I’ve seen some Australians expressing confusion as to whether or not they can still legally criticise Israel online after new “hate speech” laws were passed on Tuesday under the pretence of combatting “antisemitism”.
The answer is yes, and you definitely should keep opposing Israel and its genocidal atrocities.
I am worried that these new laws may indirectly have a bit of a chilling effect on pro-Palestine activism due to Australians not understanding these new laws and what people are allowed to do without being jailed.
So let’s clear this up thoroughly so we’re all on the same page.
To be perfectly clear: it is still legal for Australians to oppose Israel and to associate with pro-Palestine groups – and we should. What’s changed is that now those groups can be classified as “hate groups” and banned, similarly to how Palestine Action has been banned in the UK.
But this hasn’t happened yet, and hopefully never will. We need to push for these new laws to be repealed, because they look guaranteed to be abused at some point in the future.
It is still legal to criticise Israel. So we should criticise it as much as possible, because we don’t know how much longer we’ll have that right.
It is still legal to associate with pro-Palestine groups. So we should do so at every opportunity, because we don’t know when they’ll start listing them as “hate groups” and imprisoning anyone who continues to associate with them.
Unless you are in certain parts of Sydney while the post-Bondi protest ban remains in effect, it is presently fully legal to hold pro-Palestine marches. So attend as many as you are able, because you don’t know when they’ll be shut down altogether.
It is still legal to say that Israel is a genocidal apartheid state, and to share information and opinions about its abuses. So we should do so as much as we can, because we don’t know when that right will be taken away.
It is still legal to state the fact that Zionism is a racist and murderous political ideology and that everything we’ve seen in Gaza is the result of Zionists getting everything they want. So we should say it frequently, because that right could vanish at any time.
It is still legal to say “Fuck Israel, free Palestine.” So we should say it loud and say it often, because we don’t know how much longer we’ll be allowed to do so without getting thrown into prison.
Fuck Israel, free Palestine. Say it loud and say it often, because you won’t have the right to say it much longer.
The Israel lobby is working frenetically to crush free speech in Australia, and the swamp monsters in Canberra are either actively facilitating this agenda or doing far too little to stop it.
The more aggressively they work to take away our right to oppose Israel, the more aggressively we need to oppose both them and Israel.
We’re not just fighting for Gaza anymore, we’re fighting for our own civil rights, and for our children, and for our grandchildren. They’re actively assaulting our ability to speak critically of power and make this nation a more tyrannical place.
The only appropriate response to this is ferocious defiance.
Imagine investing in a premium Central Otago vineyard, or owning a slice of prime Wellington commercial property, all without needing millions in upfront capital.
Through asset “tokenisation”, this is becoming a reality.
Essentially, tokenisation converts physical and financial assets into digital records, called tokens, which are stored using blockchain technology.
The blockchain itself is basically a shared digital ledger distributed across computers, with transactions linked into a cryptographic chain. This decentralisation and transparency makes tokenisation both trustworthy and efficient.
Why tokenise assets?
For decades, investing in real-world assets has meant navigating lawyers, banks, brokers, registries, mountains of paperwork, hefty transaction costs and prohibitive minimum spends.
A $10 million commercial building, for example, might require investors to commit large proportions of the full amount, locking out all but the wealthiest buyers.
Tokenisation changes this equation for both buyers and sellers. That same building could be split into 100 digital tokens, each representing 1% ownership worth $100,000.
Like owning shares in a company, token holders benefit from rental income and property appreciation proportional to their stake. For sellers, it’s a way to raise capital by attracting many smaller investors rather than a few large ones.
Tokenisation is already happening
Digital assets are already woven into New Zealand’s economy. BlockchainNZ reports nearly NZ$8 billion of digital assets traded annually, with interest in digital assets becoming more common.
But New Zealand stands at an important juncture. Existing financial regulations weren’t designed with tokenisation in mind, meaning progress is slow and complex.
Industry bodies such as BlockchainNZ, the Banking Association and Payments NZ warn that even slight changes in a token’s features can alter its legal classification, making compliance confusing and expensive.
Without clear rules, New Zealand risks losing billions to overseas markets offering greater regulatory certainty.
Global momentum is undeniable
Executives from multinational investment company BlackRock have compared tokenisation today to the internet in 1996, something poised for explosive growth.
Accounting firm Deloitte projects US$4 trillion in global real estate will be tokenised by 2035, up from less than US$0.3 trillion in 2024.
Dubai launched its first tokenised real estate platform in May 2025, projecting US$16 billion in value by 2033. J.P. Morgan Asset Management has launched MONY, a tokenised cash fund that invests in relatively safe short-term debt securities.
BlockChainNZ held New Zealand’s first real estate tokenisation forum in Auckland in July 2025. Industry analysis suggests tokenising just 2–3% of the domestic property market could unlock over NZ$60 billion in transaction volume.
The regulatory conversation is underway, with the Financial Markets Authority releasing a discussion paper on tokenisation in September 2025.
But the Banking Association has identified a critical gap: while existing laws are technology-neutral, they lack clarity for tokenised products.
It recommends legislative reviews, controlled testing of tokenised financial products, and guidance for industry participants and consumers on regulation and compliance.
Ultimately, New Zealand will need a cohesive framework that actively enables safe innovation. As one industry insider has argued:
the rails for tokenisation are being laid now and if we don’t help build them, we’ll be forced to run on tracks designed by others.
Navigating the risks
Tokenisation also brings serious challenges. Local financial laws were written for paper certificates and bank vaults, not digital tokens and blockchain networks.
When an Auckland property developer tokenises an apartment building, or a Marlborough winery offers digital shares, which rules apply? Are these securities? Property titles? This uncertainty creates a compliance minefield.
Technology risks compound these problems: cybersecurity vulnerabilities, digital key theft or loss, bugs or flaws in blockchain code that hackers can exploit, and malfunctions in the technology infrastructure can all cause irreversible losses.
Tokenised assets can be highly volatile, with rapid price swings encouraging speculation and panic selling. Easy round-the-clock trading amplifies boom-and-bust cycles. When everyone can trade with a few clicks, panic can spread rapidly.
The Financial Markets Authority has warned that market manipulation becomes easier across multiple unregulated platforms, money laundering may be harder to detect in cross-border transactions, and fraud (from fake tokenised assets to digital Ponzi schemes) can scale quickly.
None of this means tokenisation should (or can) be avoided. The challenge for New Zealand is to keep up with this form of financial innovation, and to retain investment dollars that might otherwise migrate to other jurisdictions.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In the modern workplace, flexible arrangements can be as important as salary for some. For many employees, flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have luxury. It has become a fundamental requirement for staying in the workforce, especially after COVID.
This leaves many employees with a stark choice: either conform to standard, rigid office hours or look for better conditions elsewhere.
The stakes of these negotiations are remarkably high. For the employee, a successful deal can mean the difference between professional growth and total burnout. For the employer, it is a major lever for retaining top talent.
Yet, many employees approach these conversations as simple “asks”, unaware that the success of their requests often hinge on invisible factors that have little to do with their actual job performance.
In our new research, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, we wanted to provide an evidence base for how to negotiate for flexible work, so both employers and employees can benefit.
Request for approval
To understand why some flexible work requests are approved and others are rejected, we ran two studies with more than 300 participants.
Successfully negotiating flexible working arrangements with a manager can be tricky. charlesdeluvio/Unsplash
Instead of asking people what they think influences flexible work approvals, we asked them to make real decisions on a series of requests presented to them.
To strengthen our findings, all participants had management experience.
In both studies, participants read short requests from hypothetical employees asking to work flexibly.
Each request was designed to look realistic, but was given a focus on one of four different things:
caring responsibilities
improved productivity
greater wellbeing via work-life integration
task completion instead of hours worked.
In the second study, we varied both the gender of the requester and how much flexibility they asked for: either two or four days working from home.
What we found
Across both studies, a clear pattern emerged. Requests related to caring responsibilities and improved productivity had the greatest success. Requests which focused on improved personal wellbeing or greater autonomy over their time were less successful.
However, contrary to what we expected, we found men and women were equally likely to be approved for flexible work.
This suggests that, at least at the approval stage, “gendered flexibility stigma”, or bias against workers (usually women) who access flexible work arrangements, may be less pronounced than earlier research has suggested.
Overall, we found managers have a clear preference for fewer days of flexible working. Requests for two days of flexible work were much more likely to be approved than requests for four days.
Our results indicate fathers won’t be penalised for asking for flexible work to provide care to their children. However, there’s an important caveat. While their requests were just as likely as women’s to be approved, our research cannot speak to the impact on men’s (or any workers’) careers after they take up flexible work.
The stigma against those who cannot be seen in the office or workplace – a perceived lack of commitment, judgements about decreased productivity, reduced likelihood of getting promoted – may still be present.
Workplace changes caused by the pandemic allowed fathers to become more engaged in caring. Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash
Other ways to make a strong case
Flexible work debates often focus on and even favour parents. That can leave non-parents with fewer options. Our research provides good news for those without caring responsibilities who still want to embrace the benefits of flexible work.
We found the business case was equally as effective as the child-care argument. Non-carers should strongly consider the mutual benefits to their employers and to themselves and be sure to make a strong case for how the company will reap the rewards.
For example, workers could highlight the possibility for increased productivity or fewer sick days.
Resources and tools are available to help employees construct their business cases, such as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s page on legal requirements in Australia and evidence for a business case.
What the law says
Anyone can ask for flexible working arrangements; your boss might say no, but it’s worth a shot. At a national level, in Australia where this study was conducted, employers cannot unreasonably refuse flexible working arrangements for people in certain circumstances, including those who have worked for the same employer for more than 12 months and who are:
pregnant
a person with disability
have various caring responsibilities
55 or older
experiencing family and domestic violence
providing care for someone who is experiencing family and domestic violence.
Employers are legally required to respond to such flexible work requests in writing within 21 days, and make their approval decisions based on “reasonable business grounds”.
Room to make things fairer
Together, our findings show that flexible work is still not doled out fairly. Because these negotiations often occur on a one-on-one basis, they are highly susceptible to individual bias, favouritism, and assumptions about who deserves to work flexibly.
One factor outside an employee’s control is their manager’s attitude. Our research found managers who held positive views about flexible work were more likely to approve requests of any kind. Those with negative attitudes were more likely to say no, regardless of how the request was framed.
Ultimately, success depends on how the request is framed, how much flexibility is asked for, and who is making the decision.
Melissa Wheeler has engaged in paid and pro-bono consulting and research relating to issues of applied ethics and gender equality (including Our Watch, Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, VicHealth). She has previously worked for research centres that receive funding from several partner organisations in the private and public sector, including from the Victorian government. She holds a Board of Directors role with the Frankston Social Enterprise and Innovation Hub.
Anne Bardoel, Asanka Gunasekara, and Lindsie Arthur do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Splinters are everyday injuries commonly involving a small shard of wood, glass, metal, plastic or a thorn that becomes embedded in the skin and the soft tissue underneath.
The outer skin layer, known as the epidermis, has a high level of pain receptors. The layer just underneath, called the dermis, has even more of them, potentially making such injuries very painful.
Knowing how to remove a splinter may not be a matter of life and death. However, good technique can relieve someone from ongoing pain or subsequent complications.
There’s little in the medical literature
Despite pain relief being an important topic in health care, splinters have drawn little academic interest.
In 2004, a team of clinicians wrote that “no controlled studies have been done comparing different techniques, leaving physicians to rely on anecdotal experiences”. A 2025 search of the medical literature on splinters only reveals a longstream of case studies and anecdotal evidence.
Online sites and TikTok videos are awash with “hacks” and tips that suggest using vinegar, duct tape, glue, onion slices and banana peels among other methods. There’s limited evidence to support or refute such practices, but some of them may cause irritation of the skin, or even allergic reactions.
Ultimately, you don’t need any hacks to remove splinters. Here’s how to do this correctly and safely – and when to seek medical advice.
First, where is the splinter?
The location of the splinter is the first triage point. If an eye or eyelid splinter is suspected, you should seek urgent medical care through a general practice, urgent care clinic or emergency department. Do not attempt to flush or irrigate your eye; this needs to be done by a health practitioner with sterile saline in a controlled environment.
Splinters stuck under a fingernail or toenail, known as subungual splinters, also often require surgical removal.
Second, what is the splinter made of?
The type of splinter can also determine if you need help from a medical professional.
Care needs to be taken with glass splinters as they can break off or shatter, leaving fragments that can be difficult to remove and may cause ongoing pain, inflammation or infection.
Outdoor splinters from wood, thorns or rusty metal can also be a source of tetanus and a tetanus vaccine booster may be required. People who are immunosuppressed or who have had lymph gland surgery should seek a medical appointment, as they may need antibiotics.
What you will need to remove the splinter
If none of the above apply and you can clearly see the splinter, the best way to approach removing it is with tweezers.
If the end of the splinter is near the surface, consider using a bevelled needle (available from chemists) to gently lift the top layer of skin to expose the splinter. Be careful not to enter deeper layers of skin as this will be painful.
Before attempting removal, if the splinter isn’t from wood, soaking the impacted area in warm water may help to soften the skin. Epsom salts, baking soda or hydrogen peroxide are sometimes recommended, but there’s no scientific evidence to support their use.
Don’t soak wood splinters, as this may cause the wood to swell and make it harder to pull out.
Sterilise the tweezers (and needle, if using) by rubbing or dipping the tips in the same sanitiser gel. Allow the tweezers to dry and do not place them back down before use.
If needed, use reading glasses to magnify the splinter. This will avoid bumping the splinter (further pain) and facilitate a good grip with the tweezers. For metal splinters only, consider using nail clippers to pinch the splinter for better grip.
Remove the splinter following the path of entry – pull it gently back from the direction it went in.
Once the splinter is removed, wash the area with soap and water or an antiseptic solution. Cleaning with alcohol-based hand gel may cause stinging.
If the wound is bleeding, cover with a plaster or small dressing.
For splinters close to the surface, you’ll likely be able to see if the whole splinter was removed. For splinters that penetrate at a steeper angle, it may be difficult to know if you got it all out. Deep splinters may even require medical diagnostic imaging to locate them.
After removing the splinter, monitor over the next few days for ongoing pain and signs of infection, such as redness, swelling, pain or discharge. Wound infections that are left untreated can lead to sepsis, a potentially life-threatening medical condition.
Andrew Woods does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
“Size matters” sounds like a tabloid cliché, but for evolutionary biologists the size of the human penis is truly a puzzle.
Compared to other great apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, the human penis is longer and thicker than expected for a primate of our size.
If the primary role of a penis is simply to transfer sperm, why is the human penis so much larger than those of our closest relatives?
Our new study, published today in PLOS Biology, reveals a larger penis in humans serves two additional purposes: to attract mates and to threaten rivals.
Why so prominent?
Understanding why the human body looks the way it does is a popular topic in evolutionary biology. We already know that physical features like greater height and a more V-shaped torso increase a man’s sexual attractiveness.
But less is known about the effect of a larger penis. Humans walked upright long before the invention of clothing, which made the penis highly conspicuous to mates and rivals during most of our evolution.
Might this prominence have been selected for greater size?
Thirteen years ago, in a landmark study we presented women with life-sized projections of 343 videos of anatomically correct, 3D computer-generated male figures that varied in their height, shoulder-to-hip ratio (body shape), and penis size.
We found that women generally prefer taller men with broader shoulders and a larger penis.
That study made global headlines, but it only told half the story. In our new study we show that men also pay attention to penis size.
In many species, traits that are more strongly expressed in males, like a lion’s mane or a deer’s antlers, serve two roles: they are attractive to females, and they signal fighting ability to males. Until now, we didn’t know if the human penis size might also serve such a dual function.
In the new study we confirmed our earlier finding that women find a larger penis more attractive. We then tested whether men also consider a rival with a larger penis as more attractive to women and, for the first time, we tried to determine if men treat a larger penis as a signal of a more dangerous opponent when it comes to a fight.
To find these answers, we showed more than 800 participants the 343 figures that varied in height, body shape and penis size. The participants viewed and rated a subset of these figures either in person as life-sized projections, or online where they were viewed on their own computer, tablet or phone.
An example of the figures used in the study. Aich U, et al., 2025, PLOS Biology
We asked women to rate the figures’ sexual attractiveness; and we asked men to assess the figures as potential rivals, rating how physically threatening or sexually competitive each figure appeared.
What we discovered
For women, a larger penis, greater height, and a V-shaped upper body all increased a man’s attractiveness. However, there was a diminishing effect: beyond a certain point, further increase in penis size or height offered smaller returns.
The real revelation, however, came from the men. Men considered a larger penis as an indicator of a rival with both greater fighting ability and as a stronger sexual competitor. Males also rated taller figures with a more V-shaped torso in the same fashion.
However, in contrast to women, men consistently ranked males with ever more exaggerated traits as stronger sexual competitors, suggesting that men tend to overestimate the attractiveness of these characteristics to women.
We were surprised by the consistency of our findings. The ratings of the different figures yielded very similar conclusions regardless of whether participants viewed life-sized projections of the figures in person, or saw them on a smaller screen online.
We now have evidence that the evolution of penis size could have been partly driven by the sexual preferences of females, and as a signal of physical ability used by males.
Note, however, that the effect of penis size on attractiveness was four to seven times higher than its effect as a signal of fighting ability. This suggests that the enlarged penis in humans evolved more in response to its effect as a sexual ornament to attract females than as a badge of status for males, although it does both.
Interestingly, our study also highlighted a psychological quirk. We measured how quickly people rated these figures. Participants were significantly quicker to rate figures with a smaller penis, shorter height, and a less V-shaped upper body. This rapid response suggests that these traits are subconsciously almost instantly rated as less sexually attractive or physically threatening.
There are, of course, limitations to what our experiment reveals. We varied male height, penis size and body shape, but in the real world characteristics such as facial features and personality are also major factors in how we rate others. It remains to be seen how these factors interact.
Additionally, while our findings were robust across both males and females of various ethnicities, we acknowledge that cultural standards of masculinity vary across the world and change over time.
Upama Aich receives funding from the Forrest Research Foundation to be based at the University of Western Australia and received a Monash University Research Reactivation Grant to conduct the study.
MIchael Jennions does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Sussan Ley may pay the price for the implosion of the Coalition, but the blame rests squarely with Nationals leader David Littleproud. He’s the one whose leadership should be on the line.
When you stand back from it, the behaviour of the Nationals has been extraordinary and, many would argue, reprehensible.
What was the issue the Nationals chose to make their stand on? It was the provision in the government’s legislation that will enable the banning of hate-spruiking groups, notably the Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and neo-Nazi groups.
The Nationals said this was too broad, and endangered free speech. However important the principle of free speech is, dealing with these purveyors of hate outweighs it in this instance. Also, the measure as passed is surrounded by reasonable guardrails.
The Nationals’ claims they want radical Islamists dealt with are hollow when they oppose this measure – which is also attacked, it should be noted, by some on the progressive side of politics, in the name of free speech. The antisemitism issue has produced a convergence of sections of the right and the left, aligned against the pragmatic centre.
In the run up to the Coalition crisis, a Sunday night meeting of shadow cabinet, which included Littleproud, decided to seek changes to the hate crime legislation; on Monday the opposition obtained concessions from the government.
Ley says that was the proper end of the process, clearing the way for the opposition to support the bill, and therefore the Nationals frontbench senators who voted against it had broken shadow cabinet solidarity.
Littleproud argues there should have been further processes. He claims it was “persecution” to insist on the resignation of the three frontbenchers who voted against the bill, who were following the orders of their party room.
Regardless of the argument over process, Ley ended up with no choice but to discipline the three senators. Liberals (some with reservations) who had stayed in line with the decision to vote for the bill would have been appalled if their leader had then turned a blind eye to the Nationals’ action. That is especially the case given many of the Liberals are enduring blowback on social media for their stand.
Occupying the same kennel requires give and take. Liberals point out that some of their frontbenchers would have preferred to vote for the government’s gun reform bill. But they accommodated the Nationals, and their own rural members, by opposing it. There was no quid pro quo from the Nationals.
If Littleproud had wanted, he could have found a middle course over the hate-crime legislation, potentially avoiding a crisis: he could have had the Nationals abstain on the vote. That may perhaps have allowed a skate-through for both leaders. But Litteproud and his party chose to be as provocative as possible.
The Nationals showed poor judgement in deciding to oppose the legislation. Their subsequent breaking of the Coalition is a massive blow for an already enfeebled opposition. Moreover, Littleproud’s announcement on the day of national mourning over the Bondi massacre was completely tone deaf. Sources said Ley had counseled him all media should be paused for 24 hours, advice he did not take.
The Nationals are self-indulgent. They have become more overbearing in recent times, preempting the Liberals on the Voice and insisting they agree to demands after the election. Littleproud likes to point out the Liberals can’t reach government without them (which is true).
His lack of respect for Ley goes back a long way. In Thursday’s comments, he painted Ley as the villain in the crisis and declared, “Sussan Ley has put protecting her own leadership ahead of maintaining the Coalition”. He made it all as personal as possible, and essentially told the Liberals to get a new leader. “There is no [Nationals] shadow minister that wants to be ultimately serving in Sussan Ley’s shadow ministry,” he said.
But the Nationals are not just self-indulgent – they are deeply frightened. They’re spooked by the One Nation vote surge and the defection of Barnaby Joyce. The Newspoll published at the weekend had One Nation on 22%, with the Coalition 21%.
Given Joyce couldn’t lead the Nationals again, he is trying to make One Nation the replacement for his old party in regional Australia. He responded to the Littleproud announcement by saying:
David just hasn’t thought this through. It is going to be a cartwheel cluster. […] Maybe they’re on a recruitment drive for One Nation. Of course, it’s going to help us.
The Liberals are furious with Littleproud, and scathing in their personal descriptions of him. But that doesn’t mean they will stick by their leader, reluctant as some might be to appear to reward the Nationals, whose departure has left the official opposition with just 28 in the House of Representatives and forced Ley into yet another reshuffle.
Even before this crisis it was generally accepted Ley would not survive for long. This has made the prospect of her demise as leader even more likely, although the timing is uncertain. That could be influenced by the opinion polls to come.
But where do the Liberals turn? The alternatives, Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor (who has been overseas and missed the crisis), are both deeply flawed as potential leaders. Taylor, though a conservative and a poor performer as shadow treasurer last term, may have more appeal to moderates who fear some of Hastie’s hard right views. But Hastie could appeal to the younger Liberals, looking for generational change.
To replace Ley, the Liberals first need to agree on a contender. If both Hastie and Taylor ran, and Ley (who doesn’t lack guts) contested too, she might come through the middle. That would just prolong the agony.
While timelines are totally unclear, this week’s events will trigger numbers-counting by supporters of the aspirants.
With little fix on what will or should happen now, or when the next eruption might come, many shell-shocked Liberals are comforting themselves by unloading their feelings about Littleproud and his band of bomb throwers.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Of all the arts, dance has a special capacity to create worlds. Centred around the moving body, these worlds draw on other art forms – music, visual art, design, projection – to fill-out visions in time-space.
Dance at this year’s Sydney Festival ranged from a 20 minute, salon-style performance for two dancers, to an outdoor, multimedia, participatory sunset event with Sydney Harbour as a backdrop.
Garrigarrang Badu
Jannawi Dance Clan’s premiere of Garrigarrang Badu by Peta Strachan is the perfect work to orient audiences to the Dharug Country at the heart of Sydney Festival.
Jannawi is an all-female group with members from across the country who work collaboratively with artistic director Strachan, a Dharug woman of the Boorooberongal clan. Strachan’s role as a Dharug Knowledge Holder informs the language-revitalisation-in-action that grounds and filters through this work.
In this full-length dance work in local language, lyrics to a song-cycle by Matthew Doyle are linked to places, materials, costumes and objects that fill each dance in a series that flows.
In Dharug, garrigarrang means salt water and badu fresh water. The title speaks to where the two meet in our water systems at Sydney Harbour where we gather on the sweltering night of the performance.
The work is shaped around women’s knowledge, artisanship, music and movement. They present to us an intergenerational connection to land, water, sky and all that they hold.
Garrigarrang badu is shaped around women’s knowledge, artisanship, music and movement. Stephen Wilson Barker/Sydney Festival
To see this all female performance, intimately and proudly connected to Country, is a moving occasion. Dancers Dubs Yunupingu and Buia David are stand-outs as the central protagonists of the loose narrative.
Digging sticks, eel traps and Nawi (canoes) focus our attention on a skilful, ethical and balanced collaboration with resources. Alongside the ephemeral cultural materials of music and dance, the whole presents as a living archive of the Dharug people.
Strachan’s choreography, with co-credits for the cast, Albert David and Beau Dean Riley Smith, reflects influences from her time at NAISDA (Australia’s National Indigenous Dance College) and with Bangarra (2000–04), and as a cultural performer and teacher.
Low shuffling walks, softly curved spines and mimetic hand gestures are combined with contemporary elements such as barrel jumps and high-leg extensions, reminiscent of the Bangarra vocabulary.
Garabari
We later moved outside for Melbourne-based, Wiradjuri choreographer Joel Bray’s Garabari, one of Bray’s first full-length, ensemble works, following his earlier solo pieces.
He describes himself as a gay Indigenous man raised in a white Pentecostal home, training at both NAISDA and the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and with an international career as a dancer prior to his first solo choreographies.
Garabari was developed across multiple cultural and artistic encounters. Time as a performer and artist-in-resident with Chunky Move may have supported the lean into popular culture in his work. The movement language draws on traditional, contemporary and popular vocabularies with a formal or shaped-based quality that perhaps reflects ten years Bray spent dancing in Israel, where a certain modern aesthetic associated with Ohad Naharin’s Gaga technique dominates.
In Joel Bray’s work, gradually we all become part of a whirling human garabari. Stephen Wilson Barker/Sydney Festival
At a language workshop I attended, led Bray and his father Christopher Kirkbright, Bray explained how this work came about. Consultation with the Wiradjuri community in Wagga Wagga led to conversations with local Elder, the late Uncle James Ingram.
Ingram shared the story of the birth of the Murrumbidgee River with Bray, the greedy Goanna men thwarted by a heroine, Ballina, which forms the core narrative of the work.
Garabari begins with some words of welcome from Bray, explaining that the title of the show is an Anglicised Wiradjuri word for corrobboree.
As the sky darkens, we are led to the furthest boardwalk of the Opera House where the Harbour Bridge looms large. We move through a smoking ceremony and wander among quiet dancers in white on multiple open-air stages. We hear recounted stories and watch danced dramas.
Gradually we become part of a whirling human garabari, with music by Byron Scullin and projections by Katie Sfetkidis coming into their own. The crowd swarms and pulses under the dancers’ instructions.
Featuring excellent dancers such as Luke Currie-Richardson and Zoe Brown Holten, this is a work with an inclusive, celebratory and contemporary spirit.
Exxy
A few days later I am back at the house to enter another world – Dan Daw Creative Project’s Exxy.
Based in the United Kingdom, this disabled-led company’s model of “theatre, dance and activism” is connected to Australia’s Restless Dance company in Adelaide through Daw, an ex-performer in the company.
The suburban, slightly grimy and claustrophobic scenography becomes a platform for vibrant truth-telling and venting. Emotional charge and physical excess go head-to-head in this relentless work that ends with both performers and audience crying to The Power of Love.
Dan Daw Creative Project’s Exxy is a work of vibrant truth-telling and venting. Neil Bennett/Sydney Festival
In the opening scenes, Daw takes time to care for his audience and introduce his collaborators Tiiu Mortley, Sofia Valdiri and Joe Brown. This introduction gives little indication of what is to come.
Like Garabari, this work grows in complexity and mood as each artist on stage shares autobiographical snippets through word and action.
The performers tell stories of lying about sports injuries and offensive sexual encounters. They perform drooling, running under duress and shaking. These stories and actions are connected by a repeated skipping or tripping movement to create a circle of unity. Interspersed are solo dances of delicate devastation.
Daw dances high and light on his feet with arms reaching above and around him. Mortley maps dramatic shapes with her arms and torso. Brown repeats actions punishingly in response to commands from off-stage and Valdiri stims violently on the floor.
Saltbush – a plant that can thrive in the harshest environments – becomes a central metaphor in this work about being not only unapologetic about disability, but expressing it with relish, abandon and anger.
Save the Last Dance for Me
Two shows at Sydney Town Hall in the Vestibule Room top off the dance program with lessons in refinement.
Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me is a 20 minute piece of perfection.
Dancers Gianmaria Borzillo and Giovanfrancesco Giannini, simply with a sound score and stylish outfits, perform a dance from the early 20th century Bologna called Polka Chinata.
Save the Last Dance for Me is a 20 minute piece of perfection. Stephen Wilson Barker/Sydney Festival
Recently rediscovered by Italian dance historians, like the Argentinian tango Polka Chinata is a male social dance form created to seduce a female audience.
Sciarroni simply adds a contemporary frame and the dance does the rest. It is intense, virtuosic and sexy.
Echo Mapping
Azzam Mohammed has emerged from the hip hop community in Sydney, winning competitive events and performing in Nick Power’s contemporary-street dance works.
A recent Sydney Festival staple, his new collaboration with composer and artist Jack Prest is Echo Mapping.
Echo Mapping is mesmerising. Victor Frankowski/Sydney Festival
This pared-back duet is mesmerising. Mohammed, trance-like, summons movement and vocalisations that shift across Africanist angular static forms, percussive geometric patterning and echoes of the most recent iteration of this deep lineage in the popping and locking that Mohammed excels in.
The music-dance dialogue between the two artists matches yearning trumpet calls to melodic cries and drum beats to looping running steps.
The perfect venue for this intimate spectacle.
Erin Brannigan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at Davos this week that signals there may still be a leader in the West worth following.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he warned.
The Canadian PM was brutally honest about Western conduct in the world but shone a bright light on a better path forward.
At a time when the US has pivoted to a smash-and-grab deployment of hard power that now extends to its closest allies, Carney stepped up.
The speech wasn’t a rhetorical tour de force; it was better than that: it was a declaration by the leader of a major, middle ranked Western power that the snivelling compliance, the fawning and the keep-your-head-down approach that has typified the collective West’s response to Trumpism is at a strategic dead end.
Nostalgia is not a strategy “We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy,” Carney said.
At a time when the US is led by a criminal toddler who can’t stop whining about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize even as he attacks country after country, it is refreshing to encounter a leader who thinks and speaks like a statesman of the first rank.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
“But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney said.
A modern non-aligned movement Carney did not reference the Non-Aligned Movement formed at the Belgrade Conference in September 1961 but it leapt to my mind when I heard him say:
“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.”
Carney also reaffirms the importance of the institutions that the West itself, including Canada, has severely weakened in recent years — WTO, UN and COP to name three. Russia, with its invasion of Ukraine, comes in a distant second in this regard.
With an assertive, aggressive US hell-bent on getting whatever it wants, Carney looks on the times we have entered with much-needed clarity. His call is for an alliance of middle powers.
In a word: collectivism.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and what Carney is proposing have similarities, particularly structurally, but also significant differences, particularly ideologically.
Not least Carney is a reformer and not at heart an anti-imperialist. He is the former head of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada and will not be seen in a Che Guevara t-shirt any time soon.
As with the NAM, however, Carney advocates collective leverage, resistance to client-state dependency and using internationalism to resist divide-and-rule by great powers.
“When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It’s the ‘performance’ of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”
The giants who formed the Non-Aligned movement were Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia). They gathered nations around the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”: mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful coexistence.
In a nutshell: the polar opposite of the Western Rules-Based Order. Carney’s speech echoed many of the same sentiments.
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.
“And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.”
Brilliant. But converting a speech into a movement that mobilises countries in an effective way requires commitment and resources we need to see emerge at pace.
In the 1960s and 70s, it was about small and middle powers navigating a course between two superpower blocs — a passage between Scylla (Soviet Union) and Charybdis (United States). Today we all must navigate the rough and rowdy world of the US, China and a resurgent Russia.
Canada’s astonishing resistance to the Empire What is astonishing is that this time around, the impulse to rally together comes not from a socialist country like the former Yugoslavia or a “black Third World country” (in 1960s parlance) like Tanzania, but from the beating heart of the white-dominated Western world – from Canada, one of the capitals of the Western empire. My, how times have suddenly changed.
This should act as shock therapy to somnolent countries like Australia and New Zealand who cleave to a past that no longer exists. Carney has shown the power of looking at the world through untinted lenses (though Macron did look pretty cool in Davos in his blue sunnies).
A rare moment of honesty about Western conduct I don’t recall a Western leader being so open about the ear-splitting hypocrisy and double-dealing of the West. Most impressively, Carney gives a clear signal of what needs to be done to survive in this world of jostling hegemons.
More submissive leaders like Christopher Luxon of New Zealand and Australia’s Anthony Albanese should take careful note because, as Carney says, we are at a turning point in the world.
Carney, who previously mumbled his way through issues like Venezuela and Gaza, made a valuable contribution to confronting the desolation of reality:
“First it means naming reality. Stop invoking ‘rules-based international order’ as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”
In time, this may open the door to Truth and Reconciliation. The genocide in Gaza is an example par excellence of the falsity of the rules-based order; Venezuela’s recent rape by the Americans, greeted with shuffling indifference by the West, traduced international law. The lawless bombing of Iran, the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians in a blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and armed by the US and UK are just a few of many such examples.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” Carney said.
Noting the standing ovation Carney received, the threat to Greenland has clearly acted on the Western countries as a shock therapy that the Gaza genocide, the bombing of Iran and the attack on Venezuela failed to deliver.
Carney stands on the shoulders of giants I would point out that former leaders like prime minister Helen Clark of New Zealand have been arguing along these lines for years, advocating, for example, for a nuclear free Pacific and recommending “that we always pursue dialogue and engagement over confrontation.”
Warning that Trump was too unstable to be relied on, she told a conference in 2025 that New Zealand “should join forces with other countries across regions who want to be coalitions for action around these issues, not just little Western clubs.”
I’ll give the last word to the late Julius Nyerere, first President of Tanzania, from a 1970 speech to the Non-Aligned Movement. It expresses a worldview in accord with Carney’s speech but which is the polar opposite of 500 years of Western conduct from Christopher Columbus to Donald Trump:
“By non-alignment we are saying to the Big Powers that we also belong to this planet. We are asserting the right of small, or militarily weaker, nations to determine their own policies in their own interests, and to have an influence on world affairs which accords with the right of all peoples to live on earth as human beings equal with other human beings.
“And we are asserting the right of all peoples to freedom and self-determination; therefore expressing an outright opposition to colonialism and international domination of one people by another.”
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
On 14 December 2025, a father and son, reportedly linked to the ISIS clerical fascist organisation, committed a murderous attack on innocent participants at a Jewish celebration on Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. Fifteen were killed and around 40 seriously injured.
There is no way this horrific event can be minimised. It was murderous, it was antisemitic, the victims and their loved ones were completely innocent.
It also can’t be remotely justified by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and increasing repression on the West Bank.
Nor did it in anyway serve the interests of Palestinians and their fight for peace and self-determination — if anything it gave “pro-genociders” a deceitful propaganda weapon.
Extraordinary heroism also powerful message of interfaith kindness There is no “notwithstanding high point” in this murderous tragedy. But there was much heroism.
Understandably the overwhelming impact of the sheer horror of the slaughter meant that this was not reported as much as it deserved.
The heroism of Ahmed al-Ahmed saved lives and prevented more serious injuries. Image: politicalbytes.blog
But prominent was the extraordinary courage of Ahmed al-Ahmed who wrestled the gun from one of the attackers and was severely wounded — being shot five times — as a result.
Ahmed al-Ahmed is an Australian of Syrian origin. He is also Muslim. His bravery saved many Jewish lives.
Sickening contrast This makes the sickening response of the Israeli government even more deplorable. It attempted to blame the terrorist attack on the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide, and to opponents of this warmongering.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu . . . response dishonest and deplorable. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu even went so far as to dishonestly claim Australia’s recognition of Palestine as a state was to blame.
Two newspaper opinion pieces from New Zealanders who deny the reality of ethnic cleansing and genocide by Israel repeat this disgraceful “blame Palestinians” response.
The first was by Deborah Hart, chair of the Holocaust Foundation New Zealand. Her paywalled piece was published by The New Zealand Herald (December 15): Never again.
The second was by Juliet Moses, a spokesperson for the New Zealand Jewish Council. Her piece was published by Stuff (December 17): New Zealand should pay attention.
While both justifiably describe the horrific nature of the slaughter, they also reiterated the above-mentioned theme of the Israeli government thereby whitewashing its ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The fact that they both write in a softer, non-brazen and more subtle style does not diminish this observation.
The heroic Ahmed al-Ahmed is similarly whitewashed presumably because the heroism of a Muslim is considered inconsistent with Israel’s unconscionable narrative.
The implied narrative of Hart and Moses is that the life of an Israeli trumps the life of a Palestinian — including a child — and the right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination.
Further, Palestinian refusal to accept this narrative is consequentially responsible in some way for the Bondi Beach slaughter.
It is bad enough to hold this position; it is even worse to tar the Bondi victims with this same brush.
An aside: Jewish exceptionalism As an aside, this narrative is reinforced by a Zionist claim of Jewish exceptionalism that is used to justify an untenable position that granting equal rights to others in Israel would be “tantamount to suicide.”
This exceptionalism argument is effectively rebutted by a paywalled article by Peter Beinart in the October 2025 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique: Jewish exceptionalism not so exceptional.
Beinart points out that the past experiences of South Africa, Northern Ireland and the American South where “. . . time and again dominant groups have loudly claimed that granting equal rights would be tantamount to suicide . . .” were always wrong.
It was appalled by the antisemitic terror attack, sided with the Jewish community, and acknowledged that for more than two years it had marched with Jews and Jewish groups against the genocide in Gaza.
Further, it criticised the use of the Bondi Beach slaughter by Benjamin Netanyahu and others to condemn and blame Palestinians and others for opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
For completion, the statement from national co-chair John Minto is published below:
“PSNA was appalled and shocked at Sunday’s antisemitic terror attack targeting the Jewish community in Australia on the first day of the celebration of Hanukkah.
“The best antidote to race hatred is community solidarity and we stand with the Jewish community in the face of such horror.
“For many decades, and the past two years in particular, we have protested and marched side by side with Jews and Jewish groups to condemn the genocide in Gaza and stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.
“We have always made clear our campaign targets Israel’s genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. Jews are not responsible for these policies, despite Netanyahu claiming he is acting and speaking as ‘Prime Minister’ of all Jews.
“Palestine supporters were also appalled when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and leaders of the pro-Israeli lobby in Australia and New Zealand, tried to exploit the horror in Bondi by blaming it on condemnation of Israel’s genocide and the Australian government’s (largely non-existent) support for Palestinian rights.
“This blaming almost invariably comes from people who support Israel’s actions in Gaza. Their strategy is to exploit the killing in Bondi to help the Israel government carry on its genocide and ethnic cleansing without criticism.”
“We are concerned that the strategy will cross the Tasman to panic the New Zealand government into introducing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism into New Zealand legislation.
“This definition is used to target people supporting Palestine. The Israeli government has managed to get it into government legislation, university rules and local government policy in many parts of the Western world.”
“It’s all part of Netanyahu’s ‘Eighth Front’ to silence Israel’s critics.
“It has no place here.”
Apart from agreeing with it, there is nothing I could say that could add to its persuasive and powerful message. It speaks for itself.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
The short-lived split between the Nationals and the Liberal Party after last year’s election has been followed by another breakup less than nine months later.
The Nationals are publicly stating they cannot work under Sussan Ley’s leadership. Provided there’s no rekindling of the relationship, this is the end of a coalition arrangement that’s survived for more than a century, albeit with the occasional hiccup.
As dramatic as this seems, it’s not the first time it has happened. Earle Page resigned as leader of the (then) Country Party in 1939 because he could not work under Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies, leading to a temporary breakup.
Even earlier, the Country Party made it a condition of establishing the first Coalition that Prime Minister Billy Hughes be replaced by the Nationalist Party’s Stanley Bruce.
But this time, the Nationals are much weaker than they were in the past. Facing perceived political threats from One Nation and a revolving door of leaders in the past decade, the party may benefit from some time to regroup.
Access to power
The Country Party emerged as a rural counterweight to the perceived urban bias of the other political parties in the first quarter of the 20th century.
In a clear statement of independence, the Country Party’s first federal leader, William McWilliams told the parliament in March 1920 the party was not seeking any alliances or “collusion”. It would steer its own course.
This, however, did not last long. The Coalition has been a consistent feature of the political landscape since 1923.
The Country Party, which would go on to become the National Party, is Australia’s second oldest, after Labor. Because of the coalition arrangement, it has been in government more often than not over that period. As a result, the party has wielded policy power arguably out of proportion to the number of votes it attracts.
The Liberal National Party arrangement in Queensland aside, the Nationals have resisted calls for the parties to amalgamate. Both the Liberals and the Nationals have benefited from the coalition.
The Liberals have relied on National Party numbers on all but two occasions to form government. Meanwhile, the Nationals have gained access to key cabinet posts of importance to rural Australia, such as trade and commerce.
Particularly under John “Black Jack” McEwen – who had a brief prime ministerial stint in the 1960s – the party wielded real influence over Australia’s economic policy direction. For instance, he drove the negotiation of a trade agreement with Japan. More broadly, McEwen successfully pushed for tariff protection for Australia’s manufacturing industries.
Over the years, the Nationals have crossed the floor over tariff policy, the restructure of the Australian Wheat Board and other issues of direct concern to the party’s constituency.
Each time, these events have highlighted something that many tend to forget: the Coalition was never one party, but two distinctly different ones, with different constituencies and often different priorities.
History repeating
The events of this week are also not the first time the parties have disagreed while in opposition, with the Liberals supporting a Labor government bill and the Nationals voting against it.
In 1973, the Nationals opposed the Whitlam government’s Industries Assistance Commission Bill. They argued the commission (the predecessor to the Productivity Commission) would introduce central planning by stealth and “be usurping the functions of many government departments”.
But there’s an important difference. Between 1972 and 1974, the then Country Party and the Liberals were not in coalition. They did not re-form the Coalition after Labor won the 1972 election. In the interim, both parties were free to vote in parliament in line with their own policies.
Why stay together?
While coalition makes sense to form government, the persistence of the arrangement when in opposition is more perplexing.
The Liberal-National Party Coalition is a very peculiar beast. It’s unlike any coalition arrangement anywhere in the world. Elsewhere, minor parties come together only after an election and negotiate a way to form government.
The apparent permanence of the Australian arrangements has contributed to the current unedifying situation. There is no reason why two different political parties in opposition would agree with one another on everything and vote accordingly in parliament.
The crisis here is a direct result of the two parties, largely for historical reasons, persisting with an uncomfortable coalition that is not necessary while they are in opposition, as was demonstrated between 1972 and 1974.
And over the past four decades, the Nationals have faced a different Australia from the one in which McEwen was so influential. The deregulation of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s, which included reduced support for the agricultural sector, put the Nationals on the back foot in policy terms.
Rather than being the driver of pro-rural policies, they were defending Coalition policies their supporters disliked. Gun reforms introduced after the Port Arthur tragedy in 1996 is a case in point. Nationals leader Tim Fischer played a central role in supporting Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s position.
It’s left the Nationals in a weaker electoral position over time. In the current parliament, Labor and the Liberals (including Liberal-aligned Liberal National Party members) each hold more rural seats than the Nationals. Ironically, given recent events, Tim Fischer’s old seat is now held by Ley.
There’s also the rural independents, making inroads into former National Party strongholds.
Depending on what recommendations are in the currently unpublished report into the Liberals’ performance at the 2025 election, the Nationals may find that this time, the Liberals will decide the coalition agreement is not worth the grief while in opposition.
A break would provide Sussan Ley and her team with the opportunity to reassess their party’s values and rebuild in a way that improves their chances of picking up the urban seats they so desperately need to form government. They may conclude this is easier to do without the Nationals.
Linda Botterill has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council.
The Paris-based global media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the guilty verdict against Filipino journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio whose case has been challenged since her arrest almost six years ago.
Cumpio was found guilty today on a charge of “financing terrorism” in the Philippines, and now faces a sentence of between 12 and 18 years in prison.
RSF released a statement condemning the verdict and questioning the Philippines government’s commitment to a free press.
“We are appalled by this verdict. Three RSF investigations and evidence presented in court by Frenchie Mae Cumpio’s lawyers clearly show how fabricated this case has been from the very beginning,” said RSF Asia-Pacific Bureau advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska in the statement in Taipei today.
Local and international groups have condemned the conviction of 26-year-old community journalist Cumpio, saying it sends a “chilling message” to media, activists, and even ordinary people in the Philippines, reports Rappler.
“Frenchie Mae Cumpio’s conviction represents a devastating failure on the part of the Philippine justice system and the authorities’ blatant disregard for press freedom,” said Bielakowska.
“The Philippines should serve as an international example of protecting media freedom — not a perpetrator that red-tags, prosecutes and imprisons journalists simply for doing their work.
‘Highlights systemic issues’ “This sentence only highlights the systemic issues in the country and the urgent need for comprehensive reforms.
“We renew our call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to act without delay to end this injustice and release Frenchie Mae Cumpio immediately.
“Without his decisive action, there will be no meaningful difference from previous administrations that showed no regard for upholding a free press.”
Committee to Protect Journalists Asia-Pacific director Beh Lih Yi said the court ruling was “absurd” and that the promises made by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to uphold press freedom were “nothing but empty talk”.
She added that the Philippines must stop criminalising journalists.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on January 22, 2026.
Trump sows ‘chaotic cruelty’ while Canadian PM Carney reminds the world it doesn’t have to play along Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University In what has become a familiar, exhausting cycle, the rest of the world is left with the futile task of trying to dredge meaning from the wreckage left behind by US President Donald
The United States’ new military strategy is a case of ‘AI peacocking’ Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zena Assaad, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering, Australian National University The United States is set to become “the world’s undisputed [artificial intelligence-enabled] fighting force”. At least that’s the view of the country’s Department of War, which earlier this month released a new strategy to accelerate the deployment
Pro-independence FLNKS ‘unequivocally’ reject latest agreement for New Caledonia By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk The signing of a new agreement on New Caledonia’s political and financial future has triggered a fresh wave of reactions from across the French territory’s political chessboard. The Elysée-Oudinot agreement was signed on Monday, January 19, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron as well
Nationals break Coalition, declaring it ‘untenable’ and blaming Ley Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The federal Coalition is dead, with Nationals leader David Littleproud on Thursday morning declaring it “untenable” after Liberal leader Sussan Ley stared down the Liberals’ minor partner. This followed all Nationals frontbenchers resigning from the shadow ministry on Wednesday night,
Australia’s frightening new ‘hate speech’ laws are clearly aimed at pro-Palestine groups COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone Australia’s Labor government has successfully passed a “hate speech” bill that’s plainly aimed, at least in part, at suppressing pro-Palestine organizations as “hate groups”. Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about the new laws, saying their extremely vague wording, lack of procedural fairness and low thresholds for implementation mean groups
Beneath Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, a hidden ocean is revealing its secrets Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Stevens, Professor in Ocean Physics, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND Beneath Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf lies one of the least measured oceans on Earth – a vast, dark cavity roughly twice the volume of
NZ is again being soaked this summer – record ocean heat helps explain it Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, NCAR; Affiliate Faculty, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Sanka Vidanagama/Getty Images For many people this summer – especially those across Northland Auckland and Coromandel – showery days and bursts of heavy rain have become all too familiar. This week, fresh downpours on
Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University Supplied When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia
View from The Hill: Coalition crisis explodes after Sussan Ley wields the whip against defiant Nationals Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The federal Coalition was imploding on Wednesday night, with all Nationals frontbenchers, including leader David Littleproud, quitting the shadow ministry. They were retaliating against Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s insistence three Nationals senators must resign for defying shadow cabinet solidarity. The
Grains of sand prove people – not glaciers – transported Stonehenge rocks Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Clarke, Research Associate, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University Ask people how Stonehenge was built and you’ll hear stories of sledges, ropes, boats and sheer human determination to haul stones from across Britain to Salisbury Plain, in south-west England. Others might mention giants, wizards,
Provocateur attacks Australian Palestine peace activists protesting over Gaza genocide By Sarah Hathway in Djilang/Geelong A group of Australian Palestine supporters in the state of Victoria have been attacked as tensions continue over the right to protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the wake of the Bondi massacre last month. As Geelong and Victoria Southwest branch members of Independent Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) were
Hate crime laws may have unintended consequences – including chilling free speech Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor Emerita in Constitutional Law, University of Sydney What impact will the criminal hate provisions in the Albanese government’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act 2026 have on the ability of ordinary Australians to protest? An earlier version contained a criminal offence of promoting or
As Trump’s threats over Greenland escalate, will Europe use its ‘trade bazooka’? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Markus Wagner, Professor of Law and Director of the UOW Transnational Law and Policy Centre, University of Wollongong The renewed campaign by United States President Donald Trump to acquire Greenland has escalated, with tariff threats against European allies. Asked on Tuesday how far he is willing to
‘We kill enemies’ – spy firm Palantir secures top Australian security clearance US cybersecurity company Palantir has received a high-level Australian government security assessment despite concerns about its surveillance and complicity in the Gaza genocide in occupied Palestine. In November 2025, Palantir Technologies was assessed as meeting the protected level under the Australian Information Security Registered Assessors Programme (IRAP). This protection is a key requirement for companies
‘We kill enemies’ – spy firm Palantir secures top Australian security clearance US cybersecurity company Palantir has received a high-level Australian government security assessment despite concerns about its surveillance and complicity in the Gaza genocide in occupied Palestine. In November 2025, Palantir Technologies was assessed as meeting the protected level under the Australian Information Security Registered Assessors Programme (IRAP). This protection is a key requirement for companies
‘We kill enemies’ – spy firm Palantir secures top Australian security clearance US cybersecurity company Palantir has received a high-level Australian government security assessment despite concerns about its surveillance and complicity in the Gaza genocide in occupied Palestine. In November 2025, Palantir Technologies was assessed as meeting the protected level under the Australian Information Security Registered Assessors Programme (IRAP). This protection is a key requirement for companies
High Seas Treaty welcome news for SPREP in uncertain times By Johnny Blades, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor In an otherwise mixed month for the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP), its leadership is hailing a win for Pacific conservation efforts with the UN Treaty on the High Seas coming into effect. The legally binding UN High Seas Treaty officially received more than 60 ratifications, and following
Keith Rankin Analysis – Greenland: National Politics versus Geopolitics Analysis by Keith Rankin, 21 January 2026 Truth in world affairs is not a single expert-narrated story. National Politics In our ‘official’ ‘United Nations’ world – the world referenced by the expression the international rules-based order – there are about 200 sovereign nation states (ie ‘countries’) which are equal members of the global community of
In what has become a familiar, exhausting cycle, the rest of the world is left with the futile task of trying to dredge meaning from the wreckage left behind by US President Donald Trump.
As Trump departed the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, much was made of the content of his rambling, hour-long speech because the president had so escalated his rhetoric over Greenland.
Trump had said the United States would take the semi-autonomous Danish territory “whether they like it or not”. He had threatened direct tariffs on NATO allies that opposed him. Europe was considering reciprocal tariffs and had even gotten to the point of sending troops to Greenland as a demonstration of resolve.
NATO itself seemed on the verge of collapse.
While some analysis suggests a reprieve, there is no permanence to Trump’s statements. This president plays with lives, and the future of entire countries, with no care for the consequences.
‘Big, beautiful piece of ice’
Those who seek clarity in the chaos may have been relieved to hear the president make what may seem, on the face of it, a definitive statement of his position on Greenland:
I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.
That may well seem a clear statement of intent. But attempting to impose clarity by stripping sentences of their context risks dramatically misinterpreting that intent.
Even the sentences around this one hint that Trump has far from given up on acquiring that “big, beautiful piece of ice”.
All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. Where were we already had it as a trustee but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War Two. We gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.
Never mind that Greenland was never the US’ to “give” or “take” back – this is a president who has long demonstrated himself impervious to fact checking.
Trump went on to describe, in detail, his plan to build new battleships for the US Navy. The implication is fairly straightforward. Trump’s United States may not have to use force, but it can if it wants to.
Be grateful, or else
In this same section of the speech, Trump fell back on a familiar theme – that the US bears all the burden of global security, with none of the benefits. As he put it,
We’ve never gotten anything except we pay for NATO.
(Never mind the hundreds of NATO troops who died fighting with the Americans in Afghanistan after September 11, the only time Article 5 of the NATO alliance has been invoked).
That Trumpian resentment was only fuelled, unsurprisingly, by a striking speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Carney’s excoriation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the world order was unlikely to be met with anything else from Trump.
Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also. But they’re not. I watched their prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful, they should be grateful to us. Canada, Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that Mark [Carney], the next time you make your statements.
The Trump administration is seeking “ownership” of the western hemisphere – that is, all of the continents of north and south America and surrounds. By implication, that leaves the other hemispheres to other great powers and strongmen, with whom Trump “has always had a very good relationship”.
This is the violent world Trump wants to create – a world divided into fiefdoms run by Mafia-style bosses paid simpering tributes by their weaker supplicants.
The rhetoric of white supremacy
Trump went to Europe to give a speech dripping with disdain for the people who live there. In contrast to those leaders with whom he has a “great relationship” (Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, et al), the Trump administration sees Europe and European leaders not just as weak, but as responsible for the demise of western civilisation – something only he can reverse.
After a racist rant directed at Somali immigrants, Trump claimed:
The explosion of prosperity and conclusion and progress that built the West did not come from our tax codes. It ultimately came from our very special culture. This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common.
Trump’s talk of inheritance, of his pure European bloodlines, of the “mass import of foreign cultures” reveal, once again, the ideological drive behind his administration and its attempt to radically remake not just the US but the world.
While the president may have softened his rhetoric on Greenland specifically, this drive is a constant for the administration.
Live the truth
This is why Carney’s speech was so striking. It identified, in clear language, the truth of what the Trump administration is doing.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.
Trump may have temporarily “backed down” on Greenland, but as Carney put it, the “rupture in the world order” cannot be undone. But what comes next is not inevitable, and it does not have to be left up to Trump.
Carney’s speech is a clear indication that while the American president will not break his constant cycle of chaotic cruelty, the rest of the world may be attempting to step outside it.
There is meaning in that.
Emma Shortis is Director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.
Australia’s Labor government has successfully passed a “hate speech” bill that’s plainly aimed, at least in part, at suppressing pro-Palestine organizations as “hate groups”.
Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about the new laws, saying their extremely vague wording, lack of procedural fairness and low thresholds for implementation mean groups can now be banned if they make people feel unsafe or upset without ever actually posing any physical harm to anyone.
For me the most illuminating insight into what these laws are actually designed to do came up in an ABC interview with Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday.
Over and over again throughout the interview Rowland was asked by ABC’s David Speers to clarify whether the new laws could see activist groups banned for criticising Israel and opposing its genocidal atrocities in a way that causes Jewish Australians to feel upset feelings, and she refused to rule out the possibility every single time.
Australia’s hate speech law Video: ABC 7.30
“Let’s just go to what it means in practice: would a group be banned if it accuses Israel of genocide or apartheid, and as a result, Jewish Australians do feel intimidated?” Speers asked.
Rowland didn’t say no, instead saying “there are a number of other factors that would need to be satisfied there” and saying that agencies like the AFP and ASIO would need to make assessments of the situation.
“Okay, just coming back to the practical example though, if a group is suggesting that Israel is guilty of genocide, what other measures or factors would need to be met before they can be banned?” Speers asked.
“Under the provisions that are now before the Parliament, there would also need to be able to demonstrate that there are for example, some aspects of state laws that deal with racial vilification that have been met as well,” Rowland responded, again leaving the possibility wide open.
Australia’s frightening new ‘hate speech’ law Video reading by Tim Foley
(It should here be noted that Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge has pointed out that “state laws that deal with racial vilification” can include “tests like ‘ridicule’ and ‘contempt’,” meaning people could wind up spending years in prison for associating with groups that were essentially banned for upsetting someone’s feelings.)
The only reason the Attorney General wouldn’t rule out the criminalisation of dissent and criticism of foreign countries and heads of state is if that’s exactly what Labor intends to cover here. pic.twitter.com/rV3e8TRB0l
“Just to be clear, if a group is saying Israel is engaged in genocide, or they’re saying that Israel should no longer exist, that is not enough for that group to be banned?” asked Speers.
“Well, again, that would depend on the other evidence that is gathered, David, so I would be reluctant to be naming and ruling in and ruling out specific kinds of conduct that you are describing here,” Rowland replied.
All this waffling can be safely interpreted as a yes. Rowland is saying yes.
Speers pushed this question three different times from three different angles because it’s the most immediate and obvious concern about these new laws, and instead of reassuring the public that they can’t be used to target pro-Palestine groups and aren’t intended for that purpose, the nation’s Attorney General confirmed that it was indeed possible.
So that’s it then. Under the new laws we can expect to see the Israel lobby crying about Jewish Australians feeling threatened and unsafe by every pro-Palestine group under the sun, and then from there all it takes is the thumbs-up from ASIO to put the group on the banned list and cage anyone who continues associating with it for up to 15 years.
The bill that ended up making it through Parliament is actually a narrowed down version of an even scarier bill that was scrapped by Labor due to lack of support which went after individuals as well as groups.
The earlier version contained “racial vilification” components which could have been used to target any individual who voices criticisms of Israel or Zionism – so it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any prison time for my writing any time soon. The new version moved its crosshairs to groups with the obvious intent to disrupt pro-Palestine organising in Australia.
So we can expect the Australian Israel lobby to both (A) push to get pro-Palestine groups classified as “hate groups” under the new laws and (B) keep pushing to make it illegal for individuals to criticize Israel in the form of new “racial vilification” laws.
They’ll keep trying over and over again, from government to government to government, until they get their way.
This comes after Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive manager Joel Burnie publicly stated that he wants to ban pro-Palestine protests and criticism of Israel throughout the nation, and as prosecutors drag an Australian woman to court for an antisemitic hate crime because she accidentally butt-dialed a Jewish nutritionist and left a blank voicemail.
So things are already ugly, and they’re getting worse.
It’s so creepy knowing I share a country with people who want to destroy my right to normal political speech. It would never occur to me to try to kill Zionists’ right to free speech, but they very openly want to kill mine.
They want to permanently silence me and anyone like me. I find that profoundly disturbing.
Israel supporters are horrible people. And I hope my saying that hurts their feelings.
The federal Coalition is dead, with Nationals leader David Littleproud on Thursday morning declaring it “untenable” after Liberal leader Sussan Ley stared down the Liberals’ minor partner.
This followed all Nationals frontbenchers resigning from the shadow ministry on Wednesday night, in protest at Ley’s retaliation against three Nationals senators, Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald, breaking shadow cabinet solidarity.
“We can not be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley”, Littleproud told a news conference early Thursday.
“No one in our ministry could work in a Sussan Ley ministry.”
This leaves the Liberals alone as the opposition, with the Nationals as a crossbench party with no role in the official opposition.
Littleproud said the parties would be “two different armies” going forward for “the time being”.
The crisis dramatically increases the threat to Ley’s leadership, which was already unstable and not expected to last. Although Littleproud would not acknowledge it, the Nationals are encouraging a change in the Liberal leadership.
Most immediately, Ley will have to reshuffle her frontbench with Liberal members only.
Littleproud said the “sovereign position of the National party had been disrespected” and the three senators had been “courageous”.
“We were not going to stand by and have three of our senators be made scapegoats. We were going to stand with them because they did the right thing.”
The senators voted against the government’s hate crimes legislation, which passed with Liberal support. Their action was in accord with the Nationals’ decision to oppose the legislation. The Nationals disagreed in particular with the bill’s provision to enable the banning of hate-spruiking organisations. The party argued it was too wide and would endanger free speech.
Ley insisted there had been a shadow cabinet decision to obtain changes to the bill and then support it. Littleproud said a final decision on the legislation had not been made by the shadow cabinet or the joint parties.
Littleproud accused Ley of mismanaging the situation.
He stressed he had warned Ley of the consequences if she accepted the three senators’ resignations.
He spoke to her again early Thursday morning before announcing the decision. She held to her position.
This is the second break in the Coalition since the election.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The signing of a new agreement on New Caledonia’s political and financial future has triggered a fresh wave of reactions from across the French territory’s political chessboard.
The Elysée-Oudinot agreement was signed on Monday, January 19, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron as well as most of New Caledonia’s politicians.
But the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the largest component of the pro-independence movement, had chosen not to travel to Paris.
PALIKA and UPM are formed into a Parliamentary caucus called “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).
The Elysée-Oudinot text was described as being a “complement” bearing “clarifications” to a previous agreement project, signed in July 2025 in the small city of Bougival, west of Paris.
They said the Bougival text and all related documents were in substance “lures” of independence and that they regarded the French state as being responsible for a “rupture of dialogue”.
As the Bougival initial text, its Elysée-Oudinot complement maintains the notion of creating a “state of New Caledonia”, its correlated “nationality” and introduces a new set of commitments from France, including a package to re-launch the local economy, severely damaged as a result of the riots that broke out in May 2024.
The new text also mentions granting more powers to each of New Caledonia’s three provinces (North, South and the Loyalty Islands group), including in terms of revenue collection by way of taxes.
This, the FLNKS protested, could erode the powers of New Caledonian provinces and reinforce economic and social inequalities between them.
Reacting to the signing in Paris in their absence, the FLNKS, in a media release on Wednesday, condemned and rejected the new text “unequivocally”.
New Caledonia’s territorial President Alcide Ponga signs the Elysée-Oudinot agreement in Paris . . . endorsed by most parties but minus the pro-independence FLNKS. Image: Jean Tenahe Faatau/Outremers360/LNC
FLNKS President Christian Téin, in the release, said the new agreement endorses a “passage en force” (forceful passage) and is “incompatible” with the way the FLNKS envisages Kanaky’s “decolonisation path”, including in the way it is defined under the United Nations decolonisation process.
It also criticises a document signed “without the Indigenous people” of New Caledonia.
The pro-independence party also expressed its disapproval of what it calls a “pseudo-accord”.
“We will use every political tool available to us to re-alert, again and again the public”, FLNKS politburo member Gilbert Tyuienon told public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie La Première at the weekend.
French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou had reiterated, even after the signing in Paris, that the door remained open to FLNKS.
In reaction to the signing, other parties have also expressed their respective points of view.
“Why didn’t they come [to Paris] to defend their positions, since they were invited?” Southern Province President (pro-France) Sonia Backès wrote on social networks.
“Does UNI not represent the Kanak people too?” she added.
French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou said this new set of agreements reflected a “shared will to look at the future together”.
“Now the territory can walk on its two legs”.
Some of the pro-France parties, who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France, have however acknowledged that even though the new documents were signed, the road ahead remained rocky in terms of its implementation in the French Parliament, through a local referendum and related constitutional amendments.
‘We’ve done the easiest part’ — Metzdorf New Caledonia’s MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf said a huge challenge still remained ahead.
“We’ve done the easiest, the hardest part remains . . . This is to obtain the [French] Parliament’s support, both Houses, to enact the accords in the French Constitution.”
Following a very tight schedule in the coming weeks, the texts will be submitted to the vote of both Parliament Houses, first separately, then in a joint chamber format (the Congress, for constitutional amendment purposes).
Then the text is also to be submitted to New Caledonia’s population for approval through a referendum-like “consultation”.
In a way of foretaste of what promises to be heated debates in coming weeks, with a backdrop of strong divisions in the French Parliament, Moutchou and far-left MP Bastien Lachaud (La France Insoumise, LFI) waged a war of words on Tuesday in the National Assembly.
Responding to Lachaud’s accusations which echoed those from FLNKS, Moutchou denounced the “passage en force” claim and the absence of “consensus”.
“FLNKS was never excluded from anything. It was invited, it was approached, it was awaited, just like the other ones. It chose not to turn up,” Moutchou said.
“The politics of empty chair was never conducive to a compromise,” she said as Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet had to call the LFI caucus back to order.
Strong financial component Some of the financial aspects of the deals include a five-year “reconstruction” plan for New Caledonia, for a total of 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion), presented to New Caledonia’s politicians by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
This chapter also comes with revisiting previous French loans for more than 1 billion euros, which New Caledonia found almost impossible to repay (with an indebtedness rate of 360 percent).
The loans, under the agreement’s financial chapter, would be renegotiated, re-scheduled and possibly converted into non-refundable grants.
Meanwhile a two-year repayment holiday (2026-2027) would be applied, while a far-reaching reform programme is expected to be pursued.
“What people really expected was [economic] prospects. This is the main part of this accord, the economic refoundation,” commented Vaimu’a Muliava, from Wallis-based Eveil Océanien party after the Paris talks.
The new financial arrangements would also provide a much-needed lifebuoy to critically threatened mechanisms in New Caledonia, such as its retirement scheme or the power supply company.
More injections for the nickel industry Another 200 million euros is also earmarked to bail out several nickel mining companies facing critical hardships.
This includes assistance aimed at supporting business and employment for French historical Société le Nickel (SLN), Prony Resources and NMC (Nickel Mining Company, which has ties to Korea’s POSCO).
The French government has also pledged to follow-up on a request to New Caledonia’s nickel mining and refining declared a “strategic” sector by the European Union.
“The agreement’s economic chapter was as necessary as the political one,” said New Caledonia’s President Alcide Ponga after the signing.
Another cash injection was directed to this year’s budget for New Caledonia, which benefits from a direct cash injection of 58 million euros.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The United States is set to become “the world’s undisputed [artificial intelligence-enabled] fighting force”.
At least that’s the view of the country’s Department of War, which earlier this month released a new strategy to accelerate the deployment of AI for military purposes.
The “AI Acceleration Strategy” sets an unambiguous objective of setting up the US military as the frontrunner in AI warfighting. But all of the hype in the strategy ignores the realities and limitations of AI capabilities.
It can be thought of as a kind of “AI peacocking” – loud public signalling of AI adoption and leadership, which clouds the reality of unreliable systems.
What does the US AI strategy entail?
Several militaries around the world, including China and Israel, are incorporating AI into their work. But the AI-first mantra of the US Department of War’s new strategy sets it apart.
The strategy seeks to make the US military more lethal and efficient. It suggests AI is the one way to achieve this goal.
The department will encourage experimentation with AI models. It will also eliminate what it calls “bureaucratic barriers” to implement AI across the military, support investment in AI infrastructure and pursue a set of major AI-powered military projects.
One of these projects seeks to use AI to turn intelligence “into weapons in hours not years”. This is concerning, given how this kind of approach has been used elsewhere.
For example, there are ongoing reports about the increased civilian death toll in Gaza resulting from the Israeli military’s use of AI-enabled decision support systems, which essentially turn intelligence into weaponised targeting information at an unprecedented speed and scale. Further accelerating this pipeline risks unnecessary escalation of civilian harm.
Another major project seeks to put American AI models – presumably ones intended to be used in military contexts – “directly in the hands of our three million civilian and military personnel, at all classification levels”.
It is not made clear why three million civilian Americans need access to military AI systems. Nor what the impacts would be of widely disseminating military capabilities across a civilian population.
The narrative vs the reality
In July 2025, an MIT study found 95% of organisations received a zero return on investment in generative AI.
The main reason was technical limitations of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot. For example, most can’t retain feedback, adapt to new contexts or improve over time.
This study was focused on generative AI in business contexts. But the findings apply more broadly. They point to the shortcomings of AI, which are too often hidden by the marketing hype surrounding the technology.
AI is an umbrella term. It’s used to encompass a spectrum of capabilities – from large language models to computer vision models. These are technologically different tools with different uses and purposes.
Despite varying significantly in their applications, capabilities and success rates, most AI applications have been bundled together to form a globally successful marketing agenda.
This is reminiscent of the dotcom bubble from the early 2000s, which treated marketing as a valid business model.
This approach now seems to have bled into how the US wants to posture itself in the current geopolitical climate.
A guide to ‘AI peacocking’
The Department of War’s AI-first strategy reads more like a guide to “AI peacocking” than a legitimate strategy to implement technology.
AI is posited as the solution to every problem – including those which do not exist. The marketing behind AI has created a fabricated fear of falling behind. The Department of War’s new AI strategy feeds off of that fear by alluding to a technically advanced military strategy.
However, the reality is these technology capabilities fall short of their claimed effectiveness. And, in military settings, these limitations can have devastating consequences, including increased civilian death tolls.
The US is leaning heavily into a marketing-led business model to implement AI across its military without technical rigour and integrity.
This approach will likely expose a vulnerable vacuum across the Department of War when these brittle systems fail – and likely in moments of crisis when deployed in military settings.
Zena Assaad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Ask people how Stonehenge was built and you’ll hear stories of sledges, ropes, boats and sheer human determination to haul stones from across Britain to Salisbury Plain, in south-west England. Others might mention giants, wizards, or alien assistance to explain the transport of Stonehenge’s stones, which come from as far as Wales and Scotland.
But what if nature itself did the heavy lifting in transporting Stonehenge’s megaliths? In this scenario, vast glaciers that once covered Britain carried the bluestones and the Altar Stone to southern England as “glacial erratics”, or rocks moved by ice, leaving them conveniently behind on Salisbury Plain for the builders of Stonehenge.
This idea, known as the glacial transport theory, often appears in documentaries and online discussions. But it has never been tested with modern geological techniques.
Our new study, published today in Communications Earth and Environment, provides the first clear evidence glacial material never reached the area. This demonstrates the stones did not arrive through natural ice movement.
While previous research had cast doubt on the glacial transport theory, our study goes further and applies cutting-edge mineral fingerprinting to trace the stones’ true origins.
However, near Stonehenge, these tell-tale clues are either missing or ambiguous. And because the southern reach of ice sheets remains unclear, the glacial transport idea is open to debate.
So, if no big and obvious clues are present, could we look for tiny ones instead?
If glaciers had carried the stones all the way from Wales or Scotland, they would also have left behind millions of microscopic mineral grains, such as zircon and apatite, from those regions.
When both minerals form, they trap small amounts of radioactive uranium – which, at a known rate, will decay into lead. By measuring the ratios of both elements using a technique called U–Pb dating, we can measure the age of each zircon and apatite grain.
Because Britain’s rocks have very different ages from place to place, a mineral’s age can indicate its source. This means that if glaciers had carried stones to Stonehenge, the rivers of Salisbury Plain, which gather zircon and apatite from across a wide area, should still contain a clear mineral fingerprint of that journey.
Searching for tiny clues
To find out, we got our feet wet and collected sand from the rivers surrounding Stonehenge. What we discovered was striking.
Despite analysing more than seven hundred zircon and apatite grains, we found virtually no mineral ages that matched the bluestone sources in Wales or the Altar Stone’s Scottish source.
Zircon is exceptionally tough: grains can survive being weathered, washed into a river, buried in rocks, and recycled again millions of years later. As such, zircon crystals from Salisbury Plain rivers span an enormous stretch of geological time, covering half the age of the Earth, from around 2.8 billion years ago to 300 million years ago.
However, the vast majority fell within a tight band, spanning between 1.7 and 1.1 billion years old. Intriguingly, Salisbury River zircon ages match those from the Thanet Formation, a blanket of loosely compacted sand that covered much of southern England millions of years ago before being eroded.
This means zircon in river sand today is the leftovers from ancient blankets of sedimentary rocks, not freshly delivered sand from glaciers during the last Ice Age 26,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Apatite tells a different story. All grains are about 60 million years old, at a time when southern England was a shallow, subtropical sea. This age doesn’t match any potential source rocks in Britain.
Instead, apatite ages reflect the squeezing and uplifting caused by distant mountain-building in the European Alps, causing fluids to move through the chalk and “reset” apatite’s uranium-lead clock. In other words, the heating and chemical changes erased the mineral’s previous radioactive signature and started the clock ticking again.
Much like zircon, apatite isn’t a visitor brought in by glaciers but is local and has been sitting on Salisbury Plain for tens of millions of years.
A new piece of the Stonehenge story
Stonehenge sits at the crossroads of myth, ancient engineering and deep-time geology.
The ages of microscopic grains in river sand have now added a new piece to its story. This gives us further evidence the monument’s most exotic stones did not arrive by chance but were instead deliberately selected and transported.
Anthony Clarke receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Chris Kirkland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The federal Coalition was imploding on Wednesday night, with all Nationals frontbenchers, including leader David Littleproud, quitting the shadow ministry.
They were retaliating against Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s insistence three Nationals senators must resign for defying shadow cabinet solidarity.
The Nationals ratified the mass walkout in a special party hook up at 6pm. This followed Ley accepting the resignation of the trio – Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald – who voted, in accordance with their party’s decision, against the government’s hate crime bill, which passed with Liberal support on Tuesday night.
The chaos deepened further when Ley declined to accept the latest batch of resignations.
As she desperately tries to hold the disintegrating opposition together, she said in a 9pm statement,
This evening, I spoke with Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, and strongly urged him not to walk away from the Coalition.
I have received additional offers of resignation from National Party Shadow Ministers, which I and my Liberal Leadership Group have determined are unnecessary.
The Liberal Party supports the Coalition arrangements because they deliver the most effective political alliance for good government. I note that in David’s letter, he has not indicated that the Nationals are leaving the Coalition.
No permanent changes will be made to the Shadow Ministry at this time, giving the National Party time to reconsider these offers of resignation.
The crisis plunges Ley’s leadership into fresh turmoil, and is also putting Littleproud under pressure.
While the resignations do not automatically break the Coalition, its future appears untenable in the present circumstances. Ley sent Littleproud a message on Wednesday evening, asking him to pass it on to Nationals colleagues, in which she said maintaining a strong and functional Coalition “is in the national interest”.
Early Wednesday Littleproud warned Ley of the walkout if the Senate trio was forced off the frontbench.
The Nationals had put the Liberal leader in a diabolical position. The party’s Senate frontbenchers had defied the principle of shadow cabinet solidarity, and convention would indicate they should resign or be sacked. As Cadell told Sky early Wednesday, “I understand if you do the crime you take the time”.
But the question for Ley was: should she press the convention, or let the “crime” go unpunished, to avoid a blow up?
To turn a blind eye, however, would be seen as weakness and further harm her fragile leadership. To let the Nationals get away with their defiance would be interpreted as a dramatic case of the tail wagging the dog.
Liberals, who are now getting blowback for voting for the hate crime legislation, would have been infuriated if the Nationals had been shown lenience.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard backed Ley, telling The Australian, “She had no choice. She behaved absolutely correctly.”
After hours of public silence in which she consulted with her senior colleagues, Ley issued a statement just before 3pm, indicating the three Nationals would pay the price for their action.
“Shadow Cabinet solidarity is not optional. It is the foundation of serious opposition and credible government,” she said.
She said shadow cabinet had on Sunday night examined the government’s hate crime legislation. “The unanimous Shadow Cabinet decision was to negotiate specific fixes with the government and having secured those amendments, members of the Shadow Cabinet were bound not to vote against the legislation.”
Ley said that when the Coalition re-formed after last year’s brief split, “the foundational principle underpinning that agreement was a commitment to Shadow Cabinet solidarity”.
She said she’d made it clear on Tuesday to Littleproud “that members of the Shadow Cabinet could not vote against the Shadow Cabinet position”.
Littleproud understood action was now required, she said.
But a letter Littleproud sent Ley early Wednesday made it clear the Nationals’ leader disputed her version of events.
He wrote that there was “also a conventíon of shadow cabinet that a final bill position must be approved by shadow cabinet”.
“This did not take place for this bill, nor was the position presented to the joint partyroom,” he said.
Littleproud wrote that, “If these [three] resignations are accepted, the entire National Party ministry will resign to take collective responsibility.
“Opposing this bill was a party room decision. The entire National Party shadow ministry is equally bound.”
In her statement Ley said the three senators had offered their resignations from the shadow cabinet, “as is appropriate, and I have accepted them”.
“All three Senators have written to me confirming that they ‘remain ready to continue serving the Coalition in whatever capacity you consider appropriate,’” and she’d asked them to continue serving “in the Coalition team”, outside the frontbench.
She’d also asked Littleproud to nominate replacements.
Last year, Ley was seen as emerging well in her post-election tussle with the Nationals, even though Littleproud extracted concessions.
Anthony Albanese, who a week ago had been on the defensive over his legislation has now had passed much (albeit not all) of what he initially wanted, and had the additional advantage of seeing the opposition thrown into chaos. The political wheel can turn very fast.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture.
Our research, published today in the journal Nature, reveals people living in what is now eastern Indonesia were producing rock art significantly earlier than previously demonstrated.
These artists were not only among the world’s first image-makers, they were also likely part of the population that would eventually give rise to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.
A hand stencil from deep time
The discovery comes from limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi. Here, faint red hand stencils, created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against the rock, are visible on cave walls beneath layers of mineral deposits.
By analysing very small amounts of uranium in the mineral layers, we could work out when those layers formed. Because the minerals formed on top of the paintings, they tell us the youngest possible age of the art underneath.
In some cases, when paintings were made on top of mineral layers, these can also show the oldest possible age of the images.
The oldest known rock art to date – 67,800-year-old hand stencils on the wall of a cave. Supplied
One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world.
This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.
Photograph of the dated hand stencils (a) and digital tracing (b); ka stands for ‘thousand years ago’. Supplied
This hand stencil is also special because it belongs to a style only found in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them look pointed, as though they were animal claws.
Altering images of human hands in this manner may have had a symbolic meaning, possibly connected to this ancient society’s understanding of human-animal relations.
In earlier research in Sulawesi, we found images of human figures with bird heads and other animal features, dated to at least 48,000 years ago. Together, these discoveries suggest that early peoples in this region had complex ideas about humans, animals and identity far back in time.
Narrowed finger hand stencils in Leang Jarie, Maros, Sulawesi. Adhi Agus Oktaviana
Not a one-off moment of creativity
The dating shows these caves were used for painting over an extraordinarily long period. Paintings were produced repeatedly, continuing until around the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago – the peak of the most recent ice age.
After a long gap, the caves were painted again by Indonesia’s first farmers, the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who arrived in the region about 4,000 years ago and added new imagery over the much older ice age paintings.
This long sequence shows that symbolic expression was not a brief or isolated innovation. Instead, it was a durable cultural tradition maintained by generations of people living in Wallacea, the island zone separating mainland Asia from Australia and New Guinea.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana illuminating a hand stencil. Max Aubert
Getting there required deliberate ocean crossings, representing the earliest known long-distance sea voyages undertaken by our species.
Researchers have proposed two main migration routes into Sahul. A northern route would have taken people from mainland Southeast Asia through Borneo and Sulawesi, before crossing onward to Papua and Australia. A southern route would have passed through Sumatra and Java, then across the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor, before reaching north-western Australia.
The proposed modern human migration routes to Australia/New Guinea; the northern route is delineated by the red arrows, and the southern route is delineated by the blue arrow. The red dots represent the areas with dated Pleistocene rock art. Supplied
Until now, there has been a major gap in archaeological evidence along these pathways. The newly dated rock art from Sulawesi lies directly along the northern route, providing the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in this key migration corridor into Sahul.
In other words, the people who made these hand stencils in the caves of Sulawesi were very likely part of the population that would later cross the sea and become the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.
Rethinking where culture began
The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that early human creativity did not emerge in a single place, nor was it confined to ice age Europe.
Instead, symbolic behaviour, including art, storytelling, and the marking of place and identity, was already well established in Southeast Asia as humans spread across the world.
Shinatria Adhityatama working in the cave. Supplied
This suggests that the first populations to reach Australia carried with them long-standing cultural traditions, including sophisticated forms of symbolic expression whose deeper roots most probably lie in Africa.
The discovery raises an obvious question. If such ancient art exists in Sulawesi, how much more remains to be found?
Large parts of Indonesia and neighbouring islands remain archaeologically unexplored. If our results are any guide, evidence for equally ancient, or even older, cultural traditions may still be waiting on cave walls across the region.
As we continue to search, one thing is already clear. The story of human creativity is far older, richer and more geographically diverse than we once imagined.
The research on early rock art in Sulawesi has been featured in a documentary film, Sulawesi l’île des premières images produced by ARTE and released in Europe today.
Maxime Aubert receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google Arts & Culture and The National Geographic Society.
Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Adhi Oktaviana receives funding from The National Geographic Society.
Renaud Joannes-Boyau receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
