Author: MIL OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Van Amber, Senior Lecturer in Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University

There’s a peculiar ritual in many kitchens: reaching past the crisp, pristine tea towel hanging on the oven door to grab the threadbare, slightly greying one shoved in the drawer.

We all know that old faithful dries dishes better, even if we can’t quite explain why. It seems counter-intuitive – shouldn’t brand new towels, fresh from the packaging, outperform their worn-out predecessors?

Yet here we are, instinctively choosing the frayed over the fresh.

This isn’t just kitchen superstition. There’s genuine science behind why your tea towels actually improve with age, and understanding it might change how you think about all your household textiles.

The science of soaking it up

Tea towels are typically made from cotton or linen fibres, chosen specifically because these natural cellulose fibres are inherently hygroscopic, or water-loving.

But fibre type alone doesn’t determine how well your towel performs. A textile’s absorption is the result of a complex interplay between fibre, yarn, fabric structure, and any finishes applied during manufacturing.

Textiles absorb and hold water in two key places: within the fibre structure itself, and in the spaces between fibres and yarns. This is why fabric structure matters so much.

Think about bath towels – when was the last time you used a smooth, thin one? Bath towels are typically thick terry pile construction with lots of small loops on the surface. These loops dramatically increase surface area, allowing water to be easily wicked into the fabric.

Tea towels come in various constructions: plain weave, twill weave, waffle cloth, or terry. Plain weave towels – the kind you see with printed designs – require a smooth surface for clean, crisp screen printing.

Waffle cloth, which looks exactly as its name suggests, has a three-dimensional texture that makes it incredibly effective. Like with terry towels, this structure increases surface area and enhances water absorption.

Why old beats new

So what makes your battered old tea towel superior to its pristine replacement? Three key factors are at play.

Silicone finishes. Many brand-new textiles arrive coated in silicone softeners that provide softness and wrinkle resistance, making them appealing on store shelves.

But here’s the catch: these same finishes are often water resistant. Your brand new tea towel may literally have a water-repellent coating. The fix is simple – always wash new tea towels in hot water before first use.

The impact of laundering. Fabrics undergo significant changes during their first several washes – typically up to six cycles. During manufacturing, whether knitted or woven, fabrics are held under tension. Washing causes the yarns to relax in what’s called “relaxation shrinkage”, reverting to their natural, tension-free state. Industry typically tolerates up to 5% shrinkage.

Here’s where it gets interesting: while your tea towel’s dimensions may shrink slightly, its mass stays the same, meaning the fabric becomes thicker and denser. In waffle weave towels, this shrinkage can make the three-dimensional texture more pronounced, increasing surface geometry and absorption. This phenomenon has been documented in terry bath towels, as well.

Fabric ageing. Repeated washing and drying causes minor surface damage that actually improves performance. Small fibres gradually raise up from the fabric surface, creating a fluffier, “hairier” texture.

Really smooth tea towels aren’t very absorbent because water struggles to wet the surface – it can almost bead up due to the contact angle between water and the smooth fabric.

But as washing raises more fibres off the surface making a “rougher” textile, the contact angle decreases, making the fabric easier to wet. Waffle fabrics, with their irregular surfaces, are inherently more absorbent from the start due to favourable contact angles.

In short: washing leads to more surface texture, leading to better absorption.

Not just tea towels

The real revelation here isn’t just about tea towels – it’s about how we think about textiles in general.

That “worn in” feeling we associate with our favourite bath towels, tea towels and even bed linens isn’t just nostalgia. Many of our home textiles are genuinely performing better after repeated laundering, having shed their factory finishes and relaxed into their true structure.

So before you send your old tea towels off for recycling to replace with new ones, remember: those frayed edges and faded patterns represent months of your towel becoming exactly what it was meant to be.

And when you do buy new household textiles, wash them at least once before using to remove any residual finishes.

Rebecca Van Amber is a chartered member of The Textile Institute.

– ref. Why are new tea towels worse at drying dishes than older ones? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-new-tea-towels-worse-at-drying-dishes-than-older-ones-271852

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/09/why-are-new-tea-towels-worse-at-drying-dishes-than-older-ones-271852/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Robinson, Senior Lecturer Above the Bar, University of Canterbury

The recent deaths of eight people in two New Zealand landslides has left the public searching for answers. Some questions will be technical, about what failed and why.

But one should surely sit above the rest: why do we keep accepting the human and financial cost of this risk?

While it might be assumed that earthquakes or volcanic eruptions are Aotearoa’s deadliest natural hazards, landslides have claimed more than twice as many lives – approximately 1,800 – as both combined over the past 200 years.

They remain such an insidious and under-appreciated hazard because they cause deaths relatively frequently, but typically only in small numbers. Being one of the most fatal New Zealand landslides since 1846, last month’s tragedy at Mount Maunganui was a stark exception.

A useful analogy is our tolerance for car crashes versus aeroplane crashes. Road deaths in New Zealand kill hundreds of people each year, one by one, with little national reckoning. The 1979 Mount Erebus air disaster, in which 257 people were killed in one afternoon, forever changed aviation policy and remains part of the country’s collective memory.

In natural hazard terms, landslides are car crashes; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are aeroplane crashes. Yet, with climate change driving heavier rainfall, it’s worth asking whether this is a danger we should be comfortable to continue living with – and paying for.

Since 2010, central government has incurred about NZ$19 billion in costs associated with natural hazards, but 97% of that has gone on response and recovery, with just 3% on reducing risk and building resilience. In practice, New Zealand keeps paying for disasters after they happen, rather than spending to stop them happening in the first place.

A hazard hiding in plain sight

The risk of landslides, specifically, is managed through a complex mix of laws, led by the Resource Management Act (RMA). It largely falls to territorial authorities, which can restrict new developments but, due to land use rights, are more constrained with existing buildings even if at high risk.

There have been some successful attempts to change land use rules, but they have been few and far between. It remains to be seen what effect the latest reforms to the RMA will have.

Recent disasters have also exposed gaps in how local councils, emergency services, central government agencies and insurers respond to events, with unclear responsibilities and slow information flows. This underscores the need for a more joined-up response to events such as floods and landslides, as a high-level inquiry recommended in 2024.

On top of all this is the need to gain a clearer national picture of the hazard. Past landslides indicate where failures are most likely: steep slopes, weak rock, wet soils and sparse vegetation, particularly where forestry was recently cleared. But outcomes also depend on subtler factors such as slope shape and aspect.

We also know landslides come in different shapes and sizes, which determines how far they travel and how much area they can threaten. In New Zealand, the most common type are shallow slides, typically one to two metres deep and involving only the top layer of soil.

Despite their size, these slides can be highly dangerous, carrying hundreds of tonnes of debris at high speed. Their paths are not always straightforward: wet landslide debris can behave like a liquid, following channels in the landscape and travelling for kilometres.

While scientists’ understanding of landslides has improved markedly over recent decades, important gaps remain. Because landslides are highly localised, they demand detailed local knowledge. But New Zealand’s inventories are still patchy, particularly in Northland and the Bay of Plenty, and existing local studies are often hard to access or compare.

This also makes it harder to understand precisely what climate change means for national landslide risk.

Although a warming climate is already driving more intense and frequent storms, emerging research suggests future landslides will mostly increase in areas already prone to them, rather than spread into entirely new regions. Even so, uncertainty in these projections remains high.

The cost of living with risk

To paraphrase New Zealand’s former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, if you want natural hazards, you’re in the right place in Aotearoa. Managing the ever-present threat from landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, tsunamis, liquefaction and wildfire is a daunting responsibility. But it’s a job we expect our authorities to do, all while running other services and keeping our rates and taxes as low as possible.

With the cost of landslides mounting, we might expect that when local authorities identify actions to reduce risk that could save money in the long run, these efforts would be welcomed by central government. Instead, they are often met with a phrase we have become too familiar with: we are in a “fiscally challenging environment”.

That may be. But it is also true that the costs associated with natural hazards are only likely to increase. The cheapest time to invest in resilience is now.

When it comes to landslides, we need to consider whether repeated fatalities from a known and worsening hazard are something we are prepared to tolerate. Aeroplane crashes have always been unacceptable to us, but the 2019 Ministry of Transport Road to Zero strategy suggested deaths in car crashes were becoming intolerable as well.

Perhaps now is the time to take a similar approach to landslides. With an election looming, political parties have a chance to put forward credible plans to reduce natural hazard risk or, better still, to agree on a non-partisan path that builds resilience for the long term.

Tom Robinson receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Natural Hazards Commission.

– ref. Landslides are NZ’s deadliest natural hazard. Why does it still tolerate the risk? – https://theconversation.com/landslides-are-nzs-deadliest-natural-hazard-why-does-it-still-tolerate-the-risk-275206

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/09/landslides-are-nzs-deadliest-natural-hazard-why-does-it-still-tolerate-the-risk-275206/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Newspoll, Redbridge and Morgan polls all have One Nation second behind Labor, with the Coalition third. However, there are no Labor vs One Nation two-party estimates.

A national Newspoll, conducted February 5–8 from a sample of 1,234, gave Labor 33% of the primary vote (up one since the previous Newspoll three weeks ago), One Nation 27% (up five), the Coalition 18% (down three), the Greens 12% (steady) and all Others 10% (down three).

This is a record high for One Nation in any poll and a record low for the Coalition. But last week’s Redbridge and Morgan polls had One Nation leading the Coalition by seven and 4.5 points respectively. On current polls, One Nation is beating the Coalition into second place.

In a single-member electoral system like the House of Representatives, the consequences for a major party that falls to third would be brutal. On current polling, the Coalition would struggle to win ten of the 150 House seats.

As the Coalition is no longer second, no Labor vs Coalition two-party estimate was released by Newspoll. None of the three polls in this article have released a Labor vs One Nation two-party estimate. A late January YouGov poll gave Labor a 57–43 respondent-allocated preference lead over One Nation.

Analyst Kevin Bonham has Labor vs Coalition and Labor vs One Nation two-party aggregates using 2025 Senate preference flow data. He has Labor leading One Nation by 54.1–45.9 and the Coalition by 54.3–45.7. With the massive drop in the Coalition vote since the last election, this method may not be reliable.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval improved one point to -10, while Sussan Ley’s net approval slumped 11 points to a new low of -39, the worst for a major party leader in Newspoll since Labor’s Simon Crean in 2003. Albanese led Ley as better PM by 49–30 (51–31 previously).

This graph shows Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll since he became PM in 2022, with a smoothed line fitted.

Amid the Coalition’s turmoil, Labor will be relieved this poll was not worse for them after the Reserve Bank raised interest rates last Tuesday.

One Nation’s poll surge and a potential Labor vs One Nation contest

Before the December 14 Bondi terrorist attacks, One Nation had already surged from 6.4% at the last election to the high teens in polls. I believe this reflected frustration from right-wing voters with Labor’s landslide at the election and the perceived weakness of Ley’s leadership.

The Bondi attacks played into One Nation’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim themes, sending it into the 20s, just behind the Coalition. The Coalition split on January 22 has resulted in One Nation overtaking the Coalition on primary votes. The Coalition reformed yesterday, but the damage may already be done.

If One Nation replaces the Coalition as the main right-wing party at the next election, I believe Labor has advantages. While One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s net favourability surged 16 points to -3 in the Redbridge poll below, she hasn’t yet come under media and Labor scrutiny for her policies. If One Nation is seen as a potential government by the next election, they will receive far more scrutiny.

One Nation is further to the right than the Coalition. An important reason for Labor’s landslide was that the Coalition was perceived as too close to US President Donald Trump. With Trump at -51 net favourable with Australians in the Redbridge poll, it will be difficult for a pro-Trump party to win.

The next Australian federal election is due by May 2028, before the next US presidential election in November 2028.

Redbridge poll has One Nation seven points ahead of Coalition

A national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted January 22–29 from a sample of 1,003, gave Labor 34% of the primary vote (down one since the last Redbridge poll in December), One Nation 26% (up nine), the former Coalition parties 19% (down seven), the Greens 11% (down two) and all Others 10% (up one).

No Labor vs One Nation two-party estimate was provided, with Labor leading the Coalition by an unchanged 56–44 using 2025 election preference flows.

Albanese’s net favourability was down 11 points to -10, while Ley was down 12 to -32. Albanese led Ley as preferred PM by 37–9 with 34% for neither (41–12 previously).

While both Albanese and Ley slumped, Hanson’s net favourability surged 16 points to -3 and Barnaby Joyce’s net favourability was up eight points to -19.

Liberal leadership aspirants Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor were respectively at an even 16–16 and 17–13 unfavourable, while Nationals leader David Littleproud was at 27–13 unfavourable. Donald Trump was at 67–16 unfavourable.

Morgan poll: One Nation now leading Coalition

A national Morgan poll, conducted January 26 to February 1 from a sample of 1,401, gave Labor 30.5% of the primary vote (steady since the January 19–25 Morgan poll), One Nation 25% (up 2,5), the Coalition 20.5% (down two), the Greens 12.5% (down 0.5) and all Others 11.5% (steady).

There was no Labor vs One Nation two-party estimate. Labor led the Coalition by 56–44 using respondent preferences, a 0.5-point gain for the Coalition. By 2025 election flows, Labor led by an unchanged 54.5–45.5.

The four January Morgan polls have had One Nation and the Coalition going in opposite directions. One Nation was at 15% in the first poll, then 21%, 22.5% and 25%, while the Coalition began at 30.5%, then 24%, 22.5% and 20.5%.

Morgan also released demographic breakdowns from its four January polls. Compared with November to December, Labor led the Coalition in all states, regaining a 51–49 lead in Queensland. Labor’s biggest lead was in South Australia (61–39), which holds a state election on March 21.

Labor led by 56–44 with women and 52.5–47.5 with men. They led by 65.5–34.5 with those aged 18–34, 58–42 with those aged 35–49 and 51.5–48.5 with those aged 50–64. The Coalition led by 58–42 with those aged 65 and older.

One Nation’s support was highest in New South Wales at 25.5%, beating its traditional strongest state of Queensland (24%). Their support by age peaked with those aged 50–64 at 27%.

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

– ref. One Nation surges to new high as Coalition slumps to record low in latest Newspoll – https://theconversation.com/one-nation-surges-to-new-high-as-coalition-slumps-to-record-low-in-latest-newspoll-274839

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/09/one-nation-surges-to-new-high-as-coalition-slumps-to-record-low-in-latest-newspoll-274839/