Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Licari, Senior Research Fellow in Child Disability, The University of Western Australia

Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson has explained he left the British Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs) ceremony early on Monday night, aware his outbursts were causing distress.

Davidson was attending the ceremony to support the film I Swear, which tells the story of his life living with the syndrome. Tourette’s can cause involuntary movements and sounds, including words.

Davidson’s outbursts during the ceremony included a racial slur while actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindon, who are Black, were presenting an award.

In a statement, Davidson stressed the words were not intentional and did not “carry any meaning”. He said he was “deeply mortified” that people might have thought otherwise.

There are valid criticisms about how the BAFTAs and the broadcaster handled the situation and failed to properly acknowledge the hurt caused, whether or not it was intended.

But the syndrome Davidson has spent his life educating people about remains sadly misunderstood. So let’s take a look at Tourette’s and the tics it causes.

A neurological disorder

Tourette’s is a neurological disorder characterised by unintentional movements and vocalisations, known as tics.

While the exact cause of Tourette’s is not fully understood, it is likely to be complex and multifactorial.

Various genes have been linked to the condition, and we know it runs in families, so it likely has a strong genetic basis.

We also know that other environmental exposures during key periods of brain development contribute to the onset and course of the condition, such as complications during pregnancy and birth, illnesses and infections, and intense stress.

Tourette syndrome also rarely occurs in isolation, with many diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and learning disorders.

What are tics?

Tics are thought to be caused by changes in brain circuits involved in impulse control and inhibition.

People with tics often experience uncomfortable physical sensations that build up in the body called premonitory urges. These urges are difficult and often impossible to suppress, and the only way to alleviate the urge is to tic.

It is a bit like when we experience itching on our skin or tingling in our nose, sensations we relieve by scratching or sneezing.

Tics vary between people and fluctuate in frequency, type and intensity, which can be challenging to manage.

Some tics are brief movements and sounds, such as forceful blinking, facial grimacing, head jerking, sniffing, throat clearing and grunting. These are referred to as “simple” tics and are very common, particularly in young children.

Other tics involve more elaborate patterns of movements and sounds – often involving several parts of the body.

These are “complex” tics. They include motor tics like hitting oneself, kicking or dropping to the floor, and vocal tics like repeating words or phrases. This can include socially inappropriate terms such as slurs or swearwords.

It is believed the Tourette’s brain sometimes struggles to control “forbidden” impulses. A person may experience urges to say taboo words and phrases, or make inappropriate actions, when they see or hear certain things within their environment.

How common are tics?

Tics are very common among children, with simple tics occurring in up to one in five children aged between five and six. These normally resolve in a short space of time, with many people unaware they are tics.

For one in 100 children, their tics will persist and become more severe. Having both motor and vocal tics for at least 12 months, meets the diagnostic criteria for Tourette syndrome.

While Tourette’s typically first appears in early childhood, onset can also occur during adolescence and adulthood.

For most children, tics will peak during early puberty, typically between 10–12 years of age, before reducing.

But for about one in four people with Tourette syndrome, their tics will be lifelong. Around 50,000 Australians currently live with a life-long tic disorder.

The use of obscene and socially inappropriate words and phrases, referred to as coprolalia, only occurs in about 15–20% of people with Tourette’s.

Unfortunately, coprolalia is often what often gets portrayed in media and entertainment, impacting the public’s understanding of Tourette’s.

Is there a cure?

Tourette syndrome currently has no cure.

Ideally, treatment should include evidence-based behavioural interventions for tics. However these can be difficult to access, with few psychologists trained in these interventions.

Other psychological therapies aim to address the person’s stress and anxiety – which are factors known to increase tics – but not their tics.

Medications are also commonly prescribed if the tics are impacting the person, but these are not effective for everyone and often have side effects.

An exhausting and disabling condition

The frequent urge to tic disrupts attention and concentration, and the tics themselves can impact many aspects of daily living, such as dressing, eating, watching TV, and even relaxing.

Tics can also cause discomfort and injury, such as muscle soreness, cramping, whiplash, dislocations and broken bones. The research I’ve done with colleagues shows two-thirds of people sustain injuries from their tics.

I was involved in a national survey in 2025 involving more than 200 people with Tourette’s and their caregivers. They told us about the challenges they faced including:

• long wait times for diagnosis
• little understanding of tics and the condition from health workers and teachers
• a lack of support and limited treatment options
• a severe negative effect on mental health.

The social stigma, bullying, exclusion and exhaustion of living with this condition often leads to significant mental health struggles.

Our research shows around 70% of people living with Tourette’s struggle with anxiety disorders and one in three experience depression. One in four adults and one in ten children with this disorder have attempted suicide.

People with Tourette’s want to be understood and accepted

Tics are not something they are doing for attention. They increase when a person is stressed, anxious or excited, and trying to hold them in can make them worse.

Not everyone experiences coprolalia but, for those that do, the inability to inhibit taboo language can lead to public scrutiny and cause embarrassment and shame. This leads to many avoiding social situations and a life of isolation.

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If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

– ref. How Tourette’s causes involuntary outbursts – and what people with the condition want you to know – https://theconversation.com/how-tourettes-causes-involuntary-outbursts-and-what-people-with-the-condition-want-you-to-know-276750

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/how-tourettes-causes-involuntary-outbursts-and-what-people-with-the-condition-want-you-to-know-276750/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

The federal government will spend A$230 million towards a high-speed rail line between Newcastle and Sydney, promising the project will be “shovel ready” for a final decision on construction in 2028.

The government also released a partly redacted business case for the project, showing the first two stages from Newcastle to Sydney by 2039 are now estimated to cost $61.2 billion, including new trains. A further $32 billion would be needed to extend it to Western Sydney’s international airport by 2042.

The High Speed Rail Authority argues Newcastle-Sydney is the best place to start, with the highest population density and the busiest intercity rail route. But its vision remains that “by 2060 a high-speed rail network will connect Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne”.

The latest announcement follows more than 40 years of previous plans, costing millions, which all amounted to nothing.

Will this time be any different?

Do we have the population to justify high-speed rail?

Back when Australia started talking about high-speed rail in 1984, just two countries had trains able to travel at speeds of 250 kilometres per hour or more: Japan and France.

Today, that number has climbed to 16, including Austria two months ago. India is expected to have bullet trains running within a couple of years.

The main argument against fast rail here has always been population density, due to Australia’s extraordinarily low population density of just 3 people per square kilometre of land. That’s a fraction of the 342 people per square kilometre in Japan, home to the famous Shinkansen “bullet” trains.

But that population density is very different along the crowded east coast.

Sydney–Newcastle is high-density

As the High Speed Rail Authority’s business case shows, the Newcastle, Central Coast and Sydney corridor is the mostly densely populated part of Australia, with 624 people per square kilometre.

That’s actually much higher density than Spain has with 97 people per square kilometre.

Spain opened its first high-speed rail link from Madrid to Seville back in 1992. Since then, its high-speed rail network has grown to nearly 4000km. Yet Spain has a significantly lower gross domestic product per person than Australia.

Why start in Sydney–Newcastle?

Sydney to Newcastle is Australia’s busiest regional corridor. But its current road and rail connections are slow and need major, multi-billion-dollar upgrades – even if high-speed rail doesn’t proceed.

There are nearly 15 million annual rail trips between the two cities, some taking up to 3 hours. The M1 Pacific Motorway is often congested, with 222 road crashes on it in 2022 alone.

The business case found expanding roads would be cheaper than high-speed rail, requiring around $20–$35 billion in investment. But it would come with other costs, including causing “substantial environmental impacts, including surface disruptions to multiple national parks”, as well as doing little to address congestion and resulting in more carbon emissions.

With high-speed rail, journey times would be halved. Newcastle to Sydney would fall to about an hour, while trips from the Central Coast to Sydney or Newcastle would fall to 30 minutes.

But the proposed route is complex, involving 194km of new high-speed rail tracks, more than half of which (115km) would be through tunnels. So construction won’t be cheap or fast.

What about Sydney–Melbourne?

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King announced an extra $230 million for the project on Tuesday, taking the planning and design total to $659.6 million.

The minister acknowledged “this is an expensive and big project”, but argued it’s better to get the design right before construction starts.

Given overseas experience, such as UK’s high-speed rail delays and cost blowouts, this staged approach does make sense.

But the main question I had after reading the business case was what’s being done to work on high-speed rail from Sydney to Melbourne? It’s still the world’s sixth busiest aviation route and the existing railway is inadequate.

The longer we leave that planning, the more housing and other obstacles there will be along any future route. A good place to start would be from south-west Sydney, heading south.

How funding fights derailed past high-speed rail plans

We have got this far with high-speed rail in Australia before: nearly proceeding from design to delivery.

Back in 2000, one of the two things that spoilt the Speedrail proposal to connect Sydney to Canberra Airport was gap funding. The NSW government announced they wouldn’t put any money into it – then the federal government followed.

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Read more: Can the new High Speed Rail Authority deliver after 4 decades of costly studies?

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Will history repeat itself? New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has said his government can’t fund high-speed rail “at the moment” while finishing other major infrastructure.

The difference this time may be that the current federal government has invested more than any previous government, both financially and politically.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said “significant private funding” would be crucial to the project proceeding in 2028. The business case discusses some of those options, including private public partnerships, plus other funding sources like developer levies.

In Japan, there’s a national agency that constructs high-speed Shinkansen lines. But they only proceed when they get support from the local prefectures (governments).

That’s the sort of clear process we’d ideally have in Australia too. If we do finally start building high-speed rail in 2028, it will be 44 years since it was first proposed.

– ref. High-speed rail from Sydney to Newcastle is a step closer. But what about Sydney to Melbourne? – https://theconversation.com/high-speed-rail-from-sydney-to-newcastle-is-a-step-closer-but-what-about-sydney-to-melbourne-276627

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/high-speed-rail-from-sydney-to-newcastle-is-a-step-closer-but-what-about-sydney-to-melbourne-276627/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruby Ekkel, Associate Lecturer in History, Australian National University

For weeks, the story of Punch the monkey has tugged at heartstrings around the world. Videos of this lonely baby monkey at Japan’s Ichikawa Zoo have triggered global outpourings of empathy, grief and outrage.

Abandoned by his mother, the young macaque has been seemingly bullied by other monkeys. His only comfort is a stuffed toy he drags around his concrete enclosure. The response online is unequivocal: “STOP BULLYING LITTLE PUNCH”.

Punch is not the first captive animal to spark such strong emotional reactions. Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippo, drew thousands of fans to her enclosure in Thailand, and Joey, a rescued sea otter pup in Canada, became famous during COVID lockdowns thanks to his YouTube livestream.

Australia has had its own famous zoo animals, who, like Punch, evoked strong emotions – and forced visitors to reckon with what captivity means. We long to see and connect with these animals, but the only way to do so up close is to hold them against their will. Here are three historic examples.

‘Almost human’: Mollie the orangutan

From 1901 to 1923, Melbourne Zoo’s must-see attraction was an orangutan called Mollie.

People were quick to project human emotions and experiences on Mollie, just as they do for Punch. Visitors commented on her “remarkable intelligence and kindly disposition”, as well as a mischievous attitude and readiness to play tricks. As one admirer wrote, she was “practically human, except for the fact that she could not talk”.

This was understandable, given Mollie’s famously human-like behaviours were actively encouraged in early 20th-century zoos. She lit and smoked cigarettes and pipes (once accidentally setting fire to her enclosure), picked locks, donned human clothes, fastidiously made her own bed and drank whiskey.

Not everyone liked seeing themselves reflected in fellow primates – especially those behind bars. To some observers, Mollie’s human behaviours felt unsettling. One reporter felt her smoking habits made her look “more grotesquely human than ever”. Mostly, however, people did not question the ethics of keeping this “almost human” primate in a small cage.

When she died in 1923, Australia’s palpable grief was felt most acutely in Melbourne, where she was a “firm favourite”. The news of Mollie’s death “spread with lightning rapidity throughout the city”, reported The Herald, and her keeper was “besieged with inquiries of her last moments”.

The last thylacine

While they lived, thylacines rarely received this kind of love. The marsupial predators were blamed for killing sheep, and condemned as ferocious and “too stupid to tame”. But Tasmanian tigers became popular zoo exhibits, and the international thylacine trade added more pressure to a species already in decline.

The last known thylacine was an unnamed female kept at Tasmania’s Beaumaris Zoo. On a cold night in 1936, she quietly died. Hobart Council began looking into finding a replacement.

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But some Hobart residents protested these plans. In a letter to the editor, Edith Waterworth questioned the need to keep “a frenzied, frantic creature”:

after the frenzy has died down, it will pace up and down, its whole body expressing the devastating misery it feels.

Waterworth wrote of seeing another captive thylacine, whose “frozen despair […] would wring the heart of any person not entirely without imagination”.

For her and many others, empathising with zoo animals meant questioning the need for their captivity. But it was too late for the thylacine, which was by then either extinct in the wild or close to the brink. Beaumaris Zoo closed the following year.

Samorn the elephant

For three decades, Samorn the elephant was a beloved attraction at Adelaide Zoo. Born in Thailand, she was brought to Australia in 1956. She would be the last of a line of popular Adelaide Zoo elephants, including Miss Siam (1884–1904) and Mary Ann (1904–34).

A generation of children delighted in being hauled in a cart behind Samorn, feeding her peanuts and apples and watching her perform tricks. She was described as a very gentle and hardworking animal. When not working, she was kept in a small enclosure without any other elephants, which was common for the time.

In her old age Samorn retired to Monarto Zoological Park, not far from Adelaide, where she had more space than her small zoo enclosure. Reports of her death in 1994 combined nostalgia with sadness at how she had been treated: “At Monarto, she had some freedom and had stopped her swaying to and fro.”

Many Adelaideans remember Samorn fondly, but regret the suffering she experienced. As resident Bernadette White put it in 2021:

even as a child, I was sensitive to her great loneliness and that ridiculously small cement enclosure she lived in […] She just gave rise to a depressive, deeply sad feeling in me […] A beautiful creature who deserved better

Samorn was the last elephant to cart children or perform tricks at Adelaide Zoo.

Care in captivity

Most zoos treat their animals very differently these days. Conservation and animal welfare are important in ways unthinkable in Mollie’s time.

What remains constant is how strong our emotional responses can be to creatures who seem intelligent, lonely or sad.

In photographs of a tiny Punch crumpled over his stuffed toy, we might glimpse something almost human. But this comparison also raises difficult questions.

To love animals while participating in what keeps them captive is uncomfortable. If we recognise their capacity for distress, what responsibility does that entail?

Should we intervene in the suffering of captive animals like Punch, even if the bullying he is subject to is “natural”?

So long as we care for wild animals and confine them, these questions aren’t going away. For now, at least, we can rest easy knowing Punch is now making friends with other macaques.

– ref. Punch the monkey isn’t the first lonely zoo animal to capture our hearts – or raise troubling questions – https://theconversation.com/punch-the-monkey-isnt-the-first-lonely-zoo-animal-to-capture-our-hearts-or-raise-troubling-questions-276622

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/punch-the-monkey-isnt-the-first-lonely-zoo-animal-to-capture-our-hearts-or-raise-troubling-questions-276622/

RNZ Pacific

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says his government will not interfere with the work of the country’s anti-corruption body following the latest turn of events involving a British-Fijian national.

On Monday, Charlie Charters, a former Fiji Rugby administrator and a journalist, was released on bail by the Suva Magistrates Court after being charged with aiding and abetting an unknown Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) whistleblower into releasing confidential information from the agency.

Charters, 57, was en route to Sydney on Saturday but was held at Nadi International Airport and reportedly asked by FICAC officers to reveal his sources in order to proceed with his scheduled flight.

He reportedly declined to comply and as a result spent two nights in FICAC custody before appearing in court yesterday. He has been released on strict bail conditions and has been ordered to surrender his travel documents.

Charters’ arrest comes amid a deepening constitutional crisis at FICAC.

According to local media, Fiji’s Judicial Services Commission, the body responsible for making recommendations to Fijian President on constitutional officers, is of the view that the appointment of FICAC’s current head Lavi Rokoika was not legal.

It makes the saga significantly complicated for Rabuka, as Rokoika was appointed in May last year following the sacking of FICAC’s previous chief, Barbara Malimali.

Appointment unlawful
While Rabuka said that the decision to dismiss Malimali was in response to the findings of a 650-page Commission of Inquiry led by Judge David Ashton-Lewis, the Fiji High Court has now ruled Malimali’s appointment was “unlawful”.

Charters has been using his Facebook platform to highlight what he describes as shortcomings of Rabuka’s coalition government which came into power in December 2022.

His posts have focused mainly on governance concerns, including issues at FICAC.

His arrest, detention, and charges have heightened anxiety among politicians, advocates and the public about FICAC and Rokoika using intimidation tactics — tactics for which the previous FijiFirst administration was accused.

“We will not interfere [with FICAC],” Rabuka told reporters in Suva when asked about the situation.

He said Fiji did not have a whistleblower policy but it needed one.

However, he added that questions needed to be asked about “how do we know that the whistleblower is genuine and the facts that they raised are factual”.

“Those are the things that will have to be considered before we formulate the policy on whistleblowing.”

Meanwhile, the case against Charters has been adjourned until March 2.

FICAC said the matter was now before the court and would proceed according to due process.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/fiji-pm-rabuka-stands-by-anti-corruption-body-after-arrest-of-critic/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 24, 2026.

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Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-february-24-2026/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angélica Durán-Martínez, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell

The death of a major cartel boss in Mexico has unleashed a violent backlash in which members of the criminal group have paralyzed some cities through blockades and attacks on property and security forces.

At least 73 people have died as a result of the operation to capture Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho.” The head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was seriously wounded during a firefight with authorities on Feb. 22, 2026. He later died in custody.

As an expert in criminal groups and drug trafficking in Latin America who has been studying Mexico’s cartels for two decades, I see the violent aftermath of the operation as part of a pattern in which Mexican governments have opted for high-profile hits that often lead only to more violence without addressing the broader security problems that plague huge swaths of the country.

Who was ‘El Mencho’?

Like many other figures involved in Mexico’s drug trafficking, Oseguera Cervantes started at the bottom and made his way up the ranks. He spent some time in prison in the U.S., where he may have forged alliances with criminal gangs before being deported back to Mexico in 1997. There, he connected with the Milenio Cartel, an organization that first allied, and then fought with, the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.

Most of the information available points to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel forming under El Mencho around 2010, following the killing of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal, a Sinaloa Cartel leader and main link with the Milenio Cartel.

Since 2015, Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been known for its blatant attacks against security forces in Mexico – such as gunning down a helicopter in that year. And it has expanded its presence both across Mexico and internationally.

In Mexico, it is said to have a presence in all states. In some, the cartel has a direct presence and very strong local networks. In others, it has cultivated alliances with other trafficking organizations.

Besides drug trafficking, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is also engaged in oil theft, people smuggling and extortion. As a result, it has become one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico.

What impact will his death have on the cartel?

There are a few potential scenarios, and a lot will depend on what succession plans Jalisco New Generation had in the event of Oseguera Cervantes’ capture or killing.

In general, these types of operations – in which security forces take out a cartel leader – lead to more violence, for a variety of reasons.

Mexicans have already experienced the immediate aftermath of Oseguera Cervantes’ death: retaliation attacks, blockades and official attempts to prevent civilians from going out. This is similar to what occurred after the capture of drug lord Ovidio Guzmán López in Sinaloa in 2019 and his second capture in 2023.

Violence flares in two ways following such high-profile captures and killings of cartel leaders.

In the short term, there is retaliation. At the moment, members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are seeking revenge against Mexico’s security forces and are also trying to assert their regional authority despite El Mencho’s death.

These retaliatory campaigns tend to be violent and flashy. They include blockades as well as attacks against security forces and civilians.

Then there is the longer-term violence associated with any succession. This can take the form of those who are below Oseguera Cervantes in rank fighting for control. But it can also result from rival groups trying to take advantage of any leadership vacuum.

The level and duration of violence depend on a few factors, such as whether there was a succession plan and what kind of alliances are in place with other cartels. But generally, operations in which a cartel boss is removed lead to more violence and fragmentation of criminal groups.

Of course, people like Oseguera Cervantes who have violated laws and engaged in violence need to be captured. But in the long run, that doesn’t do anything to dismantle networks of criminality or reduce the size of their operations.

What is the current state of security in Mexico?

The upsurge in violence after Oseguera Cervantes’ killing occurs as some indicators in Mexico’s security situation seemed to be improving.

For example, homicide rates declined in 2025 – which is an important indicator of security.

But other measures are appalling. Disappearances are still unsettlingly high. The reality that many Mexicans experience on the ground is one where criminal organizations remain powerful and embedded in the local ecosystems that connect state agents, politicians and criminals in complex networks.

Criminal organizations are engaged in what we academics call “criminal governance.” They engage in a wide range of activities and regulate life in communities – sometimes coercively, but sometimes also with some degree of legitimacy from the population.

In some states like Sinaloa, despite the operations to take out cartel’s leaders, the illicit economies are still extensive and profitable. But what’s more important is that levels of violence remain high and the population is still suffering deeply.

The day-to-day reality for people in some of these regions is still one of fear.

And in the greater scheme of things, criminal networks are still very powerful – they are embedded in the country’s economy and politics, and connect to communities in complex ways.

How does the El Mencho operation fit Mexico’s strategy on cartels?

The past two governments vowed to reduce the militarization of security forces. But the power of the military in Mexico has actually expanded.

The government of President Claudia Sheinbaum wanted a big, visible hit at a time when the U.S. is pushing for more militarized policies to counter Mexico’s trafficking organizations.

But this dynamic is not new. Most U.S. and Mexican policy regarding drug trafficking organizations has historically emphasized these high-profile captures – even if it is just for short-term gains.

It’s easier to say “we captured a drug lord” than address broader issues of corruption or impunity. Most of the time when these cartel leaders are captured or killed, there is generally no broader justice. It isn’t accompanied with authorities investigating disappearances, murders, corruption or even necessarily halting the flow of drugs.

Captures and killings of cartel leaders serve a strategic purpose of showing that something is being done, but the effectiveness of such policies in the long run is very limited.

Of course, taking out a drug lord is not a bad thing. But if it does not come with a broader dismantling of criminal networks and an accompanying focus on justice, then the main crimes that these groups commit – homicides, disappearances and extortion – will continue to affect the daily life of people. And the effect on illicit flows is, at best, meager.

– ref. Violent aftermath of Mexico’s ‘El Mencho’ killing follows pattern of other high-profile cartel hits – https://theconversation.com/violent-aftermath-of-mexicos-el-mencho-killing-follows-pattern-of-other-high-profile-cartel-hits-276728

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/violent-aftermath-of-mexicos-el-mencho-killing-follows-pattern-of-other-high-profile-cartel-hits-276728/

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

Two new federal polls by DemosAU and Fox & Hedgehog have the combined primary vote for Labor and the Greens dropping as One Nation continues to surge. There’s no sign of a boost for the Coalition from Angus Taylor replacing Sussan Ley.

At the 2025 federal election, the combined primary vote share for Labor and the Greens was 46.8%, while the combined share for the Coalition, One Nation and Trumpet of Patriots was 40.1%. In the two polls below, the total right vote is 49% and the total left vote 41–42%.

A national DemosAU poll for Capital Brief, conducted February 16–20 from a sample of 1,551, gave Labor 29% of the primary vote (down one since a mid-January DemosAU poll), One Nation 28% (up four), the Coalition 21% (steady), the Greens 12% (down one) and all Others 10% (down two).

No two-party estimate was given, but seat projections had Labor winning 76–85 of the 150 House of Representatives seats, still enough for a majority but down from 87–95 in January. One Nation was winning 43–54 seats, up from 29–38, the Coalition 9–20 (10–22 previously), the Greens an unchanged 0–2 and all Others 3–7 (6–11 previously).

Anthony Albanese’s net positive rating was down three points to -17, with 46% giving him a negative rating and 29% positive. Taylor’s initial net positive was -4 (28% negative, 24% positive), up 14 points on Ley. Pauline Hanson’s net positive improved four points to -1 (38% negative, 37% positive).

In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese led with 37% (down two), followed by Hanson at 25% (down one) and Taylor at 19% (up three from Ley).

Cost of living was rated the most important issue by 45%, followed by housing at 18% and immigration at 13%. Respondents were asked which of Labor, the Greens, One Nation or the Coalition were best for various issues.

Combining One Nation and the Coalition against the combined Labor and Greens gives the right a 44–32 lead over the left on cost of living, a 41–32 lead on housing and a 53–26 lead on immigration.

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Read more: Can One Nation turn its polling hype into seats in parliament? History shows it will struggle

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Fox & Hedgehog poll: Labor down to 51–49 lead

A national Fox & Hedgehog poll for the News Corp papers, conducted February 17–19 from a sample of 1,625, gave Labor 30% of the primary vote (up one since an early January Fox & Hedgehog poll), One Nation 25% (up four), the Coalition 24% (down one), the Greens 12% (down two) and all Others 9% (down two).

In a “three party preferred”, where Greens and Other voters are asked which of Labor, One Nation or the Coalition they prefer, Labor had 44% (down two), One Nation 29% (up four) and the Coalition 27% (down two). Respondent preferences gave Labor just a 51–49 lead over the Coalition, a two-point gain for the Coalition. Labor led One Nation by 53–47, a three-point gain for One Nation.

Albanese’s net approval was an unchanged -15 (47% disapprove, 32% approve). Taylor’s initial net approval was +3 (26% approve, 23% disapprove) (Ley’s net approval was -13). Albanese led Taylor by 40–35 as preferred PM (39–31 vs Ley). Hanson’s net approval was up 12 points to +9 (44% approve, 35% disapprove).

On reducing the capital gains tax discount, 35% both supported and opposed. By 59–17, respondents supported an immigration ban from “high risk” areas. By 64–15, respondents did not think “ISIS brides” should be allowed to return to Australia.

Resolve poll on international relations

I previously covered the mid-February federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers. In further questions, Russian President Vladimir Putin had a net likeability with Australians of -60, United States President Donald Trump -41, Chinese President Xi Jinping -26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu -20, United Kingdom PM Keir Starmer -5 and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky +22.

The US’s net likeability was -17, down 21 since October and 34 from two years ago. China’s was -24, the UK’s +41, Japan’s +53 and New Zealand’s +67.

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Read more: The Coalition leads in Victorian DemosAU poll, with One Nation posting 21% support

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On the greatest threat to Australia in the next few years, 31% said China (down 23 since January 2023), 17% the US, 5% Russia and 31% all equally.

By 62–11, respondents thought Taiwan was a sovereign nation rather than a region of China. On any conflict between China and Taiwan, 36% thought Australia should support Taiwan, 7% support China and 38% not take sides.

On the Ukraine-Russia war, 40% thought Australia should maintain its current support for Ukraine, 16% increase its support (down nine since March 2025) and 21% decrease or withdraw support for Ukraine (up seven).

Tasmanian federal EMRS poll

A Tasmanian federal EMRS poll, conducted February 16–19 from a sample of 1,000, gave Labor 30% of the primary vote, One Nation 24%, the Liberals 18%, the Greens 13%, independents 12% and others 2%. One Nation only received 6.0% at the 2025 federal election in Tasmania.

Labor led the Liberals by 60–40 after preferences (63.3–36.7 at the last election), and they led One Nation by the same 60–40 margin. Figures for the five Tasmanian federal seats were given, based on samples of 200 per seat.

In Braddon, One Nation and Labor were tied 50–50, from primary votes of 34% One Nation, 31% Labor, 16% Liberals, 7% Greens and 10% independents. Labor was winning all other seats easily. Albanese led Taylor as preferred PM by 45–31 statewide.

Queensland DemosAU poll: LNP far ahead

A Queensland state DemosAU and Premier National poll, conducted February 10–20 from a sample of 1,044, gave the Liberal National Party (LNP) 34% of the primary vote (down three since the October DemosAU poll), Labor 28% (down one), One Nation 21% (up seven), the Greens 10% (down two) and all Others 7% (down one).

The LNP led Labor by 56–44 after preferences, a two-point gain for the LNP. All Queensland polls now have the LNP far ahead.

LNP Premier David Crisafulli had a net +16 approval, with 39% positive, 38% neutral and 23% negative. Labor leader Steven Miles was at net -10. Crisafulli led Miles as preferred premier by 43–32 (44–32 previously). By 44–36, respondents thought Queensland was headed in the right direction (42–38 previously).

– ref. Two new federal polls have One Nation gaining on Labor – https://theconversation.com/two-new-federal-polls-have-one-nation-gaining-on-labor-276595

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/two-new-federal-polls-have-one-nation-gaining-on-labor-276595/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Trapani, Associate Lecturer of History and International Relations, Western Sydney University

After toppling Venezuela’s leader earlier this year, the Trump administration has turned its sights on Cuba. The near-total blockade of the island is now posing the greatest challenge to the government since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Cuba is quickly running out of oil, creating a dire political and economic crisis for the island’s 11 million residents.

US President Donald Trump’s embargo has prevented any oil tankers from reaching the island for months. A ship carrying Russian fuel is now reportedly on the way to the island to attempt to break the blockade, but the US has seized other ships that have previously tried.

The Trump administration has also threatened tariffs on any nation that tries to send Cuba fuel, putting Latin American leaders in an uncomfortable position. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called out the embargo as “very unfair”, but she’s been careful not to antagonise Trump by putting an emphasis on the Cuban “people”, not the government.

This is not the first time the US has isolated Cuba, or coerced Latin American leaders to take part. Cuba has been under a US embargo for the past 66 years, which has stunted its economy and caused widespread human suffering.

The island has always found a way to get by, but can it survive this new round of American pressure?

Animosity grows in the 1950s

The Cuban Revolution caught the United States by surprise in 1959. During the Cold War, the US had supported dictatorships in Latin America, such as Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista, with political, financial and military support, creating widespread anti-US activism across the region.

After coming to power, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro instituted modest reforms to land tenure and infrastructure to support the impoverished people. Then-US President Dwight Eisenhower opposed these moves because of their impact on US commercial interests on the island. This opposition turned into a US embargo of Cuban sugar imports in 1960.

In response, Castro looked to the Soviets as an export alternative. Eisenhower retaliated by refusing to ship oil to Cuba, leading Castro to sign an oil deal with the Soviets and eventually nationalise American and British refineries. In 1961, Castro declared his adherence to “Marxism-Leninism”.

Castro and Cuba were hugely popular throughout Latin America. When the Cuban military defeated the CIA-trained force of exiled Cuban fighters at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Castro was lauded for standing up to the US, though few knew of the military and intelligence support coming from the Soviets.

And when President John F. Kennedy began the campaign to remove Cuba from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in 1961, most Latin American democracies moved to block it.

To bring the those leaders to his side, Kennedy used a carrot-and-stick approach. He proposed an “alliance for progress” to meet the “basic needs of the [Latin] American people for homes, work and land, health and schools”. But his government also passed the Foreign Assistance Act, which established a total blockade of the island and prohibited US aid to any country providing assistance to Cuba.

The OAS removed Cuba as a member the following year and, in 1964, voted to embargo all trade to Cuba, except food and medicine.

Life under the embargo

The embargo prevented Cuba from reaching the modern technological age. Instead, it existed in socialist bubble, emphasising the care of its people over economic development.

Nonetheless, Cuba’s Cold War economic growth was comparable to its neighbours. In 1970, the nominal GDP per capita for Cuba was US$645 (A$900), slightly lower than Mexico and about double the Dominican Republic. By 1990, it was US$2,565 (A$3,600), about 80% of Mexico’s and more than triple the Dominican Republic’s.

Cuba was not industrialised, but the country did reach full literacy before any other Latin American nation and extended health care to all Cubans. Cuba then exported its teachers and doctors throughout Latin America, and beyond.

However, life on the island was still difficult, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

With no clear replacement for Soviet imports and subsidies, the economy began to buckle. From 1990 to 1994 (a time known as the “Special Period”), food production decreased by 40%, leading to food rationing, malnutrition and other health issues.

Protests broke out across the island in 1994 and some 35,000 Cubans fled on boats for Florida.

Cuba and the US after the Cold War

However, the end of the Cold War brought newfound sympathy and assistance from Cuba’s neighbours. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, for example, provided Cuba with oil in exchange for Cuban doctors.

Then, in 2009, the OAS voted to readmit Cuba and allow for regional trade and tourism again.

US President Barack Obama followed suit in 2014, saying the US embargo of Cuba had “failed”.

His administration then initiated what would become known as the “Cuban thaw”. Then-President Raul Castro visited Washington in 2015 and, the following year, Obama became the first US president to visit Cuba since 1928.

Obama did not end the embargo, but he did open the door to US tourism, providing a lifeline for Cuba’s economy.

Why is Trump punishing the island again?

Now, Trump is reimposing the Cold War-era embargo on the island and ramping up the pressure on President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government.

The White House claims Cuba presents a “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, saying the island is cooperating with “dangerous adversaries” on intelligence activities, chief among them Russia and China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned Trump’s embargo, saying “we do not accept anything like this”.

If Russian oil makes it to Cuba, more aid could follow. If that eventuates, the US will have invited Russia into its backyard again, laying the foundation for another Cold War-style stalemate, with the Cuban people once more trapped in the middle.

– ref. Cuba has survived 66 years of US-led embargoes. Will Trump’s blockade break it now? – https://theconversation.com/cuba-has-survived-66-years-of-us-led-embargoes-will-trumps-blockade-break-it-now-276065

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/cuba-has-survived-66-years-of-us-led-embargoes-will-trumps-blockade-break-it-now-276065/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kade Paterson, Associate Professor of Musculoskeletal Health, The University of Melbourne

People with hip and knee osteoarthritis are advised to wear “appropriate footwear” to minimise their pain.

Does that mean heels are out? Does it matter if you wear runners or something a little stiffer? How about using insoles?

Our research, including our latest clinical trial published today in Annals of Internal Medicine, provides some answers.

We show that stable, more supportive shoes aren’t necessarily the best option, despite what you might have heard.

What is osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is a condition that affects the tissues in and around a joint, including bone, cartilage, ligaments and muscles. It is more common in older people, and people with excess body weight. It causes joint pain and stiffness, and can lead to disability.

About 2.35 million Australians have osteoarthritis and this number is predicted to increase as the population ages and obesity rates rise.

Osteoarthritis commonly affects the hip and knee joints, making it difficult to walk. There is no cure, so self-management is important.

That includes wearing the right type of shoes.

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Read more: What’s the difference between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis?

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How can shoes affect symptoms?

There are many causes of osteoarthritis, but excessive force inside the joint when someone is walking is thought to play a role. Excessive joint forces can also increase the chance of osteoarthritis worsening over time.

Shoes are our connection to the ground and can influence how forces are transmitted up the leg during every step. Some shoe features are particularly important.

Shoes with higher heels increase joint forces. For example, shoes with six-centimetre heels increase knee forces by an average 23% compared to walking barefoot.

Some shoes come with supportive features, such as insoles that support the arches. Other supportive features include being made with a stiffer material in the sole or heel.

Many people, and clinicians, think these stable and supportive shoe features are best for people with osteoarthritis.

But biomechanical research shows shoes with these supportive features actually increase knee force by up to 15% compared to shoes without them. Arch-supporting insoles also increase knee force by up to 6% when added to shoes.

So, are flatter, flexible shoes without stable supportive features – such as ballet flats – better for knee and hip osteoarthritis?

Not necessarily. We also need to look at people’s pain.

What we found

Our biomechanical research from 2017 in people with knee osteoarthritis showed flat flexible shoes reduced knee forces by an average 9% compared to stable supportive shoe styles.

This suggests flat flexible shoes could be better for osteoarthritis. To find out, we conducted two clinical trials to look at people’s pain levels.

Our new clinical trial involved 120 people with hip osteoarthritis.

They were randomised to wear different types of flat flexible shoes, such as flexible ballet flats, or different types of stable supportive shoes, such as supportive runners. People were asked to wear their shoes for at least six hours a day. After six months we measured the change in hip pain when they walked.

We found flat flexible shoes were no better than stable supportive shoes for reducing hip pain.

These findings differ to those from our 2021 clinical trial in 164 people with knee osteoarthritis. In that trial, we found wearing stable supportive shoes for six months reduced knee pain when walking by an average 63% more than wearing flat flexible shoes.

It’s unclear why findings differed between the knee and hip. But it might be because joint forces are higher in knee compared to hip osteoarthritis, and so there may be greater potential for stable supportive shoes to reduce knee forces, and therefore knee pain.

In both trials, more complications, such as foot pain, were reported by people who wore flat flexible shoes. This might be because these shoe styles provide less protection for the feet.

So which shoes should I wear?

For people with knee osteoarthritis, stable supportive shoes are likely to be more beneficial than flat flexible ones.

For people with hip osteoarthritis, neither shoe type is better than the other for improving hip pain.

But for all older people – including those with hip and knee osteoarthritis – it is sensible to avoid ill-fitting shoes, as well as shoes with high or narrow heels, due to an increased risk of falls.

For younger people with knee or hip osteoarthritis but who are not at risk of falls, it may still be advisable to avoid high heels given their potential to increase joint forces.

Who should you talk to?

If you are concerned about your hip or knee osteoarthritis, talk to your GP or other health-care provider, such as a podiatrist or physiotherapist.

Other non-surgical treatments, such as exercise, weight management, nutrition and some pain medicines can help.

– ref. These shoes are best for hip and knee arthritis, according to science – https://theconversation.com/these-shoes-are-best-for-hip-and-knee-arthritis-according-to-science-273109

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/these-shoes-are-best-for-hip-and-knee-arthritis-according-to-science-273109/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

Most people know about car safety ratings and many take them seriously when choosing a new car.

In Australia and New Zealand, safety ratings are issued by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), a non-regulatory, not-for-profit organisation that tests new vehicles and publishes results.

ANCAP has announced significant changes from 2026.

Here’s how the ratings have traditionally been determined, what is changing and what it all means for safety on our roads.

How car safety rating works

A majority of Australians say they wouldn’t buy a car that hasn’t achieved a five-star rating.

Manufacturers know this too. Those stars influence which features companies prioritise and what specifications they supply to different markets.

Yet unless you closely follow the car industry, you may not know much about what is actually tested.

ANCAP assigns vehicles a safety rating from zero to five stars based on a mix of crash tests, assessments of on-board safety features and the safety technologies built into the car.

Its rating system has evolved over time. Under the framework introduced in recent years, vehicles are assessed across four key pillars.

1. Adult occupant protection. This looks at how well the car structure protects the driver and passengers in the most common crashes, assessed using crash-test dummies equipped with sensors. These tests include frontal (head-on) and side impacts, pole crashes, whiplash protection and how easy it is for emergency services to access occupants after a crash.

2. Child occupant protection. This examines how well children are protected in front and side crashes, and how built-in safety features such as seatbelts and restraint systems support them.

3. Vulnerable road user protection. This considers the risk the vehicle poses to pedestrians and cyclists, and includes tests of head and leg impact on the bonnet and bumper, as well as the car’s emergency braking system.

4. Safety assist. This focuses on crash-avoidance technology such as speed-assistance systems, lane support and autonomous emergency braking.

Vehicles receive a score for each pillar as well as an overall star rating.

To reach a given star level, cars must meet minimum thresholds across all pillars. This means the overall rating is limited by the weakest area.

Buyers’ considerations

It’s worth remembering that a safety score reflects the standards in place at the time of testing.

Rating requirements are updated every three years to encourage the inclusion of newer safety features and technologies in vehicles entering the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Buyers should check when a car was tested and which model was assessed.

It’s also important to consider the number of stars is an abstract rating – it doesn’t mean all five-star cars perform equally well in every area. Some may offer stronger crash protection, while others may be better at avoiding collisions or protecting pedestrians.

For anyone choosing between several top-rated vehicles, the detailed pillar scores can therefore be more informative than the stars alone.

How the ratings are changing

ANCAP has announced significant changes to its rating system.

Instead of the current four pillars, ANCAP will organise its assessments under a “Stages of Safety” framework (a reference to pre-, during and post-crash phases): safe driving, crash avoidance, crash protection and post-crash.

Crash testing remains part of the system but it becomes just one stage rather than the central construct.

The new approach places greater emphasis on features that help prevent crashes in the first place. This includes driver-monitoring technology and how reliably these systems work in real-world conditions – for example whether emergency braking can still detect pedestrians at night or in poor weather.

It also expands its assessment of safety features inside the vehicle by analysing issues such as whether key controls are accessible without using touchscreen menus.

More weight is also given to what happens after a crash. This includes whether electric door handles remain operable, if high-voltage batteries in electric vehicles are safely isolated and whether the vehicle can automatically notify emergency services with crash data through systems such as eCall.

What does all that mean?

While ANCAP is not a regulator, its ratings strongly influence what manufacturers supply to Australia and NZ and which cars buyers choose, meaning its priorities can shape real-world safety outcomes.

The new changes are broadly a positive step.

The main risk is, in broadening the existing framework, some areas may become less important.

Vulnerable road user protection was previously a distinct pillar and there is a chance its prominence could be diluted within a more complex system.

This matters because markets where safety ratings do not heavily emphasise vulnerable user protection – such as the United States – tend to have weaker incentives for manufacturers to prioritise it.

That’s partly why pedestrian safety outcomes are so vastly different between the US and other Western countries.

In recent years, the pedestrian death rate in Australia has risen despite improved car occupant safety. So, it’s important our rating systems do not lose emphasis on the risks outside the vehicle.

This is especially relevant as newer vehicles are becoming larger and taller – design features associated with higher injury risk for pedestrians and cyclists.

If safety ratings do not continue to highlight this clearly and prominently, buyers are less likely to notice it, its weight in the overall score will also decline, and manufacturers will naturally have less incentive to address it in vehicle design.

While greater emphasis on crash avoidance is welcome, crashes involving vulnerable road users will still occur. Protection should therefore continue to be clearly visible in ratings and a key criterion.

One alternative approach might have been to retain the existing pillars and build on them – for example by adding a fifth pillar, or expanding the current framework to include “safe driving” while integrating other new elements into the existing categories.

– ref. Buying a car? Here’s what you need to know about new safety ratings – https://theconversation.com/buying-a-car-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-new-safety-ratings-276177

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/buying-a-car-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-new-safety-ratings-276177/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Martin, Associate Professor in Criminology, Deakin University

Organised crime has a long history in Australia. For more than a century, criminal groups have accumulated vast fortunes, committed countless acts of intimidation and coercion and, at times, extreme and spectacular violence.

In the process, they have become a recurring feature of public concern, media sensationalism and political debate.

There’s the razor gangs operating in Sydney during the 1920s, and the underbelly gangland conflict in Melbourne during the 1990s and early 2000s. Now we have the nationwide “tobacco wars”.

All of this organised crime shares something in common: it’s centred around competition for control of the country’s highly profitable illicit markets.

But if we look back at the responses to organised crime and black markets in Australia’s history, we can see governments are making many of the same mistakes now as they did a century ago.

Changing times, changing vices

While organised crime has shown remarkable continuity, the specific markets it exploits have changed over time.

Each period produces its own anxieties about the harmfulness of different behaviours. These are shaped by prevailing social norms, the familiarity or novelty of what is deemed “deviant” and the political priorities of the day. As these factors shift, so too does whether and how different goods and services are regulated.

In his recent book, Ian Shaw recounts the exploits of Squizzy Taylor. He was a flamboyant criminal in early 20th century Melbourne with a penchant for fine suits, horse racing and armed robbery.

Yet the most reliable sources of income for Taylor and his contemporaries were not spectacular crimes, but illicit markets, particularly illegal gambling, sex work, and alcohol, commonly known as sly grog.

At the time, each of these commodities was subject to outright prohibition or extraordinary restrictions intended to reduce harm. For alcohol, this included mandatory 6pm closure times for licensed establishments.

While restrictive regulations likely reduced overall consumption, they also ensured the consumption which continued occurred in more dangerous, exploitative and unregulated settings.

Sex workers were routinely exploited by pimps and corrupt police. Gambling continued to extract money from vulnerable participants, with debts and disputes enforced through intimidation and violence. The widespread consumption of sly grog continued in beer houses run not by licensed publicans, but by organised crime groups.

But the biggest danger remained the extraordinary profits flowing into the hands of these groups. The size and profitability of these illicit markets created powerful financial incentives that spilled over into deadly conflicts.

These affected not just gangsters fighting one another, but innocent bystanders as well.

Today, all three of these once-vibrant criminal markets are now largely regulated, but not too strictly. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily free from harm. But there is broad public acceptance that effective regulation produces better outcomes than leaving control in the hands of criminal organisations.

Regulation helps protect the safety of both consumers and suppliers. And instead of vast profits flowing into the hands of organised crime groups, they go into the pockets of legal business owners and provide a major source of income for the government through taxation.

Illicit markets in contemporary Australia

Australia continues to grapple with illicit markets where prohibition or extreme restriction remains the dominant policy response.

A 2025 Australian Institute of Criminology report lays bare the extraordinary costs of serious and organised crime. They were estimated to be up to A$82.3 billion for 2023–24.

The single most costly organised crime activity, and the greatest source of revenue for criminal groups, concerns illicit drugs. Expenditure on the five main illicit drugs – cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA (ecstasy), and heroin – was estimated at A$11.2 billion.

This figure does not include Australia’s fastest growing illicit drug market, nicotine, with expenditure recently estimated to be A$7.2 billion.

As with earlier black markets, demand for illicit drugs has remained strong despite them being banned.

In the case of nicotine, recent policy changes – high levels of taxation on tobacco and the prohibition of consumer vapes – have accelerated the shift towards criminal supply. Organised crime groups now supply a dominant share of this once largely legal market.

The false promise of prohibition

Australia’s approach to managing our largest contemporary illicit markets is eerily similar to that of earlier periods in history. It’s an escalating reliance on restrictions, penalties and police powers in an effort to disrupt supply and “crush” organised crime.

As in decades prior, this approach has been ineffective. Australian drug law enforcement expenditure tripled from A$1.2 billion in 2009–10 to more than $3.5 billion in 2020–21.

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This massive investment was intended to make illicit drugs more expensive and harder to obtain. Law enforcement agencies have done their best with this vast amount of taxpayer money, producing record levels of arrests and seizures year after year.

But claims that arrests or seizures “break the business model” or “put a dent in organised crime” are hollow.

In reality, illicit drugs remain just as easy to find, purity has increased, and prices for every major drug type have declined substantially in real terms.

Methamphetamine, for example, is as readily available as it was 15 years ago but at roughly half the price, once adjusted for inflation.

These outcomes reflect research indicating that intensifying law enforcement beyond a minimal level produces sharply diminishing returns.

They also closely resemble earlier attempts to suppress gambling, sex work and alcohol through prohibition. These attempts reduced legal supply without eliminating demand and, in doing so, strengthened organised crime.

What this means for illicit markets today

Some illicit markets remain beyond the pale and can never reasonably be subject to regulation. Those that necessarily involve inflicting harm and suffering on others, such as trading in child exploitation material or stolen goods, fit squarely into this category.

But other illicit markets warrant reconsideration in light of Australia’s own historical experience. This is particularly the case for those involving widely used goods or substances consumed by consenting adults, such as illicit drugs and nicotine.

This does not mean we should throw away all legal restrictions. Regulation means control – not laissez-faire.

Completely unregulated markets are risky. They give commercial interests strong incentives to promote consumption through advertising and 24/7 delivery. There is a strong case to be made that gambling, for example, should be subject to stricter regulation than is currently the case.

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Read more: This 6-point plan can ease Australia’s gambling problems – if our government has the guts

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At the other extreme, overly restrictive policies that generate large illicit markets provide ready access to unregulated products, enrich and empower organised crime and are highly resistant to law enforcement.

The most promising path often lies between these two positions. For example, a 2025 New South Wales government inquiry recommended the current prohibition on cannabis should be overturned in favour of decriminalisation, and that a staged process towards a legal, regulated market be considered and assessed.

Australia has confronted these dilemmas before. When widely used goods and services were pushed out of legal supply while demand persisted, organised crime flourished. When those same markets were brought into the open and subject to effective regulation, criminal influence receded.

This approach would not only help protect the wellbeing of consumers. It would also deprive the Squizzy Taylors of today – people such as the alleged illegal tobacco kingpin Kaz Hamad – of their most important source of income, thereby removing a major incentive for violence on our streets.

– ref. Prohibitive policies drove organised crime in Australia 100 years ago. It’s happening again – https://theconversation.com/prohibitive-policies-drove-organised-crime-in-australia-100-years-ago-its-happening-again-270171

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/prohibitive-policies-drove-organised-crime-in-australia-100-years-ago-its-happening-again-270171/

Polynesian Panther Party Legacy Trust

The Polynesian Panthers met Roger Fowler in the early 1970s when Ponsonby was home to the largest urban Pacific population in Aotearoa.

He helped establish the Ponsonby People’s Union for Survival and ran several much needed community focused programmes like a food co-op, tenant’s rights advice and support.

He was a gifted community organiser deeply committed to social justice. He had a wide field of vision enabling him to see injustice in Aotearoa and injustice overseas are interconnected.

He brought so much light into the world and into the lives of many many people who came within his orbit locally and globally including ours.

He lived his life so others could have theirs.

Manuia lou malaga Roger. Our sincere condolences and aroha to Lyn and the Fowler whanau.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/roger-fowlers-legacy-and-the-polynesian-panthers-connection/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgina Sauzier, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Chemistry, Curtin University

3D-printed guns are a growing threat to public safety. The blueprints used to make these firearms can be found online, making them easily accessible. With a relatively cheap 3D printer and a quick web search, anyone could print their own unlicensed gun.

These guns have been called “untraceable”. Research is now putting this claim to the test.

Our new study, published in the journal Forensic Chemistry, has found some filaments – the materials used in 3D printers – have distinct chemical profiles that could help link seized 3D-printed guns to their source.

The threat of ‘ghost guns’

Last October, an Australian Border Force operation uncovered 281 3D-printed firearms or components.

3D-printed components can be combined with common hardware store parts to create “hybrid” weapons, increasing their strength and durability. Both fully 3D-printed and hybrid 3D-printed guns can be just as lethal as factory-made firearms.

Recent events have led to calls for retailers to help stem the flow of 3D-printed guns. Suggestions have included placing blocking technology on 3D printers or flagging the purchase of items that could be used to make hybrid firearms.

But what can be done about the weapons already circulating in the community?

3D-printed guns have earned the nickname of “ghost guns”, as they are difficult to trace through standard firearms analysis. With law enforcement struggling to trace the source of seized ghost guns, it falls to researchers to find an alternative solution.

Chemical analysis of the filaments used to print these weapons may be the ticket to ending their “untraceable” reputation.

What are 3D-printing filaments?

3D-printing filaments are made up of various polymers, or plastics.

The main polymer used in at-home 3D printing is polylactic acid or PLA, a bioplastic used to make compostable waste bags. Other common filaments are those made from ABS – the main material used to make LEGO bricks due to its toughness – and PETG, a flexible polymer found in sports water bottles.

Some specialist filaments are made by combining different polymers. Many also have additives – extra ingredients to improve toughness, flexibility or appearance.

As 3D-printing filaments are usually patented to protect their individual formulations, additives and other minor ingredients are typically not listed on the product packaging. It is these ingredients that could hold the key to tracing ghost guns.

The mix of ingredients used in 3D-printing filaments gives each type of filament a particular chemical signature. We can identify these signatures using a method called infrared spectroscopy, which records how the filament absorbs infrared light. This pattern of absorbance – an infrared profile – changes based on what molecules are present in the filament.

What we found

In our research, conducted in collaboration with ChemCentre – a statutory forensic laboratory in Western Australia – we analysed more than 60 filaments sourced from the Australian retail market. We discovered that many of these filaments could be distinguished using their infrared profile, despite looking identical to the eye.

Filaments made of PLA, ABS and PETG can be easily set apart due to large differences in the chemical make-up of each polymer.

However, we were also able to separate some filaments made of the same polymer, due to minor additives creating differences in their infrared profile.

In one filament for example, we found signs of a compatibiliser – an additive that helps two polymers to mix together. This ingredient was not found in other filaments of the same base polymer, meaning it could be a distinct part of the brand’s formulation. It also suggests this filament contained two different polymers, despite only one being listed on the packaging.

These findings highlight why chemical analysis of filaments is useful, despite them being a widely available consumer product.

Tracing the seemingly untraceable

Being able to distinguish or identify different 3D-printing filaments could allow forensic investigators to create links between a seized gun and seized filament, or guns seized from different cases.

These links can help lead law enforcement to the suppliers of these guns, ultimately disrupting supply chains and future production.

While our research shows some 3D-printing filaments could be distinguished, this was not the case for all filaments. We are now conducting further research using more analytical techniques that will provide complementary information, such as the elements contained within the filaments.

Combining different techniques will allow us to complete a full chemical picture of each filament. We hope this information will help us to make links between a seized 3D-printed firearm, the filament it was printed from, and the 3D-printer used to print it.

By tracing the chemical fingerprint of 3D-printed guns, criminals can no longer feel safe under their “untraceable” veil.

– ref. 3D-printed ‘ghost guns’ are not as untraceable as criminals think – new study – https://theconversation.com/3d-printed-ghost-guns-are-not-as-untraceable-as-criminals-think-new-study-275566

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/3d-printed-ghost-guns-are-not-as-untraceable-as-criminals-think-new-study-275566/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Pember, Assistant Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick

“Want to go again?” a choreographer asks Charli XCX at the start of the mockumentary The Moment. It’s the latest entry in the pop star’s rapidly expanding cinematic empire, propelled by the stratospheric cultural impact of her 2024 album, Brat.

He is asking if she’s ready to practise a gyrating, strobe-heavy routine one more time. But this question also gestures towards the central conceit of the film: what if “Brat summer” was pushed beyond its natural expiry date? Not to explore “the tension of staying too long”, as Charli has described it, but in a cynical attempt to further monetise this fleeting moment of pop cultural hype.

Conceived by Charli, The Moment offers a semi-fictionalised mockumentary account of the post Brat summer comedown. It positions her at the centre of several cynical attempts to extend its lifespan through questionable endorsement deals, social media posts and an ill-fated concert film. The film’s events map eerily onto the real post-Brat timeline, inviting knowing audiences to question the boundary between fiction and reality.

Charli’s uncertain response to the choreographer’s question − “Err … yeah?” – from the floor of her rehearsal space (in that starriest of destinations, Dagenham) crystallises the film’s knowing subversion of dominant trends in the female-oriented pop star documentary.

[embedded content]

As cultural theorist Annelot Prins has outlined in a paper, pop star documentaries like Lady Gaga’s Five Foot Two (2017), Kesha’s Rainbow (2020) and Taylor’s Swift’s Miss Americana (2020) tend to present “empowering narratives of talented and hardworking women who used to be constrained by different factors but overcame them with resilience […] and are now self-determined agents”.

This approach to female celebrity has continued in a recent glut of arena concert films released by stars including Swift, Beyoncé and Olivia Rodrigo. These arena spectaculars combine polished tour footage with backstage glimpses into the creative process. It’s a combination of intimacy and polish engineered to confirm their authentic talent in the face of the relentless commercial demands of the pop world.

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Read more: A swift history of the concert film, from The Last Waltz to the Eras Tour

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The “resilient pop documentary” is part of a wider trend identified by feminist media scholars: representations of celebrity women overcoming setbacks such as sexual assault (Kesha), addiction (Demi Lovato) or illness (Lady Gaga).

Feminist sociologist Angela McRobbie’s work shows how these images of “resilient” female celebrities block collective resistance to misogyny, racism and classism, by making women believe they can overcome oppression through “self-management and care”.

This is a pattern that these documentaries repeat with their emphasis on the creative survival of the damaged female pop star. The Moment invokes and satirises these narrative templates by showing Charli’s fictionalised self’s inability to control the runaway momentum of her own stardom.

Resilience to reflexivity

While The Moment has been positioned as Charli’s pivot from pop to the silver screen, it extends the subversions of her oft-forgotten first cinematic venture: 2022’s Charli XCX: Alone Together.

Inverting The Moment’s narrative structure, Alone Together opens with Charli’s preparations for her first arena tour, charting the effects of its abrupt cancellation in the wake of COVID. The remainder of the film depicts Charli’s production of her fourth studio album over the course of a whirlwind six-weeks of the first lockdown.

This ambitious undertaking could have provided the perfect opportunity to emphasise Charli’s resilience, but Alone Together takes a difference tack. It focuses on the emotional toll the album’s production took on Charli and emphasises the digital spaces of care and community that enabled her and her fans to survive the pandemic.

While The Moment and Alone Together approach subversion differently, both knowingly undermine the resilience typically celebrated in pop star documentaries, exposing the endless performance of “overcoming” on which female pop stardom relies. The ending of Alone Together positions Charli as the unmoved consumer of the final album. A post-credit sequence shows her immediately at another loose end. “I just feel a bit, like, bored … What am I going to do now?” she says to camera, laughing.

[embedded content]

The Moment’s closing scenes echo Alone Together’s feeling of anti-climax by ending with the trailer for the Brat concert film and its invitation to “be a 365 Party Girl from the comfort of your own home”. Hilariously, this is soundtracked by the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony – an overplayed Britpop anthem that confirms the fictional XCX’s fall from cool in pursuit of mass appeal.

The film’s quasi-documentary style compounds its challenge to the forms of authenticity upon which resilient pop stardom relies. In a voice note to her team, Charli explains that she is completing the film to “kill Brat” and free herself to pursue other creative endeavours. Here, the film uses the intimate framing used to convey authentic agency in the conventional pop documentary. This serves to blur the paper-thin line between the “real” post-Brat hype engineered by Charli and the trite, opportunistic spectacle she embraces in The Moment.

That we are left with no clear sense of what the difference truly is signals that, far from being a “shallow” take on pop celebrity, The Moment turns the conventions of the pop star documentary against themselves. In doing so, the film cleverly exposes the artificiality inherent in even the most seemingly authentic of pop performances.

Taken together, these two films cement Charli XCX’s status as our best chronicler of contemporary female pop stardom and the role of her film texts in exposing the artifice at play in supposedly “authentic” resilient pop cultural performance.

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– ref. The Moment: Charli XCX is the ultimate chronicler of contemporary pop stardom – https://theconversation.com/the-moment-charli-xcx-is-the-ultimate-chronicler-of-contemporary-pop-stardom-276681

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/the-moment-charli-xcx-is-the-ultimate-chronicler-of-contemporary-pop-stardom-276681/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Primary care – the kind delivered by general practice (GP) clinics – is the backbone of every health system. When it works, we barely notice it.

It keeps people healthy, detects problems early, coordinates care and keeps people out of hospital.

But across many high-income countries, despite very different health systems, primary care is under unprecedented strain.

Our recently published paper presents case studies from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

All show governments are leaning on primary care to solve increasingly complex health needs. At the same time, bureaucracies are demanding more documentation, compliance, performance metrics and administrative work.

However, very little new investment is going into the four parts of primary care that matter most:

• continuity: seeing the same health provider over time, rather than pinballing from one specialist to another

• comprehensiveness: getting the whole family’s physical, mental and social health care from one place

• coordination: ensuring all the different people and services involved in a patient’s care work together smoothly, information is shared and roles are clear, so patients don’t fall through the cracks

• first-contact care: being able to get an appointment with a doctor or nurse you know, when you need it.

Ballooning administrative burdens

These are the core functions of effective primary care, and they are what reduce hospital visits. But across many countries, the GP workforce is shrinking or stagnating just as populations are ageing and multi-morbidity is increasing.

Medical graduates are turning away from general practice, citing high workloads, lower pay relative to other specialities, and the emotional weight of increasingly complex care.

Many GPs who stay in practice are reducing their hours, not because they lack commitment, but because the amount of unpaid work required outside of the consulting room makes full-time practice untenable.

Administrative burdens have ballooned. Electronic health-record systems generate endless inbox tasks. As hospitals push chronic care back into the community, GPs absorb more responsibility without receiving the resources to match.

The result is predictable: practices stop enrolling new patients, waiting times blow out, and people who cannot get timely care turn instead to emergency departments.

These alternatives are often far more expensive, lack continuity, and do not offer the long-term relationships that help detect disease early and manage chronic conditions effectively.

Quick wins, long-term losses

Many of the countries facing these problems spend less than 6% of their total health budget on primary care. For example, the US spends 4%, New Zealand 5.4% and Australia 6%. But how the money is allocated is as important as the amount itself.

Funding models in many countries fail to support team-based care – a collaborative, coordinated model of healthcare delivery in which multiple health professionals work together with patients and their families.

Governments often finance new roles – for example, physician assistants – in isolation, without ensuring practices have the infrastructure to integrate them safely and effectively. This creates inefficiencies and fragmentation.

Poorly designed “pay-for-performance” measures can make things worse. So, when funding is linked to disease-specific indicators rather than the core functions of high-quality primary care, clinicians end up spending more time on documentation and less on patients.

Continuity and comprehensiveness, the strongest predictors of better health outcomes, remain largely unmeasured and unrewarded.

The benefits of primary care investment accumulate slowly – fewer hospital admissions, better management of chronic disease, reduced premature mortality. But political cycles reward quick wins. Governments are tempted to fund initiatives that reduce waiting lists in months, not strengthen foundations for decades.

The result is a proliferation of short-term “solutions” that crowd out the long-term reforms primary care actually needs. The system that prevents downstream costs is neglected because its benefits are not immediately visible.

Toward a sustainable health system

Primary care is relationship-based. That continuity – knowing patients, their histories, their families and the context of their lives – is what allows efficient decision-making and prevents unnecessary interventions.

When investment flows into standalone or narrow services instead of strengthening general practice, care becomes episodic. This can result in poor followup and patients bouncing between providers who are working without shared information.

This fragmentation increases costs while reducing quality, even though each individual initiative may look beneficial in isolation. Once the foundation cracks, the entire system becomes more expensive to maintain but less effective.

The solutions are clear, and are strikingly consistent across countries. A whole-of-system approach is needed to:

• set explicit investment targets for primary care

• align funding, workforce planning and service delivery

• invest in true multidisciplinary teams, not piecemeal roles

• prioritise continuity, comprehensiveness, and first-contact access in funding models

• and create long-term accountability structures that survive election cycles.

Countries that have strong primary care systems will spend less overall on health, have better population health outcomes, and enjoy greater equity. Those that neglect primary care pay for it many times over in hospital pressures, workforce burnout and widening inequities.

Strengthening primary care is not just another reform. It is the only path to a sustainable health system. Countries that fail to recognise this are already seeing the consequences.

– ref. We studied primary care in 6 rich countries – it’s under unprecedented strain everywhere – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-primary-care-in-6-rich-countries-its-under-unprecedented-strain-everywhere-276617

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/we-studied-primary-care-in-6-rich-countries-its-under-unprecedented-strain-everywhere-276617/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milan Klöwer, NERC Independent Research Fellow, University of Oxford

Air travel is famously one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, and the number of air passengers keeps increasing. Electric planes and “sustainable” aviation fuels are still a long way off making a dent in the industry’s emissions – if they ever will.

But new research by me and my colleagues shows aviation could still cut its climate impact dramatically, simply by using planes more efficiently. In fact, rethinking cabin layouts alone could slash emissions by up to half.

From 1980 to 2019, the share of occupied seats in commercial air planes increased from 63% to 82%. Airlines already have strong commercial incentives to sell every seat – empty ones cost money as well as carbon.

For any given level of passenger travel, carrying more people on each flight means other planes can stay grounded and fewer flights are needed overall. It’s planes that make the big difference, not people – the additional weight of a passenger and their luggage is negligible relative to the aircraft and its fuel.

Aviation is responsible for 2%-3% of global CO₂, but its contribution to global warming is about 4% when secondary effects like condensation trails (which trap heat) are factored in. This impact is dominated by rich people flying frequently, often long-haul in business and first class or even private.

Efficiency in aviation is often thought of as an engineering challenge: how much thrust an engine generates for a given amount of jet fuel. But operational efficiency – the amount of passenger-kilometres per unit of CO₂ emitted – has received far less attention.

In our research, my colleagues and I calculated this operational efficiency for the year 2023, for every flight route, by airline, aircraft model and airport. We found that efficiency gains available in the short term could reduce aviation’s climate impact by more than half.

Short empty flights are the least fuel-efficient

On average, aviation emissions fell from around 260 grams of CO₂ per paying passenger-kilometre in 1980 to 90 grams in 2019. That’s a big difference, but for comparison, electrified rail powered by low-carbon energy can emit less than 5 grams.

Our analysis shows that CO₂ efficiency varies enormously across routes, regions, airports, airlines and aircraft models. Some flight routes emit more than 800 grams per passenger-kilometre, others less than 50. This variability is staggering but also yields a large potential to reduce emissions if efficiency across the industry increased towards that of the most efficient routes we analysed.

Among the highest emitting countries, many of the least efficient flights start or land in the US, followed by China, Germany and Japan. Inefficient flights are common elsewhere, particularly from or to smaller airports, and in Africa and Oceania, often exceeding 140g per passenger-kilometre.

By contrast, more efficient flights – below 100 grams per passenger-kilometre – are common in Brazil, India and south-east Asia, particularly on high volume routes. Europe contains a mix of both.

These differences can be explained by the share of occupied seats, the aircraft models used on a route and the cabin layout – especially the space allocated for business and first class.

Budget airlines tend to be more efficient as they seat as many passengers as possible. Spacious business or first class seats are often removed and revenue is instead generated through services such as baggage, food or booking flexibility – all of which add little to flight emissions.

We also found a few newer aircraft models to be the most efficient in operation (Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus 320neo, both in several variants) averaging less than 65 grams of CO₂ per passenger-kilometre. However, they are not (yet) the most widely used, partly because aircraft typically remain in service for around 25 years.

Long-haul flights are on average more efficient than shorter flights. Take-off emissions only occur once, and larger aircraft with more seats are typically used on longer routes. For similar reasons, larger airports tend to have lower average emissions per passenger.

Increasing air travel efficiency

We modelled three hypothetical scenarios to illustrate the potential of certain operational changes, recalculating the total emissions after each change.

First, we increased the average passenger load factor from 80% to 95%. This alone would cut emissions by 16%, as fewer flights would be needed to carry the same number of passengers. While this is already in airlines’ interests, creating additional incentives – such as emissions-linked airport charges or fuel taxes – could encourage further gains.

Second, we imagined only the two most efficient aircraft (Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A321neo) were in operation. Aircraft cannot be replaced overnight, given their long service lives, and the industry hasn’t built enough 787-9 or A321neo yet anyway. But choosing already existing aircraft highlights the potential of replacing older aircraft with newer and more efficient ones – in our calculations, it would save between 27% and 34% of global emissions. This would also require overcoming logical and commercial constraints, again potentially incentivised by airport or fuel charges.

Third, we analysed the impact of an all-economy cabin layout. Business and first class seats are up to five times more CO₂-intensive than economy seating because they occupy far more space per passenger. Operating all aircraft at the manufacturers maximum seating capacity would reduce global aircraft emissions by between 26% and 57%.

There are already large differences between airlines. Some chose to set up their Boeing 777-300 ERs with more than 400 economy seats, while others have as few as 200, despite a maximum seating capacity of 550.

Our findings highlight how strongly aviation emissions are shaped by travel inequality between occasional economy fliers and frequent business and first class travellers. Many of those may complain about the inconvenience of economy class. But perhaps that’s not a bad thing: it could create an even stronger incentive to reduce the number of non-essential journeys.

– ref. Scrapping business class could halve aviation emissions – new study – https://theconversation.com/scrapping-business-class-could-halve-aviation-emissions-new-study-275474

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/scrapping-business-class-could-halve-aviation-emissions-new-study-275474/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

The next major international sporting event, the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup hosted jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico, is already garnering international scrutiny. There have been numerous calls to boycott it.

Calls for a boycott were amplified recently following U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland from Denmark, prompting soccer officials in Germany and France to broach the possibility of both countries boycotting the tournament.

Both countries’ soccer federations have pushed back against calls to boycott the World Cup for now, although recent events in Minneapolis have heightened concerns about the U.S.’ role in hosting the tournament and what that will mean for visitors.

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter — who was suspended by FIFA in 2015 and replaced by current FIFA president Gianni Infantino amid a corruption scandal he was later acquitted of — recently voiced concerns over the marginalization of political opponents and violent crackdowns on immigration in the U.S.

The World Cup has historically been an event that brings together fans from across the world. Many fans rely on tourist visas, and ICE is expected to be responsible for security at the World Cup. ICE’s director has refused to commit to pausing the agency’s operations during the tournament.

Human rights groups have raised concerns over whether World Cup visitors will be detained and handed to ICE if they engage in actions deemed critical of the U.S. government.

Boycotts at international sporting events

In the history of international sporting events, boycotts have been far less common than bans.

Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were not invited to attend the 1920 Olympic games after losing the First World War.

South Africa was invited to the 1964 Tokyo Games but saw their invitation rescinded due to apartheid, and only rejoined Olympic competition in 1992. Rhodesia saw its invitation to the 1972 Games rescinded due to its government enacting a white supremacist regime.

Notably, both instances of rescinded invitations to the Olympic Games came after other African nations threatened to boycott the Games if South Africa and Rhodesia were invited to participate.

There were also partial boycotts at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Several nations announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics to protest China’s mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslims, prohibiting many government officials from attending in an official capacity, while still permitting athletes to compete. Russia has been banned from most major international sports competitions since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

However, the most famous boycott of an international sporting event occurred in 1980 ahead of the Summer Olympics in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 countries boycotted those Games, led by the U.S. In turn, 19 countries boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, led by the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries.

Yet there has never been a World Cup boycott by qualified teams on political grounds. In 1934, Uruguay famously chose not to travel to the second-ever World Cup in Italy because several European teams, including Italy, declined to travel to Uruguay for the inaugural tournament in 1930.

Prior to the 1966 World Cup, all African teams withdrew from qualifying in protest because FIFA had only allocated all of the teams from Africa, Asia and Oceania one combined place at the tournament. There were calls for Norway to boycott the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar, but they did not qualify for the tournament.

How likely is a boycott?

As of yet, no leaders of major soccer federations have endorsed calls for their country to boycott the tournament, despite pressure from some executives and politicians. It would likely take decisive action from a federation head, akin to the action President Jimmy Carter took prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, to arrive at a country boycotting.

Furthermore, given the relationship Trump has built up with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the effect of a boycott, or any credible threats of one, on the United States’ immigration policy or hosting responsibilities would likely be rather limited, making a boycott an unpopular decision that may not achieve the desired goal of any boycotting nation.

Infantino attended Trump’s inauguration and controversially awarded Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize. More recently, he signed an agreement with Trumps’ Board of Peace on behalf of FIFA.

Infantino was also a staunch defender of Qatar’s building practices in the face of heavy human rights criticism and was willing to change FIFA’s policies at the last minute to acquiesce to Qatar’s demands for limited alcohol sales during the 2022 Men’s World Cup.

Trump could still escalate geopolitical tensions enough to spark further boycott discussions. But for now, a boycott remains unlikely, and even credible threats would likely do little to shift Infantino and Trump from the status quo.

– ref. Calls for a boycott of the 2026 FIFA World Cup are growing, but how realistic is one? – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-a-boycott-of-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-are-growing-but-how-realistic-is-one-275785

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/calls-for-a-boycott-of-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-are-growing-but-how-realistic-is-one-275785/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Trelease, Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology

If you’ve spent much time on the internet, you probably know how to yell “I was rooting for you!” The clip from “Cycle 4” (iykyk) of America’s Next Top Model which aired in 2005 went uncontrollably viral.

It became a foundational reality TV meme – an enduring moment that has fed pop culture for two decades.

Now, America’s Next Top Model is back in the headlines thanks to a three-part Netflix series, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. This docuseries is supposed to offer a “look back at the reality show’s complicated legacy”.

In reality, there’s a clear self-serving intention here.

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A cultural juggernaut

Running from 2003 to 2018, each season or “cycle” of America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) follows a group of young women learning the skills of a top model. Each episode includes a task, a photoshoot and an elimination.

The series incorporated elements from other successful reality shows such as Fear Factor (with models posing in photoshoots with cockroaches, dripping in fish guts and wearing meat as clothes); Survivor (backstabbing cast mates and bitchiness) and, unfortunately, The Swan (drastic makeovers sometimes resulting in chemical burns or lengthy surgeries).

Created, produced and hosted by veteran supermodel Tyra Banks, ANTM taught millennials how to extend the neck, angle their face for the camera and “smize” (smile with the eyes).

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Who is to blame?

Those who held creative power on the show deliberately distance themselves from Banks in the documentary. Banks herself participates for seemingly no other reason than to soft launch a new season after eight years off air, and boldly justify her mistreatment of contestants.

Jay Manuel, ANTM Creative Director and judge – and consultant on this new documentary – claims “reality TV is a bitch. If it doesn’t bleed and lead it doesn’t work”. This is fundamentally untrue. There are many shows that don’t rely on the “villain edit”.

As an ex-participant on The Bachelor New Zealand, I have experienced first-hand the negative physical effects of being on such a show – as well as the fear of legal persecution and financial penalties for speaking out.

Documentaries that revisit old reality shows ought to be spaces for former contestants to share their experiences. That doesn’t happen here. There is no honest critique or reflection on the part of the production team. Instead, we see producers once again exerting their own narrative to counter contestant testimonials.

Last year’s Fit For TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser was similarly problematic. Instead of explaining, apologising and taking accountability, the crew reasserted their power by using “it was a different time” as an excuse.

Banks offers no sincere apologies in Reality Check. At one point, she describes an apology in the past tense, and it’s not clear whether it was directly given to the contestant. “I have actually apologised for the issue with Dani,” she says, regarding past behaviour that coerced 2006 contestant Dani into getting dental surgery for a tooth gap.

In another “apology”, Banks doesn’t refer to the victim, Keenyah, by name: “Boo Boo. I am so sorry.” Tyra had fat-shamed and lectured Keenyah in a 2005 episode after Keenyah politely called-out on-set sexual harassment by a male model.

Who, then, does Banks think is responsible for the harm inflicted on contestants?

Across three episodes, we hear “gen Z”, “social media”, viewers “that were demanding it”, co-creator Ken Mok, judge Janice Dickinson, UPN network President Dawn Ostroff, CW President Mark Pedowitz, CBS CEO Les Moonves, the fashion industry, the reality TV industry, “the culture at the time” and the contestants.

She blames everyone but herself.

Tyra Banks and lateral violence

In the documentary, Banks says her intention with ANTM was to respond to an industry that constantly demonstrated abuses of power throughout her career:

I wanted to fight against the fashion industry […] for this show to represent not all white, not all skinny, but just showing all the differences, and all the different types of beauties. I had a feeling that I was going to change the beauty world. This was my way to get back.

Whether it was her ethnicity, weight, forehead, or media-fueled rivalry with Naomi Campbell, only once Banks was “established” could she speak of her experiences of mistreatment.

Despite this intention, Reality Check shows us how, once Banks accrued her own cultural capital, she took her frustration out on contestants rather than the industry. As journalist Zakiya Gibbons, an independent voice within the documentary, points out:

Tyra wants to challenge the fashion industry’s ideals around what is beauty, but is also still upholding ideologies and attitudes that oppressed her.

What Gibbons captures here is an example of lateral violence: when someone directs their rage at their own minority group, rather than their oppressor.

ANTM became Banks’ own sub-industry in which to dole out her harshest verbal and emotional violence on Black contestants. Her chosen forms of violence included body shaming, fat shaming, coercion into medical surgery, and verbal and emotional abuse.

A public relations project

Social media now allows former reality TV participants an unfiltered opportunity to speak their truth, despite the threat of non-disclosure agreements.

In 2023, former Real Housewives participant Bethenny Frankle banded together with other ex-Housewives in a “reality reckoning” against American TV network Bravo – exposing how even non-eliminating shows are unethical.

That same year, we saw the launch of the UCAN Foundation, a support and advocacy foundation for people on reality TV.

These were steps in the right direction. Reality Check is an example of a major platform giving airtime and an opportunity for redemption to the perpetrators of violence: it’s a step backwards.

There are already accusations that former ANTM contestants were not compensated for appearing in the docuseries.

Live appearances, social media, and documentary exposé are the few remaining spaces where reality TV contestants can share experiences. They should not be reclaimed by producers.

– ref. Reality check: America’s Next Top Model docuseries never apologises for abuse of contestants – https://theconversation.com/reality-check-americas-next-top-model-docuseries-never-apologises-for-abuse-of-contestants-276167

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/reality-check-americas-next-top-model-docuseries-never-apologises-for-abuse-of-contestants-276167/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura de Zwaan, Senior Lecturer, School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology

After just three rate cuts in 2025, interest rates have risen again in Australia this year. It’s unwelcome news for many borrowers – particularly those still struggling with the increasing cost of living.

Currently, the average new loan size for owner-occupied homes is about A$736,000. On a 30-year mortgage this size, an increase of 0.25 percentage points in the official cash rate could mean paying about $120 more each month.

When assessing home loan applications, lenders are required by law to check a borrower could still make their repayments if interest rates were to rise by a certain amount. This “serviceability buffer” is currently three percentage points.

Across the country, borrowers are showing remarkable resilience. At Commonwealth Bank, for example, Australia’s largest mortgage lender, latest results show 87% of home loan customers are ahead of their scheduled repayments.

That offers little comfort to other households already struggling to make ends meet who may not be able to find the extra money required to meet increased repayments.

So, what options are available when homeowners can’t stretch their budget any further?

Ask for help

If you’re experiencing mortgage stress, the first step should always be to talk to your lender – as soon as you realise you are not going to be able to make a payment, or if you have missed a payment.

In Australia, consumer protection laws mean you can ask your lender for financial hardship assistance, which can come in a few different forms.

It may be able to offer a pause on repayments for a short period, or negotiate reduced repayments for a few months.

However, this sort of assistance is aimed at helping with a short-term problem. If your mortgage repayments are unaffordable for the foreseeable future, you will need to look at other options.

Longer-term options

Your lender can help identify if there are other ways it can help reduce your repayments.

One option may be extending your loan term to reduce the repayments for the rest of the loan. A lender could also consider moving you into another product, such as an interest-only loan, to lower repayments.

You can also apply to access your superannuation on compassionate grounds, to prevent foreclosure or the forced sale of your home.

Further assistance may be available in certain jurisdictions. For example, if you are in Queensland or the Australian Capital Territory, you might be able to access mortgage relief through state government schemes.

Looking at the bigger picture

If your mortgage is still unaffordable, and you want to keep your home, then you will need to cut back in other places to afford your repayments in the long term.

There are many guides to help get you started on finding ways to reduce your expenses.

If a particular household bill is of concern, you can also talk to utilities providers about your financial hardship and see if you can pay these bills in instalments.

Depending on your situation, there could be other options to help keep up with repayments, such as renting out a spare bedroom or parking space.

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Read more: Shop around, take lunch, catch the bus. It is possible to ease the squeeze on your budget

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Selling a home

If you cannot manage your repayments, it might be time to consider selling. Generally, you will get a better price for your home if you sell it, rather than letting the bank take possession and selling it to recover any outstanding loan balance.

Again, it’s important to talk to your lender as it can arrange hardship assistance that allows you time to sell.

It’s important to act early

If you are struggling financially, your best bet is to talk to your lender. Ignoring your mortgage repayments will not make them go away, and will make your situation worse.

Early communication with your lender ensures it is aware of your financial hardship and can provide advice on how best to proceed.

You are not the first person to suffer financial stress, and you should know you are not alone. In 2024–25, there were more than 280,000 financial hardship notices (borrowers advising lenders they were struggling).

Lenders know your circumstances can change, so use your legal right to ask for support to help you manage your mortgage stress.

Help is available

If you or someone you know is in financial distress, support is available:

• The National Debt Helpline provides free advice on how to manage your debt, and you can talk to a financial counsellor about your situation. The counsellor can help with budgeting and can also provide advocacy services to help you manage your debts.

• For First Nations people, Mob Strong can provide legal advice and financial counselling.

• The Financial Rights Legal Centre has tools to help you manage your debts and can provide free financial counselling or legal help.

• The Australian government’s MoneySmart website has straightforward information on what to do if you are struggling with your mortgage repayments. It also has information and tips on all other aspects of personal finance, including superannuation and insurance.

– ref. What are your options if you can’t afford to repay your mortgage? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-your-options-if-you-cant-afford-to-repay-your-mortgage-275924

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/what-are-your-options-if-you-cant-afford-to-repay-your-mortgage-275924/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Kear, Sessional Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

In the aftermath of the Bondi terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people, the New South Wales government is moving toward banning phrases it argues incite hatred. The Queensland government has said it would do the same.

Chief among these are “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea”.

The meaning and intent of both of these phrases are hotly contested between the Jewish and Muslim communities and their supporters.

The main reason they are so contentious is because they form part of the broader debate over the legitimacy of Israel and Palestine, and whether they can or should exist simultaneously in a two-state solution.

On one side, proponents of these phrases say they are expressions of Palestinian nationalism and their right to equality, freedom and dignity. They indicate support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination and their right to resist Israel’s nearly 60-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, known as the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which the International Court of Justice has ruled is illegal.

On the other side, those arguing against these phrases say they are antisemitic because they incite violence towards Israel and Jewish people more broadly, and are catchcries for the destruction of Israel.

Given these binary positions and the legislative moves towards banning them, it is important to understand the history and nuances of the phrases, separate from the emotive rhetoric and, at times, disinformation surrounding this debate.

Globalise the intifada

One of the first times this phrase was reportedly used was at an anti-war protest in Washington in 2002.

It has become much more commonplace after Israel’s devastating response to Hamas’ October 2023 terrorist attacks. The war has caused the deaths of more than 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza and is being investigated by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

According to the American Jewish Committee, one of the oldest Jewish advocacy groups in the United States:

The phrase is often understood by those who are saying and hearing it as encouraging violence against Israel, Jews and institutions supporting Israel. While the intent of the person saying this phrase may be different, the impact on the Jewish community remains the same.

Key to understanding this phrase is the term “intifada”. In Arabic, the word means “uprising” or “shaking off”. There have been two intifadas against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, from 1987–93 and 2000–05.

Both intifadas were spontaneous eruptions of discontent and revolt by Palestinians against the violence, harassment, and social, political and economic deprivation they experienced in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Additionally, one of the primary motivations of the First Intifada was Palestinian frustration at the inability of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to advance the cause of Palestinian statehood.

Notably, the violence of the First Intifada was confined to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and consisted mainly of stone throwing, tire burning, demonstrations and civil disobedience. According to the Jewish human rights group B’Tselem, around 1,400 Palestinians and 270 Israelis were killed.

The Second Intifada has more relevance to how the global Jewish community perceives the term “intifada” today. This is because the Palestinian groups Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched suicide attacks that deliberately targeted civilians in Israel. According to B’Tselem, more than 680 Israeli civilians and 3,300 Palestinians were killed during the violence.

These attacks caused immense fear and feelings of vulnerability among Israelis. Jews were deliberately targeted – a hallmark of antisemitism.

Indeed, the very reason Israel exists is because of the institutionalised antisemitism and political persecution of Jews in Europe, which culminated in the Holocaust. This is the reason Theodor Herzl established the Zionist movement – the realisation that the only way European Jews could be free from this rampant violence and antisemitism was to have a state where they would form the majority. To Jews, this makes Israel more than simply a state – it is an ideal, a sanctuary – a place where they can feel safe.

The memory of the attacks during the Second Intifada – in concert with this long history of persecution and the Holocaust – drives the opposition to this phrase among many Jewish people.

However, Palestinian supporters argue that both intifadas were centred on expressions of Palestinian nationalism, their demands for statehood and resistance against Israel’s occupation.

There is a growing fear among Palestinians that the increasing permanence of Israel’s occupation and creeping annexation of the territories destroys any hope of achieving a state – a place where they can be safe from Israeli violence and persecution.

Therefore, Palestinian activists argue the phrase has legitimacy. According to Ben Jamal, leader of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the phrase is used as a “call for worldwide support for an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people through all means of legitimate resistance”.

He added:

That’s not a call for violence against civilians or Jewish people – and to say that is actually, in my view, a form of anti-Palestinian racism.

From the river to the sea

A similar debate rages over the meaning of the phrase “from the river to the sea”. Again, this taps into the broader debate concerning Palestinian nationalism and advocacy for a Palestinian state, with the full phrase being “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The geography refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea where Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories now sit.

Many Israelis and Jews around the world believe the phrase is antisemitic because of the perception that the establishment of a Palestinian state extending across this entire territory would signal the destruction of Israel. This is not just the state, but more importantly, the ideal.

The phrase was first used around 1964 by the newly formed Palestine Liberation Organisation to advocate for a unitary Palestinian state along the borders of “Mandatory Palestine” – the administrative territory ruled by the British from 1920–48 – that would include Palestinians, Jews and Christians. This would mean the elimination of the state of Israel, but not the Jewish people.

But it’s necessary to unpack how the meaning has changed over time. A key question here: what is the geography of a future Palestinian state?

The PLO accepted the two-state solution in 1988, meaning it acknowledged that any future Palestine would consist only of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, meaning the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

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Read more: Explainer: what is the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

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Hamas’ position on the phrase has also evolved over time. While its 1988 charter never mentioned the phrase specifically, it did state “[Hamas] will strive to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”

However, in its 2017 Declaration of Principles, Hamas officially tolerates the idea of a two-state solution. It states:

Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967 to be a formula of national consensus.

This refers to the ceasefire lines between Israel and the Palestinian territories before the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel captured and occupied the Palestinian Territories.

Therefore, Hamas’ position is consistent with United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) that is used by the international community as the basis for the two-state solution.

The 2017 declaration also highlights the compromise position within Hamas between those who believe Palestine should exist “from the river to the sea” and those willing to tolerate a Palestine only in the Occupied Territories. Hamas now officially treats the former as a guiding principle, not an organisational objective.

As former Hamas Chairman Khaled Meshaal explained in 2017:

Even though we accept and welcome that eventuality of [the two-state solution], this does not mean we would have to recognise Israel or surrender our principle that all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinian people.

Given this, there is an argument that the term’s use is not a call for the destruction of the Israeli state and the expulsion of Jews, but a demand that Israel dismantle its illegal occupation and allow Palestinians the freedom to establish their own state.

Adding to the phrase’s controversy is the fact that Israel’s Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, used a variation of it in its 1977 party platform:

Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

Though Likud has dropped the phrase from its current platform, it continues to vehemently oppose any Palestinian state.

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Read more: Geography and politics stand in the way of an independent Palestinian state

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Charting a way forward

This brings us back to the central questions at the heart of the debate over these phrases.

Does support for the Palestinian people and Palestinian statehood, as expressed in these phrases, equate to the threat of violence against Israel as a state and an ideal, and against the Jewish people?

Or are they part of legitimate political debate about Palestinian self-determination?

As Australians, we face a stark choice about whether to criminalise these phrases. Favouring one side will only inflame tensions with the other. It will only entrench – not resolve – societal discord.

Charting a middle course based on democratic ideals will be difficult. Finding a way forward will require a level of political and moral courage from our leaders that has been sadly lacking since the current round of violence began more than two years ago.

– ref. Why are the phrases ‘globalise the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’ so contested? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-the-phrases-globalise-the-intifada-and-from-the-river-to-the-sea-so-contested-275668

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/24/why-are-the-phrases-globalise-the-intifada-and-from-the-river-to-the-sea-so-contested-275668/