While the world has focused on the atrocities in Gaza, Israel continues its support of illegal settlements, hostility and apartheid in the West Bank. Asia-Pacific specialist journalist Ben Bohane reports from Bethlehem for Michael West Media.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ben Bohane
We are no more than 5 minutes out of Bethlehem on a crisp December morning when my Palestinian driver — let’s call him Ahmed — stops and points to a curl of smoke rising in the valley below, near Beit Jala.
“That’s a local restaurant the Israeli’s are burning since last night. They demand permits even when it is on family land. Israel then gives demolition orders, and no one can stop them.”
It’s the day before Christmas. I’m in the West Bank and Israel for a month to see the situation for myself, to try and understand how this comparatively small area continues to hijack history and our news agenda.
Photojournalist and producer Ben Bohane . . . “Israel has killed more journalists in the past three years than any other government in history.” Image: BB/MWM
The international Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) states 249 media personnel have been killed so far by Israel in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel and Iran since the Gaza war began.
Israel has killed more journalists in the past three years than any other government in history,
assassinating more than all media personnel killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined.
Israel has also now banned many reputable international NGOs from operating there. In late January, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) finally acknowledged the death toll tally compiled by Palestinian health authorities as accurate, saying it believed 71,000 people had been killed so far — the death toll is now more than 72,000.
I’ve come to the other front, the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and the IDF establish new illegal settlements and make life difficult for Palestinians just trying to eke out a living.
While I’m there, Israel announces 19 new settlements, bringing to 69 the number of new settlements approved in the past few years.
They are slowly circling and strangling Palestinian towns by taking the high ground on hilltops, establishing their own roads to link up with other settlements, and destroying ancient olive groves which locals have long relied on for a meagre income.
Some of these trees are many hundreds of years old, and their desecration seems somehow symbolic of Israel’s attempts to change history and geography.
“We are trapped here”, says Ahmed. “Ever since October 7, Israel has closed off our access to Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. A lot of businesses are struggling to survive after 5 years of shutdowns — first it was covid, and then the Gaza war. No tourists for years.”
Unless they are employed in one of a handful of jobs, such as in hospitals or working for a Christian organisation, Palestinians in the West Bank can’t leave. Denied both Palestinian statehood and Israeli citizenship,
West Bank Palestinians are caught in a limbo where they can’t travel into wider Israel or beyond.
“Israel controls all our movements, all our water, and controls our petrol supply”, says Ahmed. “The only thing they don’t control is the air we breathe, and if they could control that, they would.”
Bulldozer warfare We visit a home recently bulldozed by settlers and fields uprooted because they were considered too close to the expanding nearby Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit. As locals lose access to their olive orchards, the only trees safe are those within towns or around their homes.
I see a young boy with a wheelbarrow full of seedlings and uprooted olive saplings moving towards a nearby field. Ahmed translates:
“The boy says that part of their resistance is to immediately replant the olive trees when settlers chop them down. The olives aren’t just an income for us, they are part of our identity on this land.”
We have to be quick when visiting the contested edges of these towns and fields, as settlers are always watching from nearby hilltops and the IDF can be on the scene in less than 5 minutes. On two occasions, my driver yells to get us back in the car for a hurried exit when he spots settlers driving down to intercept us.
Returning to Bethlehem, the annual Christmas parade is underway. Hundreds of Palestinian, Arab and Armenian Christians in uniforms march along roads leading to Manger Square in the heart of Bethlehem.
Palestinian Authority police guard the route and churches, including the Orthodox Basilica of the Nativity, first begun by Emperor Constantine’s Christian mother Saint Helena in the 4th century. Under this Byzantine church is a grotto where Jesus was supposedly born.
This is the first time in two years that Christmas celebrations, including a huge Christmas tree, have taken place. With few foreign tourists, shops in Bethlehem are happy to see many Muslim families from across the West Bank visiting with children to see Santa and the holy sites. It’s a peaceful time with Christian and Muslim families celebrating together.
I met Father Issa Thaljieh, a Palestinian (Greek Orthodox) priest overseeing the Basilica.
“Issa” is the Muslim name for Jesus. He says the number of Christians continues to dwindle, from 10 percent of the Palestinian population during the British mandate period 100 years ago, to around 1 percent today. Most live overseas now, with Israel incentivising their departure.
Apartheid One thing I hadn’t known until I came here is that Israelis are forbidden from entering any West Bank towns. At the entrance to many towns I visited, including Jericho and Bethlehem, are large road signs in red warning Israeli citizens not to enter.
Although usually framed as a security measure to prevent kidnapping, it has the additional impact of preventing ordinary Israelis and Palestinians from mixing together and stops Israelis from really understanding what is going on across the West Bank. It underlined the sense of apartheid, along with the long winding separation wall that snakes between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank.
Always interested in art and graffiti as forms of resistance, I cruise a length of the wall, near two refugee camps inside Bethlehem and come across artist Banksy’s “Walled Off” hotel, which had only reopened the week before after 5 years of closure.
Upstairs is a gallery supporting local artists, downstairs a museum about the wall and “occupation”, along with a chintzy piano bar styled like a frontier saloon.
The hotel faces a section of the wall emblazoned with graffiti and promises “the worst views in the world”. The wall began construction substantially in 2002, runs for 810 kms and is Israel’s biggest infrastructure project. Banksy’s museum quotes the man put in charge of the build, Danny Tirza:
“The main thing the government told me in giving me the job was,
to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside as possible.
Down the road, a number of local stores have popped up selling cheap Banksy merch, and apparently, Banksy is fine with all the rip-offs.
Other days are spent visiting Jericho and Hebron with its shrine containing the tomb of Abraham, patriarch of all the monotheistic faiths.
It is a town often at flashpoint between Palestinians and hardcore Israeli settlers who have moved right into pockets of the town, protected by IDF soldiers. A day trip to Ramallah is aborted when my driver says that Israeli forces had entered that morning to destroy dozens of shops and shot two people.
“It’s too dangerous today to visit, and besides, it would take us 5 hours to get through the checkpoints instead of one hour as normal,” he says.
Every day across the West Bank, Palestinians must navigate security challenges, declining business and hungry families. Given the impunity with which Israel operates in Gaza, Palestinians across the West Bank are still standing their ground, but without much hope that the international community will stop Israel’s encroachment.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to extinguish any hope of a two-state solution, but Palestinians will not cede their homes — or their olive trees — easily.
Ben Bohane is Vanuatu-based photojournalist and producer who has reported for global media for more than three decades on religion and war across the world, mainly in the Asia-Pacific region. His website. Republished with permission,
Roger Norman Fowler: 12 September 1948 – 21 February 2026
Roger Fowler, an activist legend of social justice solidarity movements from Bastion Point to resisting apartheid and racist rugby tours and freedom for Palestine, has died after a long illness. He was 77.
Described by some as a “true Tāne Toa”, his protest warrior courage and his commitment to a bicultural and cross-cultural vision for Aotearoa New Zealand, was perhaps best represented by his “Songs of Struggle and Solidarity” vinyl album launched last year.
The first of 14 tracks on the album produced by Banana Boat Records, was “We Are All Palestinians”, which has become an anthem for the Gaza solidarity movement for the past 124 weeks of protest against the Israeli genocide.
Roger Fowler and his wife, Dr Lyn Doherty, with whānau and friends at a community concert in his honour in November 2025. Image: Hone Fowler
Ironically, this was sung yet again by a group in Te Komititanga Square yesterday within hours of his death.
It was written by Fowler after the Viva Palestina solidarity convoy from London to Gaza in 2010.
Tigilau Ness and Roger Fowler at the launch of his album last September 2025. Ness recorded his version of “We Are All Palestinians” here. Image: APR
Fowler led the Kia Ora Gaza team of six Kiwis who drove three of 135 aid-packed ambulances – funded by New Zealand donations — into the besieged enclave. This was followed later by two other land convoys and three Gaza Freedom Flotillas.
In April 2026, a massive new siege-breaking Sumud Flotilla to Gaza with 100 boats and carrying some 1000 activists is being planned.
Gaza solidarity rallies In spite of failing health in recent months, Fowler was frequently seen at Gaza rallies, speaking and singing in his rousing voice.
Close comrade and friend, John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), paid tribute to his contribution in a statement today.
“Roger has been a legend of the solidarity movement for many decades as the founder and co-cordinator of Kia Ora Gaza which delivered aid to the besieged Gaza strip by land and by sea,” he said.
“He was a man of great integrity and character with passion for justice. He will remain a guiding light for the solidarity movement here.”
The Palestinian community presenting Roger Fowler an award at the launch of his album last September 2025. Image: APR
Co-chair Maher Nazzal presented Fowler an award for his contribution to Palestinian solidarity last September.
Another comrade, especially during Fowler’s activism in the 1960s and 1970s, Tony Fala, recalls his “dauntless courage, tireless optimism, boundless energy, and vast strategic capacity was profoundly inspiring.”
“Roger was one of the humblest and kindest people I have ever met. He could build coalitions and strengthen community bonds with ease. He sought what brought people together, not what kept them apart.
Belief in ordinary people “He believed in ordinary people and possessed a deep, instinctive understanding of justice. He was strong yet carried no ego.”
Fala praised Fowler’s commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Te Ao Māori community life, describing him as a “born oral historian”.
“He gave selflessly to every cause he committed himself to and would move mountains to achieve victory for the struggles he served.”
[embedded content] “We are all Palestinians.” Video: Banana Boat Records
In the weeks before his death, he and his whanau were working hard to complete a history of the socialist Ponsonby People’s Union, “Struggle and Solidarity”, due to be published soon. Fowler met his future wife, Dr Lyn Doherty (Ngati Porou and Ngāpuhi), then while they were activists campaigning to stop landlords evicting tenants.
Activist author Dean Parker once described Fowler as “the Great Helmsman of the legendary Ponsonby People’s Union, brave hero of so many struggles”.
Fowler had lived for almost four decades in Mangere East, a multicultural quarter of South Auckland.
He was manager of the Mangere East Community Learning Centre and an executive member of Out of School Care Network.
The “Free Palestine” photo on the Roger Fowler album launched in September 2025. Image: Banana Boat Records
Impressive community tribute In 1999, he was a recipient of the Queen’s Service Medal for his “services to community” and the people of Mangere East paid an impressive tribute to him with a daytime concert last November.
One of his best remembered local campaigns was the community coalition in 2010 that saved Mangere East’s Postshop.
A one-time bus driver, Fowler strongly campaigned for public transport.
He was also involved with amateur theatre for several decades, including Auckland Light Opera, “The Aunties” children’s theatre and Manukau Performing Arts.
Fowler was a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the 1970s and he was part of the anti-apartheid movement for 15 years.
In 1969, along with a large group of activists — including Alan Robson, Pat Bolster and Graeme Whimp — he opened the first Resistance Bookshop in Queen Street and he was co-director for a time.
During his lifelong protests, he was arrested and jailed four times and with colleagues he set up a free prison visiting service in 1972 for Paremoremo and Waikeria.
The last track on Fowler’s album is titled “The Final Song” but his music will be long remembered as the hallmark of the life of an extraordinary community and political activist.
• Roger Fowler’s life will be celebrated at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Mangere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.
Asia Pacific Report’s David Robie and Del Abcede with Roger Fowler in November 2025. Image: Tony Fala
Last week, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said Aotearoa’s immigration settings were “no way to treat our Pacific cousins”.
“All Pacific people want is a fair go, equivalent to what other nations are getting, and they’re not getting it,” he said outside Parliament.
While Peters’ comments were made in the context of the Pacific Justice petition, the concept of the Pacific as “family” has become a common rhetoric used by politicians and leaders across New Zealand.
In 2018, former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern spoke on such issues facing the Pacific.
“We are the Pacific too, and we are doing our best to stand with our family as they face these threats,” she said during a talk at the Paris Institute.
At the Pacific Islands Forum last year, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said: “This is the Pacific family and we prioritise the centrality of the Pacific Islands Forum.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the 2025 Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting . . . “This is the Pacific family.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Caleb Fotheringham
But is Aotearoa doing enough to live up to this “Pacific family” rhetoric in the face of daunting and life-changing threats, such as climate change, continues to reshape the region?
Discussions and comparisons continue to arise off the back of Australia’s Falepili Union Treaty, which saw the first group of Tuvaluan migrants relocate towards the end of 2025.
Australia’s implementation of the treaty has sparked criticism over whether New Zealand is failing its Pacific neighbours when it comes to climate-related migration.
‘Increasingly perilous situations’ For Pacific Islanders hoping to move to Aotearoa, there is a pathway.
Under the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballot, 150 people from specifically Kiribati and 250 from Tuvalu — two of the most vulnerable nations at the forefront of climate impacts — can gain residency every year.
Applicants must pay $1385, pass health checks, meet English requirements, be under 45, and secure a job offer.
Dr Olivia Yates has spent years researching climate mobility from Kiribati and Tuvalu.
University student Olivia Yates at the Auckland march. Image: RNZ/Kate Gregan
She said the tension around climate mobility sits not in a lack of awareness, but in the design of the system itself.
“I think the main takeaway is that New Zealand’s current approach to climate mobility, or at least for the last five years — things are starting to change now — but initially — we do a lot of research, get a lot more information, and leave immigration systems as they are,” she said.
She said Pacific neighbours islands are facing “increasingly difficult” circumstances.
“Disasters are becoming more frequent … the access to food and to water is being challenged because of these creeping impacts of climate change. So as the New Zealand government takes one step forward, I feel like climate change is sort of a step ahead of us,” Dr Yates said.
“It sounds very doom and gloom, but the other thing I would say is that our Pacific neighbours, fundamentally and primarily, want to stay in place. Nobody wants to have to leave.”
In the meantime, people are moving, often through pathways never intended to respond to climate pressure.
“People are using these laws to come to the country and their laws that were not really set up to address climate change and the movement of people in response to climate change,” Dr Yates said.
“They’re primarily economically motivated, and so this creates a whole bunch of issues that are the downstream consequence of using a system for something that is not what it was designed for.”
She said that PAC ballot, created in 2001, has effectively become “the de facto pathway for people from Kiribati and Tuvalu to move here for reasons related to climate change”.
While many migrants cite work, family or opportunity as the primary motivations, these distinctions are becoming blurred.
“It’s kind of becoming increasingly difficult to separate climate change drivers from these factors,” Dr Yates explained.
NZ’s immigration laws are being used in a way that they were not designed for, says Dr Yates. Image: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
And the consequences can be significant. When visas hinge on employment and strict eligibility criteria, families can find themselves vulnerable if those circumstances shift.
“Our current immigration laws are being used in a way that they weren’t designed for, and this is having really negative consequences on people, specifically from Kiribati and Tuvalu,” she said.
“On the other side of that, those that wish to stay, whether because they choose to or because they can’t afford to leave, that visas aren’t available to them, and they start to face increasingly perilous situations that breach their rights.”
Lacking a plan Kiribati community leader Kinaua Ewels, who works closely with Pacific migrants settling in Aotearoa, said the system’s rigidity has left many feeling excluded and unsupported.
She does not believe New Zealand is set up to deal with the realities of climate migration
“I’m hoping the New Zealand government could help the people who are able to move on their own, using their own money, but when they get here, they can actually access work opportunities,” she said.
Kinaua Ewels . . . the PAC still feels restrictive. Image: mpp.govt.nz
Ewels said the PAC still feels restrictive, and lacks a plan to help new arrivals adapt or secure employment.
“They pressure them to look for their own job. There’s no plan for the government to help them settle very easily, to run away from climate change and their life situations back on the island,” Ewels said.
“More can be done.”
According to Ewels, the families who do arrive with the hopes of safety and stability, end up struggling to navigate basic systems, such as healthcare and employment, and get no formal support.
“It’s very restricted in the way that it’s not supportive to the people from the Pacific Islands,” she said.
NZ govt ‘not ready to bring climate refugees’
Ewels said that while New Zealand spoke of the Pacific as “family,” those words continued ringing hollow for communities who saw little practical support.
“They use the family name, which is a very meaningful and deep word back home, but the process is not done yet,” she said.
“In reality, the government is not actually ready to bring people over here in terms of climate refugees or people needing to move because of climate change.”
Ewels said if New Zealand truly viewed the Pacific as family, that connection would extend itself into some meaningful collaboration with Pacific community leaders here in Aotearoa, who could help them navigate the complexities of this situation.
“If the government talks about family, they should work with us, the community leaders, so we can help them at least make sure people are warmly welcomed and supported when they come here,” Ewels said.
Dr Yates said the government was making efforts, but warned the the pace of policy was struggling to keep up with the pace of change happening in the world today.
“I would say that the New Zealand government is trying. But as the government takes one step forward, climate change is starting to outpace us.”
Pacific sea levels have risen by as much as 15cm over the past three decades.
There are predictions that around 50,000 Pacific people across the region could lose their homes each year as the climate crisis reshapes their environments.
In the past decade, one in 10 people from Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu have already migrated.
Kiribati dancers performing at the opening ceremony of the Wellington Pasifika Festival. Image: RNZ Pacific/Tiana Haxton
Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata told RNZ Pacific in October last year that life on the Micronesian island nation was becoming increasingly difficult, as it was being hit by severe storms, with higher temperatures and drought.
“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said at the time.
Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.
Kiata said Kiribati overstayers in New Zealand were anxious they would be sent back home.
“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”
In 2020, Kiribati man Ioane Teitiota took New Zealand to the United Nations Human Rights Committee after his refugee claim, based on sea-level rise, was rejected.
The committee did find his deportation lawful, although ruled that governments must consider the human rights impacts of climate change when assessing deportations.
The term “climate refugee” remains unrecognised in binding international law. It is a term Dr Yates has previously told RNZ was always flawed.
“Climate change is this unique phenomenon because what is forcing people out of their countries comes from elsewhere,” she said.
“At face value, the idea of being a refugee didn’t fit.”
Many communities suffering at the hands of climate change do not want to leave their home, their culture, their land, their community.
Dr Yates said the term “climate mobility” was a better fit — describing it as a spectrum that recognises the desire for communities to have options.
Australia’s Falepili Treaty v NZ’s climate pathways In late 2025, the first Tuvaluans began relocating to Australia under the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty signed with Tuvalu in 2023.
The agreement creates a new permanent visa for up to 280 Tuvaluans each year, allocated by ballot. Applicants do not need a job offer, there is no age cap, nor disability exclusion.
The treaty has led debate on online platforms around why New Zealand does not offer a similar pathway.
Australia and Tuvalu signing the Falepili Union Treaty in Rarotonga in 2023. Image: Twitter.com/@PatConroy1/RNZ
International law expert Professor Jane McAdam is cautious against simplistic comparisons between New Zealand and Australia.
“It has been mislabelled in a lot of the international media as a climate refugee visa when it’s nothing of the sort,” Prof McAdam said.
“There’s often nothing in this visa that requires you to show that you’re concerned about the impacts of climate change in the future,” she said.
Professor McAdam pointed out that New Zealand had never been viewed as “totally useless” in climate-related migration of Pacific peoples.
“Historically, New Zealand has been seen as leading the way when it comes to providing pathways for people in the Pacific to move,” she said, noting the PAC visa and labour mobility schemes as examples.
“New Zealand has been leading the way globally in recognising how existing international refugee law and human rights work,” she added.
That includes influential tribunal decisions examining how climate impacts intersect with refugee and human rights law, even where claims ultimately failed.
New Zealand has been seen as leading the way when it comes to providing pathways for people in the Pacific to move, says Professor McAdams. Image: RNZ Pacific
In 2023, Pacific leaders endorsed the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, the first regional document to formally acknowledge climate-related migration and commit states to cooperate on safe and dignified pathways.
Dr Yates said New Zealand was “furiously involved” in shaping the framework.
“The framework is the first time, put down on paper, that people are migrating because of climate-related reasons,” she said.
However, the document is non-binding.
“It means our government is ready to take this seriously. But I wouldn’t say they are taking this seriously, yet.”
She added a dedicated, rights-based climate mobility visa is needed that can account for a wide-range of people, including those with disabilities and others disproportionately affected.
RNZ Pacific approached the Immigration Minister Erica Stanford’s office for comment on whether New Zealand immigration law does explicitly recognise climate change or climate-induced displacement as grounds for special protection or a dedicated visa category.
We were advised Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was the appropriate person to comment on the issue.
However, a spokesperson for Peters told RNZ Pacific the specific issue “would be a question for the Minister of Immigration, or the Climate Change Minister”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The place of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, former prince and brother of the king, in the line of succession to the British throne appears to be under threat in the United Kingdom.
Currently, Mountbatten-Windsor is eighth in line (after the families of princes William and Harry) to the Crowns of the United Kingdom and Australia. This makes it extremely unlikely he would ever become monarch, but his removal is more a symbolic act of repudiation.
Is it possible to remove him? The short answer is yes – but it would most likely be a time-consuming process involving many parliaments passing legislation.
Does the same line of succession apply to the British and Australian Crowns?
At the time of Australia’s federation in 1901, the British Crown was described as “one and indivisible”. Queen Victoria exercised constitutional powers over all her colonies, acting on the advice of British ministers.
That changed after the first world war, due to a series of Imperial Conferences, with the self-governing “dominions” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland) having separate Crowns by 1930. This meant the Australian prime minister could advise the monarch about the appointment of the governor-general of Australia and other federal (but not state) Australian matters.
However, the rules of succession to these separate Crowns remained the same. They are a hotch-potch of English laws, including common law rules of inheritance and statutes, such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701.
These laws became part of Australian law in the 18th century, but for a long time Australian parliaments had no power to alter them. This changed in 1931 with the enactment of the Statute of Westminster. It gave the dominions power to repeal or alter British laws that applied in their country.
However, recognising this could cause havoc in relation to succession to the Crown, a clause was included in the preamble to the statute, making it a convention that “any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne” shall require the assent of the parliaments of all of the dominions and the United Kingdom. Section 4 of the statute continued the power of the UK parliament to legislate for a dominion, but only if it gave its request and consent.
In 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated, the UK parliament enacted a statute to alter the rules of succession to the throne, to exclude any children he might have. Australia assented to the British parliament extending its law so it applied to Australia too.
That option is no longer available since the enactment of section 1 of the Australia Act 1986. It says that no act of the UK parliament shall extend as part of the law of the Commonwealth, or a state or territory. Any changes made to the operation of the laws of succession to the Crown of Australia must be made in Australia.
[embedded content]
How could Australia change the law of succession?
When the Commonwealth Constitution was enacted, the Crown was still “one and indivisible”. This meant no one inserted a section giving the Commonwealth parliament power to make laws about succession to the Crown. However, the framers of the Constitution were clever enough to insert a mechanism to deal with such unanticipated developments.
Section 51(xxxviii) of the Constitution says the Commonwealth parliament may exercise a power, at the request or with the concurrence of all the states directly concerned, which only the UK parliament could have exercised at the time of federation. This means the Commonwealth and state parliaments can cooperate to change the rules of succession to the Crown of Australia.
This issue arose in 2011, when the various realms (being countries that retained Queen Elizabeth II as head of state) agreed to change the rules of succession so that males would no longer be given preference over females, and heirs would no longer be disqualified for marrying a Catholic.
The UK parliament enacted the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 to give legal effect to this change. However, it delayed commencing the act until other realms had enacted their changes too. The British act only made the change with respect to the Crown of the United Kingdom.
The 2013 changes to the line of succession mean that Princess Charlotte is now third in line to the British throne.Dave Shopland/AP/AAP
Some realms accepted they needed to change the law in relation to their own Crown. Others concluded they didn’t need to act, because their Constitution makes their sovereign the same person who is king or queen of the United Kingdom. Legislation was ultimately enacted in Australia, Barbados, Canada, New Zealand, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
In Australia, each state enacted the Succession to the Crown Act 2015. The Australian process took a long time, due to different legislative priorities and sitting periods, and the intervention of state election periods.
Australia was the last to enact its law, after which the alteration in succession was brought into effect simultaneously across all the realms.
How would the process operate today?
If it were proposed to remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession today, the UK government would probably first seek the agreement of all the realms. While not legally necessary, it is important if a shared monarch is to be retained for all realms to be consulted.
The UK parliament would then prepare its own bill, providing a template for other jurisdictions. This means the changes are uniform across the realms. The bill would probably also specify whether Mountbatten-Windsor’s exclusion affects his heirs, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and their children. Under the old law, a person who married a Catholic was treated as “dead” for the purposes of succession, so that their exclusion from the succession did not affect the hereditary position of their heirs. The same approach might be taken in relation to the exclusion of Mountbatten-Windsor.
The same parliaments that enacted laws in relation to the last change of succession (apart from Barbados, which is now a republic), would also need to enact an equivalent law, if they wish to maintain symmetry in such rules across the realms. Putting such a bill before a parliament runs the risk that other issues will be raised, opening broader questions concerning the role of the monarchy in different realms.
Could Australia make such a change on its own?
While Australia could unilaterally enact a law to exclude Mountbatten–Windsor from succession to the Crown of Australia, it is unlikely it would do so. There are two reasons for this.
First, it involves a lot of legislative hassle, getting seven parliaments to enact a law that will probably have no substantive effect, given how far Mountbatten-Windsor is down the line of succession.
Second, covering clause 2 of the Commonwealth Constitution says that references to “the Queen” in the Constitution shall “extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom”.
There is considerable disagreement about whether this is just an interpretative provision about updating references, or whether it has a substantive effect.
Keeping Australia’s rules of succession in sync with those of the United Kingdom avoids opening that potential Pandora’s box.
The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office will heap yet more pressure on the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest over allegations he passed government documents to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein comes directly on the heels of the resignation of Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s ambassador to the United States, due to his own alleged associations with Epstein.
The fallout from the scandal is hugely damaging to public trust in both the political establishment and institutions in the United Kingdom, including the royal family.
Trust in the royals already declining
It’s hard to separate the fate and popularity of the royal family from the institutions of British governance because they’re very much part of it.
The monarchy, specifically the Crown, is part of the British constitution. The monarch gives assent to all legislation that’s passed by parliament (in other words, he or she has to sign it for it to pass). While that might seem like a rubber-stamping exercise and that the monarch is a mere symbol in British politics, King Charles and, in slightly different ways, Queen Elizabeth II certainly have had their political preferences.
And despite the impression you get during royal occasions like weddings, funerals and coronations, the royals don’t enjoy unanimous support in Britain. In fact, public support has been declining in recent years, especially among the young.
In an Ipsos survey released this week, just 47% of Britons said they had a favourable opinion of the royal family on the whole (a seven-point decline from November). And just 28% of Britons believe the royal family has handled the allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor well, compared to 37% in November.
Importantly, there’s been a long-term trend of steady decline in support for the monarchy since 1983, when the British Social Attitudes survey first asked about this.
More broadly, and in common with many other liberal democracies, there is a pervasive sense the Epstein scandal is more evidence of the existence of a self-serving, corrupt elite making good for itself and harming others, while many people in the “left behind” and “squeezed middle” of society are struggling.
Politically, this perception adds further fuel to the notion that the inequality between the rulers and the ruled has become unjustifiable. Something has to change.
Pressure mounting on Labour
Starmer’s Labour government was already deeply unpopular before Mandelson’s alleged ties to Epstein were revealed. Now, it has entered some sort of permanent crisis mode.
Mandelson was one of the key figures behind the so-called “New Labour” project associated with the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997–2007.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, talks with Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, at the ambassador’s residence in Washington in February 2025.Carl Court/Pool Getty Images/AP
New Labour has a dual legacy in British politics. On one level, it was the most electorally successful Labour government ever. But that electoral success seemed to come at the expense of a clearly defined sense of what a Labour Party stood for. Key players like Mandelson courted wealthy backers and moved Labour to the centre of British politics to, not unreasonably, win elections.
As such, many Labour supporters started to drift away from the party and towards other, at times diametrically opposed, political parties. In Scotland, this benefited the pro-independence parties. In England, it benefitted the radical-right Reform UK.
Reform has precious little governing experience, but that is its appeal. Its radical messages are finding traction with a large number of voters, many of whom formerly supported Conservative or Labour.
So in this context, when Mandelson, an already divisive figure, was named ambassador to the US in the belief he could help manage President Donald Trump, Starmer’s political gamble to reinstate him to a public role backfired.
Reform could ultimately benefit
The British government’s travails represent another gilt-edged opportunity for Reform UK to capitalise on the unpopularity of Starmer, Labour and politics more broadly. But there is a risk for Reform, too.
Radical-right parties tend to place a great emphasis on the figure of the leader. For Reform UK, this is Nigel Farage.
Farage has had an incredible impact on British politics, especially since Brexit. But Farage, a former merchant banker, is also part of this global elite, despite pitching his politics at the “left behinds”. He has spent years courting Trump’s friendship. So, while there are no allegations against him related to Epstein, the public anger towards elites in general may eventually rebound on Farage, too.
Reform UK, however, is positioning itself successfully as an alternative to the two major parties in the UK, and could form a minority government at the next UK-wide elections in 2029.
The Conservative Party has shot its bolt as a result of its 14 years in government. And Labour came to power more as a rejection of the Conservatives than an endorsement of its policies. It has thus far excelled in failing to meet these low expectations, to Reform’s benefit.
Excluding a by-election in February, the first major political test will be local government elections in England, and elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd in May. A poor Labour showing will quite possibly lead to a leadership challenge against Starmer, whose government seems incapable of stemming the rise of support for an emboldened Reform.
A boost to republicanism
“Unprecedented” is an over-worn term. However, the arrest of a member of the royal family is the first in England since 1647 (it didn’t end well).
Prince William is still very popular. But there could still be very serious consequences for support for the monarchy in the various nations of the United Kingdom.
There isn’t the same sort of support for republicanism in England as there is in Australia, where republicans can de-legitimnise the king as a “foreign” monarch. Although this argument is made by republicans in Northern Ireland, English republicanism needs to be driven by some other sentiment.
And the Epstein crisis could be it, given it is drawing attention to gross inequality and damaging entitlement. It’s hard to see where exactly all this will end up, but it is quite possible this will give the greatest boost to anti-monarchical sentiment in England for some centuries.
It is important not to forget the women and girls who were victims of this rich man’s cabal. Yet, one great harm of the Epstein scandal in Britain is the further damage done to trust in institutions of governance and the boost it provides for the illiberal critics of what seems like a decaying order.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 22, 2026.
Trump hikes global tariffs to 15% as the fallout from Supreme Court loss continues Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law and Taxation, Queensland University of Technology US President Donald Trump has announced the United States will increase baseline tariffs on all foreign imports to 15%, as the fallout continues from a seismic Supreme Court ruling on Friday. Trump had imposed sweeping
Activists tell of ‘apocalyptic’ ecocide on top of Israel’s Gaza genocide at rally Asia Pacific Report Two Extinction Rebellion activists joined the speakers today at an Auckland protest over Israel’s genocide and ecocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine, condemning the “apocalyptic” assault on both people and their living environment. Caril Cowan, a de facto coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Tāmaki Makaurau, spoke of the climate crisis this month in
Indonesia’s human rights law being revised under a global spotlight ANAYSIS: By Laurens Ikinia in Jakarta The global human rights landscape has witnessed a significant diplomatic milestone. Indonesia, for the first time since the body’s establishment in 2006, has officially taken the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Indonesia’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro, is currently
US President Donald Trump has announced the United States will increase baseline tariffs on all foreign imports to 15%, as the fallout continues from a seismic Supreme Court ruling on Friday.
Trump had imposed sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” last year under an emergency powers act, but the court ruled this law did not authorise him to do so.
Speaking in the wake of the ruling on Friday, Trump admonished the justices of the Supreme Court. He called the democratic justices who ruled against the tariffs a “disgrace to the nation”.
He also said he felt “ashamed” of members of the court he considered conservative who had voted against his use of emergency powers.
Trump’s statement was riddled with insults and inaccuracies. However, he admitted he had tried to “make things simple” by using the emergency powers act. He went on to say he does have other options, but those options would take more time. This was one part of his speech that was indeed accurate.
With the clock already ticking on his landmark trade agenda, and the multi-billion dollar question of refunds looming, what might Trump do next? Here’s what could now be in store for both Australia and the world.
This part of the law has never been used. However, it appears to clearly allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 15%, and for a period of no more than 150 days.
This section does allow the President to impose tariffs in response to foreign countries who violate US rights under international trade agreements, or that burden or restrict US commerce in “unjustifiable”, “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” ways. However, it requires some steps to be followed.
The process for using this law is detailed and can not be subverted. It would likely take either years or vast amounts of resources to introduce tariffs that were anywhere near the “Liberation Day” tariffs.
If nothing else, it requires consultations with the countries upon whose goods those tariffs will be imposed.
Section 301 has previously been used to impose tariffs on China, following an investigation by the United States Trade Representative in 2018.
Another option
Another avenue for the president to bypass Congress is a specific section of a different law, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, that applies to a particular sector of the economy.
However, it can’t be used to recreate sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports. This provision is generally product-specific and requires an investigation into the national security threat.
Its use to impose steel and aluminium tariffs has been challenged by multiple trading partners at the World Trade Organization. A panel of experts ruled the US had used a special national security exception erroneously.
If all collected duties are refunded, it’s estimated the total repayment could reach approximately US$175 billion (A$247 billion).
Much to the president’s frustration, there was no clarity within the Supreme Court’s ruling on the process for refunds of illegally collected tariffs.
That silence, which prompted Trump to refer to the decision as “terrible” and “defective”, was likely because this would be handled by other courts.
Back in December, the US Court of International Trade stated it would have the authority to order reliquidation and refunds of the sweeping tariffs if the Supreme Court ultimately ruled them unlawful.
Many large companies had already anticipated this ruling, and acted to get on the front foot. For example, in late November, large retailer Costco sued the Trump administration to secure a full refund of tariffs in the event the Supreme Court deemed them unlawful.
In late December, faced with an avalanche of similar cases, the Court of International Trade temporarily halted all cases where companies were claiming relief from of IEEPA tariffs ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Refunds may not be straightforward
Some importers have argued that because the tariff payments were itemised, receiving refunds should not be messy.
But the process for refunds may not be as straightforward as it should be. Trump suggested they could be “in court for the next five years”.
What does this all mean for Australia?
Australia’s previous 10% rate was much lower than many other nations, but now at 15% the playing field has been levelled – at least for the next 150 days.
Australian exporters don’t pay these tariffs directly themselves, but may be pressured to absorb some of the cost, and it makes their imports less competitive in the US market.
However, not all Australian exporters are in the same position. The proclamation issued by the White House listed some exceptions, including beef, critical minerals, energy products and pharmaceuticals.
At Friday’s press conference, Trump said “great certainty” had been brought back to the United States and the world. In truth, the uncertainty is far from over.
Two Extinction Rebellion activists joined the speakers today at an Auckland protest over Israel’s genocide and ecocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine, condemning the “apocalyptic” assault on both people and their living environment.
Caril Cowan, a de facto coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Tāmaki Makaurau, spoke of the climate crisis this month in Aotearoa New Zealand to provide an insight into the Gaza emergency.
“One of our climate scientists, says this is normal – get used to it. We are going to have killing storms over, and over, and over …
“As we are saying, ‘We are all Palestine’, I just think of the people of South America, I think of the people of Africa, I think of Europe, where people are dying now because of the climate.
“They are dying of heat exhaustion, they are dying from floods, they are dying from landslides, like we have been having, not just a few. It’s happening. It is here now.”
After the rally, the protesters marched around the corner from Te Komititanga Square to the US Consulate in Auckland for a “Blood on your hands “ protest over the US role in funding and enabling Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
Cowan was among those protesters who symbolically raised blood on their hands over the “shameful” US role under President Donald Trump and previous presidents.
Extension Rebellion speaker Caril Cowan . . . “people are dying now because of the climate crisis.” Image: APR
US pays part UN dues This week in Washington, a UN spokesperson said the United States had paid about US$160 million (NZ$268 million) of the more than US$4 billion it owes to the UN, just as Trump hosted the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” initiative over Gaza that critics say could undermine the United Nations.
The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, but under the Trump administration it has refused to make mandatory payments to regular and peacekeeping budgets, and slashed voluntary funding to UN agencies with their own budgets.
Washington has also withdrawn from dozens of UN agencies.
Another speaker at today’s rally, Adam Jordan, from both Extinction Rebellion and the Palestinian movement, talked about the “connection” between the Gaza genocide and anthropogenic climate breakdown.
“As is so often the case with colonialism, and the capitalist system more generally, ecological destruction has always been inherent to the Zionist, settler-colonial project,” Jordan said.
Extension Rebellion’s Adam Jordan . . . the destruction in Gaza has reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”. Image: APR
“From contaminated soil and groundwater to decimated farmland and burning down centuries old olive groves that had been lovingly tended by countless generations of Palestinians.
“Rather than ‘making the desert bloom’ as they often claim, the colonisers are engaged in a process of ‘desertification’ — transforming once fertile and active farmland into an area devoid of both vegetation and biodiversity.”
Damage visible from space Jordan said that destruction of both people and the land itself in Gaza had reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”.
“The people who have not yet been killed by the bunker buster bombs, the forced starvation, disease, sniper fire and autonomous killer drones live in a wasteland of undrinkable water, unexploded munitions, overflowing landfills, contaminated soil and toxic debris, with orchards and fields reduced to dust in which life itself is being rendered impossible for the long term,” he said.
[embedded content] Gaza pollution environmental threats Video: Al Jazeera
“Ecocide here fuses with genocide in a manner never seen before.”
But where was the real connection between Palestine and the climate crisis?
“Despite all the rhetoric from governments and corporations about how they’re taking climate change seriously, the 2020s have so far seen an accelerated expansion of fossil fuel production, just when it had to be reined in and inverted into a sustained dismantling — for the world to avoid a warming of more than 2°C, and ideally no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline.
“Currently we’re at 1.6°C above that baseline, and this is already proving to be absolutely catastrophic. In fact it’s proving again and again to be deadly,” Jordan said.
“The destruction of Gaza is of course executed by tanks and fighter jets, sending their projectiles that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right path.
“All these military vehicles run on oil. As do the supply flights from the US, UK and Germany.’
A young protester with a Palestinian flag at the Auckland rally today. Image: APR
Emissions burden One study had estimated that from October 2023 to January 2025 the emission burden of the Gaza genocide by Israel and the West to be 32 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
“That’s more than the annual emissions of many countries,” Jordan said.
“It has generated more than 36 million metric tonnes of debris from buildings being either severely damaged or completely destroyed. It would take as long as four decades to remove and process all of this debris.”
Jordan said what was happening in Gaza was not just a transnational effort, but “a stain on the so called ‘international law’ that cannot be washed clean”.
“For over two years now we have watched as the corrupt corporate media has dehumanised the victims and attempted to humanise those committing this genocide,” he said.
“We have watched as academic institutions, politicians and governments all over the world have denied or justified the unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza, just as they deny the severity and the consequences of the climate crisis and justify the continuation of business as usual, no matter how destructive it is to our environmental life support systems.
“But this is just business, this is just how the capitalist system works. Both people and the environment are seen as expendable, here only for the purposes of wealth extraction by the ultra wealthy ruling class — or as I prefer to call them, ‘The Epstein class’.”
New flotilla plans Among other speakers, Rana Hamida spoke about the new Global Sumud Flotilla plans to break the military siege of Gaza in April.
The flotilla has announced plans to send more than 100 boats carrying up 1000 activists, including medics and war crimes investigators, to the besieged enclave.
Hamida appealed for more volunteers from New Zealand to join the fleet.
Not just climate change – but a “system change” call for action. Image: APR
The global human rights landscape has witnessed a significant diplomatic milestone.
Indonesia, for the first time since the body’s establishment in 2006, has officially taken the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
Indonesia’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro, is currently guiding the procedural and diplomatic course of the world’s foremost human rights forum for the coming year.
Indonesian Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai . . . seeking to ensure the revised law is “more progressive and advanced”. Image: Antara
This appointment, backed by consensus within the Asia-Pacific regional group and subsequently endorsed by the full council, is far more than a routine procedural rotation.
It is a mirror reflecting diplomatic success, yet also a fragile piñata — ready to spill forth either in praise or sharp criticism depending on the blows dealt by reality and unfolding dynamics.
This moment is not the end of a journey, but the opening of a new chapter rife with interpretation — a complex test of Indonesia’s credibility, capacity, and consistency on the stage of global issues.
The test begins not only in the halls of Geneva but simultaneously in the halls of power in Jakarta, where the government is pushing for the ratification of a revised Human Rights Law by this year.
This legislative endeavour has now become inextricably linked to the credibility of its international leadership.
Foundations and mandate To understand the seriousness of this position, one must look to its foundational pillars.
The UN Charter, as the supreme constitution of global governance, clearly places the promotion and respect for human rights as a central pillar for maintaining international peace and security.
This charter provides an undeniable moral and political mandate. Indonesia’s presidency, within this framework, is an operational instrument to realise the charter’s noble aims — a collective trust bestowed by the community of nations.
The Human Rights Council itself is a product of the post-Cold War collective consciousness and the failures of its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. Established by General Assembly Resolution 60/251, it was designed as a more legitimate intergovernmental body with a mandate to strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights globally.
It is a space of often-tense dialogue, a tireless advocacy arena for civil society, and a stage where mechanisms like the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and Special Procedures strive to illuminate dark corners of violations.
Within this complexity, the council president is not merely a passive moderator but a pacesetter, agenda-shaper, balance-keeper, and often a mediator in intricate political deadlocks. This position holds the key that can either unlock discussions on neglected issues or bury them in procedure.
The normative compass for the council is the International Bill of Human Rights — comprising the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
These standards are the shared measure, the common language, and the basis for demands.
Indonesia’s leadership will be judged on its ability to advance the language and spirit of these covenants, not only within the halls of Geneva but also through their resonance and enactment at the national level. It is here that the ongoing revision of Indonesia’s own Human Rights Law (Law Number 30 of 1999) transforms from a domestic legislative process into a litmus test for its international posture.
Two sides of the coin Globally, this presidency represents the pinnacle of Indonesia’s soft power diplomacy. It affirms the image of a consequential developing nation deemed capable of leading even the most sensitive conversations.
It is an invaluable platform to voice Global South perspectives, emphasise the interdependence of civil-political and socio-economic rights, and champion dialogue over confrontation.
Indonesia has the opportunity to act as a bridge-builder, spanning the divides between West and East, North and South, in an increasingly polarised human rights discourse.
Yet, behind the stage lights, the shadows are long and critical. Organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have consistently warned that leadership on the council must align with tangible commitment.
They are watching closely: Will Indonesia use its influence to push for access by special mandate-holders to global conflict zones, or will it cloak inaction in the rhetoric of state sovereignty?
Will its voice be loud in highlighting violations in one region while falling silent on another due to geopolitical and geostrategic considerations?
Herein lies the ultimate credibility test. The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) criticises Indonesia’s presidency, arguing it could swiftly become “hollow prestige” if seen merely as a product of regional rotation, not a recognition of substantive capability.
The ULMWP asserts that Indonesia is unfit for the role, pointing to allegations of a 60-year conflict in Papua, historical casualties, and comparing the situation to past international controversies.
They challenge Indonesia’s moral standing, citing unresolved historical allegations, internal displacement, and the long-standing refusal to grant access to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
This opposition underscores the profound domestic scrutiny the presidency faces: every action on the global stage will be measured against conditions in Papua, where critics describe ongoing tensions and demand immediate access for journalists and a UN visit.
The most profound implications may, in fact, unfold domestically. This presidency is a mirror forcibly held up to the nation itself. It creates unique political and moral pressure to address longstanding homework.
Issues such as freedom of expression, protection of minorities and vulnerable groups, law enforcement in cases of alleged violations, and the state of labour and environmental rights will come under a brighter international spotlight. Image: Laurens Ikinia/APR
Issues such as freedom of expression, protection of minorities and vulnerable groups, law enforcement in cases of alleged violations, and the state of labour and environmental rights will come under a brighter international spotlight.
In this context, the government’s move to revise the Human Rights Law is a direct response to this pressure.
Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai, in a meeting with Commission III of the House of Representatives (DPR) on February 2, 2026, emphasised that the drafting process involves prominent national human rights figures — including Professor Jimly Asshiddiqie, Makarim Wibisono, Haris Azhar, Rocky Gerung, Ifdhal Kasim, and Roichatul Aswidah — to ensure the revised law is “more progressive and advanced”.
The government is targeting ratification in 2026, aiming to synchronise domestic legal progress with its international leadership year.
The government thus faces a stark choice: leverage this historic moment as a catalyst for deeper legal and institutional human rights reforms, open wider dialogue with civil society, and demonstrate tangible progress anchored in a stronger law; or, wield the position merely as a diplomatic shield to deflect criticism, content with symbolism over substance, even if that symbolism includes a newly passed but weakly implemented law.
The latter would be a damaging boomerang, deepening a crisis of trust both in the eyes of its own citizens and the global community.
Indonesian civil society, conversely, holds a golden opportunity. They now have a wider door to elevate domestic issues to the global forum, using their own nation’s presidential position as an accountability tool. The involvement of activists in the law revision process is a start, but the presidency must be seen not as the sole property of the government, but as a national asset to be filled with diverse and critical voices, both sweet and bitter, to ensure the promised progress is real.
Navigating the terrain A clear-eyed SWOT analysis is indispensable for Indonesia to strategically navigate its historic presidency of the UN Human Rights Council. This framework illuminates the internal and external factors that will define its tenure, balancing inherent advantages against palpable risks, all while the domestic reform clock ticks.
Strengths: Indonesia enters this role with a formidable diplomatic toolkit. Its long-standing tradition of “free and active” foreign policy has cultivated a wide non-aligned network and substantial credibility as an independent voice in the Global South.
As the world’s third-largest democracy, it offers a practical case study in balancing governance, diversity, and development. Furthermore, its soft power assets — embodied in the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) and its narrative of moderate Islam — provide unique cultural and religious leverage to mediate polarised debates on sensitive issues like religious freedom.
Operationally, the presidency itself confers significant agenda-setting power, allowing Indonesia to prioritise thematic issues such as the right to development, climate justice, and interfaith tolerance, while influencing the appointment of key human rights investigators.
The concurrent push for a progressive Human Rights Law revision can be framed as a strength, showcasing a commitment to aligning domestic norms with international aspirations.
Weaknesses: Indonesia’s most significant vulnerability remains the perceived gap between its international advocacy and its domestic human rights landscape. Longstanding, contentious issues — including restrictions on civil liberties, protections for minorities, and unresolved past alleged violations — provide immediate fodder for critics and undermine its moral authority.
This credibility deficit is a strategic weakness that adversaries will exploit. The revision of the Human Rights Law, if perceived as a rushed or cosmetic exercise to coincide with the presidency, could exacerbate this weakness rather than alleviate it.
Additionally, the technical and political capacity of its permanent mission in Geneva will be under immense strain, tested by the need to master complex procedural rules while managing intensely politicised negotiations among competing global blocs in real-time.
Opportunities: This presidency is an unparalleled platform for strategic nation-branding, casting Indonesia as a consensus-driven, responsible global leader. Domestically, it creates a powerful political catalyst to accelerate and deepen stalled legislative reforms.
The targeted 2026 ratification of the Human Rights Law is the prime opportunity; it must be used to revitalise national human rights institutions like the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and pass long-delayed bills like the Domestic Workers Protection Bill.
Internationally, it offers the chance to operationalise its bridge-builder identity, mediating in protracted conflicts or humanitarian crises where dialogue has stalled, thereby translating diplomatic principle into tangible impact.
Successfully shepherding a meaningful domestic reform would give Indonesia undeniable moral currency in these international efforts.
Threats: The external environment is fraught with challenges. The council is often an arena for great power politicisation, where human rights issues are weaponised for geopolitical ends. Indonesia risks being ensnared in these zero-sum games, which could drain diplomatic capital and compromise its neutral stance.
Simultaneously, it faces relentless scrutiny from a vigilant transnational civil society and global media, ensuring that any perceived stagnation or regression at home — such as a watered-down Human Rights Law or continued restrictions in Papua — will trigger amplified criticism internationally.
The paramount threat, however, is the boomerang effect: that the heightened visibility of the presidency exponentially raises expectations, and the subsequent failure to demonstrate concrete progress — both in Geneva through effective leadership and in Jakarta through substantive reform—could severely damage Indonesia’s hard-won diplomatic reputation, leaving it weaker than before it assumed the chair.
Thus, Indonesia’s tenure will be a constant balancing act: leveraging its strengths to seize opportunities, while meticulously managing its weaknesses to mitigate existential threats.
The presidency is not merely a position of honour, but a high-stakes test of strategic foresight and authentic commitment, where domestic legislative action is now part of the international exam.
From symbol to substance: The path forward Indonesia’s election as the 2026 President of the UNHRC is an acknowledgment of its role and potential on the global stage. However, this acknowledgment comes as a loan of trust with very high interest: increased accountability and consistency.
The government’s own timeline, aiming to ratify a revised Human Rights Law within this same year, has voluntarily raised the stakes, tying its legacy directly to tangible domestic output.
This year of leadership is not a celebratory party, but a laboratory for authentic leadership. Its success will not be measured by the smoothness of procedural sessions or the number of meetings chaired.
It will be measured by the extent to which Indonesia can articulate and champion a vision of inclusive and just human rights globally, and — just as crucially — by the degree to which this office leaves a positive legacy for the advancement of human rights at home.
The revised Human Rights Law is poised to be the most visible component of that domestic legacy. Minister Pigai’s confidence in its progressiveness, bolstered by the involvement of respected figures, must translate into a law that meaningfully addresses past shortcomings and empowers institutions.
Indonesia stands at a crossroads. One path leads to transformative leadership, using this position to strengthen global norms while cleansing the domestic mirror through courageous reform and open engagement. The other leads to transactional leadership, leveraging prestige and a new but potentially inert law to impress without touching the core of the issues.
Indonesia’s choice will determine whether history records 2026 as the year Indonesia truly led the world on human rights by exemplifying the change it advocates, or merely performed a protocol duty on a stage where the lights are slowly fading on its credibility.
A historic mandate and its dual imperative This strategic position is a historic achievement, cementing the country’s role while presenting a real-time test of its global credibility. As a body of 47 member states, the UNHRC holds vital authority in investigating violations, conducting periodic reviews, and shaping international human rights norms. The Council President controls the agenda, guides dialogue, and, most importantly, builds consensus from diverse interests.
Indonesia is no newcomer, currently serving its sixth membership term and often as a Vice-President. Securing the top seat opens the chance to shift from “player” to “game-setter,” potentially shaping a more inclusive global human rights discourse.
This achievement is built on active diplomacy: vigorous economic and peace diplomacy (including Indonesia’s peacemaker initiatives), strengthened regional diplomacy emphasising ASEAN centrality and Global South solidarity, and a consistent multilateral commitment as a strong UN system supporter.
The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has affirmed its commitment to lead the council objectively, inclusively, and in a balanced manner. Potential agenda paths include advocating for contextualising human rights principles to be more sensitive to the historical, developmental, and socio-cultural contexts of developing nations; expanding the discourse to seriously discuss issues like corruption, environmental degradation, and electoral governance in the Council; and testing its bridge-builder capacity in acute conflicts, such as the Palestinian issue, by leading constructive diplomatic initiatives.
Ultimately, history will record not just the prestigious title of “UNHRC President,” but the substance and impact of the leadership. This position is a mirror: Is Indonesia ready to lead with consistency and firm moral principle, or will it become trapped in the contradiction between rhetoric in Geneva and reality at home?
The parallel process to revise the Human Rights Law is now part of that reflection. Its quality, its process, and its final enactment will be scrutinised as evidence of Indonesia’s sincerity.
True leadership will be measured by the courage to build bridges amid global divisions and the ability to connect words with concrete action and accountability domestically. The year 2026 will determine whether this moment is remembered as a renaissance of moral diplomacy, backed by genuine legal evolution at home, or merely a display window of symbolism where even new laws ring hollow.
The final word rests not on the title itself, but on the government’s collective actions in both the international arena and the national legislature. Success in this dual mission would add a brilliant and coherent achievement to the international record of the administration of President Prabowo Subianto and Vice-President Gibran Rakabuming Raka.
The choice — and the test — is in Indonesia’s hands.
Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 21, 2026.
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Australia’s masculine policing culture is failing women and children Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Simpson, Associate Professor in Criminology, Macquarie University Australian policing has been in the spotlight in the past few weeks. There were concerning scenes in New South Wales during protests against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit, while Queensland Police’s commitment to curtailing domestic and family violence was
Andrew’s arrest: will anything like this now happen in the US? Why hasn’t it so far? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University The stunning arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor by UK police on suspicion of misconduct in public office must have chilled many powerful American men to the bone. They may now wonder: could something like
Palau’s Supreme Court has denied an application by the Senate for a stay order on the government’s plan to take third country nationals deported from the United States.
President Surangel Whipps’ has agreed for Palau to take up to 75 people, with the US to give Palau US$7.5 million in development funds.
However, the Senate — the upper house of the Palau National Congress (Olbiil era Kelulau) — and a citizens group went to court arguing the deal is unlawful and not in Palau’s interests, but their motion has been denied.
While the Senate earlier tried to block the deal through legislation, the House of Delegates did not approve.
The President has said Palau will decide on a case by case basis which deported people are accepted.
A source within the government said it was likely that the first group of deported people to arrive in Palau would number about 10.
Whipps’ office said the Senate and traditional leaders have declined attempts to meet for discussions about the issue.
The Senate is pushing for a referendum on the issue, as indicated in a vote on the issue last month.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Known globally as one of America’s most prominent and inspiring civil rights leaders, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr twice ran for US president. He has died at 84.
Throughout his lifetime, he fought to promote social justice, economic equality and political empowerment for marginalised communities — and worked hard to encourage voter uptake from the disillusioned and excluded.
Little wonder he was outspoken against the South African apartheid regime and on Palestine. His six children described their father as a “servant leader”.
When I think of Jesse Jackson, I recall the iconic image of him standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968, moments before his mentor Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated.
I visited the site over a year ago. Now transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum, it documents the Jim Crow era both men were born into; where segregation and racism was formally normalised.
The interactive display was both moving and disturbing. It was also hopeful; a reminder of people-power movements led by those shaped by a Baptist church culture that grew the most compelling orators.
I have a personal memory of meeting Jesse Jackson one special afternoon many years ago in New York, while travelling with Deirdre Nehua and Syd Jackson.
Fearless treaty activist Syd, one of our most fearless unionists and treaty activists, passed away in 2007. Both men were intelligent, witty and passionately Kaupapa-driven; powerful speakers who used their gifts and life experience to build movements at home and beyond.
They marched and organised sit-ins. They spoke out when it wasn’t popular, put their hands up when others hesitated. They got off the fence and made a difference.
We were introduced by a mutual friend as “Māori activists from New Zealand”. A puzzled Jesse gazed at Uncle Syd.
“Where did you get that slave name from, my brother?”
Deirdre and I glanced at each other. Uncle Syd responded with a deft explanation that referred to his Welsh whakapapa and included the words both “rugby” and “colonisation”.
Afterwards, the three of us bounced around New York beaming. We’d met an inspirational leader and he now knew “Māori brothers and sisters at the bottom of the South Pacific” were in the same waka; fighting the good fight.
In the many tributes to Jesse Jackson, I noted the odd commentator described him as a “populist”. It’s a term that conjures up those who frame themselves as saviours by fomenting division and exploiting fear.
Inclusive and reformist Yet Jesse was inclusive and a reformist. Their point was about how he built coalitions that brought African Americans, Latinos, unions, rainbow communities, poor whites and working class together to fight for basic human rights inside the existing system. It’s said he frequently used his platforms to highlight Native American and Indigenous-led causes.
This week The Washington Post noted how colleges in the US are dismantling affirmative action stategies designed to overcome restrictions on participation due to race or income. Back here, calls have been made for a referendum on electorates set up to specifically provide a voice for signatories to Te Tiriti, in a system not designed by or for them.
Next week, a champion who railed against inequality will be laid to rest in his beloved Chicago. For us in Aotearoa, it’s an opportunity to reflect on his coalition-building record in this era of division and truly look around; to understand who and what the real threat to our sense of nationhood truly is.
A man of faith and hope, Jesse Jackson’s words are as relevant now as they ever were. Words matter. So does his call to action.
“It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.”
Moe mai ra e te Rangatira.
Moana Maniapoto MNZM is an Aotearoa New Zealand singer, songwriter and documentary maker, and presenter of Te Ao With Moana. This article was first published on the Te Ao FB page and is republished with permission.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The arrest comes after the US government released files that appeared to indicate he had shared official information with financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a trade envoy for the UK. But the police have not given details of exactly what they are investigating.
It is important to be clear that the arrest is not related to accusations of sexual assault or misconduct. In 2022, Mountbatten-Windsor reached a settlement with the late Virginia Giuffre for an undisclosed sum that did not include an admission of liability.
Being named in the Epstein files is not an indication of misconduct. Mountbatten-Windsor has previously denied any wrongdoing in his association with Epstein and and has previously rejected any suggestion he used his time as trade envoy to further his own interests.
What was Mountbatten-Windsor’s official role and why did he lose it?
In 2001, Tony Blair’s government made the then-prince the UK’s special representative for trade and investment. According to the government at the time, his remit was to “promote UK business internationally, market the UK to potential inward investors, and build relationships in support of UK business interests”. He did not receive a salary, but he did go on hundreds of trips to promote British businesses.
Members of the royal family are often deployed by the government on international missions to promote trade. When negotiating with other countries, particularly those which are also monarchies, sending a prominent figure like a royal may help seal the deal. Indeed, the then-government claimed that the former Duke of York’s “unique position gives him unrivalled access to members of royal families, heads of state, government ministers and chief executives of companies”.
It is not unusual for members of the royal family to be deployed by the government for diplomatic missions. Royals often host incoming state visits and lead similar visits abroad, and can be deployed to lead delegations on more specific missions.
However, Mountbatten-Windsor had an official role as trade envoy. He stepped down from this role in 2011 following reports about his friendship with Epstein, who was convicted of sex offences in 2011.
The monarch is protected by sovereign immunity, a wide-ranging constitutional principle exempting him from all criminal and civil liability. According to the leading 19th century constitutionalist Alfred Dicey, the monarch could not even be prosecuted for “shooting the Prime Minister through the head”. The Prince of Wales also enjoys immunity as Duke of Cornwall, which protects him from punishment for breaking a range of laws.
The State Immunity Act 1978, which confers immunity on the head of state, also extends to “members of the family forming part of the household”. However, this phrase has been interpreted narrowly to apply to a very tight circle of people and does not appear to apply to the monarch’s children in general. For example, in 2002 Princess Anne was prosecuted (though not arrested) for failing to control her dogs in Windsor Great Park after they bit two children.
Nevertheless, there has often been a perception that members of the royal family are held to a different standard when it comes to the law. In 2016 Thames Valley Police were criticised by anti-monarchy groups for not prosecuting the then-prince after newspaper reports alleged he had driven his car through the gates of Windsor Great Park. In 2019 the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute Prince Philip for causing a car crash which injured two people.
The monarch also cannot be compelled to give evidence in court. For example, prosecutors were unable to summon the late queen to give evidence in the trial of Princess Diana’s former butler, who was accused of stealing her jewellery.
In response to Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest, the king said: “What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and co-operation. Let me state clearly: the law must take its course.”
When was the last time a royal was arrested?
You have to go back quite a long way to find the last time that a member of the British royal family was arrested. This was during the English civil war, when Charles I was taken prisoner for treason before being found guilty and ultimately executed in 1649.
A number of royals, including Princess Anne, have committed driving-related offences, including speeding. But this arrest makes Mountbatten-Windsor the first member of the royal family to be arrested in modern times, though it should be noted that he is no longer a royal – he was stripped of all his official titles in October 2025 as his friendship with Epstein came under even more scrutiny.
What limits do police have on investigating royal estates?
Sovereign immunity also prevents police from entering private royal estates to investigate alleged crimes without permission. This can, theoretically, protect members of the royal family from arrest and prosecution. The Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017 also bans police from searching royal estates for stolen or looted artefacts.
In 2007, two hen harriers were illegally shot at Sandringham estate. However, Norfolk Police first needed to ask Sandringham officials for permission to enter the estate, by which time the dead birds’ bodies had been removed. Police questioned Prince Harry, but did not bring charges.
Other incidents have allegedly led to Sandringham being accused of becoming a wildlife crime hotspot, with at least 18 reported cases of suspected wildlife offences taking place between 2003-23 – yet only one resulting in prosecution.
Another longstanding legal precedent is that no one may be arrested in the presence of the monarch or within the precincts of a royal palace. It was thought that this rule could protect other members of the royal family and royal employees. However, Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest at Sandringham suggests that this antiquated principle may no longer hold true today.
A West Papuan leader has accused the Indonesian government of lying over its operations and “masking” the military role of some civilian aircraft.
Disputing an Indonesian government statement about reported that TPNPB fired upon an aircraft in Boven Digoel, killing both the pilot and copilot, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny said the aircraft was “not civilian”.
Benny Wenda said the Indonesian government was “tricking the world” about its military operations in West Papua.
“The Cessna plane the TPNPB [West Papua National Liberation Army] fired upon in Boven Digoel was not a civilian plane, as the police spokesman misleadingly stated, but part of a security operation,” Wenda said.
“Indonesia is again disguising their military activity as [civilian] activity. They are also willfully breaching the no-fly zones established by the TPNPB.”
The occupied conflict areas in which the Indonesian military TNI were “not permitted to fly” had been “clearly marked out by the TPNPB”.
“This is the same pattern Indonesia used in 1977, when Indonesia used a disguised civilian plane to bomb villages across the highlands and massacre thousands, including many members of my own family,” Wenda said.
Clear strategy He added there was a clear strategy behind this — “Indonesia wants to avoid the attention that would be drawn by a large scale military buildup, so they mask their introduction of weapons and other military equipment and personnel”.
Wenda said they were effectively “using their own people as human shields”.
Indonesian soldiers and equipment next to a civilian aircraft. Image: ULMWP
Indonesian troops boarding a civilian aircraft in the West Papua Highlands. Image: ULMWP video screenshot APR
The TPNPB attacks took place on February 11, with the plane being downed and the pilot and co-pilot being killed.
A second attack took place in Mimika, near the Grasberg gold and copper mine, which has been the cause of so much West Papuan deaths over the past 40 years.
“Indonesia then immediately began operating their propaganda machine, claiming that the planes were simply engaged in civilian and medical supply distribution,” Wenda said.
“The truth is that these aircraft were involved in intelligence and security operations.
Media blackout “Indonesia is only able to spread these lies and mislead the international community because of their six-decades long media blackout in West Papua.
“No journalists or NGOs are allowed to operate in our land. West Papua is a closed society, just like North Korea. I thank God we have civilian journalists to document their lies.”
By breaching these rules the military were inviting further attacks, Wenda said.
“We must always remember that the Indonesian military uses any armed action by West Papuans for their own gain, as a pretext for more militarisation, more displacement, and more deforestation and ecocide.”
Wenda said their aim was always to escalate the situation as a way of ethnically cleansing Papuans, forcing them to become refugees in their own land, and strengthening their colonial hold over West Papua.
“It isn’t a coincidence that in the week since this incident we have seen an escalation in Yahukimo, an Indonesia-occupied community health centre, and transformed it into a military post, displacing and traumatising local residents.”
Using hospitals and other health infrastructure for military means was a clear breach of international humanitarian law, Wenda said.
Normal for military In West Papua such behaviour was normal for the military.
“In the same week in Puncak regency, Indonesian military personnel seized a school, preventing students from learning and putting ordinary people at risk of harm. Soldiers are posted in classrooms with guns.”
Wenda called on the Indonesian government to withdraw their troops from occupied West Papua, allow civilians to return home, cease using civilian vehicles as a cover for military action, and immediately facilitate a UN Human Rights visit to West Papua — as has been demanded by more than 110 UN Member states.
“Ultimately, Indonesia must come to the table to discuss a referendum,” Wenda said. “This is the only path to a peaceful solution in West Papua.”
When a royal faces scrutiny, it can feel like a rupture with tradition. Yet across the ages, British royals have repeatedly fallen under suspicion. What makes the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor so striking is that we have to reach back to the 17th century to find anything comparable.
The royals are by no means strangers to scandal, but allegations of law-breaking are another matter entirely. Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall from grace will have huge repercussions for the British royals, and it also gives us an insight into how the handling of the royals has changed since Queen Elizabeth’s death.
When the crown fell
This is not the first time the British royals have crossed paths with the law. In 1483, Richard III became associated with the disappearance of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. The two princes were legitimate heirs and therefore direct threats to Richard’s claim to the throne. He was never tried in court, and historians still debate the evidence.
The most dramatic confrontation between monarchy and law came with Charles I. He was accused of treason during the English Civil War. He was arrested in 1649, tried and publicly executed. This act stunned Europe and shattered the belief royals were above the law.
As a consequence, England abolished the monarchy and became a republic under Oliver Cromwell. So the last time a member of the royal family was arrested and tried, the crown itself fell.
That precedent matters because it underscores how rare royal arrests are. For more than three centuries the monarchy has avoided that spectacle. The fact Andrew’s arrest forces comparison with Charles I reveals how rare the moment is.
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Reputation as royal strategy
By the 19th century, the monarchy survived less through force and more through reputation. Under Queen Victoria (1837-1901), the crown cultivated domestic virtue and moral seriousness as a shield against instability. Respectability became a strategic defence against scandal.
However, fame and power inevitably lead to very high public interest, and scandals made their way into print culture and later mass media. Prince Albert Victor, the grandson of Queen Victoria, was accused of being Jack the Ripper. It’s a claim historians have largely rejected as conspiracy theory, yet it persists because it speaks to fears about royal cover-ups.
James II was removed from the throne in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution amid claims he undermined Protestantism laws and promoted Catholic officials. His perceived abuse of power, rather than a single prosecutable crime, cost him the throne.
In the 20th century, Edward VIII generated a different kind of unease. After his abdication in 1936, evidence emerged of his sympathy toward Nazi Germany followed by his 1937 meeting with Adolf Hitler in Germany. While there was no prosecution, it did cause serious damage to Edward’s standing and public trust.
The collapse of deference
For much of the 20th century, the monarchy operated within a culture of deference. The press refrained from reporting royals’ private lives and indiscretions were quietly managed. The arrangement insulated the royal family from sustained exposure. However, this began to change after a series of scandals in the 1990s. This eventually led Elizabeth II to call 1992 her annus horribilis.
The rise of tabloid journalism eroded old boundaries, and digital media dissolved them entirely. Silence now intensifies suspicion rather than calming it, as was the case with royal silence about the Princess of Wales’ health in early 2024, forcing them to go public with her cancer battle.
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Influence, access and optics
Even before Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest, the optics were damaging.
His arrest lands in this transformed landscape. During his tenure as the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, he cultivated relationships with political leaders and wealthy business figures across the Middle East and Central Asia. Critics questioned whether he blurred the line between official trade promotion and private networking.
The 2010 “cash for access” episode involving Mountbatten-Windsor’s wife Sarah Ferguson deepened that perception. She was filmed offering introductions to Andrew in exchange for substantial payment. Although she apologised and Andrew denied involvement, the imagery of monetised proximity to the crown was corrosive.
In 2021, an undercover investigation suggested the queen’s cousin Prince Michael of Kent was prepared to use his royal status to assist a fictitious company in exchange for payment. He denied wrongdoing, but the harm was done.
A brand without insulation
Under Elizabeth II, longevity conferred authority and steadiness that often softened scandal. Under Charles II, the institution appears more exposed. Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest disrupts and exposes the royal family to reputational damage. While he was later released, the scandal still has a long way to play out.
Charles is a constitutional monarch. He can’t interfere in police investigations or prosecutorial decisions without provoking a constitutional crisis. His authority is symbolic rather than executive.
But he can excise Andrew’s inner circle, including his daughters, further from public life. He has already stripped his brother of his royal titles and told him to leave his home, Royal Lodge.
Yet even that has limits. Charles’s power now rests less on control than on credibility. In a permanently watchful society, judgement is delivered not in private but in full view.
The precedent that lingers
The last time a reigning monarch was arrested, England abolished the monarchy and became a republic. The historical echo is impossible to ignore. It reminds us that when the crown becomes entangled with criminal process, the consequences resonate beyond the individual.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest underscores how fragile that trust can be and how decisively it is shaped by the court that really matters, that of public opinion. While Andrew is not the king, the scandal may have been softened if his brother Charles acted more decisevly and sooner to remove him from the inner circles of the monarchy.
Royal scandals chip away at the sense of mystery that has long protected the crown. The monarchy survives not because it holds real political power, but because it represents stability, dignity and something slightly removed from everyday life.
When royals are caught up in scandal, that sense of distance collapses, and the institution can begin to feel more fragile than untouchable.
Good adaptations take advantage of the affordances the cinematic medium provides, so some changes are permissible. Fennell goes well beyond this, altering essential characters, relationships and themes to the point that the film feels like erotic fan-fiction with a Hollywood budget.
To synopsise, Brontë’s story is a tragedy of intergenerational trauma. It follows Heathcliff, an abused serial abuser, and Catherine, an intergenerational manipulator. The pair’s toxic relationship – and mutual revenge on everyone they knew (beyond the grave in Catherine’s case) – wreaks havoc.
Visually loud, emotionally mute
Given its tagline “the greatest love story ever told”, Fennell’s film was destined to make some changes.
The frame narrative of the novel is missing. The novel is told through housekeeper Nelly Dean, who is recounting it to Heathcliff’s tenant, Lockwood. The film, meanwhile, starts in Catherine’s childhood and ends at her death.
This also means Fennell stops short of the final act of the novel. In doing so, she omits an entire generation of important characters on whom the original Catherine and Heathcliff – two traumatised, irredeemable wrecking balls – foist their damage.
The interpersonal dynamics that underpin Brontë’s story are warped into a vacuous caricature, missing the point with virtuosic flair. And make no mistake: there is flair. The visual design is bombastic, pointedly anachronistic, and utterly at odds with the novel’s gloomy Gothic countenance.
The opulent, richly saturated sets veer sharply from Brontë’s bleak, wind-swept moors.Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Brontë’s perpetually grey and haunted moors are swapped for technicolour highlights, elaborate outfits and, at times, saturated tangerine sunsets. It watches like Sofia Coppola attempting Edgar Allan Poe – or a Charli XCX clip (guess who wrote the original soundtrack). This is an odd liberty for a film named after the story’s original setting – the stormy Wuthering Heights estate.
As pioneering Gothic theorists Sanda Gilbert and Susan Gubar write, the Heights in the novel are blanketed by “a general air of sour hatred” that manifests as “continual, aimless violence”.
In the Gothic, setting functions as a haunted presence that reflects the characters’ aberrant psychological states. The past haunts, even when there are no ghosts.
Fennell’s version retains the melodrama, but not the foreboding, hate and malice. And despite the explicit sexuality (none of which appears in the novel beyond euphemism), her take on the story feels oddly toothless. Neutered, even. It trades Gothic for vaudeville.
The erasure of Hindley and Heathcliff
To say the film lacks the novel’s social commentary is an understatement.
From the opening scene, the changes to the source material are clear. We see a young Catherine witnessing a hanged man with an erection – and this tone remains for the entire runtime.
Hindley – Catherine’s brother who forces Heathcliff into servitude, and is arguably the lynchpin of Heathcliff’s revenge – is also entirely absent from the film.
Literary critic Terry Eagleton notes how it is Hindley’s inherited status that enables his abuse of Heathcliff. It is Heathcliff’s lack of wealth, status and property that sees Catherine wed the wealthy Edgar Linton; and, as theorist Arnold Kettle argues, it is Heathcliff’s weaponisation of wealth and inheritance that finally serves as his vehicle for revenge.
To remove these factors is to remove the novel’s entire moral framework.
In the film, Heathcliff’s grievances shrink to Catherine choosing to marry Edgar Linton. This is as close as the film comes to the novel’s treatment of classism, racism and intergenerational trauma.
Likewise, ending on Catherine’s death erases the consequences of the deuteragonists’ manipulations – namely the suffering of their respective children and servants.
The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has its own controversy. In the novel, Heathcliff’s ambiguous racial identity, within the context of Georgian England, shapes almost every interaction he has.
Even though it’s not clear what his racial identity is (some scholars point to hints that suggest he may have escaped from slavery), his character is defined by “othering”. This is something Elordi’s Heathcliff is at no risk of believably experiencing.
The film flattens the novel’s broader account of how trauma replicates across generations, and how systemic marginalisation can both attract and beget abuse.
Jacob Elordi’s casting sidesteps the racialised marginalisation central to Heathcliff’s character.Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
On abuse – perhaps Fennell’s strangest departure from the source material is reframing Heathcliff’s treatment of Isabella (Edgar Linton’s sister and later Heathcliff’s wife) as a consensual BDSM dynamic.
Brontë’s Heathcliff terrorises Isabella physically and emotionally, and implicitly sexually, until she flees with their son.
The switch from repressed, complex desire in the novel to explicit sex scenes (absent from the book), and the rewriting of abuse as kink, seems to cater to audiences raised on post-50 Shades Of Grey erotica rather than Victorian Gothic.
Literary classics for a Tiktok generation
Like 2020’s colourful Austen adaptation, Emma (well received as a film, but criticised as an adaptation), Fennell’s Wuthering Heights signals a trend towards the “tiktokification” of literary adaptations.
Hollywood has long taken liberties with books, but this recent wave feels engineered for clips, reels and virality, rather than the necessary sacrifices of adaptation.
We know it’s possible to have adaptations with both flair and substance. Consider Baz Luhrmann. The Oscar-nominated Romeo + Juliet (1996) is just as visually bombastic, yet the extent of verbatim Shakespeare retains a dedication to the source that Fennell’s film lacks.
So what does it have to offer? Virality. Even this article contributes to the internet firestorm that will ensure Wuthering Heights’ commercial success. It will ragebait critics far longer than such a limp effort deserves – and we are all its victims.
This story oscillates and swells around a glass outdoor table, on the porch of a family home on Larrakia land. A table almost identical to the one on my porch back home. I point this out to my sis as the bubbling opening night crowd pours into the Merlyn Theatre, in the Malthouse on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nation.
I am a proud Dabee Wiradjuri person and theatre maker. My family’s table is held by cold Ngarigo Country, in the alpine plains where I grew up. A far cry from the salty humid air of Larrakia land where this table and this story are set. I do not know Larrakia Country well, only faint memories of glowing sky, crocs and giant mystical trees from when I visited family as a child.
But this table, I do know.
I wonder who else in this auditorium knows this table? Or what is their version of this table? Where do they and their people gather?
Aunty and Bub confront their deeply rooted fears, pain and wisdom on Country.Pia Johnson/Malthouse Theatre
My table back home has held more cups of tea with my family than I can possibly count, summer storm watching, rain bird listening, laughter, tears and silence. If my understanding of this table is even somewhat similar to that of Larrakia mother, writer, director Jada Alberts, then my heart is in for a ride.
Around the Black Light table, we are met by four inimitable First Nations women and actors: Trisha Morton-Thomas (Nan), Rachael Maza (Aunty), Lisa Maza (Mum) and Tahlee Fereday (Bub).
Each of these women is holding the strength of the people and places that have come before and after them. The audience is also there with a lineage that has led us all to this very moment. I wonder how many people will go home and think of all the people and places that have come together in them?
Love and magic
Four women across three generations come together in the wake of an unnamed national crisis. There are allusions to climate disaster with regular power outages, unrest in the city and storms scoring the play. There are resonances of lockdowns from a not-so-distant past, or the possibility this is a crisis in a not-so-distant future.
Following a relationship breakdown, Bub has returned home from the bustle of the city with their children in tow. Nan’s memory is declining; Mum is always working; Aunty, Nan’s main carer, is lonely.
This is the first time in a long time they have all been together – and possibly the first time they have been forced to speak the unspeakable.
Trisha Morton-Thomas as Nan brings equal parts joy and tenderness to the stage.Pia Johnson/Malthouse Theatre
Morton-Thomas as Nan has us in the palm of her hand. When she giggles, we giggle. When she cries, we weep. She so beautifully carries us between worlds, dipping in and out of lucidity, the liminal, the here, the past and into a dreamscape of a beyond. We follow her as our guide through both the surreal and domestic non-linear form this play traversed.
“This is magic and magic is love,” Nan says. Tonight, there is a whole lot of love and undeniable magic.
On the topic of magic, the Maza sisters are a force to be reckoned with. Returning to the stage together for the first time in 17 years, the synergy of these real-life sisters playing fictional sisters is truly palpable. As they began to bicker for the first time, you can feel an energy spill across the audience: a collective strapping in.
The head-to-head, sarcastic side eyes from Aunty and deathly glares from Mum have the audience cackling. The comedy lulls us into a false sense of security, momentarily forgetting the ecological and familial crisis on the horizon.
Tahlee Fereday’s Bub embodies the state of being on the precipice of crisis. Bub is lost and needs to find their way back home. Nan repeats, “Just reach out bub” – Country is waiting.
I have the immense privilege of calling Tahlee a friend and colleague. In the real world, she is a laugh a minute. Here as Bub, Tahlee is grounded, authentic and captivating. Her delivery of the final monologue flaws me in its vulnerability.
Melbourne-based actor Tahlee Fereday plays Bub, teetering on the precipice of crisis, with compassion, depth and humour.Pia Johnson/Malthouse Theatre
Country speaks loudly
I cried before, during and after the show.
Before, reading Albert’s writer and director’s note honouring their grandmothers and generously inviting us to listen to Nan’s words:
I hope her words remind you of your own humanity, your interconnectedness, to every living thing and the Country that holds you.
During, between the laughs, as I experienced the brave truth telling and poetic reclamation of grief, trauma, love, loss and survival in the colonial project. Country speaks loudly: no words, but we heard her.
After, remembering – just like Albert’s – my own grandmother turns 90 this year. The staunch matriarch and pillar of my family. So much of her is in me, her love, her magic (which Nan says is the same thing).
I can’t wait to call my grandma and tell her all about this play.
This will be one of those plays that stays with us another 17 years from now.Pia Johnson/Malthouse Theatre
As I write this now, I still feel as though my heart is on the outside of my body – “good ways”.
Thank you Jada, for sharing the story of your motherhood and the mothers who came before you. Thank you Malthouse for programming this work to open the 2026 season.
I know this will be one of those plays that stays with us another 17 years from now.
Black Light is at Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, until March 7.
Anyone who engages in serious dialogue with a Large Language Model (LLM) may get the impression they are interacting with an intelligence. But many experts in the field argue the impression is just that. In philosopher Daniel Dennett’s words, such systems display “competence without comprehension”.
The hype about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) from big corporations and their celebrity spokespersons has prompted a backlash, in which scepticism turns to cynicism, often tinged with paranoia about how “stochastic parrots” may start to control our lives.
“Intelligence” itself has become an overheated topic, one that calls for less assertiveness, more cool thinking, and refreshed attempts at a starting point.
Review: What is Intelligence: Lessons from AI about Evolution, Computing, and Minds – Blaise Agüera y Arcus (MIT Press)
What Is Intelligence? by Google luminary Blaise Agüera y Arcus is the first book in a new series from MIT in collaboration with Antikythera, a think tank focused on “planetary-scale computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force”. A foreword from series editor Benjamin Bratton makes the bold claim that “computation is a technology to think with” and that the building blocks of our reality are themselves computational.
Research on intelligence has a chequered history, tainted by eugenics, statistical manipulation and a banal obsession with metrics. Agüera y Arcas counters this by opening up the topic as wide as it can go. A physics graduate with a background in computational neuroscience, he is something of a polymath. He draws explanatory frameworks from microbiology, philosophy, linguistics, cybernetics, neuroscience and industrial history.
His book presents almost as a sequence of foundation lectures in these areas. Its release has been accompanied by dozens of online talks and interviews, in which Agüera y Arcas presents the case that we are up for a seismic shift in how we think about intelligence – biological and artificial.
“Few mainstream authors claim that AI is ‘real’ intelligence,” he writes. “I do.”
Could the nerds be right?
The fundamental case against the “I” in AI is that intelligence is organic, derived from sensory interaction with a physical environment. Agüera y Arcas turns the tables with the premise that computation is the substrate for intelligence in all life forms.
The claim builds on an apparently crude proposition: prediction is the fundamental principle behind intelligence and “may be the whole story”.
What he means by prediction here is something much more radical than what we see with autocorrect. He explains it in biological terms as a process of pattern development. Single cells like bacteria predict sequences of events that may influence their capacity for survival. The synaptic learning rules in single neurons give rise to local sequence prediction.
Agüera y Arcas recounts how his journey into the enigmatic terrain of AI reached a turning point with his counterintuitive recognition that “the nerds were right”: in computation, bigger really was better and might actually be the key to moving from Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) – the kind that can play chess – to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which can participate in a philosophical discussion.
Setting aside his contempt for the apparently simplistic dedication to scaling up, Agüera y Arcas returned to the biology lab for a reassessment of what was observable in living systems. If every form of life is an aggregation of cooperative parts, he reasoned, the evolution of cells into organs and organisms may be a matter of predictive modelling.
A central tenet of What is Intelligence? is that every form of life is an aggregation of cooperative parts. Links proliferate through patterns that enable increasingly complex functions. When Agüera y Arcas says the brain is computational, it’s not a metaphor: it is not that brains are like computers, they are computers.
Correlations between biological and mechanical forms of intelligence are his deep and abiding interest. What is Intelligence? follows What is Life?, a shorter book in which Agüera y Arcas lays the groundwork for this larger, more ambitious publication.
These are the originators of modern thinking about artificial intelligence, and the quest for origins runs through all Agüera y Arcas’ lines of enquiry.
It is worth noting that Antikythera, the publishing series launched with this book, is named after an ancient device found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, which has been called the original analog computer.
Computation was discovered as much as it was invented, Bratton says in his foreword. This might apply to the Antikythera. If it is indeed the first computer, it was literally discovered at the bottom of an ocean.
But it corroborates Bratton’s statement in another sense. As a device for tracking astronomical phenomena, the Antikythera testifies to computation as an aspect of how the universe works.
Getting specific about origins
Agüera y Arcas wants to get more specific about origins. How does pattern emerge from randomness? How does code emerge from an unorganised soup of molecules?
In approaching these questions, he takes his cue from Turing and von Neumann, whose experiments anticipated the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953. The 1936 Turing machine established a minimalist prototype for computational function with the simple components of a coded tape and a read/write head. Von Neumann brought in a focus on embodied computation, where the components of the machine or body are part of what is written.
This is where Agüera y Arcas situates his work. His breakthrough came from adopting a programming language, devised in 1993, called “Brainfuck”. With just eight command symbols, Brainfuck set the parameters for a controlled experiment, in which Agüera y Arcas and his team used 64 byte tapes coded with “junk” drawn from a soup of code and data.
In the experiment, two tapes are selected at random, joined end to end, and run to test for interaction patterns. Then it’s rinse and repeat. The tapes are returned to the soup, and two more are run.
At first, nothing much shows up amidst the randomness. But after a million or so repeats (not massive in computing terms) the magic starts to happen. Loops appear. Patterns emerge. At around the five million mark, the non-functional code or “Turing gas” transforms itself into a “computorium” of replicating code.
In lectures, Agüera y Arcas shows a screenshot of this on his laptop: a vertical line down the centre of the field of data marks the “phase transition”. The image is reproduced on the cover of his book, as an emblem of the paradigm shift he is tracking.
If the transition to replicating code is indeed an expression of what is happening in the development of life forms, the theory of natural selection may lose its claim to primacy as the explanatory model for evolution. Richard Dawkins enthusiasts, hang on to your hats.
Agüera y Arcas does not engage in a polemical critique of Dawkins, but his book brings Margulis, an early adversary of Dawkins, into the centre of the arena. The pair faced off in a public debate in Oxford in 2009, where Dawkins’ popularised concept of the “selfish gene” came under pressure from Margulis’ theory of symbiogenesis, literally genesis through combination or fusion.
The Dawkins account is based on a Darwinian view of natural selection through competitive advantage; Margulis was drawing on research into the formation of microorganisms through combinations of mitochondria and chloroplasts, once independent life forms.
It was survival of the fittest versus a vision of biological complexity generated through endosymbiosis, a relationship in which one organism lives inside another, potentially resulting in a new life form – or, as Agüera y Arcas sees it, an impetus towards “fit” understood as pattern completion, rather than “fitness” understood as advantage.
Microbiologist Lynn Margulis was an early adversary of Richard Dawkins’ theory of the ‘selfish gene’.Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Prediction and function
Agüera y Arcas’ central concepts are prediction and function, which work together to explain intelligence as the development of functional complexity through predictive pattern completion.
He is erasing a familiar conceptual boundary here: intelligence does not prompt function, it is function.
Intelligence, he argues, is a property of systems rather than beings, and function is its primary indicator. A rock does not function, but a kidney does. This is demonstrated simply by cutting them in half. The rock becomes two rocks, but the kidney is no longer a kidney.
So does a kidney have intelligence? Or an amoeba? Or a leaf? These questions are opened up, along with the question of whether Large Language Models have intelligence, which may a better way to frame it than asking whether they are intelligent.
Agüera y Arcas is not alone in taking an affirmative position. Influential biologist Michael Levin runs a research laboratory at Tufts University, where he and his team study the functional correlations between natural organisms and synthetic or chimeric life forms in search of “intelligence behaviour in unfamiliar guises”.
Their declared goal is to develop modes of communication with truly diverse intelligences, including cells, tissues, organs, synthetic living constructs, robots and software-based AIs.
Such an approach steers a course between the stochastic parrots view and biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance,” which proposes that organic form is a manifestation of memory, resonating through generations as genetic heritage. Agüera y Arcas avoids both Sheldrake’s intuitive and telepathic orientations, and the hard-headed constraints of mechanistic determinism.
The thesis presented in What is Intelligence? is unfamiliar rather than intrinsically difficult. Much of the explanation is easy enough for the general reader to follow, though Agüera y Arcas has a tendency to veer into more the technical and abstract terrain of programming, as if addressing an insider audience. The extensive glossary does not include standard programming terms, such as logic gates, gradients, weights and backpropagation.
At over 600 pages, What is Intelligence? is a marathon read and it is encumbered by tangential excursions. I’m not sure why Agüera y Arcas needs to go into the history of industrialisation, or anthropological studies of the Pirahā people of the Amazon. This is a book for dipping into rather than swallowing whole.
But its ideas are important. They may well be part of a major transformation in our thinking about where human intelligence sits in the rapidly evolving environment of AI.
These issues might appear to be separate, but they both highlight a masculinity problem within Australian policing.
It may be time for an Australian version of the United Kingdom’s 2023 Baroness Casey Review, which exposed worrying behaviour and cultural issues inside the UK’s Metropolitan Police Service.
Violence and a lack of support
In Sydney, the policing of protesters against the visit of Herzog led to serious questions about the use of force.
Protesters were pepper sprayed and forcibly penned in by police, leaving a 69-year-old woman with four broken vertebrae.
Meanwhile in Queensland, a tribunal revealed this month that the Queensland Police Service (QPS) had refused to discipline an officer accused of serious domestic violence against his heavily pregnant partner, citing “no tangible benefit” to doing so.
This comes at a time when domestic and family violence incidents reported to police in Queensland increased by more than 220% between 2012 and 2024, with many victims left waiting hours or days for help.
Each of these events is of significant concern in its own right.
But put together, they present a far more troubling picture and raise the question of whether Australian policing has a problem with gender.
Not simply in how it responds to violence against women but in how an increasingly masculine institutional culture shapes what policing looks like, what it prioritises and ultimately who is protected.
Worrying cultures
Following the 2020 murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children by her former partner, and the 2021 Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce’s “Hear Her Voice” report, the Queensland government established a Commission of Inquiry into policing responses to domestic and family violence.
Its report found a culture of “sexism, misogyny and racism” across the service, with “negative attitudes towards women” that “inhibits the policing of domestic and family violence”.
In NSW, a 2023 Law Enforcement Conduct Commission review of police responses to domestic and family violence found such incidents account for 40% of all police work. That is around 500 incidents every day.
Yet, the review found basic failures in recording, training and victim support. It also found 60 officers were involved in domestic and family violence incidents. Some were investigated more than once.
In more than three quarters of cases, those officers were investigated by colleagues from their own command. In most, there was no record of whether their firearms had been removed.
In Victoria, 683 Victoria Police staff were investigated for alleged sex crimes and family violence offences between 2019 and 2024 – the majority of whom were uniformed officers. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton called the figure “alarming”.
This follows the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission’s 2015 Independent Review which found an “entrenched culture of everyday sexism” and a “high tolerance for sexual harassment” across the force.
These reports all identify cultures of misogyny, sexism and basic operational failures in responding to violence against women.
But what none of them quite names is what sits behind all of it: men, and a deeply entrenched culture of masculinity.
As Amanda Keddie – a Deakin University professor who has researched gender equality in police forces – argues, the hierarchical and masculinised cultures within policing have been “taken for granted and unquestioned”.
They remain unnamed in report after report, even as they shape every failing those reports describe.
Commissioned after the 2021 abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer, Casey found a rampant “boys’ club culture” that privileged white male officers while sidelining women, Black and gay colleagues.
At the same time, services for violence against women and girls were hollowed out, with rape kits stored in broken freezers held shut with bungee cords.
gender inequality will not be addressed without transforming the hierarchical and masculinised cultures of policing organisations.
The Casey Review offers a blueprint: specialist units for violence against women, independent oversight of police-perpetrated abuse and mandatory standards on vetting and misconduct.
In Australia, this means working to systemically change police cultures that were built by, and for, a narrow demographic which does not reflect the diversity of the communities they are meant to serve.
It means resourcing specialist domestic violence commands rather than dismantling them, holding officers who perpetrate violence to account, and recruiting and promoting in ways that genuinely reshape who polices and how.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 20, 2026.
Friday essay: ‘red flags’ and ‘performative reading’ – what do our reading choices say about us? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology What do our reading choices say about us? When teaching creative writing and literature classes, I always ask my students about their favourite genres and current reading in the first week. It is
SA Newspoll shows Liberal wipeout likely; Victorian Morgan poll puts One Nation first on primaries 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 A South Australian Newspoll has given the Liberals just 14% of the primary vote, four weeks before the state election. And in a Victoria Morgan poll, One
Humanoid home robots are on the market – but do we really want them? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eduardo B. Sandoval, Scientia Researcher, Social Robotics, UNSW Sydney Last year, Norwegian-US tech company 1X announced a strange new product: “the world’s first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home”. Standing 168 centimetres tall and weighing in at 30 kilograms, the US$20,000 Neo bot promises
Is couples counselling right for me and will the therapist take sides? An expert explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Priscilla Dunk-West, Professor of Social Work, Victoria University Should we do couples counselling? Are we happy? Are we both pulling in the same direction? How can we get our spark back? These kinds of questions are normal in a society that places such importance on coupledom, despite
Not just sport and car crashes: debunking 5 myths about traumatic brain injury in NZ Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Jones, Associate Professor of Pediatric Neuropsychology, Auckland University of Technology Touching the lives of an average 110 people each day in Aotearoa, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is much more common than any of us would like it to be. Yet it is often misunderstood, underestimated and
Diversity programs have become a tick-the-box exercise. They need to become more political, not less Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celina McEwen, Senior Researcher in Sociology of Work, University of Technology Sydney Diversity programs are a favourite target of right-wing populists who claim they represent a radical left agenda that is politicising workplaces. Our research shows something quite different. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) isn’t failing because
SpaceX rocket left behind a plume of chemical pollution as it burnt up in the atmosphere Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn Schofield, Professor and Associate Dean (Environment and Sustainability in Faculty of Science), The University of Melbourne Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found. Published today in the
Almost half of antibiotic prescribing for surgery is inappropriate, new report shows Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allen Cheng, Professor of Infectious Diseases, Monash University Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing around the time of surgery and long-term prescribing in aged care are among a mixed bag of findings of a recent report into antibiotic use and resistance in Australia. The report shows while fewer antibiotics are
Dramatic changes in upper atmosphere are responsible for recent droughts and bushfires: new research Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Over the past decade, southern Australia has suffered numerous extreme weather and climate events, such as record-breaking heatwaves, bushfires, two major droughts and even flash flooding. While Australia has always had these disasters,
More women are professors, but gender gaps continue to plague NZ universities Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hebert-Losier, Associate Professor in Sports Biomechanics, University of Waikato Universities play a crucial role in achieving gender equality, but persistent disparities in leadership, pay and research opportunities continue to shape women’s careers in academia. Globally, only 36% of senior academics are women. In Aotearoa New Zealand,
Why has Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor been arrested, and what legal protections do the royal family have? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francesca Jackson, PhD candidate, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The arrest comes after the US government released files that appeared to indicate he had shared official information with financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey
The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn’t cheating – it’s the erosion of learning itself Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Applied Ethics Center, UMass Boston Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it? These concerns are
Why Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ endures Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Virginia Raguin, Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emerita, College of the Holy Cross Michelangelo’s fresco of “The Last Judgment,” covering the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, is being restored. The work, which started on Feb. 1, 2026, is expected to continue for
Why the ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ have echoed with public support – unlike the campus of Kent State in 1970 Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory P. Magarian, Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis The president announces an aggressive, controversial policy. Large groups of protesters take to the streets. Government agents open fire and kill protesters. All of these events, familiar from Minneapolis in 2026, also
Streetlights in Lagos can boost safety and grow the economy. Why not everyone benefits Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adewumi Badiora, Senior Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Olabisi Onabanjo University Nigeria is urbanising at a remarkable speed. Some of the world’s fastest growing cities are in the west African country. With the current rate of urbanisation, Kano, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt will surpass
Former Fiji prime minister and ex-police commissioner on bail in inciting mutiny case By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior journalist Fiji’s former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and ex-police commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho are out on bail after appearing in court, charged with inciting mutiny. The pair appeared for a first call before the Suva Magistrates Court yesterday and were granted bail under strict conditions. Magistrate Yogesh Prasad also issued
‘Antisemitism training’ at universities. Labor’s march to authoritarianism From curbing protests to controlling what can be said in Australia, state and Federal Labor governments are becoming authoritarian. Next in line is the thought police entering campus. Nick Riemer reports for Michael West Media. ANALYSIS: By Nick Riemer In December, the NSW Labor government gave itself the power to ban street marches for an
Grattan on Friday: Can Angus Taylor get beyond slogans to craft a sound immigration policy? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra This week we pressed the rewind button on the Pauline tape, back to Hanson maxing out with inflammatory statements about Muslims, attracting a blaze of publicity and widespread outrage. Or, given One Nation’s surging polls, have we pushed the fast
Why one of Australia’s most successful TV production companies is being shut down Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Hart, Associate Professor, Film Screen & Animation, Queensland University of Technology Members of the Australian screen industry have been shocked to learn one of the nation’s most successful and prolific production companies, Matchbox Pictures – and its subsidiary Tony Ayres Productions – will shut their doors
With more restrictive laws across the country, how can we protect the right to protest? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria O’Sullivan, Associate Professor of Law, Member of Deakin Cyber and the Centre for Law as Protection, Deakin University, Deakin University In the wake of the Bondi terror attack, multiple state governments have passed laws to restrict mass protests. Most notably, the New South Wales government introduced
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