Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Dunstone, Climate Science Fellow, Met Office Hadley Centre

A new Earthset image has been captured by the crew of Artemis II, 58 years since the iconic Earthrise photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8. Over these past six decades, the climate has changed dramatically.

“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty.” That was Nasa astronaut Bill Anders’ reaction to seeing the Earth appearing to rise above the lunar horizon as their Apollo 8 spacecraft came around the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968.

Theirs were the first human eyes to see our planet at such a distance and from another celestial body. As fellow astronaut Jim Lovell said a few hours later: “The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.”

That original Earthrise image is widely credited with helping to set the mainstream environmental movement in motion. Although I wasn’t born when the Apollo 8 photo was taken, a framed print of it hangs above my desk as a reminder of the beauty and fragility of our planet.

For me as a climate scientist, these photos, taken 58 years apart, inspire me to reflect on how the Earth’s climate has changed in the interim.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in our atmosphere has rapidly increased as a result of over half a century of continued and spreading industrial development, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.

This is clearly illustrated by the Keeling curve – a graph that plots the continuous record of atmospheric CO₂ from Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii (started by Charles Keeling in 1958).

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Read more: Mauna Loa Observatory captured the reality of climate change. The US plans to shut it down

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This curve shows a steep and steady increase from approximately 320 parts per million (ppm) in 1968 to about 430ppm in 2026. This increase of over one-third in the total carbon dioxide in our atmosphere shows little sign of slowing down.

That additional blanket of greenhouse gases has increased the surface temperature of our planet. Data from the World Meteorological Organization shows how the global mean temperature record (the average temperature of the Earth’s surface) has risen by approximately 1.2°C since the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo was taken. This represents most of the warming that has happened since the early industrial period in the mid-19th century.

While an average global temperature increase of 1.2°C may not sound large, it means that regional hot extremes and new records are now much more likely. For example, my team’s recent research has shown that a 40°C day in the UK (first recorded on July 19 2022) is now over 20 times more likely than it was in the 1960s.

The global average temperature has surged in the past three years – most probably driven by a combination of internal climate variability and human-made emissions (including strong reductions in industrial aerosol particle emissions that largely act to cool the planet). In 2023, temperatures jumped from the previous record of 1.29°C (set in 2016) to 1.45°C above the early-industrial 1850-1900 baseline.

This record was then immediately broken in 2024 – the first year to temporarily exceed 1.5°C. Going beyond that boundary in a single year doesn’t mean we have breached the 1.5°C target set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which is generally accepted to refer to a 20-year average. However, it does highlight how rapidly we are now approaching that level of warming.

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Read more: Record January heat suggests La Niña may be losing its ability to keep global warming in check

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Temperatures in both years were partly boosted by warmer conditions in the tropical Pacific due to El Niño, a climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns globally. Last year, after El Niño had subsided, was slightly cooler at 1.43°C. However, current forecasts give a high probability for another El Niño developing during the second half of 2026. If this materialises, we could easily exceed 1.5°C again.

A key question is whether global warming is accelerating. This is difficult to detect directly from the surface temperature record. However, a recent study found a significant acceleration after accounting for the “noise” of year-to-year variability.

The view from above

Climate science isn’t just about measuring changes in temperature.

One of the legacies of the 1960s space race was the subsequent launch of many satellite observation platforms that have transformed our ability to monitor, understand and predict changes to the global climate.

We now have continuous monitoring of many key components of Earth’s climate system, including sea surface temperature, sea level, and the extent of polar sea ice, glaciers and land surface changes. Unfortunately, many of these reveal worrying trends, such as more frequent heatwaves on land and sea, loss of Arctic sea-ice, melting glaciers and sea-level rise.

One of the most concerning recent trends comes from a set of satellite instruments called the Nasa Ceres, which have measured changes in the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) since 2000. EEI is the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by the planet and the thermal energy radiated back into space.

The Ceres data shows a strong upward trend, indicating a growing rate of accumulation of energy, consistent with an acceleration in global heating.

Looking ahead, I hope that by the time astronauts take the first Earthrise photo from Mars (perhaps in the late 2030s), we are heading towards net-zero carbon emissions and more stable global temperatures.

Achieving net zero is this century’s Moonshot. The prize is minimising the severity of the worst climate consequences of global heating – leaving our children and future generations a sustainable “grand oasis” here on Earth.

– ref. Earthrise to Earthset: how the planet’s climate has changed since the photo that inspired the environmental movement – https://theconversation.com/earthrise-to-earthset-how-the-planets-climate-has-changed-since-the-photo-that-inspired-the-environmental-movement-279818

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/earthrise-to-earthset-how-the-planets-climate-has-changed-since-the-photo-that-inspired-the-environmental-movement-279818/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

While the government works to reassure New Zealanders that fuel stocks are stable, the numbers tell an uncomfortable story: the country has about 27 days of onshore cover for petrol and 17 days of diesel.

Meanwhile, the Middle East crisis remains volatile, even after today’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire.

In a country that imports all of its refined petrol, diesel and jet fuel, petrol is above NZ$3 a litre and diesel has overtaken it for the first time in history.

Roughly 80% of New Zealand’s fuel supply originates from refineries in South Korea and Singapore, which rely heavily on the Strait of Hormuz for their crude oil.

It is one of the most serious energy disruptions the world has faced. And governments everywhere are responding accordingly, some capping fuel purchases and pulling the available levers to reduce how much fuel citizens burn each day.

The Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania have made public transport free, as has Pakistan. The International Energy Agency has urged governments to pursue rapid demand reduction through public transport, teleworking and promoting walking and cycling.

In contrast, New Zealand has offered a NZ$50-per-week tax credit for an estimated 143,000 working families to ease petrol costs. A phased fuel response plan remains at its lowest setting, encouraging the public to check their tyre pressure and consider public transport.

Reducing transport demand

As a country with one of the highest car ownership rates in the world and a transport system in which 82% of personal trips are made by private vehicle, New Zealand is more exposed to global oil disruption than virtually any developed nation.

And yet the government’s demand-side response is essentially non-existent. This is despite what we know works in an oil shock. In particular, public transport fare reductions can cut the number of car trips. In congested urban networks, the effect compounds.

New Zealand’s own transport cost modelling shows fuel consumption per car rises roughly 35% in stop-start traffic, so every vehicle removed from the road saves fuel for everyone still on it.

Lower speed limits reduce fuel consumption per kilometre. Fleet electrification displaces oil from the highest-mileage vehicles first.

This is all standard demand-side response to supply disruption, according to the International Energy Agency. But these strategies underpin climate change mitigation, too.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s transport recommendations identify the same “avoid, shift, improve” framework as being essential for both decarbonisation and energy resilience.

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Read more: Iran oil crisis: why NZ’s car dependence is now a strategic liability

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The wrong policy lane

The problem for the current government is that nearly every one of those levers is a policy it has spent two years dismantling, defunding or disavowing.

It has pushed public transport agencies toward higher fare recovery targets and halved walking and cycling investment to $460 million (with no new funding for the 2024–27 period). It cancelled Auckland light rail.

Better urban walking and cycling infrastructure is known to shift people away from short trips by vehicle. But former Transport Minister Simeon Brown has claimed New Zealanders were “sick and tired of the amount of money going into cycleways”.

The Clean Car Discount – framed by the government as a handout for wealthy Tesla buyers – was repealed under urgency in 2023. Electric vehicle fleet growth, which had exceeded 50% per year while the scheme operated, collapsed to under 10%.

The previous Labour government’s speed limit reductions were reversed and labelled “nanny state” policy. Councils were allowed to opt out of medium-density residential standards, despite this being a way to reduce private vehicle use.

Every effective oil-shock response sits in the policy lane the current government has disowned as wasteful, anti-motorist or ideologically driven. Deploying any of them now risks conceding the political point.

The timing deepens the bind. After the second phase of the Royal Commission into COVID-19 reported recently, the government seized on criticisms of Labour’s crisis interventions.

Having built a political brand around the idea that the previous government overreacted and overspent during an emergency, the coalition now faces its own crisis. But it has encouraged voters to distrust the kind of rapid, interventionist measures that might be most effective.

Promoting energy security

The process has been termed “reputational constraint”, meaning political parties avoid policy options that stray into territory already “owned” by the competition – even if it might be effective.

But there is a way out of this that doesn’t require ideological surrender. The government could frame temporary fare reductions not as subsidies but as what they actually are: energy security measures.

It could fund connected cycling networks as cheap emergency capacity to reduce cars on the road and keep them clearer for freight. And it could target funding for fleet electrification at high-kilometre commercial vehicles as strategic oil displacement policy.

The International Energy Agency endorses all of these as energy security instruments. The government’s own fuel plan already acknowledges demand management should be part of the response to extreme disruptions.

The government has boxed itself in, but the problem is political, not technical. By treating transport demand reduction as energy security, rather than a partisan issue, an evidence-led response is still available.

– ref. The government has boxed itself in over fuel saving strategies – but there is a way out – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-boxed-itself-in-over-fuel-saving-strategies-but-there-is-a-way-out-280131

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/the-government-has-boxed-itself-in-over-fuel-saving-strategies-but-there-is-a-way-out-280131/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa-ann Gershwin, Research Scientist in Marine Biology, University of Tasmania

On a calm summer morning in southern Australia, the water can look deceptively clear, until you see thousands of gelatinous shapes washing ashore.

In January, thousands of pink lion’s mane jellyfish washed into Port Phillip Bay, prompting beach warnings and startling swimmers more accustomed to cold water than the shock of stinging tentacles.

The same month, unusually high numbers of moon jellyfish were reported across southern Tasmanian coastal waters.

If you’re swimming in southern seas and have an encounter with a jellyfish swarm, you may well wonder what led to it. Could a cold spike, a marine heatwave or other changes in the ocean have triggered the bloom?

Are these blooms normal?

Many Australians associate jellyfish with the dangerous stings of northern species such as box jellyfish and Irukandji. But jellyfish aren’t just confined to tropical waters. In southern Australia, species such as lions mane and moon jellyfish are more common, particularly this summer.

In fact, hundreds of species of jellyfish are found in Australian waters, ranging in size from a mere speck to nearly two metres wide. And it’s natural for jellyfish numbers to boom and bust. When conditions are favourable, they can bloom into superabundance. Their millions of mouths can strip every particle of food out of the water, from fish fry to fish eggs and plankton.

That said, there is a clear pattern visible globally. More disturbed marine ecosystems tend to experience larger and more persistent jellyfish blooms.

Jellyfish blooms can act as a visible indicator that something is out of balance in the ocean. For example, when oceans are overfished, polluted or suffer from other environmental degradation, this can trigger highly visible jellyfish blooms. Overfishing can remove predators and competitors, leaving jellyfish to thrive unchecked.

Coastal impacts from urbanisation add further pressure. When rivers dump huge amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients from farms and cities into the seas, this and other forms of pollution can favour jellyfish growth. For oceans affected by several of these issues, jellyfish blooms often grow larger and last longer.

Researchers have found jellyfish are becoming more abundant in many areas. Warmer waters favour jellyfish. But it is too simplistic to say that all jellyfish are are taking over everywhere. Different species respond to different conditions in their ecosystems.

Warmer water is good for jellyfish

As climate change heats up the oceans, many species are struggling to cope. Warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen than cooler water, making life harder for species with higher oxygen demands, like crustaceans and fish.

Jellyfish are highly responsive to their environment. Warmer water gives their metabolism a boost, so longer warm periods or sudden marine heatwaves can create conditions highly favourable for rapid population growth. They grow faster, eat more, reproduce faster and live longer.

Surprisingly, cold matters too. Researchers have found moon jellyfish can also get a boost from cold water. In their polyp stage, young moon jellies attach themselves to rocks or coral. When a cold period is followed by a return to normal temperatures, the polyps get a cue to begin budding off larval jellyfish (a process known as strobilation).

Interestingly, the size of the temperature change – not just whether it is warm or cool – can make jellyfish blooms more intense.

For example, in the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska and in the waters off Peru, long-term monitoring has shown jellyfish numbers closely tracked warming and cooling periods associated with the El Niño climate driver.

Ocean warming can be a threat multiplier, amplifying pressures on marine ecosystems, creating conditions in which jellyfish populations can expand dramatically.

Less oxygen is bad for fish but jellies don’t care

Heavy breathing marine species such as fish struggle to survive in warmer, less oxygenated water. Here, too, jellyfish do well. They can even survive periods in oxygen-free habitats, as they can store oxygen in their jelly.

As I put it in my TEDx Talk, when marine ecosystems face pressures on several fronts, jellyfish are often advantaged – while the predators normally keeping them in check suffer.

What to do if stung

While life-threatening box jellyfish and Irukandji stings have occurred in subtropical and even temperate Australian waters, both types are commoner in the tropics. For this reason, the Australian Resuscitation Council recommends different treatments for stung swimmers in southern and northern waters.

In the tropics, the priority is saving a life. Douse the sting liberally with vinegar to inactivate stinging cells, seek medical care if appropriate and be prepared to commence CPR if necessary.

Outside the tropics, the priority is pain relief. Rinse the sting well with seawater to wash away undischarged stinging cells, then use hot water or ice for the pain. In either case, seek immediate medical care if breathing difficulties or other systemic symptoms develop.

Blooms are beautiful

Many people who marvel at the beauty of jellyfish in an aquarium might shy away from them in the sea. But while it can feel daunting to think about being stung, jellyfish blooms in southern waters more often present a splendid opportunity to see an unusual natural phenomenon.

– ref. Swum into a jellyfish bloom recently? Here’s what may have triggered it – https://theconversation.com/swum-into-a-jellyfish-bloom-recently-heres-what-may-have-triggered-it-276866

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/swum-into-a-jellyfish-bloom-recently-heres-what-may-have-triggered-it-276866/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Professor in Pharmaceutical Policy, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney

You can have an online consultation, be prescribed medicinal cannabis, and have it sent directly to your home, in a seamless operation. This one-stop-shop certainly sounds convenient.

But not everyone’s happy.

Industry observers, doctors and pharmacists call these one-stop-shops “vertical integration”. That’s when the person who prescribes medicinal cannabis or the clinic that employs them has a financial relationship with the manufacturer of the product and/or the business that dispenses it.

Critics say it’s where prescribers – GPs, specialist doctors or nurse practitioners – can feel pressured to prescribe what will make money for clinics, pharmacies and suppliers. It’s a system where patients can be prescribed medicinal cannabis, despite good clinical reasons not to. It can also lock in patients to specific products or pharmacies.

So should clinics be allowed to prescribe medicinal cannabis if they have financial links to the supplier or dispenser?

We asked five experts. Five out of five said no.

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

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– ref. Should clinics prescribe medicinal cannabis that they also supply? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/should-clinics-prescribe-medicinal-cannabis-that-they-also-supply-we-asked-5-experts-272426

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/should-clinics-prescribe-medicinal-cannabis-that-they-also-supply-we-asked-5-experts-272426/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Bird, Industry Fellow, Corporate Governance & Senior Lecturer, Swinburne Law School, Swinburne University of Technology

Almost every Australian has a stake in how well the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) works. Most working adults have superannuation savings invested in companies listed on the ASX, which together are valued at more than A$3 trillion.

If you’re among the millions of members of big super funds AustralianSuper and UniSuper, those industry funds are some of the biggest investors in the publicly listed ASX itself. So you could also have a direct stake in the ASX too.

Yet after a decade of costly technology failures, outages and embarrassing mix-ups, an independent report has just found the “ASX is at serious risk of falling further behind without a fundamental reset”.

Those damning findings come just weeks before the ASX is due to launch a long-delayed replacement for its antiquated trading technology. If that April 20 launch goes well, it could finally be a step in the right direction.

But until the ASX comes under more pressure from competitors and its shareholders, it’s hard to see that “fundamental reset” happening any time soon. Here’s why.

What the corporate watchdog found

On Thursday, as Australians were packing up for their Easter holidays, corporate regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) released the final findings of a nine-month independent inquiry into the ASX. It didn’t hold back.

The report found the ASX had “systemic, long-standing and deeply embedded” issues, with an “insular and defensive culture” that put short-term profits ahead of fixing well-known problems.

The report lists multiple examples. For instance, the ASX’s systems struggled to cope with record trades in March 2020, as investors panicked about COVID-19, followed by a full-day market outage late that year.

There was another outage in December last year. That came just months after an ASX mix-up that briefly wiped $400 million off the market value of Australia’s third biggest telco, TPG Telecom.

The problems this report identifies are less about technology failures, and more about a culture of short-term fixes, at the expense of acting as long-term stewards of a stable financial system.

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Read more: The ASX’s rookie error is just the latest of many blunders. Investors are losing confidence

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The ASX’s lack of competition

If there was an easy alternative for companies wanting to list on the stock market in Australia, the ASX’s issues would matter far less.

However, the profit-driven ASX has close to a monopoly over Australia’s stock market, managing 81.5% of turnover as of end of December 2025. Its only competitor, Cboe Australia, manages the remaining one-fifth of Australian equities trading.

This week, the Canadian-owned National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX) announced it wants to become a rival to the ASX and Cboe Australia.

More competition would be very welcome. Yet it’s hard to see the ASX’s dominance being challenged anytime soon.

ASIC’s report highlights just how unusual it is have so little competition in the absence of direct government control.

In North America and much of Europe, the market is bigger, so there’s more competition between stock exchanges. The report found this “tends to lead to more competitive service quality”.

Across much of Asia, stock exchanges are more likely to be government owned or controlled, meaning “public interest is often prominent in how they operate”. Yet, as the report concluded:

Australia is different. ASX faces little competition and there is no major government ownership stake or board representation. It has, therefore, evolved with fewer constraining influences on the way its market infrastructure is operated compared with other jurisdictions

The report found the ASX has put delivering high shareholder returns to its own ASX Limited shareholders ahead of investing in the technology and people needed to run a consistently reliable stock exchange.

Beyond new tech, investors need to demand change

Over the next two months, expect to see some big changes at the ASX.

First, on April 20, the ASX expects to begin launching its replacement “clearing house” technology: the computer system used to manage transferring money and share ownership between buyers and sellers.

Known as the “Clearing House Electronic Subregister System” (CHESS), if that launch goes well it could start to address the ASX’s long-running technology problems.

The ASX also needs to appoint a new chief executive officer by the end of May.

Ideally, that person would be an outsider, possibly coming from overseas, with experience from another stock exchange.

Who that new CEO is matters. But what will matter even more is how much the ASX board gives the CEO real authority to carry out genuinely transformational change – not just more short-term fixes.

Shareholders have a role to play here too. Key investors, like industry super funds AustralianSuper and UniSuper, have benefited from the ASX paying out high returns for many years.

To protect their own members’ returns in the long-run, those funds could make a real difference by demanding the ASX finally act on this latest damning report into its culture – even if that means accepting slightly lower dividend payments from the ASX while it gets its house in order.

It’s in all of our interests for Australia’s major stock exchange to be able to cope well, especially in a crisis, without the “systemic, long-standing and deeply embedded” problems that have plagued the ASX for too long.

– ref. Australia’s biggest stock exchange needs tougher competition, or we all risk paying the price – https://theconversation.com/australias-biggest-stock-exchange-needs-tougher-competition-or-we-all-risk-paying-the-price-279839

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/australias-biggest-stock-exchange-needs-tougher-competition-or-we-all-risk-paying-the-price-279839/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

The three-page fuel plan the Australian government released last week was very light on detail. So too was Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s address to the nation. This week, Energy Minister Chris Bowen moved to reassure Australians their fuel supply was safe “well into May”.

It’s understandable the government is focused on the immediate problem. Australia imports almost all its liquid fuels via very long supply chains, making it highly exposed to disruption. But as the war on Iran drags on, it won’t be nearly enough.

As analysts have pointed out, what we need is a longer-term plan focused not on fuel, but on energy security.

If policymakers conclude the answer to fuel shortages is to simply build much larger liquid fuel reserves, they will lock Australia into a worse dependence on less reliable supplies of petrol, diesel and other liquid fuels. As geopolitical tensions increase, this reliance is foolish in the extreme.

What Australia needs isn’t bigger fuel tanks. It’s to build energy independence. A nation able to run its transport sector on its own resources is a nation better able to weather global uncertainty. The fastest and most cost-effective way to do so is to accelerate the electrification of transport, powering vehicles with electricity from renewables and storage.

From oil stockpiles to electrified oil resilience

The longstanding fuel supply goal set by the International Energy Agency (IEA) is for nations to have 90 days’ supply stored. Australia has long fallen short of that aim.

Much analysis has focused on this gap.

This misses the point. The 90-day stockholding standard was designed for a different era. It followed the 1973 oil crisis that gave rise to the IEA, when oil was the unquestioned backbone of transport and strategic planning.

In recent years, Australia’s rapid expansion of solar, wind and battery storage has shown gas can be turned from mainstay to support role.

When combined with EVs, the same technologies can do the same for oil across many – but not yet all – forms of transport. One reason China has gone so fast on EVs is precisely to slash its reliance on foreign oil.

This means EVs, renewables and storage are not just a boon for climate action. They’re strategic assets which bolster energy security. Charged on Australian solar and wind, EVs reduce oil imports and cut household fuel costs.

Our analysis suggests Australia could have had three times as many EVs on the road if scare campaigns had not delayed sensible policy.

It was a missed opportunity to reduce dependence on oil. Every time a new internal combustion vehicle is bought, it makes the nation a little more dependent on volatile oil markets and insecure supply chains.

Electrification can do more and more

Heavier types of transport have long been seen as hard to electrify, from ships to trucks to aircraft. But this is changing.

Rapid advances in batteries mean electric ships and ferries are now viable. Electric planes, too, are proving possible on shorter routes, while electric trucks make sense for shorter runs until long-distance recharge capacity is in place.

For the sectors hardest to electrify, such as long-distance air travel, there will likely be a role for biofuels made from plant oils. If produced sustainably, these liquid fuels can begin decarbonising aviation while battery and aircraft technologies mature further. Trials are ongoing.

Fossil-fuel alternatives such as coal-to-liquids would only deepen our dependence on carbon‑intensive fuels.

6 things a credible fuel plan should include

A credible fuel-security strategy for Australia must ensure provision of short-term liquid fuel stocks, especially for critical services such as freight and farming as well as remote communities and defence. But it must go much further than that. It should include:

A clear timeframe to electrify most new road transport vehicles, supported by strong fuel efficiency and emissions standards so Australian vehicles no longer lag the world.

A program to boost uptake of electric trucks, following China’s example. Megawatt charging stations or battery swapping sites will be needed, and requiring service stations to have truck chargers could help.

Accelerate renewables and storage deployment so that clean local energy pushes out largely imported oil and gas.

Use EVs and stationary batteries to boost energy resilience in a coordinated way. The large batteries of EVs can act as movable storage able to power communities and critical infrastructure during supply shocks or power outages due to extreme weather. Large batteries could be delivered by train.

Accelerate use of Australian-produced biofuels such as canola oil to replace jet fuel and the bunker fuel used by large ships. Build supporting infrastructure in ports and airports.

Plan for the orderly decline of oil. Ensure any extra fuel reserves are targeted, modest and focused on genuine national interest uses, rather than prolonging business-as-usual use of petrol, diesel, jet fuel and bunker fuel.

Business as unusual

In response to global uncertainty, the Albanese government has effectively promised a return to normal in its focus on economic resilience, productivity and cost of living pressures.

That’s risky, given we don’t know when – or if – normal will ever return.

It would make much more sense to take a clear-eyed look at how oil imports make Australia vulnerable.

The clean energy transition is well under way across Australia’s power grids. But the government has yet to release a plan linking this to the energy security of our transport systems.

If Australia is to be secure amid uncertainty, leaders cannot double down on the highly vulnerable supply chains which put us in this position. Real fuel security means shifting away from foreign fuels as quickly as possible.

We should measure our progress not just with how many days of fuel we have, but in how many petrol and diesel cars, trucks and trains, and even tractors and headers, have been replaced with electric versions. Over time, we can measure progress for planes and ships running on biofuels and batteries.

The first step is to change our thinking. Rather than focus on managing our dependence on oil, we need to think about how to end it.

– ref. 6 things Australia should do to tackle the energy crisis rather than just building bigger fuel reserves – https://theconversation.com/6-things-australia-should-do-to-tackle-the-energy-crisis-rather-than-just-building-bigger-fuel-reserves-280030

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/6-things-australia-should-do-to-tackle-the-energy-crisis-rather-than-just-building-bigger-fuel-reserves-280030/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas J. Derrick, Gale Research Fellow in Ancient Glass and Material Culture, Macquarie University

Roman leader Julius Caesar is said to have kept a stock of it in the treasury. Ancient writer Pliny the Elder says Rome’s Emperor Nero owned the last stalk of it.

And some have suggested rampant extramarital sex in elite Roman circles led to demand outstripping supply, and it dying out altogether.

What is it?

Silphium: an extinct plant that once grew wild in modern-day Libya.

Used for contraception and abortion, medicine, food seasoning, perfume and as a livestock improver, its special properties made this herb one of the most precious commodities in Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Then, one day, it went extinct.

Powerful resin

Silphium is often described these days as an aphrodisiac, despite no ancient source confirming this.

Some of the earliest depictions of silphium are of the plant’s heart-shaped seedpod, which may be the source of this association.

Depictions on coins and figurines have led modern botanists to wonder if silphium was related to modern wild giant fennels (from the genus Ferula). (It’s not related to plants of the genus Silphium, such as compass-plant and rosinweed, in North America).

Depictions of silphium next to gazelles (another product of Libya) suggest typical ancient silphium stalks were around 30cm in height.

Resin was extracted from the plant’s stems and roots and preserved in flour, which allowed it to make the journey from Libya to further shores.

The Romans called this resin laser or laserpicium. The best laserpicium was extracted from the root, but an inferior type could also come from the stem.

And before the Romans, the Greeks also used silphium; it was so central to some regional economies that it was a frequently depicted motif on coins.

The Greeks seemingly did not harvest silphium themselves; they were given it as tribute by Libyan tribes who lived with it and knew how to harvest and prepare it.

The Greeks of those regions capitalised on and exploited this indigenous knowledge, creating and fulfilling a market for this product. This pattern of extracting and profiting from the local knowledge of indigenous peoples is still a feature of the modern globalised economy.

Food as medicine

Silphium is frequently mentioned in ancient medical treatises and was often administered through food. The modern distinction between food and medicine was not as pronounced in antiquity as it is today; curatives were frequently added to simple dishes such as lentil porridge.

In Ancient Graeco-Roman medicine, silphium was considered a “windy” food that could clear the body of obstructions causing ill health. “Windy” foods were also thought to prevent conception and ensure miscarriage (depending on when they were administered).

Soranus of Ephesus’s four-volume text on gynaecology, written around the 1st-2nd century CE, suggests various strong-tasting herbs and spices (including silphium) could be mixed with wine or simple foods for oral contraception. Soranus notes oral contraceptives frequently caused upset stomachs.

Preventive suppository suggestions by Soranus include smearing the cervix with substances such as old olive oil, honey, resin, balsam, white lead, myrtle oil, moistened alum, galbanum resin (a silphium relative used in perfume) and a lock of fine wool. These were not drugs, but had properties that could lessen the chance of conception by being antibiotic or spermicidal, or providing a physical barrier.

Looking to the male-authored literature for evidence of women’s medicine is, of course, flawed. It is highly likely knowledge on pregnancy, contraceptives and abortifacients was transferred between women, much of which did not make it into surviving ancient medical texts.

We have no proof of the efficacy of silphium as a contraceptive or abortive agent, as we don’t have any to test.

An enduring mystery

Silphium resisted human cultivation, and as such, there was a finite supply. The financial value of silphium (and state control over it) seemed to be a bone of contention among local populations, and by the Roman period, there were reports of vandalism and local farmers bringing livestock to graze on it.

Climatic changes and the desertification of the north coast of Africa may have led to the plant’s extinction. While the Romans believed silphium was extinct in the 1st century CE, it may have continued in local use and consumption until the 5th century CE.

There have been multiple attempts to identify remnant pockets of silphium in the modern world, but scholars cannot agree on a single surviving plant. Silphium may have been a hybrid plant that reproduced asexually (making it hard to cultivate and vulnerable).

In 2021, a new species of giant fennel (Ferula drudeana) was identified around former Greek settlements in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

It looks much like the ancient depictions of silphium; it may be that seeds from Libya reached Turkey and survived to the present.

However, until we find evidence of the seeds of ancient silphium in securely dated archaeological deposits, we will not be able to test this hypothesis.

Many species of giant fennel occur across the Mediterranean and surrounding regions, but due to many outlets falsely reporting its aphrodisiac qualities (particularly for treating erectile dysfunction), there are growing conservation concerns about modern over-harvesting.

– ref. Ancient Romans were obsessed with a plant said to be contraception and aphrodisiac. Then one day, it went extinct – https://theconversation.com/ancient-romans-were-obsessed-with-a-plant-said-to-be-contraception-and-aphrodisiac-then-one-day-it-went-extinct-260506

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/ancient-romans-were-obsessed-with-a-plant-said-to-be-contraception-and-aphrodisiac-then-one-day-it-went-extinct-260506/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Alfano, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University

In early March, a week after the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the White House posted a video of real American attacks mixed with clips from popular movies, television series, video games and anime.

Iran and its sympathisers responded to the strikes by flooding social media with outdated war footage allegedly from the current conflict alongside AI-generated content depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf.

More recently, viral video clips reportedly created by a team of Iranians depict Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pete Hegseth, Ayatollah Khamenei, and others as Lego figurines.

Welcome to the brave new world of slopaganda.

The rise of slopaganda

Late last year, in a paper published in Filisofiska Notiser, we coined the portmanteau “slopaganda” to refer to AI-generated slop that serves propagandistic purposes.

By propaganda we mean communication intended to manipulate beliefs, emotions, attention, memory and other cognitive and affective processes to achieve political ends. Add generative artificial intelligence and the result is slopaganda.

The slopaganda situation has since become far worse than we expected.

In October 2025, US President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting himself piloting a fighter jet while wearing a crown and dumping faeces on American protesters. More recently, he posted an AI-generated video envisaging his presidential library as an enormous gaudy skyscraper, complete with a golden elevator.

[embedded content]

Lego-themed Iran-created slopaganda is just the latest example. The material isn’t just videos. It can also be images, text, or whatever else AI can generate.

How slopaganda slips through our defences

What is the point of all this slopaganda? We have several answers so far.

First, through repeated exposure in both legacy and social media, slopaganda can penetrate our usual mental defences. It works when it is attention-grabbing, emotionally arresting – typically in a negative way – and delivered to a distracted audience, such as people scrolling social media or switching between browser tabs.

Second, it is a very effective way of diluting the epistemic environment – the world of what we think we know – with falsehoods and half-truths. As philosophers have argued, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can be machines for bullshit, in the sense of content that is indifferent to truth.

Slopaganda can be understood as a special kind of AI bullshit, but its unique features become clearer when we look at its use in campaigns such as the Iranian Lego videos.

This is not just bullshit. No one is misled into thinking Trump can pilot an F-16 and drop faeces out of it. No one (we hope) believes plastic Trump Lego figurines are in cahoots with a plastic Satan figurine.

Rather than aiming for accuracy, the slopaganda is expressive and emblematic of feelings and emotions, and meant to create an association. The intended linkages are something like Satan is associated with Trump while the United States is associated with evil, and so on.

What slopaganda means for shared truth

A third point is that some slopaganda is indeed misleading. This may be by design, or because a joke or trolling escapes its intended context and is misunderstood as serious – a phenomenon scholars call “context collapse”. Misleading slopaganda, including deepfakes, can be generated quickly during conflicts, crises and emergencies, when people want information but authoritative sources are scarce.

Once misleading information or a particular association enters someone’s mind, it can be hard to shake. Because slopaganda can reach huge audiences, even a small misleading effect in the general population may have significant consequences. State actors, corporations, and private individuals can potentially influence group beliefs and decisions, including election results, protest movements, or general sentiment about an unpopular war.

Fourth, the prevalence of slopaganda may make us doubt everything else. People will no doubt become better at spotting this kind of material, but they will also become more likely to misidentify authentic content as slop. As a result, public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions may also fall.

When this occurs, the overall effect is likely to be a general lowering of public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions, leading to a kind of nihilistic doubt in really knowing anything.

When it’s hard or impossible to identify trustworthy sources, you can choose to believe whatever you find comforting, invigorating or infuriating. In increasingly polarised societies struggling with interlocking economic, political, military and environmental crises, the breakdown of shared sources of truth will only make things worse.

3 ways to stave off slopagandapocalypse

What can be done about the slopaganda shitstorm? In our paper, we discuss interventions at three different levels.

First, individuals can become more digitally literate, for instance by looking for telltale signs of AI in text, images and video. They can also learn to check sources rather than merely glancing at headlines and other content, as well as to block sources that routinely spread slopaganda, rather than attempting to evaluate each piece of content in a vacuum. This will help them avoid falling for slopaganda while still trusting authentic sources of news and other information.

Second, industry and regulators can implement technological fixes to watermark AI-generated content. Some content may even need to be removed from platforms where people see news and other important information.

Third, large tech companies such as OpenAI, Google and X can be held accountable for what they have made. This could be done through taxation and other interventions to fund both regulatory efforts and education in digital literacy.

Slopaganda is probably here to stay. But with sufficient foresight and courage, we may still be able to adapt to it – and even control it.

– ref. Slopaganda wars: how (and why) the US and Iran are flooding the zone with viral AI-generated noise – https://theconversation.com/slopaganda-wars-how-and-why-the-us-and-iran-are-flooding-the-zone-with-viral-ai-generated-noise-280024

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/slopaganda-wars-how-and-why-the-us-and-iran-are-flooding-the-zone-with-viral-ai-generated-noise-280024/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Heward, Senior lecturer, Clinical Psychology, James Cook University

Earlier this year, I published a paper on the ethics of researching military populations.

The core argument was straightforward: the standard rules researchers follow to protect participants – for example, informed consent and voluntary participation – don’t work the same in an institution built on hierarchy and obedience.

A soldier can, as protected by ethics, say no to participating in research. But when their commanding officer has nominated them, the practical reality of saying no is very different from the legal right to do so. My paper explored the tension between ethical rights and lived reality.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to peer-review a manuscript submitted to a psychology journal on the same topic. It didn’t take long for me to become suspicious. As I read on, I came to realise the safeguards in place to protect research integrity are not keeping pace with the tools that can be used to circumvent them.

From factual errors to reproduced memos

Within the first couple of pages of the manuscript, I recognised my own work.

The manuscript had the same argument as mine, a similar structure and conceptual framework. Most alarmingly though, it contained my reflexive memos, reproduced and paraphrased as though they belonged to someone else.

Reflexive memos are a kind of research diary, in which a researcher documents their personal reflections on their own research: the dilemmas they faced, the decisions they made, the things they noticed that shaped their thinking. Reflexive memos aren’t drawn from the literature; you can’t find them in another paper and reference them. They come from the researcher’s own life.

Mine documented what is was like navigating a 24-month institutional approval process that became an ordeal of lost paperwork, shifting requirements and bureaucratic dead ends. They documented the concept of being “voluntold” – that is, watching defence personnel be put forward for supposedly voluntary training programs, and recognising the unspoken pressure that made refusal practically impossible.

In the memos, I also documented the tension I felt as a clinical psychologist between my professional obligations around confidentiality and the reporting requirements imposed on me as a researcher working within the defence organisation.

These were reproduced as if they had happened to someone else.

The manuscript also got something factually wrong. It reproduced a scenario from my fieldwork on an Australian Defence Force base, describing the force’s values displayed on flags on the main thoroughfare.

It substituted the value of “bravery” instead of the correct value, “courage” – a synonym, yes, but any researcher working in this field would spot that immediately.

A lucky catch

I can’t say with any certainty how the manuscript was produced. Nor am I sure of what happened to the manuscript after I raised my concerns.

What I can say is that the systematic paraphrasing throughout, the basic factual error, and the reference list padded with loosely relevant citations, is consistent with the use of AI.

The editor-in-chief of the journal, after confirming the plagiarism, reached the same conclusion.

The journal ran the manuscript through iThenticate, an industry-standard plagiarism software used by many major academic publishers. It returned an 8% similarity match, below the threshold that would normally prompt editorial concern. The 8% corresponded to my published article. The rest had been paraphrased thoroughly enough to look like original work.

The incentive structures of academic publishing, where the number of papers you publish affects your career progression and your institution’s rankings, create conditions where the temptation to cut corners is real.

The editor-in-chief noted that the humanities and social sciences have so far been relatively unaffected by fake science flooding scientific literature. He told me he hopes the social sciences and humanities will remain relatively spared from this phenomenon, but I suspect this may be changing.

The peer review system worked in this case. But only because the manuscript happened to be sent to the person whose work had been reproduced. That’s luck, not a safeguard.

Plagiarism tools are designed to find matching text. They’re not designed to ask whether the experiences reported in a piece of writing could plausibly belong to the person claiming them. That’s a question only a human reader with a genuine knowledge of the field can answer.

A deeper concern

But there was a deeper concern that really got to me.

When someone plagiarises a literature review, they steal intellectual ideas. When someone plagiarises a methods section, they steal intellectual labour.

But when someone reproduces a reflexive memo and presents it as their own, that isn’t about claiming someone else’s ideas; they’re claiming someone else’s experiences.

They’re essentially saying: “I was there, I felt this, this happened to me”. They were not there, they did not feel it, it did not happen to them.

I’ve spent more than a decade working as a clinical psychologist within defence mental health services. That clinical experience is what drew me to this research in the first place. The ethical tensions I documented in my article came from my work as a researcher, from real moments, my lived experiences.

Reading them reproduced in someone else’s name was a particular kind of violation that I’m not sure our existing language around plagiarism quite captures.

– ref. Plagiarised research passed automated tests, and I detected it – but only because it copied my work – https://theconversation.com/plagiarised-research-passed-automated-tests-and-i-detected-it-but-only-because-it-copied-my-work-279553

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/08/plagiarised-research-passed-automated-tests-and-i-detected-it-but-only-because-it-copied-my-work-279553/

OPEN LETTER: By Nureddin Abdurahman to NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters

Minister,

You are about to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a time of real global tension.

Moments like this define countries.

My great-grandfather fought fascism.

In 1935, when fascist Italy invaded my country of birth, Ethiopia, then Abyssinia, Emperor Haile Selassie warned the world at the League of Nations. Many countries hesitated. New Zealand didn’t.

Under Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage, we called for sanctions. We chose principle over power.

We used to be clear about our principles in international politics. We stood against apartheid. We stood against nuclear testing in the Pacific.

In the 2010s, New Zealand went across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia asking for support to sit on the UN Security Council — not as a powerful country, but as a voice for the powerless.

Many countries trusted us and backed us. And for a time, we honoured that trust.

On 23 December 2016, under [then Foreign Minister] Murray McCully, we backed a UN resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal under international law. There was pressure. We stood firm.

On 25 March 2026, the UN voted to recognise slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as among the gravest crimes against humanity. Most countries supported it. New Zealand stepped back.

And as of 2026, we still refuse to recognise the State of Palestine while genocide unfolds in Gaza.

Minister, the current global tensions make this even more important. New Zealand is clear on international law when it comes to Iran. We must be just as clear when it comes to the United States and Israel.

As a small trading nation, our economic, diplomatic and security interests depend on international law being applied consistently. If we pick and choose, we weaken that system and we weaken ourselves.

Our reputation was built by standing up and punching above our weight, even when it was uncomfortable.

That is where our soft power came from. We have the potential to be a superpower in soft power.

Right now, we risk losing that by moving closer to powerful countries, even when they are in the wrong.

Minister, take that history with you into that meeting. Be clear. Be consistent. Stand for international law everywhere, not just where it is easy.

People in New Zealand and around the world are watching. And history has a long memory.

Nureddin Abdurahman is a Tangata Tiriti from Addis Ababa 17 years ago and a Wellington City Councillor. He first won a seat as a Paekawakawa/Southern Ward councillor in 2022 and was re-elected in 2025.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/open-letter-to-peters-we-fought-fascism-why-are-we-silent-now/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Taucher, Lecturer in History, Murdoch University

After landing in Sydney airport following a flight from Brisbane, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, was arrested by Australian Federal Police. He’s faced court in New South Wales and been charged with five counts of the war crime of murder, following a years-long joint investigation between police and the Office of the Special Investigator.

Roberts-Smith is only the second Australian to be charged with such offences, and the most high-profile.

But the path to this point has been long and winding. Here’s how we got here, and what happens next.

[embedded content]

The media reporting and defamation case

This is not the first time Roberts-Smith will face a court for alleged war crimes.

In 2018, he sued three journalists and Fairfax Media for defamation. This followed media reports by Australian journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe, alleging he had murdered Afghani personnel during operations in Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith has always denied any wrongdoing.

To defend themselves, the journalists relied on proving in court that their reporting was accurate: that Roberts-Smith had, in fact, committed war crimes.

In 2023, the court held there was sufficient evidence that Roberts-Smith had himself murdered two Afghani personnel and ordered or pressured a subordinate soldier to murder another.

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Read more: ‘Dismissed’: legal experts explain the judgment in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case

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Because that trial was a civil proceeding, lawyers representing the journalists did not need to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. They only needed to meet the lesser standard of proof that the allegations were true on the balance of probabilities.

In a criminal court, where Roberts-Smith will answer a case brought by the AFP, the court will need to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt to convict him of the charges.

The maximum penalty for the war crime of murder is life imprisonment.

The defence inquiry

The allegations against Roberts-Smith are part of a much larger investigation process.

In 2016, the Australian military began investigating allegations Australian soldiers has committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force tasked Paul Brereton with preparing a report on it.

Four years later in 2020, the so-called Brereton report was released publicly. It outlined 39 murders of civilians and prisoners by Australian soldiers.

The scale of the allegations was such that the Australian government created the Office of the Special Investigator. The office is to further investigate war crimes and recommend the prosecution of people involved.

Since the release of the report, progress has been slow, given there appeared to be considerable evidence of wrongdoing.

In 2023, Oliver Schulz was arrested and charged with the killing of an Afghani civilian. Evidence of this accusation was first made public in 2020. He pleaded not guilty and his case goes to trial next year.

Why has it taken this long?

As the Roberts-Smith story played out in civilian court, public commentary began to include speculation over the likelihood of future criminal charges against him.

But Australian authorities bringing Australians to trial for war crimes is uncommon. Though Australia has prosecuted alleged war criminals of foreign nationals in the past, Schulz and Roberts-Smith are the only two Australians to be both arrested and charged.

Investigating war crimes is challenging work at the best of times. In Roberts-Smith’s case, the Office of the Special Investigator’s director of investigations, Ross Barnett, said the political situation in Afghanistan has made the work even harder. Australian boots on the ground were effectively barred.

[embedded content]

Beyond practical considerations, it’s likely the prominence of Roberts-Smith as both a decorated soldier and celebrity has made investigators particularly cautious. A failed trial would likely weaken public trust in the entire investigation and prosecution program.

Many Australians celebrate the service of the country’s military personnel. They would expect charges against former soldiers for acts committed during their service would be carefully considered.

What are the laws at play?

Australian authorities legally had no choice but to undertake the costly, fraught and lengthy process of pursuing war crimes allegations.

In 2002, the Australian government joined the International Criminal Court. Membership requires parties to domestically legislate war crimes law.

It also requires governments to investigate, and where appropriate, prosecute, those who are alleged to have committed war crimes.

If a government is unwilling, or unable, to investigate and prosecute war crimes allegations, the International Criminal Court has the power to carry out the task instead.

In this case, Australian authorities did investigate the allegations and it is because of the work of the Office of the Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police that Roberts-Smith will face trial in Australia, not overseas.

Due to the seriousness of the alleged crimes, Roberts-Smith will most likely be tried in a state supreme court, as is the case with Schulz.

Procedurally, the trial will unfold like any other criminal trial. Though the crimes are international and entwined with Australia’s membership of the International Criminal Court, war crimes and Australia’s international legal obligations in this space have subsequently been adopted into Australian criminal law.

Australia on the international stage

The decision to prosecute Roberts-Smith is at the same time both expected and in someways surprising.

On the one hand, it seemed highly likely he would be charged after his failed defamation case. The judgment set out in particularly clear detail three instances of Roberts-Smith murdering, or ordering the murder of, Afghani personnel.

Though the burden of proof was lower, it seemed clear that Roberts-Smith would eventually face criminal prosecution.

On the other hand, war crimes law seems to be at a serious crossroads internationally. In conflicts unfolding across the globe, governments – including allies of Australia – have shown what seems to be a growing disregard for war crimes law.

The upcoming prosecution of Australia’s most highly decorated soldier, who acted as the public face of the Australian military for so long, demonstrates a surprising commitment to international law that is increasingly out of step with some of the country’s major partners.

– ref. Ben Roberts-Smith is accused of 5 war crime murder charges. How did we get here? – https://theconversation.com/ben-roberts-smith-is-accused-of-5-war-crime-murder-charges-how-did-we-get-here-280037

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/ben-roberts-smith-is-accused-of-5-war-crime-murder-charges-how-did-we-get-here-280037/

The Murdoch press runs cover for an illegal war by blaming the wrong man entirely, instead of informing the public of facts. Michael West Media reports.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Here is a reliable indicator that you are being managed rather than informed.

When the story gets complicated, when the real cause of your pain points uncomfortably toward power, toward allies, toward the architecture of foreign policy that cannot be questioned, the Murdoch press reaches for a scapegoat.

And so, as Australians watch fuel prices surge by approximately 40 percent, a direct consequence of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, as ABC News has itself reported, the editors and columnists of News Corp’s Australian outlets have a different culprit in mind.

Not Netanyahu. Not Trump. Not the war that has sent energy markets into convulsions and supply chains into chaos. Not the illegal military campaign that blocked one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries and sent insurance premiums for tankers into the stratosphere.

No, their preferred villain is Chris Bowen.

Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who did not bomb Iran. Chris Bowen, who does not set the global price of oil. Chris Bowen, whose energy policies, right or wrong, are entirely debatable on their merits, has precisely nothing to do with a US-Israeli military campaign that closed the Strait of Hormuz and triggered the worst fuel price shock in years.

The Bowen beat-up is not journalism. It is misdirection of the most deliberate and dishonest kind. It is the Murdoch press doing what it does most reliably and most effectively — running cover for power, redirecting the public’s legitimate anger toward a safe domestic target, and keeping the real architecture of the crisis, the geopolitical decisions, the alliance commitments, the illegal war, safely out of frame.

Because here is what the Murdoch press will not tell you, and what the mainstream media in general has failed to say with anything like the clarity the situation demands.

Australians are paying more for fuel because a war closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Doh!

That war was launched on February 28 of this year by the United States and Israel against Iran.

It was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. It was not authorised by any provision of international law that serious legal scholars recognise as applicable. It was not preceded by any meaningful consultation with allies, including Australia, whose economies would absorb its consequences.

It was a unilateral act of military aggression by the most powerful country on earth and its primary regional client, conducted because they had the weapons to do it and had calculated, correctly, that nobody with the power to stop them would try.

Puppet on a string
And when it happened, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went on the ABC’s 7:30 programme and told Sarah Ferguson that what Australia supported was the American decision to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons and to address Iran’s role in destabilising the region.

Read that answer carefully. It is not an answer about Australian interests. It contains no reference to Australian sovereignty, Australian economic security, or the fuel price increase already beginning when those words were spoken.

It is a recitation, clean, fluent, almost word for word, of the American and Israeli justification for the strikes, delivered in the Prime Minister’s voice, on Australian public television, as though it represented Australia’s own sovereign and independently arrived at conclusion, which it didn’t.

He later described Australia’s contribution to the conflict as “constructive”. He has since said he wants more certainty about the war’s objectives and acknowledged there needs to be an end point.

This is the man who endorsed the war before its objectives had been defined, now asking what they are.

Managed complicity and Murdoch
This is what managed complicity looks like up close. You sign on. You use the ally’s language. You call it constructive. And then, when the consequences arrive in the form of 40 percent fuel price increases and small businesses collapsing under freight surcharge pressure, you allow the media ecosystem you have never seriously challenged to redirect the public’s fury at your own Energy Minister.

The Murdoch press is doing its job. That job is not to inform Australians.

That job, in this specific context, on this specific story, is to protect the US-Israeli alliance from the accountability it deserves and to ensure that the legitimate rage of a population being economically punished for decisions made in Washington and Jerusalem never finds its proper target.

The proprietor of that press empire has spent decades cultivating proximity to exactly the power centres that prosecuted this war.

Murdoch newspapers in the United States were among the most consistent cheerleaders for the military adventurism that set the conditions for what is now unfolding. His Australian mastheads take their foreign policy cues from a worldview that treats American and Israeli strategic interests as essentially synonymous with the interests of the English-speaking world.

That worldview is not Australia’s sovereign foreign policy. It is an ideology dressed as common sense, distributed at scale through the country’s most-read newspapers, and deployed most aggressively when the connection between geopolitical decisions and domestic pain threatens to become too obvious to ignore.

Chris Bowen did not block the Strait of Hormuz. A war did.

An illegal war. Conducted without Australian consent. Endorsed by an Australian Prime Minister on national television, using the language of the people who started it.

And the newspapers owned by a man whose commercial and ideological interests align entirely with the people who started it are telling you it is the Energy Minister’s fault.

That is not a coincidence; it is the system working exactly as designed.

The question is whether Australians are going to keep letting it work.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/this-isnt-journalism-australias-bowen-beat-up-and-the-iran-war/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Iris Lim, Assistant Professor in Biomedical Science, Bond University

You wake up with that familiar urgency to go to the toilet and burning when you pee – and no matter how many times you go, that urgency doesn’t let up. You know exactly what it is: a urinary tract infection, or UTI.

UTIs are common, affecting half of all women at some point. They occur when bacteria enter the urinary tract, causing symptoms such as burning, urgency, frequent urination and lower abdominal pain.

Now many women can go straight to the pharmacy and get antibiotics without having to wait to see a doctor. This will mean faster treatment and fewer delays, as well as less pressure on general practice.

But this approach is designed for simple, or “uncomplicated”, infections in otherwise healthy people. It excludes men, those with recurrent UTIs (usually more than two UTIs in six months), pregnant women, and those with more complex cases or underlying kidney or urinary conditions.

So how does prescribing work for simple UTIs? And what might you need for more complicated infections?

What happens when you see a pharmacist for a UTI?

Pharmacists will ask a series of questions to check it’s safe to treat you, and if it is, they can provide a short course of antibiotics.

These services are limited to women because UTIs are less common in men and more likely to be complicated, often requiring further investigation.

The most common antibiotics used include nitrofurantoin and fosfomycin. These target the bacteria most often responsible, especially Escherichia coli, which causes around 75% of uncomplicated UTIs.

The antibiotics pharmacists give you without a GP prescription can help with straightforward UTIs, but not the ones that keep coming back.

If you have a fever, back pain, or feel unwell, the infection may have spread beyond the bladder – and the pharmacist won’t be able to prescribe to treat this type of infection.

If your symptoms keep coming back, or don’t improve, you need to see a GP.

Why some infections don’t go away

For most people, antibiotics clear the infection and symptoms settle within a few days.

But some bacteria are surprisingly good at surviving. Instead of staying in the urine, they can invade the cells lining the bladder. Here, they are harder to detect and harder to kill, effectively “hiding” from the antibiotics and the body’s immune system.

Other times, the antibiotic simply doesn’t work. This is known as antibiotic resistance. It means the bacteria have adapted in a way that makes the drug less effective.

There are also other factors that increase the risk of repeat infections. Hormonal changes, especially after menopause, can alter the urinary tract and make it easier for bacteria to grow. Sexual activity, certain contraceptives and incomplete bladder emptying can also play a role.

What are your options if it keeps coming back?

If infections keep coming back, a doctor may test your urine to identify the exact bacteria causing the infection. This helps guide treatment, rather than relying on best guess.

Treatment might include a longer course of antibiotics, or a low-dose antibiotic taken over a longer period to prevent recurrence.

For postmenopausal women, vaginal oestrogen can help restore the natural balance of the urinary tract and reduce infections.

Researchers are also exploring vaccines. One example, Uromune, targets common urinary bacteria and aims to train the immune system to respond more effectively.

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Read more: Oral vaccines could provide relief for people who suffer regular UTIs. Here’s how they work

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Alongside medical treatment, simple strategies can help reduce the risk of a UTI: staying hydrated, urinating after sex, and avoiding harsh soaps or products that may irritate the area. These steps won’t eliminate the chance of getting a UTI, but they can make a small difference.

What happens if it’s not treated properly?

Most UTIs stay in the bladder. But sometimes bacteria travel upwards to the kidneys, resulting in a kidney infection. This is more serious. Symptoms can include fever, lower back or side pain and nausea. It often requires stronger treatment.

Repeated infections can damage kidney tissue over time, affecting how well the kidneys filter waste.

In rare cases, the infection can enter the bloodstream. This can lead to sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which the body’s response to infection damages its own organs.

While uncommon, this shows why ongoing symptoms should not be ignored.

What complicates UTI treatment?

People with recurring symptoms and chronic UTIs often need ongoing, coordinated care. This may involve a GP for ongoing management, urine testing and preventative treatment. Sometimes, you may need a referral to a urologist to investigate underlying causes. Coordinated care can be difficult to access, especially if doctors dismiss symptoms.

Testing is also a challenge. Standard urine tests don’t always pick up hidden infections, leaving some people without clear answers. On top of this, antibiotic resistance complicates treatment.

For people living with recurrent infections, this is not a minor inconvenience. It affects sleep, work, relationships and quality of life. The good news is that, with the right care, many people can get their symptoms under better control.

So if your symptoms don’t improve, or keep coming back, it’s important to see a doctor. And if you feel your concerns are dismissed, find another doctor who listens and takes your symptoms seriously.

You can also ask your doctor about further testing, such as a urine culture to identify the exact bacteria, whether a longer or preventive course of treatment is appropriate, and if referral to a specialist may be needed.

If you have fever, severe back or side pain, or feel very unwell, seek urgent medical care, as this may indicate a more serious infection.

– ref. It’s now easier to get antibiotics for UTIs. But here’s what to do if your symptoms don’t go away – https://theconversation.com/its-now-easier-to-get-antibiotics-for-utis-but-heres-what-to-do-if-your-symptoms-dont-go-away-278993

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/its-now-easier-to-get-antibiotics-for-utis-but-heres-what-to-do-if-your-symptoms-dont-go-away-278993/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested on Tuesday and will face five charges of the war crime of murder allegedly committed during the war in Afghanistan.

He was arrested by Australian Federal Police at Sydney domestic airport.

Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service corporal who was widely feted as one of Australia’s most decorated modern war heroes, has always maintained his innocence.

The AFP did not name Roberts-Smith.

The Office of the Special Investigator and the AFP said in a statement:

A former Australian Defence Force member, 47, has been arrested and is expected to be charged with five counts of war crime – murder under a joint investigation between the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and the AFP.

Roberts-Smith is set to be charged under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The charges are:

• the war crime of murder, in that he intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 11 September, 2012, at Darwan, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, with another person, in that they intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, in Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan and,

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, at Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.

The maximum penalty for the offence of the war crime of murder is life imprisonment.

Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in a New South Wales court later on Tuesday.

The investigation into Roberts-Smith has been undertaken in a joint operation between the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).

“The joint OSI-AFP investigation began in 2021, and inquiries are continuing,” the statement said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to answer any questions about the matter.

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson said she remained “steadfast in my support of Ben Roberts-Smith.

“I will not abandon him like so many other politicians.”

The OSI and AFP are investigating allegations of criminal offences under Australian law related to breaches of armed conflict laws by ADF personnel in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

The joint OSI-AFP investigation has begun 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes in the Afghanistan conflict by members of the Australian Defence Force.

Of those, 39 are finalised, unless new evidence emerges. In these cases sufficient evidence of a war crime did not exist to support referring a brief to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Another ten investigations are still underway.

One investigation resulted in a former SAS solider being charged with one count of the war crime of murder. This matter is scheduled for trial in the NSW Supreme Court next February.

AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told a media conference of today’s arrest: “It will be alleged the man was a member of the ADF when he was involved in the death of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012 in circumstances that constitute war crimes under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

“It will be alleged the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan.

“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.

“It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused, or shot by subordinate members of the ADF, in the presence of, and acting on the orders of, the accused.”

Barrett said: “We understand these charges will have an impact on several communities in Australia.

“Whenever I give a press conference, I do not just provide the facts in front of me, but I also address those impacted the most.

“So, I want to now directly address the concerns and questions some may have.

“The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF, which helps keep this country safe.

“The overwhelming majority of our ADF do our country proud. Today’s charges are not reflective of the majority of members who serve under our Australian flag with honour, distinction and with the values of a democratic nation.

“Today, is a day to rally behind the ADF, and be mindful of the families whose loved ones have died while serving our country.”

Roberts-Smith lost a defamation action he brought against the Nine newspapers. His final appeal in the seven year battle was dismissed mid last year.

– ref. Ben Roberts-Smith arrested and facing 5 war crime murder charges – https://theconversation.com/ben-roberts-smith-arrested-and-facing-5-war-crime-murder-charges-279202

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/ben-roberts-smith-arrested-and-facing-5-war-crime-murder-charges-279202/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amr Saber Algarhi, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Sheffield Hallam University

The whole point of Brexit was to change the UK’s relationship with Europe. And one of the less visible shifts has occurred in the financial markets, affecting pension funds and the cost of borrowing.

Before the referendum, when London’s stock market sneezed, Europe caught a cold. Now though, our research suggests that the financial relationship between the UK and the EU has flipped.

The change came after decades of London being the focus of European finance – and what’s known as a “net transmitter” of financial shocks. This meant that changes in London’s stock exchange had an immediate impact on investors in Paris, Frankfurt and Milan. London’s institutional ties to the European single market served as the foundation for this financial leadership.

To see if this level of influence remained after Brexit, we observed daily movements of the stock markets in nine European countries, comparing two five-year periods: before the Brexit vote (2011–2016) and after the UK left the EU (2020–2025).

Our comparison featured a specialist financial metric called a “net volatility spillover score” which measures the difference between the amount of risk (volatility) a specific market transmits and receives from other markets.

The results were stark. Before Brexit, the UK had a net volatility spillover score of +11.8, meaning it sent far more financial turbulence into Europe than it received. After Brexit, that score fell to –5.5. The UK now absorbs more shocks from Europe than it sends, making it a net recipient of volatility.

This is largely down to the fact that European investors stopped reacting to UK market signals as strongly as they once did. The UK’s financial shocks still happen – they just matter less to the rest of the continent.

Meanwhile, over the same period, Germany’s transmitting influence grew by nearly 50%, and Italy transformed from a shock absorber into the second most influential market in the system.

When London was a financial leader in Europe, its market signals shaped how continental investors valued risk across borders. This gave the City extra influence over capital flows, borrowing costs and investment decisions.

Now that influence has weakened, the consequences go far beyond the offices of City traders.

UK firms seeking to raise capital from European investors may face higher costs, because European markets are now less attuned to British price signals. A UK pension fund invested in European equities, for instance, now finds its returns shaped more by what happens in Frankfurt or Milan than by signals from the London market it sits alongside.

And the UK has less sway over the financial conditions that govern cross-border trade and investment – conditions that ultimately feed into jobs, mortgages and the cost of living.

Trading places

The physical infrastructure tells a similar story. After Brexit, more than 440 financial firms moved at least some of their operations from the UK to the EU, taking with them more than £900 billion in bank assets – such as business loans, investment portfolios and cash reserves – worth around 10% of the UK’s banking system.

As part of this transition, London was not replaced by a single city, but by a range of European centres (including Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin) which all absorbed enough activity to reshape the network. And although London is still a major international financial hub, its cross-border ties with Europe have been weakened.

So can London win back its influence? It’s unlikely. This was not a temporary dip caused by market panic. Overall connectivity across European markets barely changed. The European financial network did not shrink – it just reorganised. Countries such as Germany and Italy simply stepped into the space that the UK had vacated.

The new system, driven by legal changes, relocations and regulatory divergence in financial services now shows no sign of changing.

And although the recent UK-EU summit suggests both sides want closer ties, so far that effort has centred on trade in goods and security rather than financial services. Until the reset reaches the City, London’s diminished role in European markets looks set to stay.

None of this means London is finished as a financial centre. But within the European network, the UK’s role has fundamentally changed.

It has gone from setting the tempo to following the beat from elsewhere. And for a country which built much of its post-industrial economic power around financial services, that’s quite a shift.

– ref. How Brexit reduced the City of London’s financial clout – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-brexit-reduced-the-city-of-londons-financial-clout-new-research-277107

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/how-brexit-reduced-the-city-of-londons-financial-clout-new-research-277107/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon McLennan, Senior Research and Teaching Fellow, School of Health, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand’s recent decision to reject the latest amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) made news largely due to the lack of a clear explanation from the government rather than what the rules actually say.

Health Minister Simeon Brown and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters made the decision without seeking cabinet approval, but offered different reasons.

Brown’s position was that New Zealand had not completed the necessary domestic processes to be in a position to accept them. This is despite having had two years to review the amendments.

Meanwhile, as leader of NZ First, Peters posted on social media:

We have fought on your behalf for these IHR amendments to be fully rejected, we made a promise to put the national interests of New Zealanders first, to maintain our sovereign decision making, and to push back on globalist bureaucrats …

Technical and administrative or politically motivated? Either way, the confusion obscured what the amendments really involve. And the decision placed New Zealand in a small group of countries that have rejected the amendments, including the United States, which later left the WHO entirely.

Former prime minister Helen Clark warned that New Zealand “will be seen as a somewhat irrelevant and quirky actor with little to contribute”.

If that is true, it may have lasting consequences because WHO regulations are vitally important for the management of global public health emergencies, including pandemics.

What the amendments say

Established in 1969 and extensively revised in 2005 following the SARS outbreak, the IHR defines countries’ rights and obligations in global health events. The regulations are the principal legal framework for preventing and controlling the spread of disease between countries.

They define what a pandemic is, set rules to enable early detection of outbreaks, enable sharing of information, and aim to minimise travel and trade disruption. New Zealand has been a signatory since their establishment.

COVID exposed gaps in the legal framework that contributed to delays in alerting the world to the emerging threat, inconsistent preparedness between countries, vaccine hoarding, and confusing public health messaging.

The WHO committed to two related processes: amendments to the regulations and negotiations on a new global pandemic agreement.

The amendments were negotiated through an international process co-chaired by New Zealand’s former director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield. They include:

• clearer definitions of a pandemic emergency

• stronger expectations that countries invest in preparedness

• improved coordination for vaccines, tests and treatments

• and more structured information‑sharing and communication to enhance the transparency and timeliness of information about important public health events.

New Zealand will still receive information and support from the WHO under the 2005 regulations. But by rejecting the most recent amendments it won’t need to meet new reporting, planning and compliance obligations.

The country must decide for itself what being “prepared” for a pandemic looks like. Cooperation may take more effort and diplomacy, rather than being able to rely on shared and agreed rules.

New Zealand will also have less influence over global decisions, and potentially slower or weaker access to pooled resources.

Sovereignty vs preparedness

By definition, pandemics cross borders. This means international cooperation is essential. Opting out reduces shared standards and expectations, and undercuts foundational principles of equity and solidarity central to the amendments.

This emphasis was a direct response to the “vaccine apartheid” during the pandemic, when rich nations hoarded vaccines while up to a million lives were unnecessarily lost in poorer countries unable to access sufficient stocks.

In the Pacific region, where health security depends on cooperation, New Zealand stepping back from global rules could leave its neighbours more exposed and less supported.

According to Collin Tukuitonga, President of the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine, this is “worse than burying one’s head in the sand – it is positively flipping off the international community, including our partners in the Pacific”.

But concern about national sovereignty was evident early in the coalition government’s term, according to documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2024.

Health negotiators were tasked with ensuring New Zealand could opt out of health rules to “preserve domestic flexibility”. And New Zealand’s current position on the WHO’s new pandemic agreement remains subject to a “full national interest test”.

This perhaps reflects one response to pandemic measures, such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates, which were highly disruptive and controversial, and raised genuine concerns about political oversight and accountability.

However, the WHO cannot force lockdowns, vaccines or border closures. The International Health Regulations set expectations, not commands. The latest amendments reaffirm that each country retains “the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuance of their health policies”.

The rejection of those amendments is reversible, and the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine is urging a rethink before any future public health crisis reveals the consequences of opting out.

– ref. NZ’s rejection of new WHO pandemic rules makes no real sense – https://theconversation.com/nzs-rejection-of-new-who-pandemic-rules-makes-no-real-sense-280029

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/nzs-rejection-of-new-who-pandemic-rules-makes-no-real-sense-280029/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National University

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has reached a critical juncture. President Donald Trump has demanded Iran reopen the strait or the United States will further intensify its military assault.

While the strait has not been totally closed to shipping, it has been substantially disrupted and transits have effectively slowed to a trickle. The strait is economically and strategically unique due to the access it provides to the Persian Gulf from which there is no exit point. All shipping passes in and out a single waterway.

The key navigational choke point borders Iran to the north and Oman to the south. It’s only 29 nautical miles wide (53 kilometres) and consists of two-mile-wide (just over three kilometres) navigable channels for inbound and outbound shipping as well as a two-mile-wide buffer zone. This is all in Iranian waters.

[embedded content]

In 2025 a total of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products were estimated to have been shipped through the strait. That’s 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade to multiple markets in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

So what does the future look like for the Strait of Hormuz, and how might it be reopened? There are three legal, geopolitical and military scenarios.

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Read more: Why hasn’t the US military used force to secure the Strait of Hormuz?

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1. There’s a ceasefire

A ceasefire could arise from an Iranian capitulation to Trump’s demands to reopen the strait, even on a temporary basis until a permanent ceasefire is reached.

This scenario would leave the strait predominantly in Iranian hands and while hostilities may have ended, there is every prospect that Iran may seek to impose ongoing tolls on any foreign shipping passing through.

Reports have emerged that tolls have been imposed on some ships to escape the strait in recent weeks. These could be viewed as a temporary wartime measure that Iran knew it could extract from desperate shipping companies.

The imposition of tolls on ships passing through an international strait such as Hormuz is prohibited under international law during peacetime, but Iran may give little weight to that constraint following weeks of American and Israeli bombardment.

There is every possibility that under whatever scenario emerges for the strait’s future, Iran will seek to keep in place an ongoing toll regime. The international shipping industry, who would initially bear the burden of paying any such tolls, would most likely reluctantly do so to keep their ships moving.

The cost of any such tolls would then have to be factored into the market resulting in inevitable price rises for all exports from the Gulf region.

This is the most likely scenario given the current diplomatic and military efforts to achieve an end to the conflict, but would depend on Iranian concessions over the future of its nuclear ambitions.

2. The US puts boots on the ground

The second possible scenario is that the US pivots from an air and missile campaign against Iran to a land-based operation involving American boots on the ground.

With a significant build-up of 5,000 additional US troops throughout the Gulf, making an estimated total of 50,000 scattered throughout the region, the US is clearly poised for such an assault.

There has been much speculation as to whether the US would first seize Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. The island could provide a launch pad for US ground and sea operations throughout the Gulf.

[embedded content]

However, Kharg Island is not located in the Strait of Hormuz and does not offer an immediate military advantage to reopening the waterway. Any US reopening of the strait would eventually require significant naval assets to be deployed to initially secure the strait from all hostile threats, including mines, and then to be able to escort commercial shipping through the strait in both directions.

Recent comments from President Trump suggest he is not inclined to do this alone without the support of US allies. That support has not been forthcoming and in some instances has been directly rejected.

While capable of escalating its current campaign, even Trump may not want to gamble on the military and political risks it would entail. At present, it would appear unlikely the US would pursue this course of action.

3. End the war, but leave the strait closed

The third scenario is the US ends the war but safe passage through the strait is not secured.

There is clearly growing momentum for a coalition of like-minded countries to act to resolve this issue. On March 11 the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2817 directly addressing safety and security of navigation in the Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz.

A fresh resolution could be adopted authorising UN member states to take collective action to secure the strait. This would provide a clear legal basis for the strait to be cleared and for freedom of navigation to resume under escort from a UN-mandated naval coalition capable of defending itself from Iranian attacks.

The United Kingdom on April 2 coordinated discussions among partners and allies to explore options for how this could be achieved. Australia was part of those discussions.

The UK, Australia and other European and Asian powers such as China who may contribute to such a UN-mandated Hormuz mission will not wish to do so during a hot armed conflict. They will feel more comfortable acting once the US has withdrawn and hostilities between the main protagonists have ended.

This becomes the fall-back option if the current Iran/US impasse over the strait remains and Trump declares victory and withdraws US forces.

What is clear is that the pre-war status quo will not return in the Strait of Hormuz. If hostilities end and an ongoing peace settlement is reached, Iran will still have the capacity to control the strait. This is a reality of geography that the world will need to live with.

– ref. How might the Strait of Hormuz be reopened? Here are 3 scenarios – https://theconversation.com/how-might-the-strait-of-hormuz-be-reopened-here-are-3-scenarios-279840

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/how-might-the-strait-of-hormuz-be-reopened-here-are-3-scenarios-279840/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested on Tuesday and will face five charges of the war crime of murder allegedly committed during the war in Afghanistan.

He was arrested by Australian Federal Police at Sydney domestic airport.

Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service corporal who was widely feted as one of Australia’s most decorated modern war heroes, has always maintained his innocence.

The AFP did not name Roberts-Smith.

The Office of the Special Investigator and the AFP said in a statement:

A former Australian Defence Force member, 47, has been arrested and is expected to be charged with five counts of war crime – murder under a joint investigation between the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and the AFP.

Roberts-Smith is set to be charged under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The charges are:

• the war crime of murder, in that he intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 11 September, 2012, at Darwan, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan

• the war crime of murder, with another person, in that they intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, in Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan and,

• the war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, at Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.

The maximum penalty for the offence of the war crime of murder is life imprisonment.

Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in a New South Wales court later on Tuesday.

The investigation into Roberts-Smith has been undertaken in a joint operation between the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).

“The joint OSI-AFP investigation began in 2021, and inquiries are continuing,” the statement said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to answer any questions about the matter.

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson said she remained “steadfast in my support of Ben Roberts-Smith.

“I will not abandon him like so many other politicians.”

The OSI and AFP are investigating allegations of criminal offences under Australian law related to breaches of armed conflict laws by ADF personnel in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

The joint OSI-AFP investigation has begun 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes in the Afghanistan conflict by members of the Australian Defence Force.

Of those, 39 are finalised, unless new evidence emerges. In these cases sufficient evidence of a war crime did not exist to support referring a brief to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Another ten investigations are still underway.

One investigation resulted in a former SAS solider being charged with one count of the war crime of murder. This matter is scheduled for trial in the NSW Supreme Court next February.

AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told a media conference of today’s arrest: “It will be alleged the man was a member of the ADF when he was involved in the death of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012 in circumstances that constitute war crimes under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

“It will be alleged the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan.

“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.

“It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused, or shot by subordinate members of the ADF, in the presence of, and acting on the orders of, the accused.”

Barrett said: “We understand these charges will have an impact on several communities in Australia.

“Whenever I give a press conference, I do not just provide the facts in front of me, but I also address those impacted the most.

“So, I want to now directly address the concerns and questions some may have.

“The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF, which helps keep this country safe.

“The overwhelming majority of our ADF do our country proud. Today’s charges are not reflective of the majority of members who serve under our Australian flag with honour, distinction and with the values of a democratic nation.

“Today, is a day to rally behind the ADF, and be mindful of the families whose loved ones have died while serving our country.”

Roberts-Smith lost a defamation action he brought against the Nine newspapers. His final appeal in the seven year battle was dismissed mid last year.

– ref. Ben Roberts-Smith arrested and facing 5 war crimes charges – https://theconversation.com/ben-roberts-smith-arrested-and-facing-5-war-crimes-charges-279202

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/ben-roberts-smith-arrested-and-facing-5-war-crimes-charges-279202/

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

If the US-Israelis escalate, the Saudis should fear for the future of the Yanbu pipeline.

So should we — even if you don’t know it by name. If Trump and Netanyahu make good on their genocidal threats against Iran and escalate, “Yanbu” may soon be as familiar to you as “Hormuz”.

Yanbu alone is delivering about 7 percent of global seaborne crude. Iran is fully aware that, by bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, it provides the West with access to millions of barrels of oil per day needed to keep industries and lives moving forward and oil prices from skyrocketing.

Why, Iran might reasonably ask, should this continue while the US-Israeli war machine pursues its mission to drive Iran back to the Stone Age?

Yanbu bears resemblance to another famous pipeline — Nord Stream — that, as forewarned by President Biden, was destroyed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine — then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring it to an end,” the President said at a press conference in February 2022.

It wasn’t a smoking gun but rather watching someone load the gun.

Easily invite emulation
Today, in a different US war, Nord Stream’s destruction could easily invite emulation by the Iranians who are slowly learning to better the instruction provided by the US and Israel.

Sitting out on the Red Sea, seemingly far from the trouble and strife playing out in the Persian Gulf, is Yanbu, the port that receives up to 5 million barrels of Saudi oil per day.

It is a lifeline for Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, an escape route for oil that would otherwise be trapped. If the Strait of Hormuz is the jugular vein of Gulf oil, Yanbu is a bypass valve allowing the Saudi energy heart to keep beating.

Built during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, this 1200 km pipeline connects the massive Abqaiq oil fields in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia with the Red Sea. It was built with the express purpose of bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.

Known as the East-West Pipeline or simply The Petroline, it travels 1200km across the Kingdom over some of the harshest deserts in the world, a glistening steel thread that even traverses the jagged Hijaz Mountains, to reach its terminus at the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

Yanbu isn’t just a port, it is a sprawling facility with the complex engineering needed to receive, store and shuttle the black gold.

Huge storage farms glistening with steel tanks, each holding tens of millions of barrels, connect with dozens of specialised berths for the giant tankers.

Biggest tankers
The biggest tankers can swallow 270,000 tonnes of oil that must then work its way either north through the Suez Canal or south through the chokepoint at Bab el-Mandeb, which both Ansar Allah (the Houthis) and Iran have threatened to close this week.

Bab-el-Mandeb means — most aptly today — “Gate of Tears” or “Gate of Grief” in Arabic.

Saudi Arabia, UK, US and to a lesser extent New Zealand, Australia and many Western countries, have been part of a campaign to crush Houthi control of this 20km chokepoint.

The Saudi-led war and starvation siege imposed on Yemen with the assistance of these countries killed, according to the United Nations, more than 400,000 Yemeni civilians. This depraved violence against one of the poorest populations on earth was largely ignored by the Western media.

It features heavily in the calculations of Iran and Yemen: they know the moral values of their enemies.

So far the Houthis have only participated in a limited way with a few, largely symbolic, missiles fired at Israel. They have good reason to hesitate.

The Saudis, battered by Houthi drone strikes on their infrastructure and out-generalled by Ansar Allah, have signalled a willingness to permanently settle the Yemen war, providing territorial concessions and huge funds for reconstruction. Blocking the Bab-el-Mandeb could wreck this strategic progress and invite another genocidal onslaught from the Saudis, Americans and their allies.

Confronting ‘Axis of Genocide’
Nonetheless despite being massively out-gunned, Ansar Allah and the Yemeni people in their millions have shown a willingness to confront what they see as the Axis of Genocide (US-Israel and their allies).

Just a few days ago Houthi Deputy Information Minister Mohammed Mansour told Al Monitor, “The option of closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a Yemeni option that can be implemented should the aggression against Iran and Lebanon escalate savagely, or if any Gulf state becomes directly involved in military operations in support of the [Zionist] entity or the United States.”

For its part, Iran has a menu of options to choose from to bring the flow into or out of Yanbu to a halt. Something as simple as destroying the specialised loading arms or the pumping stations at the terminal would halt the whole system.

Striking a handful of tankers (some with $200 million of oil onboard) would instantly make the Red Sea uninsurable. The pipeline itself could be targeted. This is the fire and mayhem that the US and Israel are inviting if they continue to target Iran’s civilians and vital infrastructure.

As geopolitical experts like Professor John Mearsheimer have warned for decades: when faced with an existential threat (as Iran obviously is) a state will do anything to ensure survival. Were Iran to successfully see off the massive attack by the US and Israel and successfully retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, it will seek to establish an entirely new security architecture for the region, one that no longer involves US bases.

Iran will want peace, stability and good commerce, but will seek reparations from the Gulf States for having provided bases for the US-Israeli war machine.

Another pipeline will also likely be on Iran’s list of potential targets. Israel’s close ally Abu Dhabi, has played an important role in the war. It is the richest of the emirates that comprise the UAE. Its Habshan–Fujairah pipeline also bypasses Hormuz by taking a 360km land route from Abu Dhabi’s Habshan oil wells to Fujairah, a port on the Gulf of Oman.

Outside Iranian control
This adds about 1.8 million barrels a day to global trade and currently sits outside Iranian control.

With Iran in the process of establishing a toll booth — a system of transit charges — for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, both Habshan–Fujairah and Yanbu represent strategic threats to its control of energy coming out of the Gulf and, most importantly, the taxation revenue scheme it will need to recoup the hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the country inflicted by the US and Israel.

I discuss this topic in my article “Who will pay billions in reparations to Iran? We will.”

I hope this violence ends. I hope the Americans and Israelis cease their illegal war. I doubt either will pay reparations to the Iranians, including the families of the hundreds of school children they have slaughtered.

For those reasons and more, I hope the Iranians survive and thrive thanks, in part, to the transit fees they now have every right to charge the nations that did nothing to stop this crime of crimes.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts solidarity.co.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/eugene-doyle-saudi-arabias-nordstream-pipeline-is-waiting-to-be-hit/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bjorn Sturmberg, Senior Research Fellow, Battery Storage & Grid Integration Program, Australian National University

The war on Iran has made crystal clear how shaky our reliance on fossil fuels is. It’s no surprise electric vehicles and transport have become more appealing.

In Australia, sales of electric vehicles surged 40–50% in March.

That sudden surge came after ten months of relatively slow growth, during which battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles made up roughly 14% of new car sales. Industry groups saw the sluggishness as a sign of the difficulties in moving beyond early adopters to the much larger mainstream market.

This market includes people who live in apartments or inner city areas with no off street parking. In Sydney’s eastern suburbs, for example, 60% of residents live in apartments or townhouses, and 50% rent.

If the millions of Australians in this position are to go electric, they have to be confident in their ability to charge cheaply and conveniently. Relying on public fast chargers won’t be enough, as queues at chargers over Easter show.

These drivers will need a high quality public kerbside charging network, where drivers can park on a street, plug in a slower but much cheaper charger and head to the shops. In our new research, we lay out what a good kerbside network should look like.

Why kerbside chargers matter

Drivers usually charge their EVs using private chargers at home, public chargers at work or at dedicated fast or ultra-fast charging stations on roads.

Kerbside chargers represent another promising option. These small box-like chargers can be attached to power poles, streetlights or mounted on the footpath. Kerbside chargers usually run at power levels similar to home charging at around 7-22kW, though some run at 30-50kW.

There’s a trade-off between speed and cost. Ultra-fast chargers (150-400kW) can charge an average EV battery from 10 to 80% in around 30 minutes, but cost significantly more than slower chargers. Kerbside chargers cost significantly less, in part because they place far less stress on the power grid.

As well as letting drivers charge without off-street parking, kerbside chargers also build confidence for all EV drivers by expanding the charger network. If one charger is occupied, another will be free.

The federal government last year announced A$40 million in grant funding to accelerate the kerbside charging rollout, which is about to be delivered. Electricity distributors are lobbying to be able to provide this infrastructure.

How do we get the rollout right?

To find out how to optimise the kerbside charger rollout, we partnered with Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick Councils in Sydney, whose kerbside network amounts to 94 spaces. It’s well used, with 27,000 charging sessions over the six months to the end of February 2026.

The data from these chargers revealed key insights. Chargers were used much more when they were located near apartments and shops, and when signs restricted use to EVs actively using the chargers.

One surprise was the fact charger usage clustered around daytime and evenings, with little overnight.

Daytime use is good news for the power grid, as it makes sense to charge EVs when floods of cheap solar are being generated. This should lead to lower charging prices during these times.

But it’s less than ideal that a third of total charger use took place during evenings, when the power grid is experiencing peak demand.

As more and more EVs appear on the roads, evening demand from chargers may rise too. Meeting this demand could require expensive grid upgrades.

Optimising the kerbside network

There’s usually a lot of flexibility in when drivers charge their EVs for daily or weekly use. Many EVs can even be set to charge when power is cheapest.

The challenge is how to get people (and vehicles) to respond to this flexibility and how to coordinate their actions at scale. One method could be to set higher prices for kerbside charging during times of peak demand.

Higher prices during evening peaks for EV charging at home could also encourage drivers to avoid peak demand, though this should ideally apply only to EV charging, not cooking dinner.

People want faster kerbside chargers

Most existing or planned kerbside chargers rely on slower, low power AC chargers (7-11 kW) able to charge an average EV from 10 to 80% in around six hours.

These are the default for kerbside charging because they are cheap and provide the same charging experience as in homes and workplaces. They work well for those who live nearby and can charge over longer periods such as across a day or overnight.

But the Sydney council data showed a clear preference for higher power DC chargers (30-50 kW) able to charge an average EV battery from 10 to 80% in two hours.

These chargers are best located near services which take 1-2 hours to complete, or near apartment blocks where many local drivers can take short turns charging.

On average, the faster DC charger sites were used four times a day, compared to once a day for slower AC chargers. Because DC chargers deliver energy much faster, each one delivered five times more energy (100 kWh per day) on average.

This means these more expensive DC chargers can be the most economic option for kerbside charging. Their higher throughput also makes them space efficient, requiring fewer contentious dedicated EV parking spaces.

Our analysis shows DC sites are most effective when coupled with two hour parking restrictions rather than allowing a four hour stay, as this reduces EVs overstaying once fully charged.

In response, the three Sydney councils have deployed more DC chargers at new sites and upgraded some existing sites.

At present, many plans for new public kerbside chargers still focus on slower AC chargers, many without dedicated EV parking spaces.

Our analysis suggests dedicated EV parking spaces are essential, and faster DC chargers should play a more prominent role. These are popular with drivers, have better economics, and require fewer dedicated EV parking spaces.

– ref. Growing EV popularity is leading to queues at fast chargers. Could a kerbside charger network help? – https://theconversation.com/growing-ev-popularity-is-leading-to-queues-at-fast-chargers-could-a-kerbside-charger-network-help-279563

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/07/growing-ev-popularity-is-leading-to-queues-at-fast-chargers-could-a-kerbside-charger-network-help-279563/