of the end.
Elon Musk has criticised Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’.
So now we watch Trump and Musk stumbling away from the crash scene. One minute Trump is putting on a show for the cameras. He’s beaming away and introducing the “big, beautiful bill”, a budget reconciliation bill that rolls together hundreds of controversial proposals. Next, he is accusing Musk of “going crazy” and talking about withdrawing government contracts from the Musk empire.
Musk is unhappy too. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”
Rejection and repositioning
He says he’s disgusted by the bill. Disgust is one of the most primitive of all the emotions. A survival mechanism – you must avoid what disgusts you. He’s social signalling here, alerting others, warning them that there’s something disgusting in the camp.
Musk is highly attuned to public perception, perhaps even more so than Trump (which is saying something). With his acquisition of X (formerly Twitter), Musk was able to direct (and add to) online discourse, shaping public conversations.
Psychologically, Musk’s rejection of Trump is an attempt to simultaneously elevate himself and diminish the man behind the bill. He can call out the president’s action like nobody else. He is positioning himself anew as that free thinker, that risk taker, innovative, courageous, unfettered by any ties. That is his personality, his brand – and he’s reasserting it.
Trump on Musk’s criticism of the ‘big beautiful bill’
But it’s also a vengeful act. And it’s perhaps reminiscent of another political insider (and geek), former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings, who was sacked by the then UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2020. Cummings was accused of masterminding leaks about the social gatherings in Downing Street.
He went on to criticise Johnson as lacking the necessary discipline and focus for a prime minister as well as questioning his competence and decision-making abilities. The revenge of a self-proclaimed genius.
And revenge is sweet. In a 2004 study, researchers scanned participants’ brains using positron emission tomography (PET) – a medical imaging technique that is used to study brain function (among other things) – while the participants played an economic game based on trust. When trust was violated, participants wanted revenge, and this was reflected in increased activity in the reward-related regions of the brain, the dorsal striatum.
Revenge, in other words, is primarily about making yourself feel better rather than righting any wrongs. Your act may make you appear moral but it may be more selfish.
But revenge for what here? That’s where these big narcissistic egos come into play.
Psychologically, narcissists are highly sensitive to perceived slights – real or imagined. Musk may have felt Trump was attempting to diminish his achievements for political gain, violating this pact of mutual respect. This kind of sensitivity can quickly transmogrify admiration into contempt.
Contempt, coincidentally, is the single best predictor of a breakdown in very close relationships.
Disgust and contempt are powerful emotions, evolving to protect us – disgust from physical contamination (spoiled food, disease), and contempt from social or moral contamination (betrayal, incompetence). Both involve rejection – disgust rejects something physically; contempt rejects something socially or morally. Musk may be giving it to Trump with both barrels here.
Break-ups are always hard, they get much harder when emotions like these get intertwined with the process.
But how will the most powerful man in the world respond to this sort of rejection from the richest man in the world? And where will it end?
Geoff Beattie 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.
The US state of Montana has become the first in the country to let patients try experimental drugs – even if they are not terminally ill.
The new law allows doctors to refer patients to licensed “experimental treatment centres”, where they can access drugs that have only passed phase 1 clinical trials – the earliest stage of testing in humans.
This goes far beyond existing federal law, which only allows terminally ill patients to access such drugs under the Right to Try Act, passed in 2017.
Montana already had a fairly permissive right to try law, which was originally designed to let terminally ill patients access treatments that hadn’t yet received full approval by the drug regulator.
In 2023, that law was expanded to include patients with any medical condition. The latest law goes even further, creating a formal system for clinics to offer these experimental treatments.
According to an article in MIT Technology Review, the new law was shaped and promoted by a group of longevity advocates – a mix of scientists and influencers who are focused on extending human life.
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Before new medicines reach the market, they usually go through several stages of testing. A phase 1 trial is the first step in human studies and is designed to find a safe dose and spot early side-effects. It typically involves a small group – between 20 and 100 people – and does not prove the drug works.
Only around 12% of drugs that enter phase 1 trials go on to gain full approval. Many fail due to safety issues or lack of effectiveness.
Montana’s new law allows access to these early-stage treatments with a doctor’s recommendation – even for patients who are not terminally ill. Clinics must be licensed as experimental treatment centres, and 2% of their profits must be used to help low-income patients access these therapies.
Supporters say it gives people more control over their own health and could help boost innovation in areas like cancer, neurodegenerative disease and age-related decline. There is also hope it could turn Montana into a destination for medical tourism, attracting biotech investment.
But critics warn that the move could put vulnerable patients at risk.
Drugs in phase 1 trials may be safe enough to test – but their long-term effects are still unknown, and they may not work. There are also concerns over whether insurers will cover complications, since the drugs are not approved. Legal protections for both patients and doctors remain unclear.
And in South America, some countries allow patients to keep receiving experimental drugs after trials end – but not to start them outside of a trial.
Montana’s decision marks a bold new approach in the continuing debate over patient rights. It raises big questions about safety, ethics, regulation and the role of government in balancing innovation with public health. It could end up being a model for other states – or a cautionary tale.
Dipa Kamdar 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.
The past two decades have seen a notable rise in LGBTQ+ representation on TV. Recent shifts, however, seem to threaten that progress. LGBTQ+ characters continue to meet tragic ends on screen – while off-screen, queer shows are being cancelled, media companies in the US have joined others in rolling back DEI initiatives and anti-LGBTQ+ violence is on the rise.
At this critical moment, it feels apt to take a look back at some of the moments that made British LGBTQ+ TV history, exploring why they mattered and what we can learn from them.
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1. Man Alive (1967)
In June 1967, the BBC documentary and current affairs series Man Alive focused two episodes on homosexuality. These episodes featured interviews with gay men and lesbian women about their lives and experiences, and how society treats them.
The episode on “the women” featured an interview set in The Gateways club, a long-running lesbian nightclub on the Kings Road in west London (it closed in 1985). The Gateways also appeared in 1968 film, The Killing of Sister George, one of the first mainstream film representations of lesbian characters.
‘The Women’ episode of Man Alive.
The month after the Man Alive documentaries aired, the Sexual Offences Act legalised homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 in England and Wales, so long as they took place consensually and in private.
Documentaries such as these took an outside-looking-in approach to the subject matter, but nonetheless addressed the significant (albeit limited) shifts seen in this period.
2. Girl (1974)
In 1974, an episode of BBC Birmingham’s anthology series Second City Firsts featured the first kiss between two women on British television. The post-watershed television play portrayed a past relationship between Myra Francis’ army corporal, Chrissie, and Alison Steadman’s recruit Jackie. While this is no happily-ever-after romance, happier flashbacks do show the two women in bed together – a brief, but radical for its time, representation of queer intimacy.
The broadcast was, unsurprisingly, controversial and was preceded by a special announcement from the controller of BBC. The rights of LGBTQ+ people in the military later became a major campaign, with the ban on openly gay and lesbian people serving lifted in the UK in 2000.
Notably, fights for LGBTQ+ rights in the military demand equality, but also raise questions around the kinds of inclusions LGBTQ+ people are fighting for. As many activists and writers have argued, LGBTQ+ rights can be co-opted in ways that include some but exclude others, or justify other oppressive forces (for example in what is often referred to as pinkwashing).
3. Lesbian activists protest Section 28 on the six o’clock news (1988)
In May 1988, Margeret Thatcher’s Conservative government brought in Section 28: legislation that prohibited local authorities and schools from “promoting” homosexuality, reflecting the powerful anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice of the period.
The lesbian protestors remember the moment they stormed the studio.
The evening before the legislation was passed in parliament, a group of lesbian activists interrupted the live broadcast of the six o’clock news. As one of the protesters, Booan Temple, reflected: “By getting on the news, we would be the news.”
The bill still passed, and Section 28 remained in place until 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in England and Wales, but the power of LGBTQ+ resistance was palpable. Looking back today, there are worrying echoes of the moral panics of the 1980s to be found in the current climate.
4. The Brookside kiss (1994)
In 1985, Gordan Collins (Mark Burgess) came out on Channel 4’s popular soap opera, Brookside – making him the first openly gay character on a British television series. Five years later the soap featured the first pre-watershed kiss between two women, when Beth Jordache (Anna Friel) kissed Margaret Clemence (Nicola Stephenson).
Anna Friel looks back on her lesbian kiss scene from Brookside.
The kiss was so culturally significant that it later featured in Danny Boyle’s 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. Just one year after the episode, however, Beth died off screen in prison, an example of the “bury your gays” trope (where LGBTQ+ characters are frequently killed off in TV and film).
Meanwhile, 1994 also saw Eastenders introduce Della Alexander (Michelle Joseph), the soap’s first lesbian and one of the first Black LGBTQ+ characters on British television. Della and girlfriend Binnie departed the soap a year later.
Bisexual actor Pam St Clement, who played Eastenders matriarch Pat Butcher reflected: “Having given themselves that brief, they didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.”
5. Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper (1998)
In 1998 it was Coronation Street’s turn to make LGBTQ+ TV history, when the ITV soap introduced Hayley Cropper (Julie Hesmondhalgh), a transgender woman initially intended for a comic “bad date” storyline.
Julie Hesmondhalgh reflecting on Hayley Cropper’s ‘coming out’ scene many years later.
Following criticism from trans activists, ITV recruited trans actress Annie Wallace as a research assistant to work with Hesmondhalgh on the role. In 2015, Wallace joined Hollyoaks, becoming the first transgender person to play a regular transgender character on a British soap opera.
Hayley went on to exceed her problematic origins and win the hearts of audiences, educating them, as she did so, on the prejudices and legal barriers trans people faced. Hesmondhalgh, a trans ally and supporter of the charity Trans Media Watch, has, however, reflected that, as a cis actor, she “definitely wouldn’t take it” if the role was offered to her today.
6. Queer as Folk (1999)
Back on Channel 4, 1999 saw the broadcast of another groundbreaking show: Queer as Folk, written by Russell T Davies. Based around Manchester’s gay village, Queer as Folk broke boundaries with an unapologetic portrayal of the lives, loves and lusts of a group of queer characters.
From explicit sex scenes to queer family making, the series’ represented LGBTQ+ lives in previously unseen ways. This radical visibility was, however, largely limited to white gay male characters – reflecting longstanding inequalities in media representation.
The trailer for Queer as Folk.
In later work, Davies has represented a more diverse spectrum of LGBTQ+ experience. Returning to Manchester’s queer scene again in 2015, anthology series Banana (2015) began with the story of Dean, a young Black gay man portrayed by British Nigerian actor Fisayo Akinade, and featured Bethany Black as the first trans actor to play a trans role in a British series (a few months before Annie Wallace joined Hollyoaks).
The following years have seen more, and more diverse, examples of LGBTQ+ representation on TV. But tired tropes and exclusions continue, and the power of representation to shape possibilities, protections and prejudices is more pressing than ever.
Kate McNicholas Smith 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.
The word antisemitism has become so debased that depending on who is using it I might well take it as a sign that the accused is worth listening to.
When the World Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest, he responded by saying the court was being antisemitic. One of the court’s legal advisers was Theodor Meron, a former Israeli ambassador and legal adviser who spent a chunk of his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp.
Last month, Netanyahu declared the leaders of France, the UK and Canada of fuelling antisemitism.
Their “crime”? Threatening “concrete action” against Israel if it continues its “egregious” blockade of aid entering Gaza.
Egregious not genocidal. And the concrete action referred to wasn’t sanctions or a full arms embargo but stalling free trade talks.
The bitter irony is that with none of those countries having yet imposed a complete ban on arms exports to Israel they are all in a sense fuelling a genocide.
The Army-McCarthy hearings We’re coming up to the 71st anniversary of the Army-McCarthy hearings where an army lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy with the famous line: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
We’ll be waiting a long time for the wanted war criminal Netanyahu to show any decency, but could we be approaching a tipping point where the establishment finally calls off a witch hunt after realising no one is safe from false accusations.
The McCarthyite red scare, which began in the late 1940s, saw more than 2000 federal workers sacked, thousands of academics, teachers, and union members pressured or forced to resign due to anti-communist policies, and up to 500 Hollywood directors and actors blacklisted for being leftwing or refusing to name names.
Welch’s rebuke was triggered by none of that. It was McCarthy turning his metaphorical guns onto the military implying he would expose high ranking army personnel that saw the army lawyer return fire.
The conflating of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been spectacularly successful in making any criticism of Israel a potentially career ending move. Three Ivy League presidents have been pushed out of their jobs for failing to crack down hard enough on students protesting the brutality of Israel’s ongoing genocide.
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose popularity had seen the party become the biggest political movement in Europe, was toppled in 2016 after bogus accusations of antisemitism.
In the purge of the Labour Party that followed Jews were five times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism than goys.
It’s the same story in Germany where Jews feature prominently among those cancelled for alleged antisemitism. Renowned professor of Jewish studies Peter Schäfe was forced to resign as the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum after it retweeted a post critical of Germany’s anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions.
Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis — not a Jew — has been banned from Germany or even appearing via Zoom for this response, on 8 October 2023, to being asked if he condemned Hamas:
“I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning, but inexorable, ethnic cleansing programme. As a European, it is important to refrain from condemning either the Israelis or the Palestinians when it is us, Europeans, who have caused this never-ending tragedy: after practising rabid anti-Semitism for centuries, leading up to the uniquely vile Holocaust, we have been complicit for decades with the slow genocide of Palestinians, as if two wrongs make one right.”
That nuanced response, with its acknowledgement of the dreadful legacy of real antisemitism, has not only seen him banned from speaking — in person or virtually — but dropped by his German publisher.
Antisemitism is often referred to as the oldest hatred — with good reason — but the word itself is relatively recent.
A ‘scientific’ word for an old hatred Nineteenth century German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, popularised the term in a pamphlet the title of which translates as: The way to victory of Germanism over Judaism.
What distinguished antisemitism from the commonly used Judenhass — or Jewish hate — was the idea that it was a Jew’s race not their religion that was deserving of hate.
Antisemitism was a prejudice proud to speak its name. It was respectable in a way that religious intolerance wasn’t. Prominent professors and politicians happily declared themselves antisemites and adherents of “scientific racism”.
It was an old idea dressed up in new clothing. Fifteenth century Spain passed Limpieza de Sangre (cleanliness of blood) statutes to allow discrimination against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity.
The Judeo-Christian civilisational conflict with Islam, often referred to by right-wing supporters of Israel, is a relatively new construct. When the Jews were expelled from Spain, the Ottomans sent ships to take them to new homes in Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Izmer.
Times change and while it was once possible — even common — to be a respectable antisemite and scientific racist but frowned upon to discriminate based on religious belief, now the reverse is true.
So-called new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins declare all religions bad but Islam worse.
“Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?” Dawkins once tweeted.
The cultures of Europe have indeed cultivated racist ideas for centuries. And just as half a millennia ago conversion offered you no protection from the racism of the Spanish court, embracing Buddhism didn’t protect Columbia University student Moshen Mahdawi from being snatched from a naturalisation interview by balaclava-clad ICE agents.
His crime? Being Palestinian and telling his story.
It’s a topsy-turvy world where life-long anti-fascists like Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis are sanctioned on bogus claims of antisemitism while the likes of Elon Musk and Hungarian PM Victor Orban — both peddlers of old-style antisemitic conspiracies — are welcomed to Israel as friends and allies in a contrived battle of civilisations.
One thing that differentiates antisemitism from the Judeophobia, which has been a European disease since the early days of Christianity, is that it places Jews among the victims of the continent’s white supremacist legacy.
It’s perhaps no coincidence the Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas in the same year, 1492, that Spain expelled its Jews and Muslims.
The settler colonisation of the Americas has been estimated by historian David Stannard to have resulted in the death of 100 million indigenous people — many from introduced diseases but tens of millions also died in genocides only recently making their way into history books.
Last month, when Netanyahu declared Israel’s attacks on Gaza “a war against human beasts” he was echoing the words of settler colonialists from Alaska to Aotearoa and the dehumanising language of the Nazis against the Jews.
So, back to that question about whether we’ve reached a tipping point where unfair accusations of antisemitism will be seen in a similar light to McCarthy’s red scare.
With Netanyahu accusing the leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, an IDF reserve major-general, of promoting a blood libel for speaking out against the starving of babies in Gaza, it’s hard not to draw parallels with the Army-McCarthy hearings.
It’s worth quoting the words that saw Israel’s PM accuse Golan of a blood libel — a reference to the lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children in the baking of matzos, and a trigger for centuries of pogroms.
“A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population.”
The idea that an IDF general speaking out against the killing of babies is propagating racist hatred of Jews is surely a leap too far even for many fervent Zionists.
Another sign that the tide might be turning is Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, saying the US administration’s weaponisation of the IHRA definition is making academics and students (including Jews) less safe.
The self-described Zionist said the definition was being distorted and used to silence anti-Israel critics.
The IHRA working definition has been widely adopted internationally — including by institutions in New Zealand and Australia.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both criticised the definition claiming it has seen those documenting Israel’s human rights abuses being falsely accused of antisemitism.
It’s a tragedy that weaponised accusations of antisemitism aimed at protecting Israel from criticism are obscuring a rise in Judeophobic conspiracy theories and attacks on Jewish community centres and synagogues around the world.
And even more tragically that those accusations are blunting criticisms of Israel that could help bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end.
Ngũgi wa Thiong’o reads from his work in Mexico in 2017. He wrote across a huge variety of genres.Tania Victoria/Secretaría de Cultura CDMX/Flickr, CC BY-SA
Celebrated Kenyan writer and decolonial scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’opassed away on 28 May at the age of 87. Many tributes and obituaries have appeared across the world, but we wanted to know more about Thiong’o the man and his thought processes. So we asked Charles Cantalupo, a leading scholar of his work, to tell us more.
Who was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – and who was he to you?
When I heard that Ngũgĩ had died, one of my first thoughts was about how far he had come in his life. No African writer has as many major, lasting creative achievements in such a wide range of genres as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. His books include novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism, poetry, memoirs and children’s books.
His fiction, nonfiction and plays from the early 1960s until today are frequently reprinted. Furthermore, Ngũgĩ’s monumental oeuvre is in two languages, English and Gĩkũyũ, and his works have been translated into many other languages.
From a large family in rural Kenya and a son of his father’s third wife, he was saved by his mother’s pushing him to be educated. This included a British high school in Kenya and Makerere University in Uganda.
When the brilliant young writer had his first big breakthrough at a 1962 meeting in Kampala, the Conference of African Writers of English Expression, he called himself “James Ngũgi”. This was also the name on the cover his first three novels. He had achieved fame already as an African writer but, as is often said, the best was yet to come.
Not until he co-wrote the play I Will Marry When I Want with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii was the name “Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o” on the cover of his books, including on the first modern novel written in Gĩkũyũ, Devil on the Cross (Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ).
I Will Marry When I Want was performed in 1977 in Gĩkũyũ in a local community centre. It was banned and Ngũgĩ was imprisoned for a year.
And still so much more was to come: exile from Kenya, professorships in the UK and US, book after book, fiction and nonfiction, myriad invited lectures and conferences all over the world, a stunning collection of literary awards (with the notable exception of the Nobel Prize for Literature), honorary degrees, and the most distinguished academic appointments in the US, from the east coast to the west.
Yet besides his mother’s influence and no doubt his own aptitude and determination, if one factor could be said to have fuelled his intellectual and literary evolution – from the red clay of Kenya into the firmament of world literary history – it was the language of his birth: Gĩkũyũ. From the stories his mother told him as a child to his own writing in Gĩkũyũ for a local, pan-African and international readership. He provided every reason why he should choose this path in his books of criticism and theory.
Ngũgĩ was also my friend for over three decades – through his US professorships, to Eritrea, to South Africa, to his finally moving to the US to live with his children. We had an ongoing conversation – in person, during many literary projects, over the phone and the internet.
Our friendship started in 1993, when I first interviewed him. He was living in exile from Kenya in Orange, New Jersey, where I was born. We both felt at home at the start of our working together. We felt the same way together through the conferences, books, translations, interviews and the many more literary projects that followed.
What are his most important works?
Since Ngũgĩ was such a voluminous and highly varied writer, he has many different important works. His earliest and historical novels like A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. His regime-shaking plays.
His critical and controversial novels like Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood. His more experimental and absolutely modern novels like Matigari and Wizard of the Crow.
His epoch-making literary criticism like Decolonising the Mind. His informal and captivating three volumes of memoirs written later in life. His retelling in poetry of a Gĩkũyũ epic, The Perfect Nine, his last great book. A reader of Ngũgĩ can have many a heart’s desire.
My book, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts, was based on the three-day conference of the same name that I organised in the US. At the time, it was the largest conference ever held on an African writer anywhere in the world.
What I learned back then applies now more than ever. There are no limits to the interest that Ngũgĩ’s work can generate anytime anywhere and in any form. I saw it happen in 1994 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I see it now 30 years later in the outpouring of interest and recognition all over the world at Ngũgĩ’s death.
In 1993, he had published a book of essays titled Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Focusing on Ngũgĩ’s work, the conference and the book were “moving the centre” in Ngũgĩ’s words, “to real creative centres among the working people in conditions of gender, racial, and religious equality”.
What are your takeaways from your discussions with him?
First, African languages are the key to African development, including African literature. Ngũgĩ comprehensively explored and advocated this fundamental premise in over 40 years of teaching, lectures, interviews, conversations and throughout his many books of literary criticism and theory. Also, he epitomised it, writing his later novels in Gĩkũyũ, including his magnum opus, Wizard of the Crow.
Moreover, he codified his declaration of African language independence in co-writing The Asmara Declaration, which has been widely translated. It advocates for the importance and recognition of African languages and literatures.
Second, literature and writing are a world and not a country. Every single place and language can be omnicentric: translation can overcome any border, boundary, or geography and make understanding universal. Be it Shakespeare’s English, Dante’s Italian, Ngugi’s Gĩkũyũ, the Bible’s Hebrew and Aramaic, or anything else, big or small.
Third, on a more personal level, when I first met Ngũgĩ, I was a European American literary scholar and a poet with little knowledge of Africa and its literature and languages, much less of Ngũgĩ himself. He was its favourite son. But this didn’t stop him from giving me the idea and making me understand how African languages contained the seeds of an African Renaissance if only they were allowed to grow.
I knew that the historical European Renaissance rooted, grew, flourished and blossomed through its writers in European vernacular languages. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and more took the place of Latin in expressing the best that was being thought and said in their countries. Yet translation between and among these languages as well as from classical Latin and Greek culture, plus biblical texts and cultures, made them ever more widely shared and understood.
From Ngũgĩ discussing African languages I took away a sense that African writers, storytellers, people, arts, and cultures could create a similar paradigm and overcome colonialism, colonial languages, neocolonialism and anything else that might prevent greatness.
Charles Cantalupo 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.
Kris Jenner’s “new” face sparked myriad headlines about how she can look so good at 69 years old. While she’s not confirmed what sort of procedures she’s undergone, speculation abounds.
As a US reality TV personality, socialite and Kardashian matriarch, Jenner has long curated her on-screen identity. Her fame and fortune are intimately tied to a multinational cosmetics industry that has, for centuries, bartered in the illusion of timeless beauty.
The pursuit of cosmetic enhancement can be traced back as far as Ancient Egypt, reminding us the desire to look younger is hardly new.
But while many women try in vain to battle the ageing process, Jenner is an example of someone who’s actually succeeded, at least visually. What does that mean for the rest of us?
Decades of surgeries
Modern cosmetic plastic surgery has its roots in compassion. It was developed to help disfigured first world war soldiers rebuild their faces and identities.
But this origin story has been sidelined. Today, aesthetic procedures are overwhelmingly pursued by women and marketed as lifestyle enhancements rather than medical interventions.
Advancements in reconstructive surgery were made after both world wars with treatments on wounded soldiers. AFP/Getty Images
Plastic surgery, once considered extreme or shameful, began to gain popularity in the 1960s, and is now widespread.
Hollywood has long played a role in shaping these standards. During its Golden Age, stars like Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne are reported to have undergone cosmetic surgeries – rhinoplasty (nose jobs), chin implants, facelifts – to preserve their screen personas.
Even before Instagram, before-and-after images were a cultural obsession, often used to shame or expose.
From taboo to trend
The digital age has further normalised cosmetic enhancements, with social media influencers and celebrities promoting procedures alongside beauty products.
It’s estimated Jenner spent upwards of US$130,000 (around A$200,000) on cosmetic interventions, resulting in a look that some media outlets suggest places her in her 30s.
On Jenner, social media users are split. Some offer aspirational praise (“If I had the money, I’d get it all done!”), while others criticise her rejection of “ageing gracefully”.
Yet many stars, including Courtney Cox, Ariana Grande, and Mickey Rourke, have spoken openly about regrets and the psychological toll of these procedures. Even with agency, the pressure remains immense.
Youth as a cultural ideal
This obsession with agelessness reflects a deeper societal discomfort with visible ageing, particularly in women.
Celebrities, with access to elite medical professionals and procedures, seem to cheat time.
Yet the outcome of is often disorienting: when Jenner appears younger than her children, the generational lines blur.
This erasure of age difference entrenches youth as an end in itself. It also destabilises how we perceive kinship and mortality.
Supermodel Bella Hadid has said she regrets getting a rhinoplasty as a teenager. Of Palestinian descent, she said “I wish I’d kept the nose of my ancestors”.
In my own research, I’ve argued cosmetic enhancement is tied to a cultural denial of death.
The ageing isn’t the problem – it’s our refusal to accept it.
The desperate clinging to youth reflects a collective resistance to change. Celebrity culture and consumer capitalism exploit this vulnerability, making age a problem to be solved rather than a life stage to be honoured.
We should mourn our ageing, not erase it. In another world, we could witness it, share it, and celebrate its quiet, powerful beauty.
So what about us?
But that’s not the world many live in, and the pressure extends beyond Hollywood.
With filters, apps, and social media platforms, ordinary people also curate and enhance their images, playing their part in a fantasy of perfection.
A recent study looked at the way young Australians use selfie editing tools. It found the widespread use of such apps have a significant effect on the body image of young people.
The line between self-care and self-deception has never been blurrier. We all want to present the best version of ourselves, even if reality slips into illusion.
So while women have long tried to outrun visible ageing, whether that be through anti-wrinkle creams or more invasive means, Jenner is an example of something relatively rare: a woman who’s actually managed to do it.
In doing so, she and her celebrity counterparts set a new youthful beauty standard in what ageing should (or shouldn’t) look like.
And while that standard may be felt by a variety of women, few will be able to achieve it.
Extremely wealthy beauty moguls like Kris Jenner can afford elite treatments, while most people face growing financial pressure and a cost-of-living crisis. The divide isn’t just aesthetic – it’s economic.
Beauty, in this context, is both a product and a privilege.
And of course, judgement of women’s appearances remains a powerful force for discrediting their political, social, and moral worth. For every bit of praise there is for Jenner’s “youthful” appearance, there are videos claiming she’s “ruined her face” and questioning of whether she should spend so much money on such a cause.
As long as gender inequality persists and beauty remains a currency of value, the pressure to conform will endure.
Margaret Gibson 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.
Black and white rhino populations in the Greater Kruger (Kruger National Park and surrounding reserves) in South Africa have plummeted from over 10,000 rhinos in 2010 to around 2,600 in 2023. Hundreds of rhinos are killed each year by poachers for their horns. These are sold on the illegal global market.
Nature reserve managers, rangers, international funders, and local non-profit organisations have invested millions of dollars in anti-poaching interventions. These include tracking dogs to track poachers, artificial intelligence-enabled detection cameras, helicopters to monitor reserves and, more recently, dehorning (removing rhinos’ horns reduces the incentive for poachers).
Together, managers and scientists gathered seven years of rhino poaching data across 2.4 million hectares in the north-eastern region of South Africa and western Mozambique. During this time, we documented the poaching of 1,985 rhinos across 11 reserves in the Greater Kruger area. This number is about 6.5% of the rhino populations in these reserves annually.
This landscape is a critical global stronghold that conserves around 25% of all Africa’s rhinos.
Our study’s headline result was that dehorning rhinos to reduce incentives for poaching achieved a 78% reduction in poaching (average reduction across implementing reserves). This was based on comparison between sites with and without dehorning as well as changes in poaching before and after dehorning. Exactly 2,284 rhinos were dehorned across eight reserves over the seven years of our research – this was most of the rhino in the region.
Our findings show that significant progress can be made against rhino poaching by reducing the reward attached to poaching (removing the horn). This is a strategic shift in focus away from purely focusing on increasing risks to poachers.
But we are being careful to note that dehorning is not a complete solution. Our research found that 111 rhinos were poached even though they had been dehorned. This is because up to 15cm of horn is left on the rhino when it is dehorned by veterinarians. This is to protect the growth plate at the base of the horn.
Rhinos’ horns regrow over time. During our fieldwork, we also noticed that criminal syndicates remain willing to kill rhinos for their stumps, even if they do this at lower rates than before dehorning.
It may be best to think of dehorning as a very effective but short-term solution that buys us time to address the more ultimate drivers of poaching: horn demand, socio-economic inequality, corruption, and organised criminal networks.
A different approach to pinning down the problem
Part of what made our study special was its strong focus on collaboration between managers and scientists. The project was first conceived by reserve managers at the frontline of rhino conservation and led by Sharon Haussmann, chief executive officer of the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation. They recognised the need to take a look at whether their investments into tracking dogs, artificial intelligence cameras and other anti-poaching interventions were paying off.
Faced with a poaching crisis despite millions of dollars invested in law enforcement, security and technology, Sharon and the team were bold enough to ask: “Why are we still losing so many rhinos? What could we do differently?” These managers then began working closely with scientists to tackle this problem together through our research.
Tragically, Sharon died unexpectedly on 31 May, less than a week before our research was published. We want to dedicate this research to her legacy.
Detecting and arresting poachers alone is not enough
The nature reserves we studied had invested US$74 million (R1 billion) in anti-poaching interventions between 2017 and 2021. Most of the investment focused on reactive law enforcement – rangers, tracking dogs, helicopters, access controls and detection cameras. This helped achieve over 700 poacher arrests. Yet we found no statistical evidence that these interventions significantly reduced poaching.
Why? These interventions are a necessary element of the anti-poaching toolkit. But they were compromised by bigger challenges. For example, stark socio-economic inequality in the region creates the ideal conditions for crime to thrive, and criminal syndicates find it easy to recruit people willing to take the large risk of poaching rhino.
Entrenched corruption among police and reserve staff allowed offenders access to inside information on the locations of dogs, cameras and rhinos. This meant that poaching was not deterred as much as it could have been.
Finally, ineffective criminal justice systems mean that arrested offenders often escape punishment, with evidence from the Greater Kruger of poachers who were multiple repeat offenders.
What can be done differently?
A range of interventions will be needed to complement dehorning, particularly as poaching for stumps would probably continue if there were no risk to poachers. There is also some evidence that dehorning rhino in one area means poachers may move to another area where rhino still have horns and poach there instead. (This has happened in South Africa’s second largest rhino stronghold in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park where rhino have not been dehorned.)
Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom that detecting and arresting poachers is enough on its own. Instead, we recommend these measures:
Give local people a voice and a stake. Many people affected by rhino conservation have no say and don’t share in the benefits of the industry.
Disrupt transnational criminal networks outside protected areas through intelligence-led investigations (follow the money).
Continue supporting dehorning in the short term. This will buy time to solve the biggest drivers of wildlife crime: inequality, horn demand, and corruption.
Dehorning needs to be supported by other measures to protect the rhino.
Support people first, then interventions. Rangers are key here – their welfare, wages, training and safety are not always given the attention or funding they deserve.
Keep loving rhinos and buying your kids pyjamas with them on.
Timothy Kuiper has received funding from the National Research Foundation in South Africa.
This week the US Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed two men suspected of bombing a fertility clinic in California last month allegedly used artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain bomb-making instructions. The FBI did not disclose the name of the AI program in question.
This brings into sharp focus the urgent need to make AI safer. Currently we are living in the “wild west” era of AI, where companies are fiercely competing to develop the fastest and most entertaining AI systems. Each company wants to outdo competitors and claim the top spot. This intense competition often leads to intentional or unintentional shortcuts – especially when it comes to safety.
Coincidentally, at around the same time of the FBI’s revelation, one of the godfathers of modern AI, Canadian computer science professor Yoshua Bengio, launched a new nonprofit organisation dedicated to developing a new AI model specifically designed to be safer than other AI models – and target those that cause social harm.
So what is Bengio’s new AI model? And will it actually protect the world from AI-faciliated harm?
An ‘honest’ AI
In 2018, Bengio, alongside his colleagues Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, won the Turing Award for groundbreaking research they had published three years earlier on deep learning. A branch of machine learning, deep learning attempts to mimic the processes of the human brain by using artificial neural networks to learn from computational data and make predictions.
Bengio’s new nonprofit organisation, LawZero, is developing “Scientist AI”. Bengio has said this model will be “honest and not deceptive”, and incorporate safety-by-design principles.
According to a preprint paper released online earlier this year, Scientist AI will differ from current AI systems in two key ways.
First, it can assess and communicate its confidence level in its answers, helping to reduce the problem of AI giving overly confident and incorrect responses.
Second, it can explain its reasoning to humans, allowing its conclusions to be evaluated and tested for accuracy.
Interestingly, older AI systems had this feature. But in the rush for speed and new approaches, many modern AI models can’t explain their decisions. Their developers have sacrificed explainability for speed.
Bengio also intends “Scientist AI” to act as a guardrail against unsafe AI. It could monitor other, less reliable and harmful AI systems — essentially fighting fire with fire.
This may be the only viable solution to improve AI safety. Humans cannot properly monitor systems such as ChatGPT, which handle over a billion queries daily. Only another AI can manage this scale.
Large language models and machine learning are just small parts of today’s AI landscape.
Another key addition Bengio’s team are adding to Scientist AI is the “world model” which brings certainty and explainability. Just as humans make decisions based on their understanding of the world, AI needs a similar model to function effectively.
The absence of a world model in current AI models is clear.
One well-known example is the “hand problem”: most of today’s AI models can imitate the appearance of hands but cannot replicate natural hand movements, because they lack an understanding of the physics — a world model — behind them.
Yoshua Bengio is recognised as one of the godfathers of AI. Alex Wong/Getty Images
On the right track – but it will be bumpy
Bengio is on the right track, aiming to build safer, more trustworthy AI by combining large language models with other AI technologies.
However, his journey isn’t going to be easy. LawZero’s US$30 million in funding is small compared to efforts such as the US$500 billion project announced by US President Donald Trump earlier this year to accelerate the development of AI.
There’s also an outstanding question. Even if Bengio can build an AI system that does everything he says it can, how is it going to be able to control other systems that might be causing harm?
Still, this project, with talented researchers behind it, could spark a movement toward a future where AI truly helps humans thrive. If successful, it could set new expectations for safe AI, motivating researchers, developers, and policymakers to prioritise safety.
Perhaps if we had taken similar action when social media first emerged, we would have a safer online environment for young people’s mental health. And maybe, if Scientist AI had already been in place, it could have prevented people with harmful intentions from accessing dangerous information with the help of AI systems.
Armin Chitizadeh 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 report on the United States nuclear weapons testing legacy in the Marshall Islands highlights the lack of studies into important health concerns voiced by Marshallese for decades that make it impossible to have a clear understanding of the impacts of the 67 nuclear weapons tests.
The report was funded by Greenpeace Germany and is an outgrowth of the organisation’s flagship vessel, Rainbow Warrior III, visiting the Marshall Islands from March to April to recognise the 40th anniversary of the resettlement of the nuclear test-affected population of Rongelap Atoll.
Dr Mahkijani said that among the “many troubling aspects” of the legacy is that the United States had concluded, in 1948, after three tests, that the Marshall Islands was not “a suitable site for atomic experiments” because it did not meet the required meteorological criteria.
Dr Makhijani highlights the point that, despite early documentation in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test and numerous anecdotal reports from Marshallese women about miscarriages and still births, US government medical officials in charge of managing the nuclear test-related medical programme in the Marshall Islands never systematically studied birth anomalies.
Committed billions of dollars The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration, Kurt Cambell, said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damages and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he told reporters at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Nuku’alofa last year.
“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”
Among points outlined in the new report:
Gamma radiation levels at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, officially considered a “very low exposure” atoll, were tens of times, and up to 300 times, more than background in the immediate aftermaths of the thermonuclear tests in the Castle series at Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Thyroid doses in the so-called “low exposure atolls” averaged 270 milligray (mGy), 60 percent more than the 50,000 people of Pripyat near Chernobyl who were evacuated (170 mGy) after the 1986 accident there, and roughly double the average thyroid exposures in the most exposed counties in the United States due to testing at the Nevada Test Site.
Women from the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll greeted the Rainbow Warrior and its crew with songs and dances as part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Rainbow Warrior. Image: RNZ Pacific/Giff Johnson
Despite this, “only a small fraction of the population has been officially recognised as exposed enough for screening and medical attention; even that came with its own downsides, including people being treated as experimental subjects,” the report said.
Women reported adverse outcomes “In interviews and one 1980s country-wide survey, women have reported many adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said the report.
“They include stillbirths, a baby with part of the skull missing and ‘the brain and the spinal cord fully exposed,’ and a two-headed baby. Many of the babies with major birth defects died shortly after birth.
“Some who lived suffered very difficult lives, as did their families. Despite extensive personal testimony, no systematic country-wide scientific study of a possible relationship of adverse pregnancy outcomes to nuclear testing has been done.
“It is to be noted that awareness among US scientists of the potential for major birth defects due to radioactive fallout goes back to the 1950s. Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivor data has also provided evidence for this problem.
“The occurrence of stillbirths and major birth defects due to nuclear testing fallout in the Marshall Islands is scientifically plausible but no definitive statement is possible at the present time,” the report concluded.
“The nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands created a vast amount of fission products, including radioactive isotopes that cross the placenta, such as iodine-131 and tritium.
“Radiation exposure in the first trimester can cause early failed pregnancies, severe neurological damage, and other major birth defects.
No definitive statement possible “This makes it plausible that radiation exposure may have caused the kinds of adverse pregnancy outcomes that were experienced and reported.
“However, no definitive statement is possible in the absence of a detailed scientific assessment.”
Scientists who traveled with the Rainbow Warrior III on its two-month visit to the Marshall Islands earlier this year collected samples from Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap and other atolls for scientific study and evaluation.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In October 2021, 136 countries agreed to establish new tax rules requiring large multinational companies to pay at least 15% in corporate tax. Nearly four years later, this ambitious agreement is finally being implemented around the world, but its success faces big challenges.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tax framework aims to end the so-called race to the bottom, where corporations pit countries against each other to pay less tax and shift profits to jurisdictions with lower tax rates.
In the second part of The 15% solution from The Conversation Weekly podcast, we examine progress towards implementing the global tax deal.
The OECD’s two-pillar system fundamentally changes how multinationals are taxed. Pillar One determines where companies pay taxes. Pillar Two establishes how much they must pay: a minimum of 15% for any multinational with yearly revenues above US$850 million. The innovative aspect of the system is that it is self-enforcing. If a company pays less than 15% in any country, other nations where it operates can charge a supplementary tax to meet that minimum.
However, implementation faces significant obstacles. So far around 140 countries have signed up. President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the negotiations in February 2025. China supports the framework in theory but is slow to fully implement it. And some low- and middle-income countries have also not signed up, citing technical complexity or bias toward higher-income countries.
Martin Hearson, a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK, explains that for countries with fewer legal and administrative resources, even good rules can be counterproductive due to their complexity. This has led some countries to look for alternatives, including a new UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, for which negotiations began in February 2025.
Despite these challenges, the OECD expects that approximately 80% of profits previously taxed at low rates will now be appropriately taxed.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.
Martin Hearson’s research has been supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Gates Foundation, the Intergovernmental Group of 24, the World Bank, the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs, and ActionAid International.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Misheck Mutize, Post Doctoral Researcher, Graduate School of Business (GSB), University of Cape Town
Over the past two decades, African countries have increasingly turned to international capital markets to meet their development financing needs. For example, Kenya and Benin raised a combined US$2.5 billion through bond issuances during the first half of 2025. Proceeds were used to repay maturing bonds. This means new bonds, with unfavourable terms, are being issued to pay previous lenders.
Yet African bonds are substantially mispriced, resulting in excessively high yields that are not justified by fundamentals – based on economic, fiscal and institutional strengths. Mispricing occurs when a country has high economic growth, stable institutions that support government policy implementation, rule of law and accountability, yet its bonds trade at higher yields than those of its peers. In other words, there will be every reason for investors to trust that the country will repay what it owes, but they still expect a higher return. This is happening because of lack of information and biases perpetuated by global entities that are facilitating bond sells in Africa.
Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have strong growth (5% to 6.5%), yet they face high yields on their bonds (7.8% to 8.2%) compared to Namibia and Morocco with approximately 3% growth and bond interest of 6%.
This mispricing imposes a heavy debt servicing burden on already constrained public budgets.
At the same time African countries face a puzzling paradox: while they’re paying more for the debt they’re raising, the demand for these bonds is much higher (oversubscribed). All bond issuances in Africa are subscribed by as much as over five times. This has only been common in Africa. It is puzzling why governments are not leveraging on the high demand to bargain for lower interest rates.
In my view, based on my bond pricing modelling expertise, I believe that mispricing of Eurobonds in Africa – debt instruments issued by a country in a currency different from its own – is not a market anomaly. It shows internal capacity failures in African countries, structural market biases and insufficient understanding of the complex mechanics of global debt markets.
Oversubscription of Eurobonds should be a source of power for African governments, not a missed opportunity. African countries can move from being price takers to price negotiators. They should be able to reduce debt costs, freeing up resources for development.
But to get there African countries need to address the power imbalance in the markets.
Governments need to invest in bond pricing expertise to increase their negotiating power.
The false success signal of oversubscription
There are several reasons why African bonds remain mispriced at a higher interest despite the oversubscriptions.
Firstly, a lack of technical expertise in primary bond issuance in the debt management offices of the majority of African governments. Very few on the continent have intelligence systems for gathering information on financial markets and formal investor relations programmes. Neither do they have in-house quantitative analysts or pricing specialists capable of engaging investment banks on an equal footing during roadshows and negotiations.
The debt management offices are unable to engage confidently and critically with financial intermediaries to challenge assumptions, simulate pricing scenarios and conduct their own comparative market analysis.
After initial public offers, most governments don’t engage with holders of their bonds on the secondary market. Nor do they monitor bond post-issuance performance. The lack of interest in the secondary market has created a feedback loop where poor market intelligence has contributed to high coupons on new issuances.
Secondly, advanced economies engage investors regularly through briefings, roadshows and timely reports. Communication by African governments is often ad hoc and usually limited to the period around a new bond issuance.
This prevents investors from forming informed, long-term views. It leads to a default risk premium in pricing.
Thirdly, debt issuance by African governments is often politically driven rather than strategically timed. Often this leads to rushed or ill-prepared entries.
Sometimes it’s done when the cost of debt is rising globally, close to election cycles, or because governments are facing a financial crunch caused by falling reserves.
Fourth, African sovereigns often approach the Eurobond market with weak negotiating power. They are heavily reliant on a small pool of western investment banks as technical advisors to manage the bond issuance. These banks tend to be more inclined towards their own global investment client networks. Their incentives are not aligned with achieving the lowest possible yield for the issuers.
African issuers often accept the initial price guidance from advisors and agree to high yields even in oversubscribed situations. Even when demand could support a lower yield, African issuers fail to negotiate pricing downwards. Issuing syndicates have no incentive to push for optimal pricing for the issuer as they receive transaction-based fees.
The role of bond issuing syndicates is a major factor in the mispricing. In bond issuance, a syndicate is a group of financial institutions that structures the bond, price and market (also known bookbuilding), underwrite the unsold portion of the bond, sell the bond to their investors, and ensure compliance and documentation. These syndicates set coupon rates higher than necessary as a conservative hedge against perceived investor scepticism.
African governments have become passive participants rather than active price-setters. African-based bond syndicates are systematically bypassed despite growing regional capacity and distribution networks. Bond issues are also allocated to offshore buyers, sidelining local institutional investors.
Breaking the cycle of mispricing
To correct the systemic Eurobond mispricing and reduce debt servicing costs, African countries must undertake reforms.
First, governments should invest in debt management capacity.
Second, they must actively monitor secondary market trading to identify opportunities such as bond buybacks and exchanges that could improve the debt profile. Real-time analytics on bond trading performance should inform future issuance terms and investor communication strategies.
Third, governments must build institutional routines for submitting data, and proactively engage investors and rating agencies. This will challenge and influence risk assumptions. Investors need consistent assurances, especially on the ability to easily exit positions.
Fourth, African countries need to maintain and monitor up-to-date benchmarks from peers with comparable pricing data. Without accurate comparisons, it is difficult to know whether the proposed bond pricing by syndicates is fair and accurate. They must stop solely relying on what investment banks recommends.
Lastly, African governments should involve at least one African-based syndicate member, prioritise allocation to African institutional investors and promote regional arrangements with international banks to ensure knowledge transfer and equitable participation.
Misheck Mutize is affiliated with the African Union as a Lead Expert on Credit Ratings
New guidelines to regulate Australia’s booming cosmetic procedures industry have been called “tough” and “a crackdown” in media reports this week.
On Tuesday, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) announced the new guidelines – one for procedures, the other for advertising – and said it put the lucrative industry “on notice”.
The guidelines stem from AHPRA’s 2023 review of non-surgical cosmetic procedures – think injectables (such as Botox and dermal fillers), laser skin resurfacing, chemical peels, hair transplants and more.
That review was established only after AHPRA investigated widespread reports about unsafe practices in cosmetic surgery in 2022, exposing risks and deficiencies in both the surgical and non-surgical cosmetics sector.
These included the predatory targeting of under-18s, inadequate training for practitioners, and poor screening of patients. For example, 52-second telehealth consultations.
So, how tough are these guidelines? And can they be enforced?
What do the guidelines say?
The new rules aim to put safety before sales and cover many more issues than any previous guidance.
These new rules ban financial incentives, discounts and other financial arrangements, such as “contra deals” – where Botox injections might be administered in exchange for restaurant meals, as occurred in one New South Wales case.
They also ban perks for social media influencers, who often get free treatments.
The guidelines confirm influencers recruited by practitioners should not create unreasonable expectations of benefits for patients (which is already against the law if practitioners do it). If influencers do, the recruiting practitioner will be responsible.
The new rules for health practitioners aim to make non-surgical procedures safer. Tijana Simic/Shutterstock
Botox is a prescription-only drug subject to strict controls.
But several practitioners have been disciplined for administering or procuring it inappropriately, such as in day spas or by arranging “remote” prescriptions by email. Recent cases of unregistered people injecting it at parties, resulting in botulism (a serious condition), also suggest gaps in oversight.
The new rules allow only suitably trained practitioners to prescribe these drugs following an in-person or video consultation. Batch prescribing – issuing prescriptions for multiple patients – is now clearly unacceptable.
The guidelines emphasise skills and training. Registered nurses will now need a year’s experience in other fields before giving cosmetic treatments. Enrolled nurses will be expected to first have a year of supervised, relevant experience.
There must also be robust protocols to manage any complications after a procedure. Practitioners must provide detailed aftercare instructions, and ensure patients are aware of their right to complain and to whom.
The guidelines address this by requiring registered nurses and nurse practitioners to thoroughly assess a patient’s suitability for a treatment.
They must confirm the patient’s expectations are realistic, discuss risks and alternatives (including no treatment), be transparent about their own skills and experience, and explain all costs.
The guidelines specify that screening assessments must check for underlying conditions, such as body dysmorphic disorder, which is known to be more common in those seeking cosmetic treatments.
Patients experiencing this condition would likely be unsuitable. That’s because people with body dysmorphic disorder are at higherrisk of poor psychosocial outcomes (such as poorer mental health or wellbeing).
If found unsuitable, patients must be refused treatment and referred to another appropriate practitioner, such as a psychologist, for appropriate support.
Overall, the new guidelines foster better informed consent processes. They prompt practitioners to screen for and discuss the psychosocial risks known to be associated with cosmetic procedures.
Consultations will have to screen patients to see if they’re suitable for treatment. Chay_Tee/Shutterstock
What about under 18s?
AHPRA says the new rules offer greater protection for young people through new safeguards and special rules for under-18s.
The guidelines say prescribing dermal fillers to minors is inappropriate. For other procedures, they require parental or guardian consent where practicable, and a cooling-off period of seven days between obtaining informed consent and the procedure.
However, health practitioners will still be able to exercise their clinical judgement for under-18s within the limits of the law.
Instead, they define the standards expected of all registered health practitioners who perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures – except doctors, who have their own guidelines.
If a health practitioner does not comply with the guidelines, the board responsible for their registration and accreditation – for example, the Nursing and Midwifery Board – can take “immediate action” to suspend them or launch disciplinary proceedings for extended sanctions.
Before now, there were no specific rules about cosmetic procedures – just the general (but important) codes of conduct for each profession.
The guidelines give real teeth to the bodies that regulate the health profession and will likely enable them to weed out bad actors from the cosmetic workforce. Even so, they cannot compensate or redress patient harms.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Capitalism is in crisis, and our species’ imagination to save ourselves is sorely lacking. There are of course understandings out there, and solutions; but they are so heavily gate-kept that conversations about saving ourselves are well-nigh impossible. It remains a puzzle why those political and intellectual leaders who would most benefit from a regime of socially inclusive capitalism have been so avid in their anti-reform gatekeeping.
The missing ingredient from the capitalism that most of us know, or know of, is ‘public equity’. Capitalism is presented to us all as a system of markets, individualism, laws, and private property rights. The crisis of capitalism can be addressed through the development of a set of public property rights, which we may call ‘public equity’. It is the establishment of public property rights that is necessary to democratise capitalism.
New Zealand’s surprising history of universal income
At the end of my Zero-Sum Fiscal Narratives (22 May 2025), I suggested that we need to promote a narrative of “public equity over pay equity as an efficient means to correct destabilising inequality”.
In global capitalism, the first real narrative of public equity – even though it wasn’t called that – belongs to the New Zealand social security reforms of 1938. And the particular policy announced in those reforms, and implemented in the 1940 financial year, was known as Universal Superannuation. This was the activation of a human right; the right of a country’s citizens, once they reached a certain age, to receive a private income in the form of a public dividend. Irrespective of race, sex, or creed.
At its initial conception, the ‘Super’ was modest; but was projected to grow, in accordance with affordability constraints and fiscal prioritisation. Most good big things start with small beginnings. An annual payment of $20 was set to commence in 1940. And it commenced in 1940. And the 1938 universal welfare state came in under budget (refer Elizabeth Hanson, The Politics of Social Security, 1980).
The concept of Universal Superannuation proved to be extremely popular; a policy from the radical centre that pleased most of the public, though – until its popularity was demonstrated in 1938 – few of the politicians and other ‘opinion leaders’. The policy came to be because Michael Joseph Savage felt that his Labour Government had to come good on its most important 1935 promise, and because the ‘left’ and ‘right’ proposals favoured by each of the two main factions of the Labour Government (fortunately) cancelled out in the political numbers game.
The universal proposal came through the middle, between left-wing attempts to radically extend redistributive measures favouring working-class families and Labour right-wing attempts to bring in an actuarial pension system based on the supposed ‘miracle’ of compound interest. The latter idea, pushed by the finance industry, was to create a contributory ‘money mountain’ from which pensions from some future date would be paid to retired working men. (This idea disclaimed the obvious reality that all spending of pension income – not just public pensions – represents a slice of present [not past] economic output.)
(On the miracle of compound interest, it is useful to imagine persons born around 1920 saving regular percentages of their salaries from early adulthood until age 65. Such persons became rich from home-ownership, not from compound interest.)
This retirement-income policy based on public equity was not successfully exported to the wider world. The war got in the way, and unconditional non-means-tested payments to citizens of a certain age never caught on internationally. The post-depression environment – a relatively sexually-egalitarian time – was displaced by a post-war environment, which favoured men. The more common post-war welfare model was, in its various guises, ‘social insurance’. And even Universal Superannuation in New Zealand came to be seen, increasingly, through a ‘social insurance lens’; recipients widely believed it was a contributory scheme.
The aim of initially Labour, and subsequently National, was to gradually raise the amount of Super paid until it would render redundant (and henceforth displace) the alternative means-tested Age Benefit. National became increasingly committed to the concept of universal income support, favouring taxable universal benefits which would in practice confer more to each low-income recipient than to each high-income recipient. In the 1950s and 1960s, income tax rates were much more heavily graduated than they have been since the 1980s. (‘Graduation’ of income tax rates means higher ‘marginal tax rates’ faced by people with higher incomes.)
By 1970, the full convergence between Universal Superannuation and the Age Benefit had still not been achieved. Retired persons would still choose either US or AB. The convergence eventually took place, in 1976.
The universality of Super was lost twice, by the same man, who came from ‘working class aristocracy’: Roger Douglas.
Douglas replaced Super with an actuarial (‘money mountain’ for men) system in 1974; a system which became ‘the election issue’ in 1975. This plan was conceived in the days before Equal Pay for women; ie conceived when ‘labour’ was still a highly male-gendered word in certain Labour circles. (Equal pay for women was legislated for in 1972, when Robert Muldoon was Finance Minister.)
Robert Muldoon won a resounding victory – like Savage in 1938 – by committing to Universal Superannuation (albeit under the name National Superannuation). Muldoon, when recreating Super, did so by retiring the Age Benefit, leaving Super as the only publicly-sourced retirement income.
About Douglas’s 1974 scheme, Margaret McLure (A Civilised Community, 1998) wrote (pp.190/91): “Douglas’ plan was rooted in early and mid-twentieth century English labour history… It drew on the 1904 ideas of Joseph Rowntree which had helped shape English social insurance, and on the English Fabian Society’s promotion of a union’s industrial pension plan of 1954… It rewarded the contribution of the fulltime long-serving male worker and provided him [and his dependent wife] with comfort and security in old age.” The full earnings-related benefit would only be payable on turning 60 to life-long workers born after 1957. It was less generous to others, and represented a backward-looking “narrow vision for the late twentieth century”. While more like the current bureaucratic Australian scheme (with its many hidden costs) than today’s New Zealand Superannuation, the Douglas scheme had inbuilt disincentives for people of ‘retirement age’ to continue in some form of paid work after becoming eligible for a pension. An older population – as in the 2030s – requires older workers with work-life flexibility.
Douglas, in the later-1980s, again removed the universality of Super by introducing a ‘tax surcharge’ on superannuitants’ privately-sourced income, an indirect way of converting Super into a means-tested Age Benefit. Douglas renamed National Superannuation ‘Guaranteed Retirement Income’. (Douglas liked the word ‘guaranteed’, using it as a label for other benefits too. ‘Guaranteed’ implies a ‘safety net – ie an income top-up – rather than an unconditional private income payable to all citizens of a certain age. Income top-ups come with poverty traps; very high [sometimes 100%] ‘effective marginal tax rates’, when increased income from one source displaces [rather than adding to] income from another source.)
Super was restored in 1997 as a universal income when Winston Peters was Treasurer in a coalition government; Peters, the heir to the universalist tradition within the National Party as it once was, has enabled Savage’s enlightened ‘public equity’ reform to survive to the present day, albeit as an international outlier.
A Right. Or a Benefit?
The presumption against universalist principles has come from Generation X, the generation born either side of 1970 who have never known any form of capitalism other than 1980s’ and post-1980s’ neoliberalism. (And noting that Roger Douglas was the poster-‘child’ in New Zealand of the neoliberal revolution which acted to restore capitalism to its neoclassical basics; markets, individualism, laws, private property, and public sector minimalism).
This week I read this from Liam Dann, journalist on all matters relating to capitalism, and very much a ‘Gen Xer’, who wrote: Inside Economics: Should you take New Zealand Superannuation if you don’t need it? 4 June 2025. Dann is trying to resolve the clear view of his parents’ generation that Super is a ‘right’, against his own view that Super is an age ‘benefit’; a benefit that should be bureaucratically ‘targeted’. (A benefit in this sense is a redistributive ‘transfer’. By contrast, an income ‘right’ is a shareholder’s equity dividend; in a public context, the word ‘shareholder’ equates to the word ‘citizen’.)
Liam Dann asks an excellent question though – “Should rich people opt out of NZ Super?” – albeit by misconstruing the opting process. New Zealand Super is in fact an ‘opt-in’ benefit, as Dann comes to realise. Much of the present opposition to Super comes from people who would rather that the money paid to the rich was instead paid to bureaucrats to stop the rich from getting it. In reality, there is probably a significant number of rich older people who don’t get Super because they never bothered applying to MSD to get it. As Dann notes, the government is remiss in not collecting data on the numbers of eligible people who do not opt in to NZS. (And journalists, before Dann, have been remiss in not asking for that data.)
We should also note that, in spite of indications that ‘first-world’ life expectancies are levelling out, and indeed falling in some countries, Denmark is looking to raise its age of eligibility for a public pension to 70. In my view, this is moving in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, it is possible to both move in the direction that I am suggesting below, while raising what might be called the age of ‘privileged retirement’, meaning the age at which older people are entitled, as of right, to a higher pension or pension-like income than other citizens.
A Universal Basic-Income has come to mean an unconditional publicly-sourced private income, available to all ‘citizens’ above a certain age, which satisfies some kind of sufficiency test. Thus, a UBI is meant to be sufficient, on its own; a ‘stand-alone income’. New Zealand Super (NZS) – the present name for Universal Superannuation (from 1940) and National Superannuation (from 1976) – is such an income, designed to meet a sufficiency test. In particular, the ‘married-rate’ Super – $24,776 for a year before tax – is a UBI in Aotearoa New Zealand, payable to people aged over 65 who meet a certain definition of ‘citizenship’; a definition that neither discriminates on the basis of sex, race, nor creed.
However, a UBI is considered, by many of its advocates, to be a sufficient adult income, not just a retirement income. Just as NZS is in practice, a UBI needs to be a complement to wages, not a substitute for wages.
Technically, it is very simple to convert the ‘married-rate’ NZS into a UBI for all adults. Just two things would need to be done: lower the age of entitlement to 18, and pay for it by removing the concessionary income tax brackets (10.5%, 17.5%, 30%). (The higher ‘non-married’ rates would continue to apply to people over 65.) Under this proposal, there would no longer be MSD benefits nor student allowances, though there would still be some benefit supplements for MSD to process, such as Accommodation Supplements and NZS ‘single-rate’ supplements.
This UBI proposal would not be fiscally neutral; though it would be less unaffordable than many people would guess. (In practice, a fiscal stimulus at present could pay for itself in increased growth-revenue in just a few years; it might even ‘return New Zealand to surplus’ sooner than realistic current projections.) For present superannuitants working part-time, it would represent a small reduction in after-tax income, given that they would be paying income tax on their wages at what is commonly known today as the “secondary tax rate”.
Other than fiscal non-neutrality, two objections to such a UBI would be these: New Zealand has too many workers who would not meet the present NZS definition of ‘citizen’; and the UBI would be too generous to young people not working and living with their parents.
So, while it might be less unworkable than many people would expect, this instant-UBI policy is not one I would favour.
SUI
SUI stands for Simple Universal-Income. Self. We note that the prefix ‘sui-‘ means ‘self’; equity rights are a development of liberal individualism, not of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’. Some people equate public property rights with Marxian collectivism, with the ‘nationalisation of the means of production’. They couldn’t be more wrong. Collectivist schemes involve full government retention of citizens’ incomes; they are schemes of government control; completely the opposite of universal income.
A universal private income drawn as a dividend from public wealth is individualism, not collectivism. Indeed, the natural political home of reformed capitalism is the political centre-right, not the left; albeit the new centre-right, not the privileged and stale centre-right politics which New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has so far represented. A ‘universal private income drawn from public wealth’ is different from a ‘privileged private income drawn from public wealth’.
It would be very simple to create an SUI in Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand’s income-tax scale has five rates: 10.5%, 17.5%, 30%, 33% and 39%. The 33% rate has formed the backbone of the New Zealand tax scale since 1988. As with the UBI example above, the SUI proposal simply eliminates the 10.5%, 17.5% and 30% rates. In return every adult economic citizen – effectively every ‘tax resident’ – would receive an annual SUI (ie dividend) of $10,122.50; that’s $195.66 per week. For all people receiving Benefits – including Superannuation, Student Allowances, Family Tax Credits – the first $195.66 per week of their benefit payments would be recategorised as their SUI dividend.
That’s it. (The dividend of $10,122.50 is simply a grossing-up of the maximum benefit accrued through those lower tax rates.) Unlike the UBI option, all existing benefits and bureaucratic infrastructure would be retained; at least until they can be reconfigured in an advantageous way. From an accounting viewpoint, existing Benefits would be split into unconditional and conditional components.
It means no change for all persons earning over $78,100 per year ($1,502 per week) before tax. And it means no change for all persons receiving total Benefit income (after tax) more than $195.66 per week. (These people could continue to be called ‘Beneficiaries’, but without stigma. Without stigma, Superannuitants can be happy to be classed as Beneficiaries.) People whose present total weekly Benefit income is currently less than $195.66 would cease to be called Beneficiaries; they would cease to be clients of the MSD, the Ministry of Social Development.
What this means is that most New Zealanders, on Day One, would see no change in their bank accounts. Nobody would receive a lower income. And for most who receive a higher income, it would be only higher by small amount.
This begs the question, if most people’s disposable incomes do not increase, or only increase by a trivial amount, then why bother? The important societal benefits would be dynamic; would be around incentives.
First, individuals (of all adult ages, male and female, regardless of their position in their households) would be incentivised to take employment risks – including self-employment risks – if they receive a core unconditional income that they do not stand to lose when risk doesn’t pay off. Labour supply is boosted; as is the economy’s ‘surge capacity’ (technically, the elasticity of labour supply increases).
Second, lower-paid individuals – many of whom are women – would have increased bargaining power (through unions and as individuals) and would not have to resort to contestable narratives such as ‘pay equity’ in order to achieve a fair wage.
Third, individuals would be better able to negotiate weekly hours of work to optimise their work-life balance. The SUI would minimise the present ‘twin evils’ of overwork and underwork.
Fourth, and especially for today’s high-income workers, the SUI represents an unconditional form of income insurance to facilitate the acquisition of basic needs during a period of what economists call ‘frictional unemployment’; being ‘between jobs’. Or a period of ‘voluntary unemployment’, such as attending to the health needs of another family member.
Fifth, the SUI would count as a democratic dividend, an acknowledgement that each society’s wealth arises from both (present and past) private and public enterprise, and that – for that reason – both private and public dividends should be part of societies’ income mix. All citizens would have both private ‘skin in the game’ and a sense of ‘public inclusion’, motivating all citizens to have an ‘us’ mentality, rather than a divisive and exclusionary ‘them and us’ mentality.
The SUI is my preferred option for New Zealand for the year 2026.
BUI
BUI stands for ‘Basic Universal-Income’. In the New Zealand context, it could be easily created by removing the 10.5%, 17.5%, and 33% income brackets. Thus, except for high-income-earners (say the five-percenters), there would be an effective flat tax set at 30% of production income. It would work much as the SUI.
I have calculated that, for New Zealand, the BUI would be $7,779.50 per year, effectively $150 per week.
To partially offset the tax cut that would be payable to people earning more than $78,100 per year, the income threshold for the 39% tax rate should come down (to $146,000, from $180,000). Tax cuts would be received by all persons earning between $78,100 and $180,000, with the maximum tax cut of just over $2,000 (just over $39 per week) being payable to someone earning $146,000.
With this BUI, compared to the SUI, there would be more day-one beneficiaries (ie more better-off people) on higher incomes, and fewer day-one beneficiaries on lower incomes. Nobody would be worse off. The dynamic benefits discussed in relation to the SUI would still apply.
This is a policy that the Act Party should embrace, given its stated commitments to liberal-democracy, individualism, enterprise, and the future of capitalism.
A wider benefit of BUI is that it could represent a small beginning to something bigger and better. Just as with Universal Superannuation, the ‘establishment fear-factor’ soon dissipated. And universal benefits came to be embraced in the 1950s by both ‘left’ and ‘right’ in Aotearoa New Zealand; a decade in which there were very few persons of working age relative to persons classifiable as ‘dependents’.
HUI
HUI represents Hybrid Universal-Income; a mix of UBI and SUI. What would happen is that the age of entitlement to New Zealand Superannuation would be lowered, but not all the way to age 18. Today the ‘threshold age’ is 65. Under a HUI, all adult tax residents under the new threshold age would receive a SUI, on the same basis as described above.
A variant of HUI would be more flexible; a flexible Hybrid Basic Income. Everyone between say 30 and 70 would be able to have a UBI for say ten years; otherwise they would have an SUI. (This might be a policy that would work well for Denmark.)
Today a large proportion of babies are born to mothers aged 30 to 40. Many of these mothers might prefer to have children while in their early thirties, but, for financial reasons, end up having their children later. If all adults could choose when to have their ten years UBI, I could imagine many women choosing their thirties, and many men choosing their forties. Thus, women would be able to leave paid work to a greater or lesser extent around when they would most like to have children, and their partners could take their UBI after the mothers of their children have returned to fulltime employment. For persons in their forties, parenting non-infant children fits with the life-stage when many people would like to be establishing their own businesses and becoming employers. This would create incentives to both working-class (and bourgeois) human reproduction, more enterprise, and more employment opportunities in the private sector for youngish and oldish workers.
A further variant of this variant could be to extend the SUI to a UBI for individuals over 60 who lose their jobs on account of redundancy. This would help the many women such as those who were caught out by the Labour Government’s barely-noticed 2020 decision to remove NZS entitlements to ‘non-qualifying-spouses’ (ie people who become redundant, mostly women, whose life-partners are already on New Zealand Superannuation). (We might also note that the Sixth Labour Government – 2017 to 2023 – cut the after-tax wages of all women [and men too] by not inflation-adjusting income-tax bracket thresholds. Looked at in full historical context, Labour governments in New Zealand have not been kind to women.)
GUI
We might note that the UBI case, first-mentioned above, would be very close to a Generous Universal-Income. In this case, only the 39% income-tax rate would be retained, and the UI would be an annual GUI dividend of $20,922.50 (ie $402.36 per week). All income would be taxed at 39% and all economic citizens would receive a weekly private (but publicly-sourced) dividend of just over $400.
Conclusion
The UI policies presented above (possibly excepting the GUI, and the UBI) reflect a liberal non-establishment centre or centre-right political perspective. The GUI and UBI, in practice, realistically reflect only future policy directions (given their clear fiscal non-neutrality), whereas the SUI, BUI, and HUI all represent changes that could be easily implemented in the May 2026 Budget.
My preference, for immediate implementation, is the SUI. In inclusive capitalist societies, public equity returns to individuals are a right. Much of societies’ capital resource is not privately owned.
As in 1938 to 1940, New Zealand can set an example for the democratic reformation of global capitalism. Unfortunately, the 1938 to 1940 reform – Universal Superannuation – was not taken up by an otherwise distracted world. (Sadly, New Zealand’s misguided 1989 monetary policy ‘reform’ – the Reserve Bank Act – was taken up by a then-attentive wider world. Unnecessarily high interest rates have caused huge grief on a global scale.)
We can choose to have a 2026 reform – a technically simple reform, that, through being promoted to the wider world as an example of how capitalism can be democratic and inclusive – which can have beneficial global consequences. Do our leaders have the intellect, imagination and courage that Michael Joseph Savage revealed in 1938? Hopefully ‘yes’, but realistically ‘no’.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
This week the US Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed two men suspected of bombing a fertility clinic in California last month allegedly used artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain bomb-making instructions. The FBI did not disclose the name of the AI program in question.
This brings into sharp focus the urgent need to make AI safer. Currently we are living in the “wild west” era of AI, where companies are fiercely competing to develop the fastest and most entertaining AI systems. Each company wants to outdo competitors and claim the top spot. This intense competition often leads to intentional or unintentional shortcuts – especially when it comes to safety.
Coincidentally, at around the same time of the FBI’s revelation, one of the godfathers of modern AI, Canadian computer science professor Yoshua Bengio, launched a new nonprofit organisation dedicated to developing a new AI model specifically designed to be safer than other AI models – and target those that cause social harm.
So what is Bengio’s new AI model? And will it actually protect the world from AI-faciliated harm?
An ‘honest’ AI
In 2018, Bengio, alongside his colleagues Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, won the Turing Award for groundbreaking research they had published three years earlier on deep learning. A branch of machine learning, deep learning attempts to mimic the processes of the human brain by using artificial neural networks to learn from computational data and make predictions.
Bengio’s new nonprofit organisation, LawZero, is developing “Scientist AI”. Bengio has said this model will be “honest and not deceptive”, and incorporate safety-by-design principles.
According to a preprint paper released online earlier this year, Scientist AI will differ from current AI systems in two key ways.
First, it can assess and communicate its confidence level in its answers, helping to reduce the problem of AI giving overly confident and incorrect responses.
Second, it can explain its reasoning to humans, allowing its conclusions to be evaluated and tested for accuracy.
Interestingly, older AI systems had this feature. But in the rush for speed and new approaches, many modern AI models can’t explain their decisions. Their developers have sacrificed explainability for speed.
Bengio also intends “Scientist AI” to act as a guardrail against unsafe AI. It could monitor other, less reliable and harmful AI systems — essentially fighting fire with fire.
This may be the only viable solution to improve AI safety. Humans cannot properly monitor systems such as ChatGPT, which handle over a billion queries daily. Only another AI can manage this scale.
Large language models and machine learning are just small parts of today’s AI landscape.
Another key addition Bengio’s team are adding to Scientist AI is the “world model” which brings certainty and explainability. Just as humans make decisions based on their understanding of the world, AI needs a similar model to function effectively.
The absence of a world model in current AI models is clear.
One well-known example is the “hand problem”: most of today’s AI models can imitate the appearance of hands but cannot replicate natural hand movements, because they lack an understanding of the physics — a world model — behind them.
Yoshua Bengio is recognised as one of the godfathers of AI. Alex Wong/Getty Images
On the right track – but it will be bumpy
Bengio is on the right track, aiming to build safer, more trustworthy AI by combining large language models with other AI technologies.
However, his journey isn’t going to be easy. LawZero’s US$30 million in funding is small compared to efforts such as the US$500 billion project announced by US President Donald Trump earlier this year to accelerate the development of AI.
There’s also an outstanding question. Even if Bengio can build an AI system that does everything he says it can, how is it going to be able to control other systems that might be causing harm?
Still, this project, with talented researchers behind it, could spark a movement toward a future where AI truly helps humans thrive. If successful, it could set new expectations for safe AI, motivating researchers, developers, and policymakers to prioritise safety.
Perhaps if we had taken similar action when social media first emerged, we would have a safer online environment for young people’s mental health. And maybe, if Scientist AI had already been in place, it could have prevented people with harmful intentions from accessing dangerous information with the help of AI systems.
Armin Chitizadeh 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.
The kimono garment, the national dress of Japan, carries within itself all of the magic and traditions of Japanese culture.
The basic features of the kimono are fairly simple. It is a wrapped front garment with square sleeves that has a rectangular body where the left side is wrapped over the right, except in funerary use.
The garment may be traced back to the Heian period as a distinctive style of dress for the nobility. In the Edo period (1603–1867) it came to a glorious culmination with colourful and expensive fabrics.
The great poet Matsuo Bashō once wrote “Spring passes by / again and again in layers / of blossom-kimono”. Since childhood I’ve loved the mystical image “blossom-kimono”.
In 2020, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London staged their epic exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, where hundreds of garments, accessories, prints and photographs charted the history of the kimono from the 17th century through to the present.
A new exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria is similarly ambitious. Over 70 fabulous garments of exquisite craftsmanship – some made of silk with gold and silver embroidery and dazzling designs – have been assembled within a context of over 150 paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts.
Although many of the items have never been previously exhibited in Australia, most are now in the collection of the NGV, with many specifically acquired for this exhibition.
Exquisite production
There are seven newly acquired Edo-period silk and ramie kimonos, richly decorated with leaves, tendrils and falling snow. They provide us with a glimpse at the wealth and sophistication of the samurai and merchant classes of the 18th and 19th centuries.
One of the highlights is the Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum and cranes, from the early to mid-19th century.
It is a display of exquisite taste with satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, and embroidery with gold thread. The birds and the vegetation seem to float on the surface and must have created an amazing sight when worn.
Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum, and cranes early–mid 19th century. Satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, embroidery, gold thread, 177.5 cm (centre back) 131.0 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Michael and Emily Tong, 2024
The garment is simple and functional and, despite the exquisiteness of its production, it is also restrained in contrast to the conspicuous exuberance of some examples of 19th century European courtly dress.
Some of these Edo period kimonos can become quite narrative-driven in their design, as with the Hitoe kosode kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays of the late Edo period. Slightly smaller than the wedding kimono, that was 177.5 cm long as opposed to 167 cm, this one revels in a blue background on gauze satin silk with a multiplicity of little narrative scenes like an assembly of diverse stage sets.
Hitoe kosode, kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays late Edo period. Gauze satin silk, paste resist dye, embroidery, gold thread, 167.0 cm (centre back) 124.0 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Jennifer Lempriere and Michael Pithie, 2024
The exhibition also includes the work of contemporary Japanese kimono designers including Hiroko Takahashi, Jotaro Saito, Modern Antenna, Tamao Shigemune, Y&SONS, Rumi Rock and Robe Japonica.
The kimono as a concept
The kimono is more than an historic artefact, one where ideas and methods of production were to remain constant for centuries. It is also an idea that inspires designers working in international fashion houses.
The NGV exhibition includes kimono-inspired works of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, Comme des Garçon, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Zambesi and Rudi Gernreich.
Alexander McQueen’s Gown, belt and sandals (Dégradé) (2007) is one of the takeaway memories from this exhibition. The humble functional kimono has been totally transfigured.
To the silk-satin shell there have been added leather, metal and rubber accessories and synthetic shoulder pads. The purple and pink colour scheme and the sweeping sleeves that trail along the ground create a mesmerising and dominant phantom-like character that owns and dominates the space.
It is difficult not to be impressed by McQueen’s vision, but we have now moved quite a long way from the kimono.
The kimono is a wonderful concept – an armature on which to hang many different ideas. The beauty of this exhibition is that it frees the idea of a garment from a static piece of cloth, at best to be displayed on a dummy, to something approaching a concept in design that artists will clasp and from which they will create their own work.
There are many rich nuances in the show, for example the superb almost monochrome and somewhat gothic Men’s undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon (c.1930).
Men’s undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon c. 1930. Silk, wool, cotton 127.0 cm (centre back) 130.5 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Maureen Morrisey Bequest, 2018
At the same time, we have Women’s kimono with geometric design and accessories (c.1930) with its polychrome exuberance with reds, blacks and greys combining geometric motifs with soft organic feather-like forms.
Bashō’s “blossom-kimono” was a meditation on the passing of time and the hope that a young girl will live to experience wrinkles that come with old age. The kimono in this exhibition celebrates the passing of time and generational change within the life of an immortal idea about function, form and ideas of beauty.
Kimono is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 5.
Sasha Grishin 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.
Victorian MP Moira Deeming attracted headlines recently when news broke she’s intending to sue three former Liberal premiers, among other party figures.
Why? Deeming is trying to recoup millions of dollars in legal costs after a successful defamation case.
Who pays for legal action in Australia, particularly in civil courts, can be confusing. But given how expensive litigation can be and the big names involved in this case, it’s worth unpacking.
How did we get here?
In March 2023, Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming spoke at a “Let Women Speak” rally held at Parliament House in Melbourne. The rally was interrupted by protesters, who were described as “neo-Nazis”.
After the rally, the then-Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto made a series of public statements implying Deeming had associations with the neo-Nazi groups and therefore needed to be expelled from parliament.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in December 2023 Deeming sued Pesutto in the Federal Court for defamation. A year later, she won her lawsuit.
Pesutto was ordered to pay $300,000 in damages for the harm to Deeming’s reputation and the associated emotional distress she suffered.
But that wasn’t the end of what Pesutto had to pay.
Last month, the Federal Court also ordered Pesutto to pay $2.3 million to cover Deeming’s costs in winning her suit (in addition to having to pay his own costs).
This has created some serious problems for both Pesutto and Deeming.
It is a problem for Pesutto because he doesn’t have the money to pay and is now facing bankruptcy proceedings and his own possible expulsion from parliament.
Former premier Jeff Kennett has spruiked a crowdfunding campaign to help fund Pesutto’s legal liabilities.
It is a problem for Deeming because she will be out $2.3 million if Pesutto cannot come up with the money.
So, Deeming is now looking around for someone else who might be made to pay Pesutto’s tab.
What does the law say?
The reason Pesutto has to pay is that in nearly all Australian courts, the standard order at the end of a lawsuit is that the loser has to pay the costs – for example, lawyers’ fees, court costs, and expert witness fees – of the winner.
Usually the loser simply makes payment, unless they don’t have the financial means to do so, and the court proceedings are over.
However, the court can make “third-party costs orders”. These are orders making someone other than the losing party responsible for paying the loser’s costs bill.
Deeming’s solicitor has indicated, in a widely reported letter to Pesutto’s lawyers, that Deeming intends to seek payment of her costs from up to nine Liberal Party notables, including former premiers Ted Baillieu, Denis Napthine and Jeff Kennett, due to their alleged funding of Pesutto’s legal costs during the case.
Though the court rules allow for a third party to pay costs, and courts have broad discretion to make almost any kind of costs order, the High Court has established certain circumstances that should be considered first.
These circumstances include where a party to a lawsuit is insolvent or a “person of straw”, and where a third party has an interest in the subject of the litigation.
Perhaps tellingly, the letter from Deeming’s solicitor reportedly states Pesutto was a person of straw and that the Liberal Party figures did have an interest in the proceedings. However, this would need to be accepted by a court for Deeming to be successful.
How can people bankroll the court battles of others?
Providing money to support another person bringing litigation was originally frowned on by the law. It was regarded as “champerty” and “maintenance”. Both were treated as criminal offences.
The High Court of Australia has observed that law of maintenance and champerty can been traced to the Statute of Westminster the First of 1275. Some trace it back to Greek and Roman law.
Maintenance was where a person “improperly, and for the purpose of stirring up litigation and strife, encourages others either to bring actions, or to make defences which they have no right to make”.
But there were exceptions, such as where the maintainer acted from charitable motives or because the person maintained was family.
Champerty was a type of maintenance where the funder received some reward, such as part of the outcome of the successful litigation. The vice was stirring up litigation, oppressing others and creating an incentive to tamper with evidence.
Over time, however, Australian jurisdictions abolished the prohibition.
Access to justice, including the ability to raise a defence, is often costly in Australia because of legal fees and the loser pays system. Many litigants need financial help to bring or defend litigation.
Indeed, Australia now allows third-party litigation funding where a corporate entity funds the proceedings in return for a share of the recovery, as is commonly used in class actions and insolvency cases.
While bankrolling of civil litigation is now business as usual, it is not entirely unregulated. The courts have power to prevent an “abuse of process”, typically through permanently halting proceedings.
An abuse of process typically arises where the use of the court’s procedures unjustifiably negatively affects a party, or where it serves to bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
If a funder repeatedly supported unmeritorious claims or defences, or misused court procedures, then the courts can step in, but this is a high bar.
As a result, the main response to third parties financing litigation is to seek costs from them when the unsuccessful party cannot pay. Deeming will need to pursue this through the court.
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.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on June 6, 2025.
Defections are fairly common in Australian politics. But history shows they are rarely a good career move Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University For many years now, Australian political scientists have pointed out that that established partisan allegiance is in decline. In 1967, 36% of Coalition supporters and 32% of Labor voters reported lifetime voting
Spit or swallow? What’s the best way to deal with phlegm? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niall Johnston, Conjoint Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney Pop Paul-Catalin/Shutterstock A spitting pot I consider as an essential part of the bed-room apparatus. That’s what French physician René Laennec wrote in 1821. Laennec, who invented the stethoscope, spent his days gazing at his patients’ phlegm.
Australia is in the firing line of Trump’s looming ‘revenge tax’. It’s a fight we’re unlikely to win Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Cooper, Professor of Taxation Law, University of Sydney Alexey_Arz/Shutterstock The Australian Labor Party just won an election victory for the ages. Now, it may be forced to walk back one of the key achievements of its first term. Here’s why: United States President Donald Trump is
‘HIV shouldn’t be death sentence in Fiji’ – call for testing amid outbreak By Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor Fiji’s Minister for Health and Medical Services has revealed the latest HIV numbers in the country to a development partner roundtable discussing the national response. The minister reported 490 new HIV cases between October and December last year, bringing the 2024 total to 1583. “Included in this number
E-bikes and e-scooters are popular – but dangerous. A transport expert explains how to make them safer Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Rose, Professor in Transport Engineering, Monash Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University nazar_ab/Getty Last weekend a pedestrian in Perth tragically died after being struck by an e-scooter. This followed the death of another person in Victoria last month who was hit and killed by a modified
‘There are too many unpleasant things in life without creating more’: why Impressionism is the world’s favourite art movement Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University Installation view of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on display from June 6 to October 5, at NGV International, Melbourne. Photo: Sean Fennessy Impressionism is the world’s favourite art movement. Impressionist paintings create
‘Deadly’ sports diplomacy: why Australia’s Indigenous people must be a part of our sports strategy Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Murray, Associate Professor, International Relations and Diplomacy, Bond University Sean Garnsworthy/ALLSPORT Since coming to power in 2022, the Albanese government has focused strongly on the Indo-Pacific. The prime minister’s recent trip to Indonesia was the latest high-level bilateral summit as Australia seeks to recalibrate relationships, enhance
Making it easier to build a granny flat makes sense – but it’s no solution to a housing crisis Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau RyanJLane/Getty Images As part of its resource management reforms, the government will soon allow “super-sized granny flats” to be built without consent – potentially adding 13,000 dwellings over the next decade to provide “families
Is black mould really as bad for us as we think? A toxicologist explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Peeradontax/Shutterstock Mould in houses is unsightly and may cause unpleasant odours. More important though, mould has been linked to a range of health effects – especially triggering asthma. However, is mould exposure linked to a serious lung disease
Resident-to-resident aggression is common in nursing homes. Here’s how we can improve residents’ safety Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Aged Care Medical Research Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University Wbmul/Shutterstock The Coroners Court of Victoria is undertaking an inquest into the deaths of eight aged care residents across six facilities, over a nine-month period in 2021. Each death occurred
We tracked 13,000 giants of the ocean over 30 years, to uncover their hidden highways Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana M. M. Sequeira, Associate Professor, Research School of Biology, Australian National University Alexandra Vautin, Shutterstock Big animals of the ocean go about their days mostly hidden from view. Scientists know this marine megafauna – such as whales, sharks, seal, turtles and birds – travel vast distances
‘No one knew what was happening’: new research shows how domestic violence harms young people’s schooling Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Roberts, Professor of Education and Social Justice, Monash University Taiki Ishikawa/ Unsplash, CC BY Every school around Australia is almost certain to have students who are victim-survivors of family and domestic violence. The 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study found neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse
Internal tensions throw PNG anti-corruption body into crisis By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent Three staffers from Papua New Guinea’s peak anti-corruption body are embroiled in a standoff that has brought into question the integrity of the organisation. Police Commissioner David Manning has confirmed that he received a formal complaint. Commissioner Manning said that initial inquiries were underway to inform the “sensitive
Tasmania could go to an election just 16 months after its last one. What’s going on? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hortle, Deputy Director, Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of Tasmania Tasmania’s Liberal government and its premier, Jeremy Rockliff, have come under huge pressure since the state budget was handed down last week. It’s culminated in the Tasmanian House of Assembly voting to pass a motion of no
Grattan on Friday: Albanese will need some nuance in facing a female opposition leader Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Anthony Albanese loves a trophy, especially a human one. He prides himself on his various “captain’s pick” candidates – good campaigners he has steered into seats. Way back in the Gillard days, he was key in persuading discontented Liberal Peter
Punishment for Te Pāti Māori over Treaty haka stands – but MPs ‘will not be silenced’ RNZ News Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament has confirmed the unprecedented punishments proposed for opposition indigenous Te Pāti Māori MPs who performed a haka in protest against the Treaty Principles Bill. Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi will be suspended for 21 days, and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke suspended for seven days, taking effect
Virgin Australia is coming back to the share market. Here’s what this new chapter could mean Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rico Merkert, Professor in Transport and Supply Chain Management and Deputy Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS), University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney Petr Podrouzek/Shutterstock It is finally happening. After five years of being a private company, Virgin Australia will relist on the
GPs asking men about their behaviour in relationships could help reduce domestic violence Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelsey Hegarty, Professor of Family Violence Prevention, The University of Melbourne Domestic violence is increasing in Australia. A new report shows one in three men have ever made a partner feel frightened or anxious. One in 11 have used physical violence when angry. And one in 50
The Top End’s tropical savannas are a natural wonder – but weak environment laws mean their future is uncertain Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University François Brassard The Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory contains an extensive, awe-inspiring expanse of tropical savanna landscapes. It includes well-known and much-loved regions such as Darwin, Kakadu National Park, Arnhem
Big animals of the ocean go about their days mostly hidden from view. Scientists know this marine megafauna – such as whales, sharks, seal, turtles and birds – travel vast distances to feed and breed.
But almost a third are now at risk of extinction due largely to fishing, shipping, pollution and global warming.
Protecting them can be difficult, because we don’t often know where these animals are.
New research I led sought to shed light on the issue. My colleagues and I gathered 30 years of satellite tracking data to map hotspots of megafauna activity around the globe.
We tracked 12,794 animals from 111 species to find out where they go. The results reveal underwater “highways” where megafauna crisscross the global Ocean. They also show where megafauna dwell for feeding and breeding. Now we know where these special places are, we have a better chance of protecting them.
Satellite tracking reveals marine megafauna migration pathways and places of residence. Sequeira et al (2025) Science
Pulling all the data together: a mega task
For more than 30 years, marine biologists have tagged large animals in the sea with electronic devices and tracked their movements via satellite. The trackers capture data on everything from speed of travel, to direction of movement and where the animals spend most of their time.
I put a call out to the global research community to bring together the tracking data. I hoped it would help scientists better understand the animals’ movements and identify their favourite places.
Some 378 scientists from 50 countries responded. We assembled the world’s largest tracking dataset of marine megafauna. It includes species of flying birds, whales, fishes (mostly sharks), penguins, polar bears, seals, dugongs, manatees and turtles. They were tracked between 1985 and 2018, throughout the world’s oceans.
Ana Sequeira swimming with a whale shark in Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, to collect samples. Australian Institute of Marine Science
Mapping reveals a lack of protection
When we started analysing the data, it showed the tagged animals used some parts of the ocean more frequently than others. Most of them travelled to the central Indian Ocean, northeast Pacific Ocean, Atlantic north, and waters around Mozambique and South Africa.
It’s likely this reflects a lack of data from elsewhere. However, these species are known to go to places where they are most likely to find food, so we expect some areas to be used more than others (including the areas we detected).
Currently only about 8% of the global ocean is protected. And only 5% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified occur within these existing marine protected areas.
This leaves all of the other important marine megafauna areas we identified unprotected. In other words, the species using those areas are likely to suffer harm from human activities taking place at sea.
More than 90% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified are exposed to high plastic pollution, shipping traffic or to intensifying global warming. And about 75% are exposed to industrial fishing.
We also found marine megafauna tend to spend most of their time within exclusive economic zones. This area lies beyond the territorial sea or belt of water 12 nautical miles from the coast of each country, extending 200 nautical miles from shore. The presence of megafauna in these exclusive economic zones means individual countries could increase the protection afforded within their jurisdictions.
About 40% of the important marine megafauna areas were located in these zones. But about 60% were on the high seas.
The future of marine megafauna conservation
The High Seas Treaty, recently adopted by the United Nations and signed by 115 countries, governs the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological biodiversity on the open ocean.
Working alongside this treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030. This presents an opportunity to ensure important marine megafauna areas are well represented.
We used an optimisation algorithm to identify the best areas to protect, when it comes to marine megafauna. We gave priority to areas that are potentially used for feeding, breeding, resting and migrating across all the different species.
But even if important marine megafauna areas are selected when 30% of the ocean is protected, about 60% of these areas would still stay unprotected.
Significant risks from human activities will remain. Management efforts must also focus on reducing harm from fishing and shipping. Fighting climate change and cutting down noise and plastic pollution should also be key priorities.
Like for most megafauna on land, the reign of marine megafauna might come to an end if humanity does not afford these species greater protection.
Ana M. M. Sequeira receives funding from the Australian Research Council and a Pew Marine Fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts. She is also affiliated with the University of Western Australia.
Mould in houses is unsightly and may cause unpleasant odours. More important though, mould has been linked to a range of health effects – especially triggering asthma.
However, is mould exposure linked to a serious lung disease in children, unrelated to asthma? As we’ll see, this link may not be real, or if it is, it’s so rare to not be a meaningful risk. Yet we still hear mould in damp homes described as “toxic”.
Indeed, mouldy homes can harm people’s health, but not necessarily how you might think.
What is mould?
Mould is the general term for a variety of fungi. The mould that people have focused on in damp homes is “black mould”. This forms unsightly black patches on walls and other parts of damp-affected buildings.
Black mould is not a single fungus. But when people talk about black mould, they generally mean the fungus Stachybotrys chartarum or S. chartarum for short. It’s one of experts’ top ten feared fungi.
The focus on this species comes from a report in the 1990s on cases of haemorrhagic lung disease in a number of infants. This is a rare disease where blood leaks into the lungs, and can be fatal. The report suggested chemicals known as mycotoxins associated with this species of fungus were responsible for the outbreak.
Hundreds of different chemicals are listed as myocytoxins. These include ones in poisonous mushrooms, and ones associated with the soil fungi Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus.
The fungus typically associated with black mould S. chartarum can produce several mycotoxins. These include roridin, which inhibits protein synthesis in humans and animals, and satratoxins, which have numerous toxic effects including bleeding in the lungs.
While the satratoxins, in particular, were mentioned in the report from the 90s in children, there are some problems when we look at the evidence.
The amount of mycotoxins S. chartarum makes can vary considerably. Even if significant amounts of mycotoxin are present, getting them into the body in the required amount to cause damage is another thing.
Inhaling spores in contaminated (mouldy) homes is the most probable way mycotoxins enter the body. For instance, we know mycotoxins can be found in S. chartarumspores. We also know direct injection of high concentrations of mycotoxin-bearing spores directly in the noses of mice can cause some lung bleeding.
Stachybotrys chartarum mycotoxins have been blamed for lung issues after exposure to black mould. Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock
But just because inhaling spores is the probable route of contamination doesn’t mean this is very likely.
Moulds can affect human health in ways unrelated to mycotoxins, typically through allergic reactions. Moulds including black moulds can trigger or worsen asthma attacks in people with mould allergies.
People with impaired immune systems (such as people taking immune-suppressant medications) may also be prone to mould infections.
In a nutshell
There is sufficient evidence that household mould is associated with respiratory issues attributable to their allergic effects.
However, there is no strong evidence mycotoxins from household mould – and in particular black mould – are associated with substantial health issues.
Ian Musgrave has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study adverse reactions to herbal medicines and has previously been funded by the Australian Research Council to study potential natural product treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. He is currently a member of one of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s statutory councils.
The Australian Labor Party just won an election victory for the ages. Now, it may be forced to walk back one of the key achievements of its first term.
Here’s why: United States President Donald Trump is about to declare an income tax war on much of the world – and we Australians are not on the same side.
Over in the US, the “One Big Beautiful Bill act” – a tax and spending package worth trillions of dollars – has been passed by the House of Representatives. It’s now before the Senate for consideration.
Within it lies a new and highly controversial provision: Section 899. This increases various US tax rates payable by taxpayers from any country the US claims is maintaining an “unfair foreign tax” by five percentage points each year, up to an additional 20% loading.
Having been an integral part of an international effort to create a global 15% minimum tax, Australia now finds itself in the firing line of Trump’s “revenge tax” warfare – and it’s a fight we’re unlikely to win.
A global minimum tax rate
The origins of the looming income tax war started in 2013, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its plan to stamp out “base erosion and profit shifting”.
This refers to a range of strategies often used by multinational companies to minimise the tax they pay, exploiting differences and gaps in the tax rules of different countries.
The OECD’s first attempt to tackle the problem was a collection of disparate measures directed not only at corporate tax avoidance, but also controlling tax poaching by national governments and “sweetheart deals” negotiated by tax officials.
Under both Labor and the Coalition, Australia was initially an enthusiastic backer of these attempts.
However, the project was not a widespread success. Many countries endorsed the final reports but, unlike Australia, few countries acted on them.
After the failure of this first project, the OECD tried again in 2019. This evolved to encompass two “pillars” to change the global tax rules.
Pillar one would give more tax to countries where a company’s customers are located. Pillar two is a minimum tax of 15% on (a version of) the accounting profits of the largest multinationals earned in each country where the multinational operates.
Labor picked up this project for the 2022 election, promising to support both pillars – and they honoured that promise.
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on May 22. The Washington Post/Getty
Mixed success
Around the world, the two pillar project had mixed success. Pillar one was dead-on-arrival: most countries did nothing. But Australia and several other countries, mostly in Europe, implemented pillar two – the global minimum tax.
The OECD has always maintained the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project was a coalition of the willing, meant to rebalance the way income tax is allocated between producer and consumer countries, and rid the world of tax havens.
In the US, Republicans did not share that view. For them, BEPS was simply another attempt by foreign countries to get more tax from US companies.
This Republican dissatisfaction with the OECD is now on full display. On the first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order, formally repudiating any OECD commitments the Biden administration might have given.
He also directed his officials to report on options for retaliatory measures the US could take against any foreign countries with income tax rules that are “extraterritorial” or “disproportionately affect American companies”.
Why Australia is so exposed
Australia could find itself in the firing line of Trump’s tax warfare on many fronts. And the US doesn’t lack firepower. Section 899 adds to a number of retaliatory tax provisions the US already had at its disposal.
The increased tax rates would affect Australian super funds and other investors earning dividends, rent, interest, royalties and other income from US companies.
Australian super funds in particular are heavily invested in US markets, which have outperformed local stocks in recent years.
It would also affect Australian managed funds owning land and infrastructure assets in the US, as well as Australian entities such as banks that carry on business in the US.
And there are other measures that would expose US subsidiaries of Australian companies to US higher tax.
The bill would even remove the doctrine of sovereign immunity for the governments of “offending” countries. Sovereign immunity refers to a tax exemption on returns that usually applies to governments. This means the Australian government itself could have to pay tax to the US.
There are concerns on Wall Street this will dampen demand for US government bonds from foreign governments, which are big buyers of US Treasuries. The argument may sway some in the Senate – but how many remains to be seen.
What Australia may need to do next
We may be incredulous that anyone would consider our tax system combative, but enacting the OECD pillar two was always known to be risky.
There are other, homegrown Australian tax measures that have drawn American ire.
In 2015, Australia enacted an income tax measure (commonly called the “Google tax”) specifically directed at US tech companies. In 2017, we followed this up with a diverted profits tax. Trump’s bill specifically targets both measures.
Tying ourselves to the OECD’s global minimum tax project might have seemed like a good idea in 2019. In 2025, it looks decidedly unappealing, and not just because of Trump.
First, there is not actually any serious revenue in pillar two for Australia. Treasury’s revenue estimate totalled only $360 million after four years, just slightly more than a rounding error in the federal budget.
Second, we are increasingly alone and vulnerable in this battle. It might feel emotionally satisfying to stand up to the US. If there was a sizeable coalition alongside us, there might be some point.
If Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill act does pass through the US Senate, the Australian government and business will be left exposed to much higher costs.
Since abandoning the US market is not really an option, it might be time to surrender quietly and gracefully – by reversing, at the very least, the contentious bits of pillar two.
Graeme Cooper 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 spitting pot I consider as an essential part of the bed-room apparatus.
That’s what French physician René Laennec wrote in 1821. Laennec, who invented the stethoscope, spent his days gazing at his patients’ phlegm. In the days before x-rays and blood tests, phlegm was considered a valuable diagnostic tool.
Today, most of us don’t carry around a spitting pot. But a persistent question remains, especially during winter, when noses are dripping and chests are rattling.
When you have a cough, should you spit out phlegm or is it better to swallow it?
It might feel like an odd or even slightly stomach-churning topic, but it’s a remarkably common question patients ask doctors.
What is phlegm?
Phlegm, also known as sputum, is the thick, sticky mucus your lungs and windpipe make. This acts as a defensive barrier to protect them.
Its main ingredients are mucins – large, sugar-coated proteins that trap viruses, bacteria, allergens and dust. These mucins also regulate inflammation and the body’s immune response to bacteria and viruses.
We most commonly see phlegm with viral illness during winter. But phlegm is also evident in other medical conditions including asthma and allergies, bacterial infections, such as sinusitis, or with smoking or exposure to air pollution.
In fact, we’re always making phlegm, even when we are healthy. Cells in the lungs secrete mucus to keep surfaces moist and trap irritants. When we encounter something potentially harmful, such as a virus or allergen, immune cells detect the threat and release signals that tell mucus-producing cells to step up their game.
This extra mucus helps trap the invader and move it out of the lungs. Tiny hairs lining the airways (called cilia) then sweep the mucus up to the throat, where we cough it out or swallow it.
These tiny hairs, or cilia, sweep phlegm up to your throat. Sakurra/Shutterstock
The case for spitting
Some people feel better if they spit out phlegm, especially if the phlegm is thick, sticky or irritates the throat.
Spitting also lets you see what’s coming up. If phlegm contains blood, for example, it is important to see a doctor to exclude a more serious underlying illness, such as tuberculosis or cancer.
If you do spit out, do so into a tissue and throw it in the bin. Wash your hands afterwards. This reduces the risk of spreading infection to others via respiratory droplets or contaminated surfaces.
However, spitting out phlegm isn’t always practical, or polite. And for most viral infections, it doesn’t help you get better any faster than swallowing. The aim is to remove phlegm from the lungs, which occurs with either method.
Spitting is also not feasible for young children, who haven’t yet developed the coordination to do so effectively. They’ll generally swallow their phlegm.
How mucus keeps us healthy all year round, even if we’re not sick.
The case for swallowing
It might not sound particularly appealing, but swallowing phlegm is a normal process, and harmless. In fact, we often swallow phlegm without realising it.
The lungs generate about 50 millilitres of phlegm daily. It goes unnoticed because it’s thin, blends with saliva and we continuously swallow it. We only become aware of it when it thickens, such as during a viral infection.
After you swallow phlegm, it travels to the stomach, where acid and enzymes break it down, along with any germs it carries.
Swallowing phlegm doesn’t “recycle” the germs, and it won’t result in the infection spreading elsewhere.
In fact, swallowing viruses can even help build immunity. Once inside the gut, immune cells begin to recognise pieces of the virus and start preparing the body to respond more effectively to it in the future. Some important immunisations, such as the oral polio vaccine, work through this very mechanism.
So, what’s the verdict?
Whether you spit or swallow phlegm, both are safe. Spitting can help some people feel better, especially if their cough is associated with thick phlegm that’s causing distress.
But for most healthy people, there’s no need to force a cough or spit out phlegm. Swallowing phlegm is completely safe. And in young children, it’s the only feasible option.
In the end, it won’t matter if you spit or swallow your phlegm this winter. So choose what feels right (and least icky) for you.
Phoebe Williams receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, and the Gates Foundation.
Niall Johnston 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.
Infants born very preterm spend weeks or even months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) while their immature brains are still developing.
During this time, they receive up to 16 painful procedures every day. The most common is a routine heel prick used to collect a blood sample. Suctioning of the infant’s airways is also common.
While many of these procedures provide critical care, we know they are acutely painful. Even tearing tape off the skin can be painful.
The commonest strategy to manage acute pain in preterm babies is to give them sucrose, a sugar solution. But my recent research with Canadian colleagues shows this doesn’t stop these long-term impacts.
In New Zealand, there is no requirement to document all procedures or pain treatments. But as the findings from our Canadian study show, we urgently need research to improve long-term health outcomes for children born prematurely.
Long-term effects of pain in early life
We collected data on the number of procedures, clinical exposures and sucrose doses from three NICUs across Canada.
One of these sites does not use sucrose for acute pain management. This meant we were able to compare outcomes for children who received sucrose during their NICU stay and those who did not, without having to randomly assign infants to different care as you would in a randomised controlled trial – the gold standard approach.
At 18 months of age, when children born preterm are typically seen for a follow-up, parents report on their child’s behaviour. Our findings replicate earlier research: very preterm babies who were exposed to painful procedures early in life showed more anxiety and depressive symptoms by toddlerhood.
Our findings are similar regarding a child’s cognition and language, backing results from other studies. We found no link between preterm babies’ later behaviour and how much sucrose they were given to manage pain.
The sweet taste of sucrose is thought to alleviate pain because it leads to the release of endorphins. It has become the worldwide standard of care for acute neonatal pain, but it doesn’t seem to be helping in the long term.
As is the case internationally, sucrose is used widely in New Zealand, but there is considerable variation in protocols of use across hospitals. No national guidelines for best practice exist.
Pain management guidelines also help, but whether these changes improve outcomes in the long term, we don’t know yet.
We do know there are other ways of treating neonatal pain and minimising long-term impacts. Placing a newborn on a parent’s bare chest, skin-to-skin, effectively reduces short and long-term effects of neonatal pain.
For times when whānau are not able to be in the NICU, we have limited evidence that other pain management strategies, such as expressed breast milk, are effective. Our recent research cements this: sucrose isn’t helping as we thought.
Understanding which pain management strategies should be used for short and long-term benefits of this vulnerable population could make a big difference in the lives of these babies.
This requires additional research and a different approach, while considering what is culturally acceptable in Aotearoa New Zealand. If the strategies we are currently using aren’t working, we need to think creatively about how to limit the impact of pain on children born prematurely.
Mia Mclean 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 Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
For many years now, Australian political scientists have pointed out that that established partisan allegiance is in decline. In 1967, 36% of Coalition supporters and 32% of Labor voters reported lifetime voting for their side. At the 2022 election, the Australian Election Study found the figures to be 16% and 12%.
These changes help to explain the rising support for independents and minor parties at federal elections; they now take about a third of the primary vote.
So much for voters. What about for politicians? Of course, there have always been plenty of parliamentarians who had an earlier stint as a member of some other party before landing in the one that sent them into parliament. Brendan Nelson was in the Labor Party before he was Liberal. John Gorton was Country Party before he was Liberal. Adam Bandt was Labor before he was Green. And so on. We are all entitled to change our minds, even if switching political parties was once closer to changing football teams – a habit that immediately arouses suspicion in a sports-loving nation.
Senator Dorinda Cox’s switch from the Greens to the Labor Party was apparently a homecoming, according to Cox. She was once a Labor Party member, she said. Last week, she was criticising the party over its approval of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf gas project. This week, she finds Labor’s values aligned with her own.
Of course, her defection has been accompanied by a steady leaking of little details of her Greens career, such as an excoriation of the Labor Party, in her application to run for the Greens, when she said the ALP patronised “women and people of colour” and cared more about its donors than members.
That’s politics, but it’s a democratic deficit that senators elected as part of a Senate team, in a system that has facilitated above-the-line voting since 1984, can sit for years afterwards in the parliament as a member of another party.
But good luck in getting up a constitutional change, via referendum, to change that.
Still, it is easy to understand how such nimbleness breeds cynicism about political parties. Another perspective might be that the fluidity of allegiance out in the electorate has come to inhabit the political class itself.
All the same, defections from one party to another are quite rare these days in federal politics, at least after one is sitting in parliament. But defections from a party to sit as an independent are not and some, such as Bob Katter, have managed to build successful political careers outside the parties.
One who did not was was Julia Banks, the Liberal member for Chisholm, who announced she would not be seeking re-election and then left the party for the crossbench in the wake of Scott Morrison’s ascension to the leadership in 2018. Banks complained of bullying and intimidation within the Liberal Party and the wider parliament, and wrote a book on her experiences. She subsequently failed to gain election as an independent in another seat.
There were several defectors in the last parliament. A House of Representatives crossbench that began at 16 had reached 19 by the end, with the defections of two Liberals (Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough, both after losing preselection) and one National, Andrew Gee, the latter over his party’s opposition to the Voice. Only Gee has lived politically to tell the tale, winning Calare as an Independent, as Peter Andren did before him.
Defections from minor and microparties are especially common, based as they often are on a high-profile leader and lacking traditions of party discipline or solid structures of organisational governance. Jacqui Lambie began as a Palmer United Party senator. Tammy Tyrrell began as a Jacqui Lambie Network senator.
The biggest “defection” in modern Australian politics was that of Cheryl Kernot from the Australian Democrats to the Labor Party in 1997. It is easy, over a quarter of a century on, and with the Australian Democrats no longer in the Australian parliament, to underestimate what a big deal this was at the time.
Kernot was a rock star of a politician, leader of the Australian Democrats, and a national celebrity. But there are significant differences with Cox beyond Kernot’s greater eminence. She resigned her Senate seat immediately and would win the marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson in the following year’s election. Then, in 2001, she would lose it to a young and ambitious former policeman named Peter Dutton.
The experience was ultimately an unhappy one for Kernot: she believed that having recruited her into the ranks, the Labor Party – and its leader, Kim Beazley, did not know how to make the best use of her. She was also on the receiving end of some relentlessly negative and sometimes intrusive media coverage. And by her own admission, she made mistakes. The story of her career’s unravelling is not straightforward. The role that gender played in it remains contentious.
Perhaps Kernot’s experience would alone be sufficient to prompt second thoughts in anyone seeking to jump ship. There are, of course, older prohibitions. In the Labor Party, a defector was known as a “rat”. Billy Hughes, the prime minister whose effort to introduce conscription in the first world war split the party, is the most famous of them.
“Rat” is not a word much heard these days, but it was thrown around a bit when Senator Fatima Payman defected in 2024, and applied more seriously in 1996 to Labor Senator Mal Colston when he resigned from the Labor Party in exchange for the deputy presidency of the Senate.
The best historical example of a defection being good for your career is that of Joe Lyons, who ratted on Labor in 1931 to lead a new party called the United Australia Party, a switch engineered by a small group of influential businessmen.
The circumstances – the Great Depression, real fear of civil violence, and the disintegration of a federal Labor government – were highly unusual.
More commonly, defection is a bad career move. Most of the Labor politicians who went over to the breakaway anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in the mid-1950s found themselves out of parliament and looking for a new job. Stan Keon, one of those flying high ahead of the split, even occasionally mentioned – unrealistically – as a possible future prime minister, would run a Melbourne wine shop. Others, such as Vince Gair, Queensland Labor premier, lived to fight another day as a DLP senator (and ambassador to Ireland).
Cox has three years left of her senate term. After that, she will be at the mercy of the Labor Party. Labor won three Senate seats at the 2022 half-Senate election in Western Australia and perhaps it could do so again. On that occasion, in a surprise victory, the third place went to the young up-and-coming union organiser, Fatima Payman.
Frank Bongiorno 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.
Fiji’s Minister for Health and Medical Services has revealed the latest HIV numbers in the country to a development partner roundtable discussing the national response.
The minister reported 490 new HIV cases between October and December last year, bringing the 2024 total to 1583.
“Included in this number are 32 newborns diagnosed with HIV acquired through mother-to-child transmission,” Dr Atonio Rabici Lalabalavu said.
Fiji declared an outbreak of the disease in January. The Fiji Sun reported around 115 HIV-related deaths in the January-September 2024 period.
Fiji’s Central Division reported 1100 new cases in 2024, with 427 in the Western Division and 50 in the Northern Division.
Of the newly recorded cases, less than half — 770 — have been successfully linked to care, of which 711 have been commenced on antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Just over half were aged in their twenties, and 70 percent of cases were male.
Increase in TB, HIV co-infection Dr Lalabalavu said the increase in HIV cases was also seeing an increase in tuberculosis and HIV co-infection, with 160 individuals in a year.
He said the ministry strongly encouraged individuals to get tested, know their status, and if it was positive, seek treatment.
Fiji Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Atonio Lalabalavu . . . strongly encourages individuals to get tested. Image: Ministry of Health & Medical Services/FB/RNZ Pacific
And if it is negative, to maintain that negative status.
“I will reiterate what I have said before to all Fijians – HIV should not be a death sentence in Fiji,” he said.
In the Western Pacific, the estimated number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) reached 1.9 million in 2020, up from 1.4 million in 2010.
At the time, the World Health Organisation said that over the previous two decades, HIV prevalence in the Western Pacific had remained low at 0.1 percent.
However, the low prevalence in the general population masked high levels of HIV infection among key populations.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Installation view of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on display from June 6 to October 5, at NGV International, Melbourne. Photo: Sean Fennessy
Impressionism is the world’s favourite art movement.
Impressionist paintings create an oasis of beauty into which a viewer can escape from a sometimes dark and troubling world, or simply from the mundane boredom of urban living.
The Impressionist master, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, once famously observed:
To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty. Yes, pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.
The new Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery of Victory brings together over a 100 of these pleasant, cheerful and pretty paintings and graphics. It features some of the greatest names in French Impressionism, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Paul Signac and Alfred Sisley.
Initially, the Impressionist painters had difficulty in selling their work amid the torrent of negative criticism.
But then their Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel established a gallery in New York City, and the American artist Mary Cassatt – who worked with the Impressionists in Paris – found increasing popularity. By the 1880s and 1890s, American collectors started to buy Impressionist paintings by many of the top French artists.
This explains why the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston possesses such an outstanding collection of Impressionist paintings. Yet, unlike the museums in New York, the Boston museum is less well known and Australians are seeing many of these paintings for the first time.
To say that most works in this exhibition have never been previously seen in Australia is only partially true. Four years ago, just before Melbourne was locked down for COVID, the NGV launched a similar show. Apart from a handful of art lovers posing as media, that show expired under lockdown and was packed up and returned to Boston without being widely exposed to Australian audiences.
The new reiteration is supplemented with six additional paintings, including the early and deeply moving painting by Degas of Degas’s Father Listening to Lorenzo Pagans Playing the Guitar (1869–72).
Edgar Degas, French, 1834–1917, Degas’s Father Listening to Lorenzo Pagans Playing the Guitar, about 1869–72. Museum of Fine Arts Boston
The whole exhibition has been totally reimagined as part of an immersive interior design. It moves far away from the clinical white cube of a modern exhibition space and closer to the 19th century posh domestic interiors in which the paintings first appeared.
An extensive and in-depth exhibition
Chronologically, the exhibition charts the development of French Impressionism from the mid-19th century and the so-called Barbizon school and realism, through to late Impressionism in the early 20th century.
It includes the great paintings by Cézanne and Manet, and memorable paintings from early to late Impressionism. There is an abundance of important works by the main Impressionist masters including Monet (16 of his canvases in one room), Degas, Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt and Morisot, and a few unexpected gems by van Gogh and Signac.
Installation view of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on display from June 6 to October 5, at NGV International, Melbourne. Photo: Sean Fennessy
It is an extensive and in-depth exhibition.
The depth of the Boston collection enables rare insights. For example, when we see Édouard Manet’s Street Singer (1862), we may be aware that he employed his favourite model Victorine Meurent. Apart from being a model, Meurent was also an artist in her own right and in the same exhibition there is a self-portrait of her from 1876.
Strictly speaking, perhaps neither painting can be described as “Impressionist”. But it is a wonderful encounter of a woman being observed and, in the same exhibition, this woman looking out of the picture space and doing the observing. The self-portrait is one of those additions that was not in the original show.
If we glance at a handful of some of the outstanding paintings in the show – including Monet’s Grainstack (snow effect) (1891), The water lily pond (1900), or Water lilies (1905); Renoir’s Dance at Bougival (1883) or The Seine at Chatou (1881); Pissarro’s Spring pasture (1889); Degas’s Racehorses at Longchamp (1871/1874); and Morisot’s Embroidery (1889) – we have all of the beloved features of French Impressionism.
While the French Impressionists were not a monolithic group, their art was generally characterised by three things.
Firstly, a lighter and brighter palette with a conscious move to the ultraviolet end of the colour spectrum.
Secondly, a divisionist application of colour with juxtaposed dabs of pigment allowing for colour to blend in the eye rather than on a mirror-smooth surface of the canvas.
Finally, a move to a more democratic subject matter with landscapes, gardens, drinking parties, picnics and street scenes easily outnumbering images of pagan gods in complicated embraces.
Australian audiences never seem to tire of French Impressionism. This exhibition brings a fresh crop of rarely seen major paintings and graphics of the highest order.
If you love Impressionism, French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a must-see exhibition. This new exhibition will change the history of Australian art exhibitions from Australia’s greatest Impressionist show that no one had seen, to Australia’s greatest Impressionist exhibition that everyone has seen.
French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 5.
Sasha Grishin 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.
This followed the death of another person in Victoria last month who was hit and killed by a modified e-bike which police alleged could travel at 90 kilometres per hour.
A study published earlier this week also found nearly 180 e-scooter injuries in young people aged five to 15 at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital in 2023 and 2024. One in ten injuries were life-threatening or potentially life-threatening.
For these risks to be properly addressed, an overhaul of regulations covering e-bikes and e-scooters is urgently needed.
All to do with power
E-bikes have a battery-powered motor to assist the rider. The key word there is “assist”: to be legal the rider has to be pedalling to get the power assistance.
E-scooters are a new variant of the once humble children’s kick scooter. They are more sturdy to support an adult rider, and the battery-powered motor provides all the power.
Some e-bikes and e-scooters have throttles, which enable riders to accelerate to higher speeds without pedalling. Technically, these are illegal.
These new forms of urban transport are surging in popularity. This year alone, about 150,000 e-bikes are forecast to be sold across the country. An estimated 350,000 Australians – about 1.3% of the population – owned an e-scooter in 2024.
Regulations governing e-bikes and e-scooters were historically designed with reference to the power required to ride a regular bicycle.
A person needs to provide power equal to 220 watts to propel a regular bicycle at 32km/h on a flat road without a headwind.
The figure of 250 watts emerged as the baseline in Europe for the power limit on e-bikes. It is 500 watts in Canada and 750 watts in the United States.
The regulations specify that power-assisted e-bikes can have a motor up to 250 watts. But the rider must pedal to get the power assistance and it must cut out above 25km/h.
E-bikes can travel faster than 25km/h. But the rider has to be providing all the power above that speed.
The same power limit was applied to e-scooters. But given their design and smaller wheels, regulators in Australia were more conservative, specifying a 20km/h maximum speed.
There are two main problems with the existing system of regulations. First, there is nothing to stop the import of high-performance e-bikes and e-scooters from overseas. Second, enforcement is difficult and rarely occurs, because the police don’t have the equipment to easily test motor power.
The federal government has a clear role to play in stemming the import of e-bikes and e-scooters that exceed the legal limits for public use in Australia.
However there is no evidence the government has engaged with the issue. This is inconsistent with its commitment to the National Road Safety Strategy and the approach taken to the management of vehicle safety and import regulations which apply to motor vehicles.
State and territory governments must revise and simplify their e-bike and e-scooter regulations.
Tasmania is on the front foot with its review of e-bike regulations. But e-scooter regulations also need reform – to make them easier for the public to understand, to ensure these devices offer a viable travel option for people and, importantly, to enable efficient enforcement.
Local government and road authorities should have the power to set speed limits for e-bike and e-scooter riders on shared paths. Cromo Digital/Shutterstock
A few changes to the rules could then make a big difference.
For a start, references to motor power should be removed because the severity of a crash depends on speed not the power of the device. Having the regulations framed in terms of power is a complication for enforcement and we don’t use it to regulate motor vehicles.
Then we need to focus on where, and how fast, these vehicles can be ridden.
A good first step would be to follow the lead of Queensland and Tasmania and legalise footpath riding, subject to a 12km/h or 15km/h speed limit as is the case in those states.
Restricting e-scooters to low-speed roads (up to 50km/h), and with a lower speed limit when ridden on the footpath, would minimise the risk of dangerous collisions with pedestrians and reduce the risk of dangerous collisions with cars on high-speed roads.
Specifying a max speed under power assistance for e-bikes of 32km/h would bring us in line with the regulations for countries that have cities similar to Australia’s such as Canada and New Zealand.
This would open our market to more models from overseas. It would also ensure e-bikes are better able to keep up with traffic when ridden on roads and are more competitive in terms of travel time relative to the car, to help further reduce car use.
When it comes to e-scooters, moving to a 25km/h speed limit (as is the case in Queensland), combined with restricting their use to roads of up to 50km/h, would improve their compatibility with the flow of motor vehicles on local streets.
Local government and road authorities should also have the power to declare areas where footpath riding is not permitted – for example, inner-city footpaths with heavy pedestrian activity. They should also have the power to set speed limits for riders on shared paths and bicycle lanes where there is likely to be interaction with pedestrians.
With those changes in place, police would be able to enforce displayed speed limits for e-bikes and e-scooters using radar guns, as is already done in Queensland, and issue fines where appropriate.
Geoff Rose has received in-kind support for his research, in the form of data, from shared e-scooter operating companies; he has served on the oversight panel for the Victorian Government’s shared e-scooter trial and he has consulted to the Tasmanian Department of State Growth on e-bike regulations.
The 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study found neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children is widespread. Among Australians aged 16–65 years, 32% experienced physical abuse, 28.5% experienced sexual abuse, 39% experienced emotional abuse and 9% had been neglected during their childhoods.
As the place where children spend the bulk of their time outside home, schools could be an important source of help and support. But are they equipped to do this?
Our research, published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues, explores the impact of domestic and family violence on young people’s education. Our findings show just how significant the disruption to a young person’s education can be, including how safe or supported they feel at school.
Our study
Our study draws on data from the Adolescent Family Violence in Australia project. This is a national survey of more than 5,000 young Australians aged 16–20 years old. We focused on a subset of 1,651 respondents who had experienced domestic and family violence, either by experiencing violence between other family members or being directly subjected to it.
The survey asked both structured and open-ended questions to explore the impacts of domestic and family violence.
Family violence disrupts school attendance and participation
Our study showed family violence has a significant impact on school attendance. Young people told us they missed classes or dropped out of school during their experiences of violence.
For some young people, attending school while coping with trauma, fear and instability at home was too overwhelming.
A 19-year-old woman shared how she became so anxious in the presence of teachers and other authority figures she could only manage one day of school per week in a secluded setting.
Another young woman described missing classes regularly to care for her mother after violent episodes, while a 20-year-old man said he stayed home to protect his mother.
Even when young victims did attend school, the emotional toll of family violence often meant they were socially withdrawn. Some spoke about losing friends due to frequent house moves and school shifts, while others withdrew socially because of anxiety and trauma. One 17-year-old explained:
I don’t talk a lot to male teachers and don’t really have close friendships with girls at my school, so I tend to stay home.
Some participants described school as a safe haven away from their abusive home. But even in these cases, learning was often still difficult. One young person commented:
Yes, I wanted to go to school to get away from home, but felt very alone and isolated because no one knew what was happening.
Family violence and homework
The effects of family violence extend beyond the classroom. Many young people told us how the chaos, fear and emotional exhaustion of life at home made it difficult, if not impossible, to complete homework or study for exams. One young woman remarked:
I can’t do any homework at home because it’s not a safe environment for me.
Another young person described being kept up late listening to fighting or because of police visits, leaving them physically and emotionally exhausted in the morning.
In some cases, abusive parents directly prevented their child from attending school or doing homework. Other young people described not having access to the tools they needed, like a working computer or internet connection – sometimes withheld deliberately by a parent.
These accounts show how for some children experiencing family violence, learning at home is not just difficult, it is fundamentally unsafe.
Young people spoke of how domestic violence made it impossible to study at home. C.T.PHAT/Shutterstock, CC BY
A missed opportunity
It can be difficult for schools to fully understand and appreciate what’s happening for students at home.
Few of the young people we surveyed proactively disclosed their experiences to school staff, including teachers and counsellors. Disclosure rates ranged from just 12% to 17%, depending on the type of violence the young person reported experiencing.
For those young people who did disclose, their experiences varied. Some young people described school staff as a lifeline – listening without judgement, offering helpful information and taking action where needed.
Others described being ignored, dismissed or harmed further by insensitive responses. As one young person said, the “school counsellor told me I needed to understand dad’s behaviour and keep my head down”.
The help students received seemed to depend on the individual teacher or school counsellor, their knowledge and training. This inconsistency represents a major barrier to effective and early intervention.
What needs to change
As well as learning, schools can also provide safety, stability and healing. We need schools to be supported to provide more effective and consistent care for students experiencing family violence.
As other research has similarly found, responses need to be trauma-informed (recognising the impact of trauma on students) and student-centred (focusing on individuals’ needs). This involves:
providing trauma and domestic violence-informed training to all school staff
ensuring schools have clear processes to follow if a student disclosures domestic violence, including referrals to appropriate external supports
adopting flexible attendance and academic policies for young people impacted by domestic violence
building collaborative partnerships with community-based domestic violence and mental health services.
The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault. The Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) offers advice and counselling to men looking to change their behaviour.
Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government and ANROWS, among others. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separate from and does not represent that role.
Kate has received funding for research on violence against women and children from a range of federal and state government and non-government sources. Currently, Kate receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), the South Australian government, Safe Steps, Australian Childhood Foundation and 54 Reasons. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her role at Monash University and Sequre Consulting, and is wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as chair of Respect Victoria and membership on the Victorian Children’s Council.
Rebecca Stewart is a project officer at No to Violence. The views expressed in this article are her own.
Big animals of the ocean go about their days mostly hidden from view. Scientists know this marine megafauna – such as whales, sharks, seal, turtles and birds – travel vast distances to feed and breed.
But almost a third are now at risk of extinction due largely to fishing, shipping, pollution and global warming.
Protecting them can be difficult, because we don’t often know where these animals are.
New research I led sought to shed light on the issue. My colleagues and I gathered 30 years of satellite tracking data to map hotspots of megafauna activity around the globe.
We tracked 12,794 animals from 111 species to find out where they go. The results reveal underwater “highways” where megafauna crisscross the global Ocean. They also show where megafauna dwell for feeding and breeding. Now we know where these special places are, we have a better chance of protecting them.
Satellite tracking reveals marine megafauna migration pathways and places of residence. Sequeira et al (2025) Science
Pulling all the data together: a mega task
For more than 30 years, marine biologists have tagged large animals in the sea with electronic devices and tracked their movements via satellite. The trackers capture data on everything from speed of travel, to direction of movement and where the animals spend most of their time.
I put a call out to the global research community to bring together the tracking data. I hoped it would help scientists better understand the animals’ movements and identify their favourite places.
Some 378 scientists from 50 countries responded. We assembled the world’s largest tracking dataset of marine megafauna. It includes species of flying birds, whales, fishes (mostly sharks), penguins, polar bears, seals, dugongs, manatees and turtles. They were tracked between 1985 and 2018, throughout the world’s oceans.
Ana Sequeira swimming with a whale shark in Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, to collect samples. Australian Institute of Marine Science
Mapping reveals a lack of protection
When we started analysing the data, it showed the tagged animals used some parts of the ocean more frequently than others. Most of them travelled to the central Indian Ocean, northeast Pacific Ocean, Atlantic north, and waters around Mozambique and South Africa.
It’s likely this reflects a lack of data from elsewhere. However, these species are known to go to places where they are most likely to find food, so we expect some areas to be used more than others (including the areas we detected).
Currently only about 8% of the global ocean is protected. And only 5% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified occur within these existing marine protected areas.
This leaves all of the other important marine megafauna areas we identified unprotected. In other words, the species using those areas are likely to suffer harm from human activities taking place at sea.
More than 90% of the important marine megafauna areas we identified are exposed to high plastic pollution, shipping traffic or to intensifying global warming. And about 75% are exposed to industrial fishing.
We also found marine megafauna tend to spend most of their time within exclusive economic zones. This area lies beyond the territorial sea or belt of water 12 nautical miles from the coast of each country, extending 200 nautical miles from shore. The presence of megafauna in these exclusive economic zones means individual countries could increase the protection afforded within their jurisdictions.
About 40% of the important marine megafauna areas were located in these zones. But about 60% were on the high seas.
The future of marine megafauna conservation
The High Seas Treaty, recently adopted by the United Nations and signed by 115 countries, governs the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological biodiversity on the open ocean.
Working alongside this treaty, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to protect 30% of the global ocean by 2030. This presents an opportunity to ensure important marine megafauna areas are well represented.
We used an optimisation algorithm to identify the best areas to protect, when it comes to marine megafauna. We gave priority to areas that are potentially used for feeding, breeding, resting and migrating across all the different species.
But even if important marine megafauna areas are selected when 30% of the ocean is protected, about 60% of these areas would still stay unprotected.
Significant risks from human activities will remain. Management efforts must also focus on reducing harm from fishing and shipping. Fighting climate change and cutting down noise and plastic pollution should also be key priorities.
Like for most megafauna on land, the reign of marine megafauna might come to an end if humanity does not afford these species greater protection.
Ana M. M. Sequeira receives funding from the Australian Research Council and a Pew Marine Fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts. She is also affiliated with the University of Western Australia.
