Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Petousis-Harris, Associate Professor in Vaccinology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

When NZ First leader Winston Peters responded to the recent US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) by questioning whether New Zealand should continue funding it, he employed a familiar narrative.

Peters was not speaking in his capacity as foreign minister, but describing the WHO as an organisation full of “unelected globalist bureaucrats” nonetheless plays into fears that New Zealand’s membership is a risk to national sovereignty.

The rhetoric mirrors wider international narratives that frame global health cooperation as a threat to national interests.

But such fears are misplaced.

The WHO is a global advisory body and cannot override New Zealand law. No WHO instrument has any legal force in New Zealand unless it passes through a domestic implementation process like any other international treaty.

In practice, that means decisions are made in Wellington, through Cabinet and Parliament – not in Geneva.

The most recent amendments to the WHO’s international health regulations explicitly preserve national decision-making flexibility. The pandemic agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly last year, does the same.

Even during the COVID pandemic, WHO guidance remained advisory. Countries deviated constantly. New Zealand adopted measures stricter than WHO baselines in its elimination strategy by choice. Sovereignty was not lost in 2020. It was exercised.

Why the WHO is easy to attack

Part of the problem for the WHO is not that it is too powerful, but that it is oddly invisible.

As the scientific journal Nature recently noted, the WHO struggles to succinctly explain what it does, not because it does little, but because it does everything only a global public health authority can do. It is the sole body mandated to coordinate international public health action across borders, systems and income levels.

For low-income countries, the WHO is a lifeline providing access to affordable medicines and vaccines, quality and safety standards, laboratory capacity and expertise during disease outbreaks.

For high-income countries like New Zealand, the benefit is less visible but no less real. We rely on the WHO to limit the international spread of infectious diseases before they reach our borders through surveillance, data sharing and coordination that no single country can run alone.

The WHO’s signature achievement was the eradication of smallpox in 1980. It is often invoked nostalgically, as if it were a relic of a more cooperative era. In reality, that success defined the WHO’s modern role, shifting from time-limited eradication campaigns to permanent global surveillance and coordination.

During the COVID pandemic, the WHO provided early alerts, technical guidance and global intelligence, but it did not dictate New Zealand’s response. New Zealand’s elimination strategy was only possible because global information flowed early.

In recent years, the organisation has also strengthened its scientific backbone by embedding evidence review more deeply in decision making, including through its chief scientist’s office. This development rarely features in political attacks on the WHO, which tend to portray it as ideological rather than technical.

The irony is that the WHO is most effective when it is least visible. When surveillance works, outbreaks are smaller. When standards hold, medicines are safe. When coordination succeeds, crises are quieter.

That makes the WHO easy to caricature and to dismantle rhetorically.

What New Zealand gets from the WHO

Lost in this debate is a more important question. What would New Zealand lose by stepping back?

New Zealand benefits from global disease surveillance systems we could not replicate independently. For example, the global influenza surveillance and response system provides early warning, viral strain characterisation and vaccine reference data that feed directly into Medsafe decisions and national preparedness.

The WHO also sets international reference standards for vaccines, blood products and diagnostics that small regulators rely on to function efficiently and safely. Without that shared scientific baseline, New Zealand would have to either duplicate global work at extraordinary cost or accept greater uncertainty in regulatory decisions.

Then there is the Pacific. New Zealand’s role as a regional partner is amplified, not diluted, through the WHO.

During recent health emergencies in the Pacific, the WHO provided the coordination framework that allowed New Zealand and Australia to act quickly, coherently and legitimately.

Walking away would not make New Zealand more independent, but rather less effective at detecting, preparing for and responding to health threats.

The current resurgence of WHO hostility is not happening in isolation. It closely tracks developments in the United States, where public health institutions have become ideological targets.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, sovereignty has always been exercised through negotiated authority and collective responsibility, not isolation. Sovereignty is not the ability to opt out of reality. It is the ability to choose how you engage with it.

Information sharing, early warning and coordination are not signs of weakness. They are tools that allow national governments to act decisively in their own interests. In practice, sovereignty has never meant standing alone.

New Zealand’s COVID response was successful not because it ignored the WHO, but because it used global intelligence and then made its own choices – sometimes stricter, sometimes different – based on local conditions and values. That is a model to be defended, not caricatured.

Helen Petousis-Harris has recieved funding from GSK for expert advice. Her organisation receives research grants from industry. She is a member of the Aotearoa New Zealand National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NITAG). Helen does not work for, consult for, or receive funding from the World Health Organization. She is a former Chair of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) and has provided unpaid expert input to vaccine research initiatives, including work related to gonorrhoea vaccines.

– ref. WHO membership doesn’t threaten NZ’s sovereignty – walking away from it would – https://theconversation.com/who-membership-doesnt-threaten-nzs-sovereignty-walking-away-from-it-would-274844

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/who-membership-doesnt-threaten-nzs-sovereignty-walking-away-from-it-would-274844/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver turns 50 this month. Nominated for four Oscars and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Festival, Scorsese’s searing, hallucinatory portrait of urban alienation is widely regarded as one of the most important American films of all time.

It is also unquestionably one of the most troubling.

Taxi Driver channels the anger, paranoia and alienation of an American decade shaped by economic decline, imperialist violence and political scandal. Set in the dilapidated squalor of a rapidly deindustrialising New York, the film proffers a forlorn portrait of a society coming apart at the seams.

At its heart sits a deeply unsettling vision of masculinity, bound up in racism and misogyny.

The social and psychological forces Taxi Driver brought into focus have not disappeared. If anything, they have simply migrated – finding new expression in digital cultures shaped by the platforming of grievance, aesthetised resentment and the monetisation of male rage.

American existentialism

Travis Bickle (portrayed with unnerving intensity by Robert De Niro) was the creation of screenwriter Paul Schrader, who drew heavily on his own experiences of isolation and emotional crisis. Schrader also looked to literature for inspiration, citing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s misanthropic Underground Man as a formative influence.

In placing the European existential hero in an American context, said Schrader:

you find that he becomes more ignorant, ignorant of the nature of his problem. Travis’ problem is the same as the existential hero’s, that is, should I exist? But Travis doesn’t understand that this is his problem, so he focuses it elsewhere: and I think that is a mark of the immaturity and the youngness of our country.

Schrader also drew on contemporary events, including the attempted assassination of right-wing politician George Wallace by Arthur Bremer. The result was a character who crystallised the violent confusions of the era.

Like Bremer, Travis keeps a diary. We see him writing in it at various points in the film and we hear excerpts from it in voiceover:

All the animals come out at night. Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain’ll come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Travis, a decidedly unreliable narrator who claims to have served in Vietnam, takes a job as a taxi driver because he has trouble sleeping. Working almost exclusively at night and wound impossibly tight, he rides through the city in a state of heightened unease.

One morning, after clocking off from a long shift, he notices a young woman through the window of a midtown Manhattan office. This is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), an ambitious campaign worker employed by a presidential hopeful Charles Palentine (Leonard Harris).

Betsy quickly becomes the object of Travis’s fixation. He begins loitering in his cab outside her workplace, watching her from a distance. Eventually, he somehow persuades her to go on a date with him. It does not go well.

Socially inept, Travis’ idea of a good time is a trip to a Times Square porno theatre. He appears genuinely baffled when Betsy decides she has had enough and storms out, cutting off all contact with him. This only deepens Travis’ indignation and culminates in an angry confrontation at Betsy’s office, where he berates her in front of her coworkers.

Travis starts to spiral, confessing to a fellow cabbie that he’s got “some bad ideas” in his head. He settles on a plan of action. His diary entries become even more ominous.

He starts working out obsessively, loads up on guns and plots the public assassination of Betsy’s boss. Political violence becomes a way of giving shape to his discontent, transforming indignation into a pipe dream of historical consequence. He practices shooting in front of the mirror in his dingy apartment.

De Niro’s improvised line, “You talkin’ to me”, became (to borrow from film scholar Amy Taubin) “arguably the most quoted scene in movie history”.

When his plan to murder Palantine collapses, Travis redirects his attention to Iris, a 12-year-old sex worker played by Jodie Foster. He decides he must “help” her get away from her pimp, believing himself morally just. Carnage ensues – so ferocious that it initially led to the film being refused a commercial rating.

It ends on a bleakly ironic, ambiguous note.

A dark afterlife

Taxi Driver divided critics but proved an immediate hit with viewers.

Its disquieting power did not diminish with time; if anything, the film’s afterlife has been almost as troublesome as the work itself.

In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. – who had become obsessed with the film – attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in an effort to impress Jodie Foster. This incident shook Scorsese, who briefly considered giving up filmmaking altogether.

Travis Bickle has been repeatedly elevated to the status of anti-hero. The character has cast a long cultural shadow, most obviously in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019).

A 2025 documentary series reflecting on Scorsese’s career returns to this question of legacy. Director Rebecca Williams puts it to Schrader that she gets the impression that “there are a lot of Travis Bickles, especially right now.” Schrader’s reply is blunt:

They’re all talking to each other on the internet. When I first wrote about him, he was talking to nobody. He really was, at that point, the Underground Man. Now he’s the Internet Man.

It is a sobering thought.

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

– ref. Taxi Driver at 50: Martin Scorsese’s film remains a troubling reflection of our times – https://theconversation.com/taxi-driver-at-50-martin-scorseses-film-remains-a-troubling-reflection-of-our-times-261662

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/taxi-driver-at-50-martin-scorseses-film-remains-a-troubling-reflection-of-our-times-261662/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

There has been a spate of articles and commentary in recent days calling on the Australian government to reduce spending.

Those calling for government cuts – mostly long-time advocates of smaller government – claim this would lower inflation, and as a consequence reduce interest rates.

In fact, claims that government spending is now a very large share of the economy are exaggerated.

So, what’s actually going on with government spending?

Federal government spending has fluctuated between 23% and 27% of the economy (gross domestic product or GDP) since the mid-1970s. The exception was a spike during the COVID pandemic. Its current level is not particularly unusual.

Straight talking from the RBA

The latest Reserve Bank forecasts estimate that “public demand” (spending by all governments, federal, state and local) expanded by 2.2% during the course of 2025. This was less than the growth in consumer spending (3.1%), home building (5.5%) and business investment (2.5%).

Nor has increased government spending on services led to a wage explosion in the public sector, which was a significant contributor to inflation in the 1970s.

Both public and private sector wages have been growing around an average of 3.5% in recent years.

Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank governor, does not try to direct the government on fiscal policy. Likewise, the government does not tell her what to do with interest rates.

The RBA prides itself on independence. Bullock is an independent agent and a direct speaker. If she thought government spending was the main force driving up inflation, she would say so.

Asked directly at her press conference this week, she instead cited other factors driving the pick-up in inflation:

• supply constraints in some sectors
• private demand being stronger than forecast
• greater-than-expected resilience in the global economy
• and easier financial conditions.

Under questioning in parliament, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has also said government spending has not contributed to the latest rate rise decision.

How do we want our taxes to be spent?

An increase in government spending without a matching increase in taxes would, in theory, fuel higher inflation. However, it would depend on the type and location of the spending.

Spending on foreign aid in other countries (or for that matter on US submarine shipyards) pushes up domestic demand by workers and companies in those locations – not in Australia.

It is entirely reasonable for the community to decide it wants a greater share of its resources to be spent collectively. It may want better health and child care or support for the disabled, for example. This is not inflationary if funded from taxes, as the taxes reduce other areas of demand.

The government budget has moved back into deficit this financial year, after two years in surplus. But the current position, and projections over the next decade, are for relatively small deficits by historical standards.

The projected deficits are also lower than in many comparable countries.

There is no correlation between high government spending and high inflation. Nordic countries with much larger governments than Australia, such as Norway and Sweden, have inflation rates of 3.2% and 0.3%, respectively. Turkey, with some of the lowest government spending and debt among advanced countries, has an inflation rate persistently higher than 30%.

Where government spending can lift prices

It could be argued that it would be better for Australia to return to budget balance more quickly. This would make us better placed to respond to a future recession.

But the current fiscal settings are not the primary cause of the uptick in inflation.

They are, at best, a contributor in some areas of the economy. For example, infrastructure spending during COVID caused prices to rise in construction, more generally.

Other things being equal, cutting government spending, while leaving taxes unchanged, could in theory help reduce inflation. It is incumbent on those arguing for this to specify precisely what they would cut.

To make a difference to inflation, cuts would need to be large, targeting areas where spending is growing the fastest, such as health, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, defence and natural disasters.

Trimming at the margins — for example, cutting public service budgets — would not help much. In any case, the federal government has reportedly already asked public service department heads to suggest where 5% could be cut.

In health, costs are rising mainly due to advances in medical technology, which then leads to government spending. This pressure is hard for government to push back on. Voters tend to prefer a longer and healthier life over helping the government reduce inflation.

Another way government can help inflation is on the supply side, by improving productivity. That is a long, hard journey, but one that offers more promise in the long term.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with the Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

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

– ref. Is federal government spending really to blame for higher inflation? It’s not clear cut – https://theconversation.com/is-federal-government-spending-really-to-blame-for-higher-inflation-its-not-clear-cut-274961

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/is-federal-government-spending-really-to-blame-for-higher-inflation-its-not-clear-cut-274961/

By Russell Palmer, RNZ News political reporter

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon faced sustained heckling and had to fend off questions about a revived Treaty Principles Bill as he returned to Waitangi this year.

ACT leader David Seymour predictably attracted his own jeers, and NZ First’s Winston Peters focused on a return serve.

The opposition was not spared criticism either yesterday, with Labour accused of backstabbing, and Te Pāti Māori given a stern word to sort out their internal problems and finish the work it started at Parliament.

But Luxon was clearly the one attracting the most ire.

Even before MPs walked onto the upper Treaty Grounds, a group of 40 or so protesters led by activist Wikatana Popata gathered as he made a rousing speech beneath the flagstaff — calling the coalition “the enemy”.

“These fellas are accountable to America, they’re here on behalf of America e tātou mā. Don’t you see what my uncle Shane [Jones] is doing?” he said.

“My uncle Shane, he’s giving the okay to all the oil drilling and the mining because those are American companies e tātou mā. So wake up.

‘Not scared of arrests’
“We’re not quite sure who our enemy is, well let me remind us: those people that are about to walk in, that’s our enemy . . .  we’re not scared of your arrests, we’re not scared of your jail cells or your prisons.

“We’ve been imprisoned . ..  we kōrero Māori to our tamariki at home, we practise our tikanga Māori at home, so you will never imprison us.”

The group performed a haka in protest against the politicians’ presence amid the more formal haka welcoming them to the marae. A small scuffle broke out as security stopped some of the protesters — who were shouting “kupapa”, or “traitor” — from advancing closer.

Speaking from the pae in te reo Māori on behalf of the haukāinga, Te Mutunga Rameka paid tribute to retiring Labour MP Peeni Henare and challenged Māori MPs working for the government, asking “where is your kotahitanga, where is your unity?”.

The next speaker, Eru Kapa-Kingi, acknowledged the protesters outside — saying he had challenged from outside in the past and now he was challenging from within the marae.

“Why do we continue to welcome the spider to our house,” he asked.

“This government has stabbed us in the front, but others stabbed us in the back,” he said, referring to Labour.

“Sort yourself out,” was his message to them, and to Te Pāti Māori, which in November ousted two of its MPs.

Part of ructions
Kapa-Kingi was arguably a central part of those ructions, however, having been employed by his mother Mariameno — one of those ousted MPs — and leading some of the criticism of the party’s leadership.

His criticism of Labour highlighted the departure of Henare, who he said had been — like his mother — silenced by his party.

Henare soon rose to his feet, saying according to custom those named on the marae were entitled to speak — and he spoke of humility.

“We must be very humble, extremely humble. And so that’s why I stand humbly before you . . .  Parliament kept me safe over the years.

“We have reached a point in time where I have completed my work. And so I ask everyone to turn their thoughts to what was said this morning: the hopes, aspirations, and desires of our people.”

Henare and his soon-to-be-former boss, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, have both batted away speculation about other reasons behind his departure — not least from NZ First deputy Shane Jones.

Hipkins himself acknowledged Henare in his speech, saying “our hearts are heavy today. We know we are returning you to your whānau in the North, but you are still part of our whānau. And we know where to find you”.

‘Lot of rubbish’
He later told reporters Kapa-Kingi was talking “a lot of rubbish”, that the last Labour government did more for Māori than many others, and Labour had already admitted it got the Foreshore and Seabed legislation wrong.

Seymour was up next and spoke of liberal democratic values; dismissing complaints of colonisation as a “myopic drone”; and saying the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill was a pyrrhic victory because — he believed — it would return and become law in future.

Defending his comments on colonisation later, he said it had been more good than bad, as “even the poorest people in New Zealand today live like Kings and Queens compared with most places in most times in history”.

Conch shells and complaints about growing sick during Seymour’s speech clearly fired up the next speaker, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters — who said he did not come to be insulted or speak about politics.

“There’s some young pup out there shouting who doesn’t know what day it is,” he said, calling for a return to the interests of “one people, one nation”.

As the shouting started, Peters repeated his line there would come a time where they wanted to speak to him long before he wanted to speak to them.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson then rose to speak from the mahau, echoing the words of the late veteran campaigner Titewhai Harawira, urging the Crown to honour the Treaty, “it is not hard”.

Green candidates
The party announced during the events yesterday it would be standing candidates in three Māori seats, including list MP Huhana Lyndon, lawyer Tania Waikato, and former Te Pāti Māori candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth — and Davidson staked out her party’s claim to those seats.

“When the giants, the rangatira of our Green Party — before the Pāti Māori was even formed — were the only party in the 2004 Foreshore hīkoi to meet the people, the masses, to uphold Te Tiriti,” she said.

With the government trampling treaty and environment while corporations benefited, she said giving land back was core.

While her speech was welcomed with applause, the government’s hecklers soon turned up the noise for the Prime Minister.

After skipping last year’s pōwhiri amid tensions over the Treaty Principles Bill, Luxon began by saying it was a tremendous privilege to be back, someone already shouting “we’ve had enough”.

He spoke about the the meaning of the Treaty as he saw it, and the importance of discussing and debating rather than turning on one another.

“It speaks so highly of us that we can come together at times like this, but it is also relevant on Waitangi Day as we think about how we’ve grappled and wrestled with other challenging issues as well,” he said.

Shouts and jeers
Shouts and jeers could be heard throughout, but he ploughed on undeterred.

“. . .  I think we have the Treaty to thank for that, because that has enabled us to engage much better with each other and we should take immense pride in that.”

One person could be heard yelling “treason” as Luxon spoke. He later said it was “typical of what we expect at Waitangi . . .  I enjoyed it”.

Asked if his government was honouring the Treaty, he said “yes”.

“We take it very seriously. It’s our obligation to honour the Treaty, but we work it out by actually making sure we are lifting educational outcomes for Māori kids, we work it out by making sure we are lifting health outcomes, we work it out by making sure we’re making a much more safer community.”

Luxon has been rejecting the idea of a revived Treaty Principles Bill since the day after it was voted down, but his coalition partner Seymour has been pledging its return for even longer.

The Prime Minister has reiterated his stance several times in the lead-up to Thursday’s pōwhiri, and did so again: “David can have his own take on that but I’m just telling you, it ain’t happening,” he said.

Referendum ‘divisive’
Ahead of the 2023 election, he had said redefining the Treaty’s principles was not his party’s policy and they did not support it, that a referendum — as the bill proposed — would be “divisive and unhelpful”, and a referendum would not be on the coalition table.

He was asked, given that, how ironclad his guarantee could be with an election campaign still to come and governing arrangements yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve been there and we killed it, so we’re done,” he said, clearly hoping for finality on the matter.

Te Tai Tokerau kaumātua and veteran broadcaster Waihoroi Shortland bookended the speeches.

Beginning with a Winston Churchill quote — that democracy is a bad form of government but the others are worse — Shortland said it was easy to remark on how divisive Māori were “when you all live in the most divisive house in the country”.

He called for Henare to be allowed to leave politics with dignity, but extended no such luxury for Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“Rawiri, I cannot allow you to come away. Your work is not done. It is crushing to see and to hear what the House does kia koutou, kia tātou, ki te Māori — but we sent you there nevertheless, and that work is not done. Find a way.”

‘Feel the pain’
Waititi had spoken earlier, thanking Eru Kapa-Kingi for what he had said.

“I can hear the anger and I can feel the pain. And the courage to stand before the people and say what you had to say,” he said.

He said the party wanted to meet with Ngāpuhi but had been “scattered” when invited to a hui in November, and indicated an eagerness to meet.

“We are still eager to gather with you but we must make the proper arrangements before we can,” he said.

“It’s alright to have problems. But we must experience those problems in our own house. If those problems go outside, the horse will bolt.”

He said the current government was “nibbling like a sandfly” at the Treaty, and there was “only one enemy before us, and it is not ourselves”.

But that fell short of what Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had hoped for, telling reporters she initially thought an apology was coming.

She said she was disappointed Waititi did not fully address their stoush in his speeches, and she was committed to standing in Te Tai Tokerau — presumably, regardless of her party affiliation.

“I’m not going anywhere until our people tell me otherwise. I’ve got much to do.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/06/speeches-celebrations-and-heckling-what-happened-at-waitangi/

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

The next few months may be the most crucial Jim Chalmers has faced as treasurer, at least for judgements about his ability to drive change.

They could tell us whether Chalmers really is as committed to serious economic reform as he claims, and how much influence he has to take Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with him on a journey that might involve spending political capital.

As the education year gears up, think of it as Chalmers preparing for his first personal assignment of Labor’s second term.

The background to Chalmers’ test is economically grim, but the political context provides wide-open opportunities.

Last week’s inflation hike (to 3.8% in the year to December), and this week’s interest rate rise (to 3.85%) brought a jolt of economic reality.

Pre-election, things felt more positive. Inflation had been artificially held down through the energy rebates. Real wages had been creeping up. Labor had more handouts on the way. All that (as well as an inept opposition) helped the government glide through the election to its massive majority.

But now the immediate future has darkened for many households. Inflation is forecast to remain high. Interest rates are widely expected to rise further. Real wages are not expected to grow until mid-next year.

Is this the time for ambitious reform, which often comes with short-term pain and losers? But then there is that old question: if not now, when?

The May 12 budget will be the first of this parliamentary term, in theory the best time for hard decisions. The government has not only a huge lower house majority but a fairly pliant Senate, where it can get tough measures through with the support of either the Greens (if they’re attractive to the left) or the conservatives (on the right flank). The opposition is a shambles and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, so its attacks will have little impact.

Economists would mostly agree reform needs to include significant cuts to, and containment of, spending. Chalmers is very sensitive to the argument Labor’s high spending is contributing to inflationary pressures, but he knows action has to be taken to improve the fiscal situation. The government this week announced an extensive sell-off of defence assets to produce some modest revenue that it says will go into the defence budget.

Chalmers flags the budget will contain savings. To get the budget into better shape these need to be substantial, without smoke and mirrors. One should be suspicious if once again the government lauds cuts to consultants, which have been a go-to bucket for past savings.

Yet here is the dilemma. While many economic observers believe the budget has to be put in a better position, the public wants more and more from government, in services, benefits and other spending. Attempts to curb the growth of programs can come with a lot of blowback, as did the efforts to bring NDIS spending growth to manageable proportions.

So, the first test for Chalmers will be whether he can achieve adequate structural savings.

Pre-budget messaging is often Delphic, but Chalmers is sending some signals, in addition to the one on savings.

First, he believes he has a strong mandate from last year’s economic reform roundtable to embark on tax reform.

Second, he is focused on finding ways of tackling intergenerational inequity, particularly in relation to housing.

One way of pursuing intergenerational equity broadly would be to commit to a medium-term fiscal strategy of balancing the budget over the economic cycle. This avoids loading debt onto future generations.

In terms of specifics, speculation is running hot that the capital gains discount could be reviewed. This discount means people are taxed on only 50% of the capital gain from the sale of assets held for more than a year. The debate is particularly centred on housing properties, given the affordability crisis.

While saying the government’s attention is on boosting supply, Chalmers has carefully not ruled out trimming this tax break. If the government went down this path, which would tilt the advantage away from investors, it would have to decide whether to confine the change to housing, rather than including other assets. It seems more likely it would.

Changing the capital gains discount would make only a limited difference to housing affordability. It would be emblematic rather than dramatic.

The other main tax option affecting housing would be to limit negative gearing in some way (such as by capping the number of properties an investor could negatively gear). Given his past promises, this would be highly problematic for Albanese.

Very much in the too-hard basket is a non-tax reform: shaking up industrial relations in the construction sector, where productivity has been going backwards in recent years. This is particularly needed in non-housing construction, but benefits would flow on to housing. If Chalmers could persuade his colleagues to take some measures here he’d be a miracle-worker, but this would have Labor’s union base up in arms.

Circling back to tax, a far-reaching reform that would help younger people (though not directly related to housing) would be to bring in tax indexation. But governments are loath to go down this road because they want to keep control of when to give tax cuts, and how to frame them.

Before, during and after the economic roundtable, Chalmers highlighted, as a reform priority, reducing excessive regulation. His reading text at the time was Abundance by left-leaning authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who (counterintuitively for those on the left) set out a deregulatory agenda.

At the end of the roundtable, Chalmers listed actions that had been endorsed, including to finalise the long-stalled reform of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The government landed the EPBC changes late last year. It also announced an AI plan, which was on the meeting’s agenda. But the new road user charge remains in negotiations and many other measures discussed at the summit are still in progress. Come budget time, Chalmers will be aiming to have more of his homework from the roundtable completed.

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.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Jim Chalmers’ ticker is about to be tested as he tacks towards the May budget – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-jim-chalmers-ticker-is-about-to-be-tested-as-he-tacks-towards-the-may-budget-274834

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/grattan-on-friday-jim-chalmers-ticker-is-about-to-be-tested-as-he-tacks-towards-the-may-budget-274834/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, La Trobe University

The Australian government has finalised a A$220 billion hospital funding deal with the states and territories.

A key part of the negotiation was $2 billion designed to help hospitals move more than 3,000 patients stranded in hospital waiting for discharge to a more appropriate aged-care facility.

However this wasn’t included in the final agreement. Instead, the states will need to dip into their overall funding allocation to pay for any changes.

Being stuck in hospital is not good for older people or their families. Stranded older people are at risk of getting an infection in hospital. Their families are under pressure to find and agree to long-term support.

It’s also bad for hospitals, which end up allocating scarce resources to patients who could be much more efficiently looked after in a residential care facility or with home support.

This results in unhappy patients and families, much higher health-care costs, and longer waits for others who need hospital care.

So how did we get into this situation? And what might happen next?

Why are patients stranded?

Most older people waiting for discharge need a pathway to rehabilitation and ongoing support. That includes transition care to facilities such as rehabilitation centres or units and ongoing support at home, or residential care.

About 60% of older patients discharged from hospital through transition care go home; the remainder need residential care.

Discharge is more likely to be delayed when this transition care is unavailable or poorly planned, and there is a shortage of home and residential care.

The broader problem is the disconnect between the Commonwealth-run aged care and disability programs and the state and territory-run public hospital system.

Rising demand and long waits

Demand for aged care is increasing dramatically as more people reach older age. The proportion of population aged 65 and over has increased from 14.7% to 17.3% over the past decade and it is projected to increase to 19.3% over the next.

At any one time, about one-quarter of those aged 65 and over use either home care or residential care.

But the supply of support at home and residential care has not kept up with growing demand. Despite the introduction of a new aged care system in November last year, unacceptably long waiting times for aged care support at home and residential care persist.

In 2024-25, the average waiting time for a home care package for eligible older people was a staggering 245 days, double what it was a year earlier.

The wait for residential care was little better. On average older people eligible for residential care waited for 162 days.

Shifting costs to patients

The Commonwealth is determined to reign in the cost of its long-term care programs for older people and people with disabilities.

Government has been unwilling to consider levies, taxes and insurance models to underwrite the costs of aged care.

Instead, it has introduced a user-pays model. So at the same time as waiting times have increased, out-of-pocket costs have risen.

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Read more:
Changes are coming for residential aged care. Here’s what to know

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With the new aged care model introduced last November, for residential care:

• the maximum cost of buying or renting a place has increased by nearly 40%

• the lifetime cap on out-of-pocket costs has increased by about 60%

• part-pensioners and self funded retirees must now pay a new “hotelling” contribution

• providers are increasingly charging optional extra service fees.

For the new Support at Home program, all new users, including full pensioners, will now pay mandatory out-of-pocket contributions for everyday services such as cleaning, laundry and gardening, and independent living support including showering and toileting.

The cost of these services has also gone up. Most providers are now charging around A$100 per hour for cleaning services.

It’s not as simple as just ‘adding more beds’

The Commonwealth has put its faith in a highly centralised and quasi-market model to manage the system.

Effectively, the Commonwealth funds and regulates aged care from Canberra, and lets the local market of providers and consumers sort out the price of services and where they are provided. The Commonwealth has no direct involvement in their planning or management.

The result is a postcode lottery of fragmented home and residential care providers. These are difficult to navigate and have little connection to hospital services.

About a quarter of the 700 residential care providers report they are breaking even or making a loss. Their return-on-investment isn’t sufficient to encourage enough capital investment to address the shortfall of 10,000 aged care beds per year.

Meanwhile, cost pressures are driving increasingly larger “big box” corporatised institutional facilities to maximise their profits.

Without either a low-cost capital investment fund from the government or higher returns on investment, providers will be unwilling to take the risk of investing in new beds to meet the shortfall.

The Commonwealth is betting that increased charges for residential aged care users will improve the return on investment and encourage new building.

Home-care providers are also feeling squeezed

Similarly, around 25% of support at home providers report breaking even or losing money and putting up their hourly rates to make ends meet.

For the increasing number of self-funded retirees, these costs are high and may discourage them from using home care when they need it.

What might happen next?

It’s unclear the new user-pays model will deliver the necessary uplift in return on investment to increase the supply of aged care services in the near future.

If it doesn’t, some of the hospital agreement funding will need to be used to increase the supply of residential and home care.

Western Australia is already taking action to encourage more investment in residential care. Whether others do so remains to be seen.

The states may also invest funds in their own transition care, hospital-in-the home and rehabilitation facilities to ease pressure on hospitals.

Hal Swerissen has received government funding and grants to investigate and provide advice on health and aged care services. He is currently the Deputy Chair of the Bendigo Kangan Institute and a director of the Victorian TAFE Association.

– ref. With a shortage of aged-care beds, discharging patients stranded in hospital is harder than it sounds – https://theconversation.com/with-a-shortage-of-aged-care-beds-discharging-patients-stranded-in-hospital-is-harder-than-it-sounds-274949

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/with-a-shortage-of-aged-care-beds-discharging-patients-stranded-in-hospital-is-harder-than-it-sounds-274949/

Sweeping cuts by one of most iconic investigative newspapers in the United States, The Washington Post, now owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, apply to about one-third of the newsroom, with sport and international coverage largely gutted. Another major blow to media freedom in the US that came after the following CPJ editorial was published.

EDITORIAL: By the Committee to Protect Journalists Board

Free speech and a free press are the bedrock of American democracy.

Over the past year, those liberties have come under threat in ways not seen in generations.

The events of recent weeks — including the arrest of two journalists for covering protests in Minnesota, and the raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter — represent a dangerous escalation.

These are not isolated incidents. They are the latest in a sustained pattern of actions that are systematically undermining press freedom and the public’s right to know.

Such actions are unacceptable and intolerable.

The board of directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) stands unequivocally in defence of a free and independent press — one that can report the facts and hold power to account without intimidation or interference.

For more than 40 years, CPJ has been consistent in its defence of journalists. As a nonpartisan, nonprofit organisation, we stand with journalists whenever they are threatened or placed in peril, anywhere in the world — including in the United States.

We hold all political leaders to the same standard. We will not be silenced by pressure, harassment, or efforts to punish journalists and those who support them.

A free press and the factual information journalists provide are essential to democracy, public safety, and social stability. Without them, the public is at greater risk.

This role is explicitly recognised and protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Journalists have the right to report the news. Efforts to obstruct, punish, or deter them from doing so violate not only their rights, but the rights of all Americans.

CPJ stands with Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, Hannah Natanson, and all journalists targeted for doing their jobs in the United States.

Today we call on leaders across political, civic, and business life—especially those who lead media organisations — to speak out clearly and publicly in defense of press freedom.

Republished from the Committee to Protect Journalists website.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/committee-to-protect-journalists-the-first-amendment-is-in-peril/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Levi West, Research Fellow, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University

Nine days after it happened, police have declared an alleged attempted bombing at an Invasion Day rally in Perth an act of terrorism.

A 31-year-old man is accused of throwing a homemade fragment bomb, filled with ball bearings and screws, into a crowd protesting on Australia Day. The bomb failed to detonate.

He has been charged with engaging in a terrorist act: the first time such charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, have been laid in Western Australia. This is in addition to previously laid harm and explosives charges.

Law enforcement and the media have been criticised for not calling the incident a terrorist attack sooner. But terrorism isn’t always cut and dry, and it’s crucial authorities get the necessary proof to have the best chance of successful prosecution.

What do we know about the attack?

WA Police, ASIO and the Australian Federal Police have been working together on the investigation, under the Joint Counter Terrorism Team arrangements.

They allege the man, who can’t be named for legal reasons, engaged in an “attack on Aboriginal people and other peaceful protesters”. They allege it was “motivated by hateful, racist ideology”.

He is accused of disguising the bomb in a child’s sock. It was allegedly intended to detonate on impact.

Authorities say they have evidence the man was accessing “pro-white male, pro-white material online”.

Why did it take 9 days?

When intelligence and law enforcement authorities investigate incidents like these, they must pursue every relevant line of inquiry.

In the immediate aftermath, it wasn’t clear whether the man police had taken into custody had any ideological motivation: a key distinguishing factor for terrorism as opposed to other (equally serious) offences, such as hate crimes.

Under the Australian Criminal Code, terrorism is violence and conduct done for the purpose of advancing a “political, religious or ideological cause”.

In an event such as the Bondi terror attack, the ideological motivations were relatively clear. Authorities found two Islamic State flags in the car that belonged to the accused gunmen.

In Perth, however, police had no such immediate evidence. They would have had to investigate every other conceivable possibility.

The man could have been having a severe psychotic episode, as in the tragic Bondi Junction stabbings. He could have been acting out of hate for Indigenous people that didn’t have an organising ideological framework behind it.

Police are clearly confident they’ve found enough evidence to meet the criteria for a terrorist act. While nine days may seem a long time, given the likely breadth of the investigation, the time frame is quite efficient.

Was he acting alone?

Part of what authorities would have had to establish was whether the alleged attacker was linked to other people or terrorist groups.

WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said “we understand he’s accessing and participating in the ideology, but not having conversations about what was going to happen on January 26”. He said the man was engaging with ideology on Facebook.

So while he wasn’t formally linked to a specific terrorist group, police allege he was on the periphery.

Academic evidence shows this is quite common. Terrorism, especially in Western nations, is generally less centrally organised and far more fragmented.

On the far-right, they call this approach “leaderless resistance”. For Islamic extremists, it’s often referred to as “lone Jihad”.

Terrorists actively encourage this sort of decentralised structure because it helps them avoid detection by intelligence organisations. If a person is planning an attack, no leader need know about it. Both in Jihadist and extreme right-wing contexts, encouraging lone actor methodology is, in part, to maintain operational security.

We also know people on the edges of an ideology are more likely to act than key leaders and organisers. Often, lone-wolf actors see themselves as avoiding getting bogged down in a movement’s politics and bureaucracy. In their eyes, they’re the ones getting the job done.

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Read more:
What is extremism, and how do we decide?

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These movements, however different in their politics, are less formal groups and more social movements. People believe in the cause, the aesthetic and the social scene, but there’s no formalised membership structure, at least for those operating in Western nations.

This makes it harder for counter terrorism operations to track key people and prevent incidents. It can also make investigations after an event longer and more complicated.

But conversely, while not always the case, it also can mean a perpetrator’s capacity for harm is smaller. Someone who has been radicalised online and is acting with whatever they can get their hands on is often less likely to pull off a mass-casualty event than an organised, trained fighting force.

The path ahead

It should be noted, however, that even if this hadn’t been designated as terrorism, it wouldn’t have lessened its severity. This could have been a mass casualty event, as was highlighted by WA Police. People rightly feel unsafe and emotional, and want to see the threat taken seriously.

Indeed, it was taken very seriously. The Joint Counter Terrorism Team was involved almost immediately.

But the job of law enforcement is to find the evidence to successfully prosecute. Nobody would want to see someone escape harsh punishment because of a flimsy police case, nor would they want to citizens detained on terrorism charges without a thorough investigation.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about this terror attack, the man allegedly behind it, and what his precise beliefs are. As the matter is proceeding through the courts, a lot of these details will come to light in the weeks and months ahead.

Levi West is employed under a National Intelligence and Security Discovery Grant, administered by the Office of National Intelligence.

– ref. Why did it take 9 days to declare the Perth bombing attempt a terrorist attack? – https://theconversation.com/why-did-it-take-9-days-to-declare-the-perth-bombing-attempt-a-terrorist-attack-275223

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/why-did-it-take-9-days-to-declare-the-perth-bombing-attempt-a-terrorist-attack-275223/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited, with the potential to be a spectacular sight in early April.

C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was spotted by a team of four amateur astronomers with a remotely operated telescope in the Atacama desert on January 13.

It quickly became apparent the newly discovered object was a member of a group called the Kreutz sungrazing comets. These include many of the brightest and most spectacular comets ever seen.

Comet MAPS is moving on an extreme, highly elongated orbit around the Sun, and is diving towards a fiery date with our star. In early April the comet will pass within just 120,000km of the Sun’s surface.

If the comet survives, it could become a spectacular sight in the evening sky in early April. It may even become visible in broad daylight as it swings closest to the Sun – unless it falls apart before then.

So what makes these sungrazers so exciting, and what can we expect?

Fragments of a mega-comet

Over the past 2,000 years, a series of spectacular comets have graced our skies. Without fanfare, they appear seemingly from nowhere, shining remarkably close to the Sun in the sky. Some even become bright enough to be visible in broad daylight.

Historically, the brightest comets often become known as “Great Comets”. The Great Comet of 1965 – C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki) – was the brightest comet of the 20th century. Discovered just one month before its closest approach to the Sun, it got as bright as the full Moon, and was easily visible with the naked eye during the day.

The Great Comet of 1882, C/1882 R1, was even more impressive. At its brightest, it was a hundred times brighter than the full Moon, dazzling in the sky for several months.

We now know that all these bright comets from the last two millennia – the Kreutz sungrazing family – share a common origin. At some point in the past (potentially in the 3rd or 4th century BCE), a giant cometary nucleus, more than 100km in diameter, came perilously close to the Sun’s surface. Some time after that close approach, far from the Sun, that comet split into two major fragments and shed lots of smaller pieces.

A few hundred years later, in the 3rd century CE, those pieces returned as they journeyed on their long orbit around the Sun. Reports from 363 CE suggest there may even have been multiple comets visible with the naked eye in broad daylight at the same time. Those returning pieces again fragmented.

In the eleventh century, the two largest remaining pieces of the ancient mega-comet swung by again, becoming the Great Comets of 1106 and 1138. Once again, the pieces fragmented – and the products of those fragmentations have been seen as a series of comets through the past two centuries.

We’ve been due for a big one

Today, the Kreutz sungrazing family contains a vast number of smaller comets which fall apart en-route towards the Sun, as well as larger pieces that can put on a fantastic show.

NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, has spotted thousands of Kreutz fragments over the years – tiny icebergs just metres or tens of metres across. Larger fragments swing by more rarely.

The most recent larger Kreutz sungrazer was visible in 2011. Discovered by Queensland astronomer Terry Lovejoy, the comet barely survived its close approach to the Sun, becoming as bright as the planet Venus in late December 2011.

According to the predictions of Czech-American astronomer Zdeněk Sekanina, we could potentially see two large, show-stopping sungrazers in the coming decades, with one potentially arriving in the next couple of years.

That comet would be a sibling to the Great Comets of 1965 and 1882, and a fragment of the Great Comet seen by Chinese observers in 1138.

Enter comet MAPS

Which all brings us to the newly discovered comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS). It’s moving on an orbit typical of Kreutz sungrazing comets, and already holds one record. At the time of its discovery, comet MAPS was farther from the Sun than any previous newly discovered sungrazer.

That suggests it might be a larger-than-usual fragment – perhaps.

The previous holder of this record was comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965, which proved to be the brightest of the 20th century. However, technology has moved on significantly in the past 70 years, and it seems very unlikely the nucleus of comet MAPS is as large as that of Ikeya-Seki. In turn, that makes it unlikely comet MAPS will be as bright.

Nevertheless, the fact we’ve caught it so early means it’s either a reasonably large Kreutz fragment, or it’s currently in outburst – already falling apart. Fortunately, recent observations have shown it steadily brightening, which points to the former theory.

What can we expect from the new comet?

Overall, it’s too soon to tell. If – and that’s a big if – the comet survives its closest approach to the Sun (known as perihelion), it could put on a great show in early to mid-April.

If it holds together, it might get bright enough to be visible in broad daylight. Even if that doesn’t happen, the SOHO spacecraft will provide great images of the comet.

In the days following perihelion, the comet will move into the evening sky. Thanks to its orbit, like all Kreutz comets it will be far easier to see from the southern hemisphere.

If the comet survives until perihelion, then fragments as it passes the Sun, it could brighten suddenly and unexpectedly. A late break-up might therefore be the best-case scenario for a dazzling show.

For now, we watch and wait.

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

– ref. A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight? – https://theconversation.com/a-new-comet-was-just-discovered-will-it-be-visible-in-broad-daylight-274533

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/a-new-comet-was-just-discovered-will-it-be-visible-in-broad-daylight-274533/

Pacific Media Watch

A new Pacific Media research publication and outlet for academics and community advocates has now been added to the Informit database for researchers.

Two editions of the new journal, published by the Aotearoa-based independent Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and following the traditions of Pacific Journalism Review, have been included in the database’s archives for institutional access.

Most university and polytech journalism schools in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific subscribe to Informit which delivers expert-curated and extensive information from sectors such as health, engineering, business, humanities, science and law — and also journalism and media.

Informit also offers an Indigenous Collection with a broad scope of scholarship related to Indigenous culture, health, human geography in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Pacific Media offers journalists, journalism academics and community activists and researchers an outlet for quality research and analysis and more opportunities for community collaborative publishing in either a journal or monograph format.

While associated with Pacific Journalism Review, the new publication series provides a broader platform for longer form research than has generally been available in the PJR, featured here at ANU’s Development Policy Centre. The full 30-year archive of PJR is on the Informit database.

Earlier editions of Pacific Journalism Monographs have included a diverse range of journalism research from media freedom and human rights in the Asia-Pacific to Asia-Pacific research methodologies, climate change in Kiribati, vernacular Pasifika media research in New Zealand, and post-coup self-censorship in Fiji.

Managing editor Dr David Robie, who founded both the PJR and PM, welcomed the Informit initiative and also praised the Tuwhera DOJ platform at AUT University.

“There is a real need for Pacific media research that is independent of vested interests and we are delighted that our APMN partnership developed with Informit is continuing with our new Pacific Media journal,” he said

The first edition, themed on “Pacific media challenges and futures”, was partnered with the The University of the South Pacific and edited by Associate Professor Shailendra Singh and Dr Amit Sarwal and published last year.

The second edition, themed on “Media construct, constructive media”, was partnered with the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) and edited by Khairiah A Rahman and Dr Rachel E Khan, and was also recently published.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/pacific-media-journal-research-added-to-informit-global-database/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beatriz Carbajal-Carrera, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of Sydney

Bad Bunny is on a roll. Among the three wins at the 68th Grammy Awards, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I should have taken more pictures) became the first Spanish-language record to win Album of the Year. On Sunday, Bad Bunny will be the first Latino and Spanish speaking artist to perform as solo headliner at the Super Bowl halftime show.

Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and raised in Borinquen (the Taíno-language name for Puerto Rico), Bad Bunny’s life and music has been marked by political, social and economic crises affecting the archipelago: government corruption, failing infrastructure and debt.

Bad Bunny has used his voice to protest in both his music and public statements against national crises and the ongoing effects of colonialism, while celebrating Latinx and Puerto Rican identities.

Bad Bunny started posting songs on SoundCloud in 2016. In 2018, he released his first album, X 100PRE. Sung in Spanish, the album reached number 11 on the Billboard charts.

His third album, 2020’s El último tour del mundo (The Last World Tour), became the first Spanish-language album to reach number one in the Billboard charts. His fourth record, 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti (A Summer Without You) also topped this chart, this time for 13 weeks.

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS stands out against Bad Bunny’s previous albums for its focus on Puerto Rican identity and ongoing fight against colonisation. This is reflected in the album through national symbols, genres and, of course, language. Bad Bunny addresses these themes through companion videos explaining central aspects to the collective memory of Puerto Rico.

In the current climate in the United States of interventionism and mass deportations, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS has made the domestic Puerto Rican experience resonate among global audiences.

Language and genre

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory that belongs to the US, and Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but the territory is not counted as one of the country’s states. The US exerts control over the military, politics and economy of the archipelago.

Spanish plays a complex role in Puerto Rico, as a colonial language that was imposed in the archipelago. More recently, Spanish has been embraced as a resistance to English dominance.

Bad Bunny speaks Puerto Rican Spanish, which combines influences from indigenous Taíno language, African languages, Spanish and English. Studies have found Spanish speakers may consider this variety as incorrect because its characteristics are seen as distant from the Castilian Spanish norm: perceptions anchored in colonial ideologies that privilege Castilian Spanish.

Among other genres, Bad Bunny sings reggaeton, a Caribbean genre that draws on Jamaican dancehall, American hip-hop and Dominican Republic dembow.

Reggaeton is popular music with underground roots and explicit lyrics. In the 1990s, Puerto Rican reggaeton was subject to government prosecution (including confiscation, fines and negative media campaigns) due to its alleged obscenity. That did not stop its increasing popularity among young audiences in the Caribbean, and beyond.

The international popularity of reggeaton artists such as Don Omar, Daddy Yankee, Young Miko, Ozuna and Bad Bunny has changed the perception of Puerto Rican Spanish from a history of deficit views to more social prestige. In the past, the distance from the Castilian Spanish norm was considered something negative, but there is now a strong interest among students of Spanish to learn this variety.

Fluid use of language

Bad Bunny’s language does not reflect a purist vision of language with rigid boundaries. Instead, he embraces a creative use of language with fluid boundaries.

The Puerto Rican slang Bad Bunny uses on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS features numerous Anglicisms, or words borrowed from English – a feature of Puerto Rican Spanish.

He uses unadapted borrowings – such as the words shot, pitcher, flashback, follow, blondie, glossy, brother, bestie, eyelash, underwater and movie. And he also uses hybrid realisations, compound words that combine English and Spanish components such as janguear (adapted from the English “hang out”), girla (girl), ghosteó (ghosted), stalkeándote (stalking) and kloufrens (close friends).

Bad Bunny embraces his Puerto Rican identity in the pronunciation of lyrics and in public commentary. For example, he pronounces the letter “r” as the letter “l” in songs like NUEVAYoL (New York) and VeLDÁ (Truth).

The letter “l” becomes a strong identity feature of NUEVAYoL when compared to other iconic renditions to the city, such as from Frank Sinatra.

By using his voice to celebrate characteristics of Puerto Rican Spanish previously not perceived as prestigious, Bad Bunny is contributing to the values of linguistic diversity and fighting language ideologies inherited from colonialism.

Music as defiance

The way Bad Bunny uses language has been described as an act of defiance and survival. Bad Bunny does not break down language and make it easier for listeners. Rather, listeners have to make the effort of decoding it.

Notably, the lexicographer Maia Sherwood Droz created a Spanish dictionary for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, including definitions of words, phrases and cultural references to decode the meanings in the album.

In an album loaded with references to the ongoing fight to preserve Puerto Rican identity, he evokes community symbols of “pitorro de coco” (homemade clandestine rum) to “la bandera azul clarito” (the light blue flag, referring to a 1895 Puerto Rican emblem.

When accepting an award at the Grammys, Bad Bunny said:

We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.

Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech is explicitly rejecting dehumanisation in a ceremony where, finally, music in language other than English and, importantly, in Puerto Rican Spanish, was honoured and celebrated as the best album of the year.

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Read more:
The backlash to Bad Bunny’s halftime show reveals how MAGA defines who belongs in America

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

– ref. Who is Bad Bunny? Why the biggest music star in the world sings in Puerto Rican Spanish – https://theconversation.com/who-is-bad-bunny-why-the-biggest-music-star-in-the-world-sings-in-puerto-rican-spanish-274965

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/who-is-bad-bunny-why-the-biggest-music-star-in-the-world-sings-in-puerto-rican-spanish-274965/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tai Neilson, Senior Lecturer in Media, Macquarie University

When the World Wide Web went live in the early 1990s, its founders hoped it would be a space for anyone to share information and collaborate. But today, the free and open web is shrinking.

The Internet Archive has been recording the history of the internet and making it available to the public through its Wayback Machine since 1996. Now, some of the world’s biggest news outlets are blocking the archive’s access to their pages.

Major publishers – including The Guardian, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and USA Today – have confirmed they’re ending the Internet Archive’s access to their content.

While publishers say they support the archive’s preservation mission, they argue unrestricted access creates unintended consequences, exposing journalism to AI crawlers and members of the public trying to skirt their paywalls.

Yet, publishers don’t simply want to lock out AI crawlers. Rather, they want to sell their content to data-hungry tech companies. Their back catalogues of news, books and other media have become a hot commodity as data to train AI systems.

Robot readers

Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini require access to large archives of content (such as media content, books, art and academic research) for training and to answer user prompts.

Publishers claim technology companies have accessed a lot of this content for free and without the consent of copyright owners. Some began taking tech companies to court, claiming they had stolen their intellectual property. High-profile examples include The New York Times’ case against ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI and News Corp’s lawsuit against Perplexity AI.

Old news, new money

In response, some tech companies have struck deals to pay for access to publishers’ content. NewsCorp’s contract with OpenAI is reportedly worth more than US$250 million over five years.

Similar deals have been struck between academic publishers and tech companies. Publishing houses such as Taylor & Francis and Elsevier have come under scrutiny in the past for locking publicly funded research behind commercial paywalls.

Now, Taylor & Francis has signed a US$10 million nonexclusive deal with Microsoft granting the company access to over 3,000 journals.

Publishers are also using technology to stop unwanted AI bots accessing their content, including the crawlers used by the Internet Archive to record internet history. News publishers have referred to the Internet Archive as a “back door” to their catalogues, allowing unscrupulous tech companies to continue scraping their content.

The cost of making news free

The Wayback Machine has also been used by members of the public to avoid newspaper paywalls. Understandably, media outlets want readers to pay for news.

News is a business, and its advertising revenue model has come under increasing pressure from the same tech companies using news content for AI training and retrieval. But this comes at the expense of public access to credible information.

When newspapers first started moving their content online and making it free to the public in the late 1990s, they contributed to the ethos of sharing and collaboration on the early web.

In hindsight, however, one commentator called free access the “original sin” of online news. The public became accustomed to getting their digital editions for free, and as online business models shifted, many mid- and small-sized news companies struggled to fund their operations.

The opposite approach – placing all commercial news behind paywalls – has its own problems. As news publishers move to subscription-only models, people have to juggle multiple expensive subscriptions or limit their news appetite. Otherwise, they’re left with whatever news remains online for free or is served up by social media algorithms. The result is a more closed, commercial internet.

This isn’t the first time that the Internet Archive has been in the crosshairs of publishers, as the organisation was previously sued and found to be in breach of copyright through its Open Library project.

The past and future of the internet

The Wayback Machine has served as a public record of the web for more than three decades, used by researchers, educators, journalists and amateur internet historians.

Blocking its access to international newspapers of note will leave significant holes in the public record of the internet.

Today, you can use the Wayback Machine to see The New York Times’ front page from June 1997: the first time the Internet Archive crawled the newspaper’s website. In another 30 years, internet researchers and curious members of the public won’t have access to today’s front page, even if the Internet Archive is still around.

Today’s websites become tomorrow’s historical records. Without the preservation efforts of not-for-profit organisations like The Internet Archive, we risk losing vital records.

Despite the actions of commercial publishers and emerging challenges of AI, not-for-profit organisations such as the Internet Archive and Wikipedia aim to keep the dream of an open, collaborative and transparent internet alive.

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

– ref. News sites are locking out the Internet Archive to stop AI crawling. Is the ‘open web’ closing? – https://theconversation.com/news-sites-are-locking-out-the-internet-archive-to-stop-ai-crawling-is-the-open-web-closing-274968

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/news-sites-are-locking-out-the-internet-archive-to-stop-ai-crawling-is-the-open-web-closing-274968/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Efron, Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne

The Victorian government has announced it will train 150 GPs to diagnose and start treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults and children.

This decision could shorten wait times and lower costs for people yet to be diagnosed. It will also bring Victoria in line with most other Australian states.

But how will it all work?

How do we currently diagnose ADHD?

Diagnosing ADHD requires a comprehensive assessment. This allows the doctor to understand a person’s medical history and the impact of their symptoms on how they function in different settings, for example at school or in social situations.

Then the patient has to learn to manage their ADHD, with the support of professionals such as psychologists and occupational therapists. This might mean modifying aspects of their lifestyle such as sleep, nutrition or exercise.

They may also be given strategies to help them cope at school, home or work, such as scheduling regular rest breaks.

Stimulant medication is often prescribed to help the patient focus better and to reduce impulsive behaviours.

About 6% of boys and 2% of girls under 12 in Australia are prescribed ADHD medications. This figure rises to 9% of boys and 5% girls aged 12–17 years, and 2–3% in adults.

Currently in Victoria, GPs can continue prescribing ADHD medication to a patient if a specialist (such as a paediatrician or psychiatrist) has already made a diagnosis.

At the moment Victorian GPs need a government permit to continue prescribing and the patient must be reviewed by a specialist every two years.

A costly condition

In many parts of Australia, parents wait months or even years to get an appointment with a paediatrician to be assessed for ADHD and related conditions. This is the case in both the public and private health-care systems.

These long wait times can lead to delayed diagnoses in children, which means delays in starting treatment. This can result in ongoing problems such as inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity, which can have a major impact on learning, relationships and social functioning.

There is also the financial burden on families on getting assessments and diagnoses for ADHD from a specialist.

Similarly, Victorian adults who wish to be assessed for ADHD must see a psychiatrist. This need for specialist appointments makes the diagnosis process more costly than your average GP visit.

One benefit of involving GPs in ADHD care is that this should free up appointments with paediatricians and psychiatrists for people with ADHD or other conditions.

So, how will this training work?

Following the Victorian government’s decision, GPs can undertake additional training to diagnose and treat ADHD in patients aged six years and above. This includes prescribing medication alongside other non-medication care options such as behavioural therapy.

This accredited training program will be overseen by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).

So far, the Victorian government has committed A$750,000 towards training an initial 150 GPs by September 2026.

Across Australia, ADHD-specific training for GPs varies between states. However, the RACGP is also involved in delivering training to GPs in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales.

What’s happening in other states?

Queensland has been the frontrunner in GP-managed ADHD care. Since 2017, Queensland GPs have been able to both diagnose ADHD and prescribe stimulant medication for children. As of December 2025, they can also treat adults with ADHD.

In June 2025, the WA government committed A$1.3 million to train GPs to diagnose and treat ADHD in patients aged ten and older. The first group of 65 local GPs is expected to be trained by the end of 2026.

Since September 2025, GPs in NSW have been able to prescribe stimulant medications to patients with an existing ADHD diagnosis, aged six years and older. However, they must first apply to become a “continuation prescriber” and meet certain criteria.

As of 2026, South Australian GPs can access additional training to diagnose ADHD and prescribe medication to both children and adults, without the need for specialist appointments.

Governments in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory have also committed to revise their policies around ADHD care.

The Northern Territory remains the only Australian jurisdiction that has not announced ADHD-related reforms.

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Read more:
GPs will be a great help for managing ADHD medications. But many patients will still need specialists

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Issues to watch out for

ADHD assessment must consider a range of factors. Most patients with ADHD have one or more other conditions. Common ones in children include learning difficulties, anxiety and autism spectrum disorder.

And in some people, ADHD symptoms might actually be caused by something else, such as sleep deprivation, depression, learning disorders or trauma.

Medication can be extremely helpful to manage symptoms. But patients taking medication need to be regularly reviewed to ensure the medication is having the desired impact. GPs must also monitor any side effects to make sure they are not too severe.

On the whole, this policy change has the potential to improve access to medical care for Victorians with ADHD. However, we must give careful consideration to the details of the training, implementation and supports available.

Daryl Efron has received research grants from the Medical Research Future Fund, National Health and Medical Research Council, Victorian Medical Research Acceleration Fund (Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions), and the Victorian government Department of Families, Fairness and Housing

Nadia Coscini is currently the paediatrician on the Royal Children’s Hospital/Murdoch Children’s Institute/ North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network ADHD shared care feasibility study which is funded by the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network. Nadia also receives funding for a postgraduate PhD scholarship through the NHMRC (No. 2031478).

– ref. More GPs will be able to diagnose and treat ADHD – and experts say it’s a positive step – https://theconversation.com/more-gps-will-be-able-to-diagnose-and-treat-adhd-and-experts-say-its-a-positive-step-274959

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/more-gps-will-be-able-to-diagnose-and-treat-adhd-and-experts-say-its-a-positive-step-274959/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, The University of Melbourne

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto waited decades for his chance to lead the country. The controversial former general finally won the office on his third attempt in a 2024 landslide election.

Since then, Prabowo has wasted little time moving against Indonesia’s fragile democracy, accelerating a process that began under his predecessor, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

As Australia and Indonesia grow closer, this matters. The two neighbours agreed on an important bilateral security treaty in November, and it is expected to be formally signed in the coming days during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s trip to Indonesia.

Yet, the countries seem to be moving further apart when it comes to freedom of speech and respect for civil society. This could complicate matters for Albanese, particularly as Prabowo ramps up his crackdown on critics of his administration.

Distaste for democracy

Indonesia’s vulnerable democratic system has been under repeated attack from government for most of the last decade. Under the administrations of Widodo and now Prabowo, a laundry list of actions have been taken to chip away at it. To name just a few:

• the independence of the once-feared anti-corruption commission (KPK) has been profoundly compromised

• blatant efforts have been made to stack the Constitutional Court

• the army has been invited back into civil administration, with laws passed to make it possible

• nepotistic appointments have been made to high public offices, including ministries, the central bank, the courts and even the vice presidency

• unconstitutional laws prohibiting criticism of the government have been reinstated

• laws have passed allowing the government to ban civil society organisations without judicial intervention

• a new proposal has been made to end direct elections of local government heads.

Many predicted these events. Prabowo has never made secret his distaste for democracy and enthusiasm for the authoritarian New Order regime of Soeharto, his former father-in-law.

In fact, Gerindra, Prabowo’s political party, still has as its No. 1 objective reinstating the old constitution under which Soeharto ruled. This would mean dumping most of the key democratic reforms of the past 30 years.

But recent developments suggest the dismantling of democratic freedoms is speeding up. Prabowo seems to be using the Soeharto playbook to move against those who oppose what he is doing – mainly pro-democracy activists.

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Read more:
Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, finds democracy ‘very tiring’. Are darker days ahead for the country?

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Increasing attacks on critics

It’s not hard to understand why. Prabowo’s grand ruling coalition now includes almost every party in the legislature – all of them right or centre-right – and political discourse rarely involves detailed policy debates.

This means civil society – in particular, Indonesia’s tiny but vibrant activist community – has become the only real source of opposition.

After Soeharto’s fall, activist NGOs emerged as key drivers of reform, progressive policy and government monitoring in Indonesia. At times, they partnered with government to deliver new policy initiatives. But under Jokowi, NGOs also led massive demonstrations against regressive policies.

Now, Prabowo’s administration has identified them as the enemy.

In August, huge protests broke out after politicians voted to give themselves extravagant allowances. A brutal police response then triggered wild violence against authorities across the archipelago. These riots shook the ruling elite to the core.

In response, the government came down heavily on civil society activists. It blamed them for the riots, even though they were mostly a spontaneous popular response to abusive actions by the authorites. Prabowo, however, said activists were engaging in “treason and terrorism”.

Thousands were arrested and, detainees claim, some were tortured. Hundreds now face trial for subversion and incitement. This has tied up the small activist groups working frantically to defend their colleagues.

Prabowo has also used the Soeharto-era approach of associating his critics with shadowy foreign enemies. He has railed against “foreign intervention” he says is intended to “divide the country”. He claims there are “foreign lackeys” backed by foreign powers “that do not want to see Indonesia prosper”.

Last year, Prabowo even accused the highly-respected news outlet Tempo of being a foreign stooge because it won a grant from the Media Development Investment Fund, a not-for-profit linked to George Soros.

This week, he claimed to have unspecified proof that foreign forces were behind the August riots.

A draconian new law against ‘foreign propaganda’

“Let the dogs bark,” Prabowo told a press conference last March in response to his critics. “We will keep moving forward. We are on the right path”.

But, in reality, Prabowo is determined to stop the barking. His government has now proposed a law against disinformation and foreign propaganda that could revive Soeharto-era media controls and censorship.

A so-called “academic draft” putting forth the rationale for the law says Indonesia needs “a comprehensive and integrated legal instrument to prevent, detect, and counter disinformation and foreign propaganda”. It alleges that disinformation and foreign propaganda is being “powered by social media, artificial intelligence and transnational networks” of malicious actors.

If this law is passed in the form the draft suggests, it could be used to ramp up the government’s crackdown on civil society groups. Activists and journalists could potentially be charged with offences of spreading “foreign propaganda”.

The draft also proposes restricting “foreign capital” to stop the threat posed by so-called foreign agents.

Many civil society groups in Indonesia are affiliated with international NGOs, such as Amnesty and Transparency. Many others receive funding from overseas aid organisations, including Australia’s, or private philanthropists. Most depend on these streams of income to pay wages and day-to-day expenses. They would collapse without this funding.

It’s not clear what exactly “foreign capital restrictions” means. But it could cast a wide net over all activist groups, as well as foreign organisations working in Indonesia that have an online presence.

Indonesians targeted in Australia

But the net may reach even further than this. The draft suggests the law would apply across borders. This could effectively target government critics based overseas, including in Australia.

Despite the dramatic decline in Indonesian studies in our schools and universities, Australia is still a major global centre for research on Indonesia. Indonesian critics of different regimes in Jakarta have sought sanctuary in Australia over the decades, and many thousands of Indonesians have studied here.

Australia is also home to a small but active Indonesian diaspora community. In August, they held their own demonstrations in cities across Australia in support of the protests in Indonesia.

As Prabowo’s administration moves Indonesia closer to becoming a “new New Order”, where opposition is routinely met with repression and censorship prevails, Australia’s role as a hub for open dialogue, free speech, analysis and criticism of Indonesia will become even more important.

We can be sure this will be no more welcome in Prabowo’s Indonesia than it was under Soeharto. Then, Australian academics and journalists were often denied entry and critical articles sometimes led to a freeze in diplomatic relations.

Today, however, the Indonesian government has coercive digital capabilities, which it can deploy against its critics in the diaspora. To make matters worse, Australia and Indonesia have an active extradition agreement. Theoretically, it might be deployed against Indonesians in Australia who have fallen afoul of the proposed disinformation and foreign propaganda law.

Indonesia is the dominant economic and political force in Southeast Asia, and an emerging global player. It is crucial to Australia’s defence strategies and an important partner on immigration, trade and education.

This means Canberra must have a good working relationship with Jakarta. Agreements about trade and defence are part of that, as is the constant flow of ministerial visits between the two countries.

But all that will become way more difficult to manage if this xenophobic new law is passed and used to stifle free speech and target legitimate criticism of the government.

Tim Lindsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Indonesia’s leader is going after critics with a vengeance. This could complicate relations with Australia – https://theconversation.com/indonesias-leader-is-going-after-critics-with-a-vengeance-this-could-complicate-relations-with-australia-274947

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/indonesias-leader-is-going-after-critics-with-a-vengeance-this-could-complicate-relations-with-australia-274947/

Essay by Keith Rankin.

A great academic campus? But note the roof of the Concentrix building.

A Green Way?

Or was it the 1990s’-built Languages Building?

Whoops, there goes Concentrix!

Hard Yakka. Auckland’s answer to the Christchurch Cathedral

 

Two days before present

The Martians have landed:

One Day before present: going, going, …

Unitec Stadium and Gymnasium (and there were state-of-the-art Squash Courts with a café popular with business staff and students). Once the home of Auckland basketball and netball. And the Auckland Blues – and business staff – trained at the gym, not so long ago.

Back to today:

Ouch, from late 2006 to early 2014 that was my modern state-of-the art workplace and teaching place!

Literally the home of the Schools of Communications and Business. Over those years, I had three offices in that building, and many great memories; and sad memories, too, losing two colleagues.

Near the Carrington Campus main entrance on Carrington Road South; erasing 1900s’ as well as 1990s’ history.

Penman House; only the pine tree remains.

(Who today knows where ‘norfolk pines’ originated? Hint, it’s a place not far away which been erased from our travel maps, despite being a Unesco World Heritage site. I was lucky enough to fly there from Auckland in 2024, when it was still possible. One of these trees is the signature tree at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.)

See this and other easily googled material about Robyn Hyde’s 1930s’ sanctuary. Fortunately, local MP Helen White was able to save a few heritage mementos from the house, just in the nick of time.

Oakridge House in June 2024 and in October 2024

Is that an oak tree? Sadly the Unitec Arboretum and Sanctuary Gardens have also gone. At least there are still oaks and norfolks in the Carrington precinct.

Oakridge House became the main sanctuary (especially 2017 to 2019) for the School of Business in the years after Unitec’s flagship business building was tenanted to IBM (in 2012, in an opaque high-level deal) and soon after was abandoned by IBM and became the Concentrix Call Centre. (I understand that the aim of the 2012 eviction was for Unitec to make money through renting out some of its key assets to lucrative high-tech tenants; the template was the University of Ballarat in Australia, with QUT Kelvin Grove being the template for a high level tertiary campus without being ‘saddled with’ heritage and green spaces which government accounts would construe as a ‘lazy asset’.)

There are very few photos of Oakridge House in the public domain; Unitec itself has been remiss in this aspect of the documentation of its past. Here is one poignant photo that I found, in an advertisement labelled “chimney demolition”.

Finally, below, is the former Childcare Centre and another former workplace. (My son attended the demolished childcare centre in the foreground. He was proud to have been a ‘Unitec student’. My 2016 office was in the former building in the distant background.)

Unitec has now formally merged with Manukau Institute of Technology. It is reputedly going to become a site for city edge tenement housing; some of it, but not all, ‘social housing’. The precinct will need schools, given that nearby schools Gladstone Primary and Mount Albert Grammar are amongst the most oversubscribed schools in the country. It takes little imagination to see that the remnants of Unitec at Mt Albert eventually will become a school (or schools), and that the ongoing Unitec presence of the new Tamaki Institute of Technology (it will probably be called something else) will be at the Henderson ‘campus’, a highrise sandwiched between the Waitakere District Court and the Henderson Library.

Q How do you acquire a small Polytech? A. Establish a large Polytech, then wait.

See Unitec’s extreme financial distress detailed in documents, RNZ, 4 September 2018. Unitec punched above its weight, when it could. Let’s hope that it has not been completely forgotten, by 2050.

And see my yesterday’s photo-essay on Scoop: Carrington: a site for sore eyes.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/keith-rankin-essay-carrington-precinct-aka-unitec/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 5, 2026.

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Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-february-5-2026/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania

This year’s Winter Olympics will be held in northern Italy, starting on Friday.

They will be the most spread out in history: the two main competition sites – Milan and the winter resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo – are more than 400 kilometres apart.

Some 3500 athletes from 93 countries will compete in 16 sports for 245 gold medals.

What’s happening at the 2026 games?

Events are organised into broad categories, including ice sports (such as figure skating and curling), skiing and snowboarding (including moguls and halfpipe), Nordic events (such as cross-country and ski jumping) and sliding events (including skeleton and luge).

For the Milan Cortina games, the program has added eight new events designed to increase variety and gender parity.

The most significant addition is the sport of ski mountaineering, often referred to as “skimo”.

The sport requires competitors to ski uphill, transition to walking up steep climbs and then descend on skis.

The program will be the most gender-balanced winter games to date, with 47% women participation mainly thanks to the introduction of women’s double luge and a women’s large hill event in ski jumping.

While the Winter Olympics have been held in 21 cities in 13 different countries, climate change may limit the number of future host locations.

How the Winter Olympics began

The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France in 1924.

Current events such as figure skating and ice hockey were actually included in the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1920.

Following the success of these events, and support from the father of the modern Olympics Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to hold a separate winter competition in 1924.

This competition was known as the “Winter Sports Week of the 8th Olympiad” and was retroactively recognised as the first Winter Olympics in 1926.

Many of the early Winter Olympics were held in the same year as the summer games – and in the same country.

While the Summer and Winter Olympics have not been held in the some country since 1936, they were held in the same year until 1992.

The IOC then altered their schedule so the summer and winter games were held on alternating even-numbered years.

IOC officials hoped this change would increase the importance of the winter games, which had been regarded as less important than the summer event.

This decision meant the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, were held only two years after the 1992 winter games in Albertville, France.

The next Olympics were the 1996 Summer Olympics, then the 1998 Winter Olympics.

This alternating format continues to this day.

Australia at the Winter Olympics

Australia’s first winter Olympian was speed skater Ken Kennedy in 1936.

Since then, Australia has competed in every Winter Olympics and its team has grown from one athlete in 1936 to more than 50 in recent games.

Speed skater Colin Coates has represented Australia at the most winter games: six times between 1968 and 1988.

It took 58 years for Australia to claim its first Winter Olympic medal in 1994. Steven Bradbury, Richard Nizielski, Andrew Murtha and Kieran Hansen won bronze in the 5,000m short track speed skating relay.

Bradbury also famously won Australia’s first Winter Olympic gold medal in the 1,000m speed skating in 2002.

Australia has won 19 Winter Olympic medals, including six gold.

It has achieved most success in freestyle skiing events such as aerials and mogul, led by multiple medal winners Alisa Camplin and Lydia Lassila.

Australia’s medal chances in 2026

Australia heads into these games with realistic medal chances in a small number of sports where it has consistently punched above its weight. This may seem surprising for a country better known for beaches than snow but targeted investment and athlete pathways have paid off.

Australia’s strongest gold medal hope is in freestyle skiing moguls, a fast downhill event where athletes ski over steep bumps while performing two jumps.

Jakara Anthony, who won gold in Beijing in 2022, has dominated international competitions since then, regularly winning World Cup events – the highest level of competition outside the Olympics.

Aerial skiing has also emerged as a genuine medal opportunity for Australia.

Laura Peel has continued her strong international form with recent World Cup gold, while Danielle Scott has also topped the podium this season.

With two athletes consistently winning at the highest level outside the Olympics, Australia is a genuine podium contender in this discipline.

Snowboarding also offers strong chances.

In snowboard halfpipe, riders launch out of a giant ice channel and perform aerial tricks while being judged on height, difficulty and style. Scotty James has been among the world’s best for almost a decade and has won multiple World Championship medals.

Australia is also building serious depth through younger athletes such as Valentino Guseli, who has already claimed World Cup gold and is emerging as a genuine podium contender.

In women’s monobob, Bree Walker’s recent World Cup gold shows Australia is now a genuine contender in one of the games’ newer disciplines.

In skeleton, where athletes race head-first down an icy track at speeds exceeding 120 kilometres per hour, Jaclyn Narracott won silver in 2022 – Australia’s first sliding sport medal. Another podium finish is possible for her.

Beyond these core medal prospects, sports such as short track speed skating could also feature in Australia’s medal mix if athletes peak at the right time, with potential for 2026 to rival Australia’s most successful Winter Olympics to date.

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.

– ref. Milan Cortina Winter Olympics: history, new events and Australian medal chances – https://theconversation.com/milan-cortina-winter-olympics-history-new-events-and-australian-medal-chances-271834

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/milan-cortina-winter-olympics-history-new-events-and-australian-medal-chances-271834/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ahmed Uzair Aziz, PhD Candidate in Māori Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

This story begins with a 160-year-old cottage, sited in a vortex of overlapping histories, and becomes the tale of a city itself.

The green and cream weatherboard house at 18 Wynyard Street is a rare survivor of the old dwellings that once lined this central Auckland lane.

These days it houses the University of Auckland’s James Henare Research Centre, dedicated to empowering Māori in the Te Tai Tokerau region.

But the cottage was originally built in the 1860s to provide housing for married British army officers during the land wars raging at that time.

The street was named after Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, the commanding officer of British armed forces in the 1850s and acting Governor of New Zealand for a year.

Wynyard lived among other colonial officers in Officials Bay, which was visible from Wynyard Street back then. The Māori name for the bay is Te Hororoa, the “slipping away”.

It was a short stroll from Wynyard Street to Te Hororoa before extensive land reclamation between the 1870s and 1920s. Now, the shoreline is covered in asphalt and named Beach Road.

Despite the massive changes in the area over the past 160 years, stories have surfaced from the earth beside the cottage on Wynyard Street.

Lost history and reclaimed land

Around 2007, when buildings to the south of the cottage were demolished to make way for the university’s business school, an archaeological team found a midden containing traces of earlier Māori life: obsidian flakes, chert and greywacke tools, and a bird-bone awl that may have been used to make dog-skin cloaks.

The archaeologists noted that Te Reuroa pā once stood at the top of Constitution Hill, near where the Auckland High Court now stands.

In nearby Albert Park, there was also a significant settlement, the Ngāti Whātua kāinga (village) of Rangipuke, and a fortified pā called Te Horotiu.

Māori are believed to have valued the hilltop because the elevated site was good for growing crops and easy to defend, while two freshwater streams ran into the bays below.

In the 1840s, British military barracks were built at what became Albert Park. Albert Barracks grew to a nine-hectare military compound, which the early British used to secure their position against Māori.

Part of the basalt wall that once circled Albert Barracks still snakes through the university grounds.

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Read more:
Books of mana: 10 essential reads for Waitangi Day

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Before European histories begin, the whenua (land) beside the cottage might have been used by Māori for preparing flax and food, and making garments.

The earth under our feet is full of fragments. But it’s difficult to reclaim the past in this part of Auckland because reclaiming land for a new shoreline involved digging up hills where Māori once lived and worked.

Parts of Tāmaki Makaurau were flattened beyond recognition, then concreted over in the process of becoming Auckland city.

The Wynyard Street cottage has also changed over the years. It was restructured in the 1920s by Malcolm Draffin, one of the architects of the Auckland War Memorial Museum in the nearby Domain.

The house later glimpsed the limelight during a brief season when it became a theatre. British movie star Vivien Leigh (who played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind) visited in 1962 and the venue was named in her honour.

But the owner and manager of the Vivien Leigh Theatre was jailed for his homosexuality and the theatre doors slammed shut before a single show was staged.

Later in the 1960s, the university bought the building. Education and anthropology departments took over the space until it became a Māori research centre in 1993.

A door to the past and future

By a curious coincidence, the James Henare Research Centre is named after Sir James Henare, the great-grandson of Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard.

But hold on for a plot twist.

Sir James was the son of Taurekareka Henare, whose father Henare Wynyard was the son Robert Wynyard had fathered out of wedlock with a Maōri woman.

Taurekareka changed the family name from Wynyard to his father’s Christian name, Henare, as a means of aligning with his whakapapa (genealogy), which led back to the great warriors Kāwiti and Hone Heke.

In 1845, Taurekareka’s grandfather Robert Wynyard had fought in the British army that attacked Ruapekapeka pā in Northland. The Māori defending the pā included Kāwiti and Hone Heke.

That left Taurekareka looking back at a history in which his ancestors did battle. He chose the Māori side when he dropped the surname Wynyard and became a Henare.

Taurekareka’s son James (later Sir James) was a Ngāti Hine rangatira (chief) born in the Bay of Islands. He served as commanding officer in the Māori Battalion in World War II and later became a champion of Māori education and the kōhanga reo movement.

A man of great mana, he helped Ngāti Whātua Orākei during their Waitangi Tribunal claim in the 1980s. After he died in 1989, Ngāti Whātua leaders asked if his name might be given to the new centre.

Thus the name Henare returned to claim ground on Wynyard Street. Sir James’ son, Bernard Henare, is now chair of the centre.

In the 1990s, Ngāti Porou master carver Pakaariki Harrison created two pou and a lintel for the entrance to the centre.

The whakairo (carving) physically and symbolically transformed the house into a whare for its official opening in 1994. Several years ago, the pou were removed for restoration by Pakaariki’s son, Fred Harrison. The carvings will be returned to cloak the whare early in 2026.

Number 18 Wynyard Street is shrouded in layers of the past that build to the future. Maybe one day its doors will open onto Henare Street instead.

Ahmed Uzair Aziz has worked as a researcher and administrator at the James Henare Research Centre. He is a recipient of the University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship.

– ref. This central Auckland cottage tells a remarkable tale of the city’s bicultural history – https://theconversation.com/this-central-auckland-cottage-tells-a-remarkable-tale-of-the-citys-bicultural-history-274005

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/this-central-auckland-cottage-tells-a-remarkable-tale-of-the-citys-bicultural-history-274005/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Scanlan, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Law; Academic Co-Lead, CSAM Deterrence Centre, University of Tasmania

In the 2024–25 financial year alone, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received nearly 83,000 reports of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), primarily on mainstream platforms. This was a 41% increase from the year before.

It is in this context of child abuse occurring in plain sight, on mainstream platforms, that the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, requires transparency notices every six months from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and other big tech firms.

The latest report, published today, shows some progress in detecting known abuse material – including material that is generated by artificial intelligence (AI), live-streamed abuse, online grooming, and sexual extortion of children and adults – and reducing moderation times.

However, the report also reveals ongoing and serious safety gaps that still put users, especially children, at risk. It makes clear that transparency is not enough. Consistent with existing calls for a legally mandated Digital Duty of Care, we need to move from merely recording harms to preventing them through better design.

What the reports tell us

These transparency reports are important for companies to meet regulatory requirements.

But the new eSafety “snapshot” shows an ongoing gap between what technology can do and what companies are actually doing to tackle online harms.

One of the positive findings is that Snap, which owns SnapChat, has reduced its child sexual exploitation and abuse moderation response time from 90 minutes to 11 minutes.

Microsoft has also expanded its detection of known abuse material within Outlook.

However, Meta and Google continue to leave video calling services such as Messenger and Google Meet unmonitored for live-streamed abuse. This is despite them using detection tools on their other platforms.

The eSafety report highlights that Apple and Discord are failing to implement proactive detection, with Apple relying almost entirely on user reports rather than automated safety technology.

Apple, Discord, Google’s Chat, Meet and Messages, Microsoft Teams, and Snap are not currently using available software to detect the sexual extortion of children.

The biggest areas of concern identified by the commissioner are live video and encrypted environments. There is still insufficient investment in tools to detect live online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Despite Skype (owned by Microsoft) historically implementing such protections before its closure, Microsoft Teams and other providers still fail to do so.

Alongside the report, eSafety launched a new dashboard that tracks the progress of technology companies.

The dashboard highlights key metrics. These include the technologies and data sources used to detect harmful content, the amount of content that is user reported (which indicates automated systems did not catch it), and the size of the trust and safety workforce within the companies.

How can we improve safety?

The ongoing gaps identified by the eSafety Commissioner show that current reporting requirements are insufficient to make platforms safe.

The industry should put safety before profit. But this rarely happens unless laws require it.

A legislated digital duty of care, as proposed by the review of the Online Safety Act, is part of the answer.

This would make tech companies legally responsible for showing their systems are safe by design before launch. Instead of waiting for reports to reveal long-standing safety gaps, a duty of care would require platforms to identify risks early and implement already available solutions, such as language analysis software and deterrence messaging.

Beyond detection: the need for safety

To stop people from sharing or accessing harmful and illegal material, we also need to focus on deterrence and encourage them to seek help.

This is a key focus of the CSAM Deterrence Centre, a collaboration between Jesuit Social Services and the University of Tasmania.

Working with major tech platforms, we have found proactive safety measures can reduce harmful behaviours.

Evidence shows a key tool, which is underused, is warning messages that deter and disrupt offending behaviours in real time.

Such messages can be triggered when new or previously known abuse material is shared, or a conversation is detected as sexual extortion or grooming. In addition to blocking the behaviour, platforms can guide users to seek help.

This includes directing people to support services such as Australia’s Stop It Now! helpline. This is a child sexual abuse prevention service for adults who have concerns about their own (or someone else’s) sexual thoughts or behaviours towards children.

Safety by design should not be a choice

The eSafety Commissioner continues to urge companies to take a more comprehensive approach to addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse on their platforms. The technology is already available. But companies often lack the will to use it if it might slow user growth and affect profits.

Transparency reports show us the real state of the industry.

Right now, they reveal a sector that knows how to solve its problems but is moving too slowly.

We need to go beyond reports and strengthen legislation that makes safety the standard, not just an extra feature.

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The author acknowledges the contribution of Matt Tyler and Georgia Naldrett from Jesuit Social Services, which operates the Stop It Now! Helpline in Australia, and partners with the University of Tasmania in the CSAM Deterrence Centre.

Joel Scanlan is the academic co-lead of the CSAM Deterrence Centre, which is a partnership between the University of Tasmania and Jesuit Social Services, who operate Stop It Now (Australia), a therapeutic service providing support to people who are concerned with their own, or someone else’s, feelings towards children. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, the eSafety Commissioner, Lucy Faithfull Foundation and the Internet Watch Foundation.

– ref. Big tech companies are still failing to tackle child abuse material online – https://theconversation.com/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857/

SPECIAL REPORT: By Jason Brown

Fast-paced electronic music pumps in the background as a rapid montage of moving images flash across the screen.

In a 20 second video, French sailors hunker down in an inflatable speeding over swells.

Another sailor, in bright red shorts, is lowered from a helicopter onto the vessel’s back deck. Captured crew with faces blurred are held in a galley, as bags full of drugs are pulled from below deck and loaded onto pallets for lift-off.

“Throwback to the latest drug seizure at sea by the French Navy, as if you were part of it,” reads the social media caption from French armed forces, documenting last month’s drug seizure by the frigate Prairial.

What the video does not show
French sailors dropping 4.87 tonnes of cocaine into the ocean near the Tuamotu group, north-east of Tahiti. Tossing drugs overboard may be a time-honoured tactic for drug smugglers at sea — but a new one for authorities.

“This record seizure is a successful outcome of the new territorial plan to combat narcotics developed by the High Commissioner of the Republic in French Polynesia,” reads a statement on their website.

Record seizure — worth at least US$150 million — and record disposal, in record time.

One raising questions worldwide.

Why?
“Why won’t France open an investigation after the seizure of these 5 tons of cocaine?” reads the January 20 headline in the French edition of Huffington Post.

Prosecutors in Tahiti emphasised the costs faced by French Polynesia if it were to prosecute all drug traffickers.

“Our primary mission is to prevent drugs from entering the country and to combat trafficking in Polynesia,” said Public Prosecutor Solène Belaouar. As “more and more traffickers transit through our waters we must address the issue of managing this new flow.”

Belaouar told French media that prosecuting drug cases locally costs 12,000 French Pacific Francs a day, or about US$120 per person.

This new concern about costs came as the French territory winds up another drug trafficking case. Under those estimates, the conviction of 14 Ecuador sailors caught smuggling in December 2024 would represent around US$600,000.

Last Thursday, they had their appeal against trafficking 524 kilos on the MV Raymi dismissed, meaning their jail sentences of six to eight years are confirmed. Costs of this case compare with the US$93 million spent between 2013 and 2017 constructing a new prison, Tatutu de Papeari,  with a capacity of 410 inmates in Tahiti.

A question sent via social media about the drug dump went unanswered by ALPACI, Amiral commandant la zone maritime de l’océan Pacifique.

Overall, drug seizures by French forces worldwide have increased dramatically.

A total of 87.6 tons of drugs were seized in 2025 in cooperation with state services, including local police, customs and the French Anti-Drug and Smuggling Office (OFAST), nearing twice the previous record of 48.3 tons set the year before, in 2024.

Those statistics seem unlikely to quieten concerns about the new cost-cutting strategy.

Sunny day
Boarded on a sunny day on January 16, the MV Raider carried a crew of 10 Honduran citizens, with one from Ecuador. All faced lengthy jail terms if convicted.

Instead, French authorities let all 11 go, allowing the crew to resume their journey on the offshore supply ship. That decision contrasts with the high-profile approach sometimes taken when it comes to illegal fishing boats, with many captured and resold or set on fire and sunk at sea.

Dozens of public social media comments in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands questioned the disposal of the drugs at sea, with some calling for the ship’s seizure. Tahiti news media were the first to question the decision to catch and release.

“4.87 tonnes of cocaine . . .  but no legal action taken,” Tahiti Nui Television noted as the news broke a few days later.

At first, French authorities claimed the seizure took place in international waters or the “high seas”.

Lead prosecutor Belaouar told TNTV that “Article 17 of the Vienna Convention stipulates that the navy can intercept a vessel on the high seas, check its flag of origin, ask the Public Prosecutor, and the High Commissioner is involved in the decision, if they agree that the procedure should not be pursued through the courts, and that it should therefore be handled solely administratively.”

However, TNTV also quoted legal sources as stating the drug seizure of 96 bales took place within the “maritime zone” of French Polynesia.

Ten days after first reports of the seizure, Belaouar was no longer talking about the “high seas”, instead claiming the need for a new strategy to handle drug flows.

Drug ‘superhighway’
“The Pacific has become a superhighway for drugs”, Belaouar asserted, adding that “70 percent of cocaine trafficking passes through this route.”

Those differing claims raised questions in Tahiti, and 1100 km to the south-west, when the briefly seized vessel, the MV Raider, turned up off Rarotonga broadcasting a distress signal.

Customs officials told daily Cook Islands News the vessel was reporting engine trouble, and confirmed MV Raider was the same vessel that had been intercepted by French naval forces with the drugs on board.

Live maritime records also show the tug supply boat as “anchored” at Rarotonga.

Aptly named, the Raider caught official attention before passing through the Panama Canal, with a listed destination of Sydney Australia.

Anonymous company
Sending a small coastal boat some 14,000 km across the world’s largest ocean drew attention on a route more usually plied by container ships up to nine times longer.

Also raising questions — the identity of the ship owners.

A signed certificate uploaded online by an unofficial source appears to show that the last known ownership traces to an anonymous Panama company named Newton Tecnologia SA.

That name also appears in a customer ranking report from the Panama Canal Authority, with Newton Tecnologia appearing at 541 of 550 listed companies.

Under Panama law, Sociedad Anonomi — anonymous “societies” or companies — do not need to reveal shareholders, and can be 100 percent foreign owned.

A review of various databroker services show one of the company directors as Jacinto Gonzalez Rodriguez.

A person of the same name is listed on OpenCorporates in a variety of leadership roles with 22 other companies in Panama, including engineering, marketing, a “bike messenger” venture, and as treasurer and director for an entity called “Mistic La Madam Gift Shop.”

However, Newton Tecnologia SA does does not show up in the same database, or searches of the country’s official business registry.

A similarly named company is registered in Brazil but is focused on educational equipment, not shipping, with one director showing up in search results at community art events.

‘Dark fleet’
Registered with the International Marine Organisation under call sign 5VJL2, the MV Raider is described as a “Multi Purpose Offshore Vessel” with IMO number: 9032824.

Online records indicate that the ship was built in 1991 in the United States, with a “Provisional Certificate of Registry” from the Togo Maritime Authority dated only two months ago, on 19 November 2025. With a declared destination of Sydney, Australia, the Raider and its Togo certificate are valid until 18 May 2026.

According to maritime experts, provisional certification is a red flag that allows what industry sources term the “dark fleet” to exploit open registries. This “allows entry on a temporary basis (typically three to six months) with minimal due diligence pending submission of all documentation,” according to a 2025 review from Windward, a marine risk consultancy.

“Vessels then ‘hop’ to another flag before the provisional period expires.”

Where there’s smoke
Windward listed Togo as being among ship registries that flagged ships with little to no oversight, along with Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belize, Cameroon, Comoros, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Liberia, Mongolia, Oman, Panama, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Vietnam.

In the Pacific, other registries noted by Windward as failing basic enforcement include Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Previously registered in Honduras, the July 2023 edition of the Worldwide Tug and OSV News reports that GIS Marine LLC, a Louisiana company, sold the Raider in 2021 to an “undisclosed” interest in Honduras.

Other records indicate GIS Marine acted as managers but the actual owner was a company called International Marine in Valetta, Malta. The only company with a similar name at that address, International Marine Contractors Ltd, is shown as inactive since 2021.

For now, though, the Raider is among tens of thousands of ships operating worldwide with “provisional certification” — allowing ships to potentially skip regulations requiring expensive maintenance and repair.

That may have been the case for the Raider, with Rarotonga residents filming what one described as “smoke” rising from the ship a day after issuing a distress call.

Where there’s drug smoke, there’s usually a bonfire of questions afterwards.

Including from José Sousa-Santos, associate professor of practice and head of the University of Canterbury’s Pacific Regional Security Hub, who told Cook Islands News that since the vessel was intercepted in French Polynesian waters “it falls under French legal jurisdiction”.

Jason Brown is founder of Journalism Agenda 2025 and writes about Pacific and world journalism and ethically globalised Fourth Estate issues. He is a former co-editor of Cook Islands Press.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/french-shrug-off-cocaine-case-costs-with-new-smugglers-strategy/