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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Kidson, Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Australian Catholic University

Almost half of surveyed Australia’s school principals face physical violence in their jobs. Almost 90% say they encounter offensive behaviour from students, parents and even colleagues, according to new survey results.

The latest instalment in an annual survey of Australian principals shows how their exposure to aggression risks becoming normalised in schools.

Principals also report they work an average of 54 hours a week. They say the sheer quantity of work is their biggest source of stress. As one principal from a Catholic high school told us, “this job is getting harder every year”.

What can governments and education systems do to help?

Our research

Since 2011, our study has collected the experiences of 2,000–2,500 Australian school principals per year.

This is now the 15th year of the study and over that time, 8,100 individual school leaders have completed at least one survey. This includes principals as well as other senior teachers, such as deputy principals.

Respondents come from primary and high schools around the country, and across the public, private and Catholic sectors.

Given there are less than 10,000 schools across the nation, this is a strong sample of the people who lead our schools.

When this many leaders speak, we should listen.

Reports of violence are growing

In 2025, nearly half of school leaders reported being subjected to physical violence. Almost 54% experienced threats of violence. Students were the most common source of physical violence, while parents were the main source of threats.

As the chart below shows, these reports have increased significantly since the survey started in 2011.

Rates of violence at this magnitude would be considered unacceptable in many other professions.

Meanwhile, almost 90% of respondents say they are subject to some form of unacceptable/offensive behaviour in their jobs. This includes physical threats, sexual harassment, unpleasant teasing, cyberbullying and gossip.

As one primary school teacher told us:

When I became a principal I didn’t expect to be mired in managing adult behaviour. I thought it would be about instructional leadership and inspiring educators. I didn’t realise how I would be subject to manipulation and need to respond like a lawyer – with extreme care and explicit language which leaves no room for interpretation.

What else did we find?

School leaders continue to work long hours, averaging 53.9 hours per week during term and 19.6 hours during holidays. This is well above an average working week in Australia (about 38 hours). There has been some reduction in reported hours worked. In 2011, 27% of participants reported working 60 hours or more, which has reduced to 22% in 2025.

Unsurprisingly, principals report mental health issues and plans to leave their jobs:

• 25% scored at least a “moderate” rating for anxiety and 23% scored at least a “moderate” rating for depression

• 54% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I often seriously consider leaving my current job”. This is up slightly from last year.

As one respondent from a private high school told us:

The challenges of reduced funding combined with growing expectations from all stakeholders make it more and more difficult to meet the demands of the role […] I am not sure how this will be sustainable for the next generation of principals.

New rules for schools

Across the life of the project, we have seen important changes to try and improve conditions for principals.

The Victorian, Queensland, and NSW governments have introduced programs to reduce administrative loads, and public campaigns have tried to build community respect for the teaching profession.

Some states have developed programs to support aspiring principals.

Just last week, the NSW government introduced legislation to address aggressive parental behaviour, similar to Victorian laws. This will mean those who have engaged in threatening or abusive behaviour can be banned from coming within 25 metres of a school.

What else do we need?

But clearly more needs to be done to improve the conditions for school leaders.

In 2011 we also saw the release of the Australian Standard for Principals which sets out what principals are expected to “know, understand and do to achieve in their work”.

It is time to review this.

Our last three reports show student and teacher mental health have become acute sources of stress for principals – this should be reflected in a revised standard. There is not one mention of teachers’ mental health throughout the document, despite it now consistently ranking as a top source of stress for principals.

And much has changed in our wider society. Since the standard was published, we’ve had a royal commission on child abuse in school settings, COVID and growing understanding of the need to manage young people’s healthy use of screens.

It’s time to honestly and openly acknowledge the life of the school principal has radically changed – and update our expectations and support.

We know principals have a huge influence on the culture and expectations of a school. So their welfare matters not just to principals and those who aspire to these jobs. It is also vital to families who value their children’s education and governments who rely on education for our national good.

– ref. We surveyed more than 8,000 principals – they face violence, threats and stress in their schools – https://theconversation.com/we-surveyed-more-than-8-000-principals-they-face-violence-threats-and-stress-in-their-schools-279444

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/30/we-surveyed-more-than-8-000-principals-they-face-violence-threats-and-stress-in-their-schools-279444/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Behr, Reader in Music, Politics and Society, Newcastle University

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” John Lydon’s closing words before stalking off stage at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom in January 1978, concluding the Sex Pistols’ US tour, have echoed ever since. They’re a bitter bookend to a fractious spell in the limelight. Barely three years had passed since the band’s first gig and less than two since they exploded into the national consciousness.

Lydon’s words marked an ending, but the start was almost as combustible. Fifty years ago, on March 30 1976, the Sex Pistols played a pivotal gig at London’s 100 Club. Photographer P.T. Madden recalled the small, but select, crowd and the sense of momentum:

My main memory is thinking, this is extremely important. It is not like any other gig I have ever been to. It has an atmosphere of expectation which is totally exciting. This means something and there is no one here.

A venue and a moment

The 100 Club, a basement venue on Oxford Street with a history stretching back to the 1940s, had already hosted generations of musical growth in jazz and rhythm and blues. In 1976 it became a focal point for a new, abrasive sensibility. Alongside key gigs at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall and Kensington’s Nashville Rooms, it helped crystallise what punk looked, sounded and felt like.

In September, the two-day 100 Club Punk Special brought together emerging acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash and The Damned, consolidating a scene that was coalescing around an aesthetic of nihilistic confrontation and musical minimalism. The Pistols were not alone in this but became its most visible face.

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Their rise was swift. The band was signed to EMI by October 1976, only to be dropped within months amid controversy stoked by the band and their manager Malcom McLaren. A key flash-point was the furore surrounding an expletive-laden chat show interview with Bill Grundy.

Their debut single, Anarchy in the UK, released the following month, was a blunt declaration of intent. A rapid sequence of label changes followed, culminating in the 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, anchored by the incendiary single God Save the Queen. It was banned by the BBC and independent radio stations during the Silver Jubilee.

The Pistols’ opening salvo flared brightly and briefly, its intensity bound up with the conditions that produced it.

A soundtrack for disaffection

The optimism of the 1960s had curdled. Economic decline, an oil price shock, rising inflation and industrial unrest led to the three-day week of 1974 (in which commercial electricity use was restricted to three consecutive days per week), presaging 1978-79’s “winter of discontent”.

The 1976 sterling crisis saw chancellor Denis Healey turn cap-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund for a loan to stabilise the UK economy. This underscored a sense of the post-war economic consensus running aground. Rising youth unemployment deepened a pervasive feeling of stagnation and exclusion.

The Sex Pistols became the most recognisable expression of this broader cultural mood: caustic, disillusioned and sceptical of authority. Their salience was amplified by media outrage, oscillating between fascination and moral panic. Contemporary reports of local authority venues banning punk acts reinforced the perception of a movement defined by exclusion and resistance.

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The roots of this approach were not exclusively British. Across the Atlantic, bands like the Ramones had begun stripping rock music back to its raw essentials in the early 1970s. Clubs like New York’s CBGB saw a defiant, unpolished aesthetic take shape. The Pistols and their peers translated and intensified this within a distinctly British landscape.

Cultural theorist Dick Hebdige framed punk as “homology”: the different elements of a sub-culture – clothing, art, and music – resonating with one another. Torn clothing, safety pins and aggressive performance articulated a confrontational, knowingly chaotic stance. The Pistols did not just express disaffection, they gave it visible and audible form.

From rupture to routine

Revolutions often reproduce what they set out to overthrow. Pete Townshend – once a critic of the old order, later a “rock dinosaur” target of punk – described apparent change leaving underlying power structures intact: “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. The Pistols’ implosion seemed to confirm this pattern of established practices reasserting themselves. But what followed was less disappearance than transformation into a different kind of cultural object – not a unified movement, but a musical style absorbed into mainstream culture.

After Winterland, the band’s remnants were repurposed through a mixture of opportunism and myth-making. Sid Vicious’s notoriety was a factor. The Virgin-produced, McLaren-narrated film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle also offered a fictionalised, satirical account of their rise and fall, blurring the line between history and performance.

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Thereafter, the Sex Pistols’ trajectory resembled that of many rock acts they had ostensibly sought to disrupt. Lawsuits, reunions and reissues followed. Lydon’s legal battles with McLaren, and later with bandmates underscored the tensions between artistic expression and commercial control. Reunion tours, documentaries such as The Filth and the Fury, and ongoing commemorations (like this) have all contributed to their canonisation.

What began as a rupture in popular music culture became incorporated into its institutional frameworks. The Pistols’ career has been endlessly revisited and repackaged.

Even institutions that once recoiled from punk have, over time, folded it into their own symbolic repertoire. In 2016, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight closed with the God Save the Queen in deadpan response to a Conservative MP’s call for the national anthem to mark Britain’s departure from the EU. What was once treated as cultural contagion became pressed into service as establishment punctuation.

But this should not obscure the force of the original moment. In 1976, the Sex Pistols did more than generate headlines. They captured a particular moment of social disaffection and cultural experimentation that remains emblematic of how music, style and social context aligned to produce something both fleeting and enduring.

If their later career followed familiar patterns, that raw, disruptive and unresolved moment continues to resonate – long after Lydon’s final, sardonic question at Winterland.

– ref. Sex Pistols at 50: how punk’s most notorious band became part of the mainstream – https://theconversation.com/sex-pistols-at-50-how-punks-most-notorious-band-became-part-of-the-mainstream-279421

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/30/sex-pistols-at-50-how-punks-most-notorious-band-became-part-of-the-mainstream-279421/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris McMillan, Professional Teaching Fellow in Sociology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

New Zealand Cricket’s decision to support “in principle” the development of a T20 franchise competition represents a major shift in governance and funding for the summer game. But it’s not clear whether the tensions behind that decision have been resolved.

At the heart of the debate is a model that would see a new NZ20 competition replace the existing Super Smash, currently run by New Zealand Cricket. While crucial details are yet to be settled, this would likely see the league sold to a private owner.

In addition, a stake in existing teams could be sold, or new franchises established and owned or partly owned by private equity.

While the NZ20 competition ended up the preferred option for players and domestic governing bodies, the immediate resignation of board member and former international Dion Nash (following chief executive Scott Weenik’s departure in December) shows how hotly contested this has been.

But it also reflects pressure across New Zealand sport in general, which is increasingly at the mercy of global commercial forces while also trying to improve domestic participation and performance.

As such, New Zealand Cricket opting for a franchise league funded by private equity raises questions about the future of the local game – and the ability of national sporting bodies to keep acting in the public interest.

To understand why, we need to appreciate how the cricketing landscape has shifted in recent years.

The changing face of cricket

The New Zealand summer was once defined by international cricket, especially during the school holidays. This summer, however, no men’s or women’s international cricket was scheduled from December 22 to February 25.

This is no anomaly. The southern hemisphere summer is now dominated by domestic franchise tournaments: Australia’s Big Bash League, the Bangladesh Premier League, South Africa’s SA20 and the United Arab Emirates International League T20.

On top of this, the Indian Premier League (IPL), just warming up now, is the second most valuable sports tournament per match in the world. Combined, these franchise leagues have become the dominant commercial force in the game.

Notably, New Zealand is the only major cricket country without a franchise competition. Instead, the provincial “major associations” – most based on 19th-century colonial boundaries – play in the Super Smash.

It’s hardly a level playing field. The global franchise leagues – based in much larger media markets and backed by private capital (except in Australia) – offer salaries, status and glamour far beyond a provincial match in front of a smattering of fans.

As a result, many of New Zealand’s best players are rejecting contracts from New Zealand Cricket and playing in competing franchise leagues rather than the Super Smash.

Kane Williamson, for example, played in the SA20 this summer, and Finn Allen turned out for the Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash League. There have been reports of a widespread exodus of players next summer.

There was a feeling that something had to change, and the NZ20 initiative has been the result. Privatising the Super Smash and selling teams to private interests is likely to bring in cash and increase the status of a New Zealand competition.

And it’s hoped the NZ20 will retain the best players and revitalise fan interest, as well as generate income for New Zealand Cricket. But what might be lost?

The privatisation of the game means decisions once based on participation, player development and national representation will increasingly be subordinated to commercial imperatives.

National bodies are at least nominally responsible to members and the public; private investors are not.

Hypothetically, would a hedge fund owner prioritise broadening the game’s appeal in New Zealand over scheduling games to maximise the Indian market’s far larger broadcast audience? Would they be interested in increasing participation numbers or developing players for the national team?

The price of progress

It is no wonder New Zealand Cricket has been equivocal in its public statements, noting the decision was “not a final commitment” and “part of the process, not the end of it”.

In particular, concerns have been expressed about support for the women’s game and regional representation. Whether private equity would share those concerns is yet to be seen.

Indeed, it seems these big questions of ownership, control and purpose are still to be worked through.

The game is changing, and New Zealand Cricket is being forced to make a decision in circumstances not of its choosing. But this is not a problem unique to cricket in an environment where broadcast deals are the primary source of income.

Given New Zealand’s small media market, any local competition will struggle to attract and retain the best players. That’s why teams such as the New Zealand Warriors in rugby league have attached themselves to Australian competitions, reducing local league to secondary importance.

NZ20 may provide financial stability and help retain talent. But it also embeds New Zealand more deeply in a system where commercial interests hold increasing power. Private equity comes at a cost, and it’s yet to be seen what cricket in New Zealand will have to pay.

– ref. Can NZ’s new T20 cricket franchise attract the dollars, players and fans it will need? – https://theconversation.com/can-nzs-new-t20-cricket-franchise-attract-the-dollars-players-and-fans-it-will-need-279221

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/30/can-nzs-new-t20-cricket-franchise-attract-the-dollars-players-and-fans-it-will-need-279221/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Quilty, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Excellence for The Elimination of Violence Against Women, Monash University

Gender-based violence is a global issue, but studies consistently show the Pacific has among the highest rates in the world. Up to 79% of women in the region experience some form of abuse over the course of their lives.

An emerging concern is violence through technology. This is where digital technologies are used to abuse, harass, coerce and exploit another person.

Most often, these harms are disproportionately experienced by women and girls.

Yet there is limited research on gender-based violence in the Pacific. And even fewer academic studies looking at the role of technology.

Our recent study aims to fill that gap. We surveyed victim-survivor support practitioners from nine Pacific Island nations. We found smartphones, Facebook and AI-generated sexualised deepfakes are being used to control and harm women and girls.

Coercive controlling behaviours

In our study, recently published in the journal Violence Against Women, we surveyed 19 and interviewed five practitioners across Fiji, Kiribati, Micronesia, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands who work with victim-survivors.

We asked about the ways technologies are being used to abuse. We also asked about any challenges in supporting victim-survivors who experience tech-based violence.

We found common types of abuse included:

• controlling access to devices

• sharing or threatening to share intimate images without permission (often with the person’s family and religious or faith-based networks)

• monitoring another person’s location using trackers or publicly available online information

• and creating or threatening to create AI-generated sexualised deepfake videos or images to extort money.

Practitioners reported they were supporting increasing numbers of victim-survivors with experiences of technology-facilitated violence.

The abuse was also happening in the context of other forms of intimate partner violence. This included financial, physical and psychological harm, further compounding the abuse.

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One device per household

One finding particular to the Pacific is the shared-device problem.

Practitioners reported that many families share a single phone. This meant the somewhat standard digital safety advice, “change your password” or “use a different device”, does not apply.

Practitioner Mere said partners sharing access to one digital device can facilitate controlling and abusive behaviours. She explained:

married couples having the same Facebook account, then the other partner sees messages coming in directly to the wife […] and monitoring where the other partner is going.

Sexualised image-based abuse

Another common form of abuse reported was coerced sexual acts and image-based sexual abuse. Victim-survivors are commonly forced into sexual activities via digital means, according to 36% of participants.

Other forms of image-based sexual abuse practitioners reported as very common included:

• the taking of sexual images or videos without permission

• the sharing of sexual images without permission

• the threat to share sexual images without permission.

Practitioner Kiana said victim-survivors report image-based sexual abuse happening in both relationship breakdowns and as a way to force them to stay in an abusive relationship:

the partner would threaten or even send nude photos of their partners […] to group chats [or] threaten to send the photos to his partner’s family members.

An emerging issue in the Pacific, and one that is being experienced globally, is sexualised deepfake abuse. This is where sexualised imagery is created with Artificial Intelligence (AI) or other digital technologies, such as Photoshop. Of the participants in our study, 26% reported this as occurring “often”.

With the rapid development of AI technologies that easily create sexualised deepfake abuse content, these trends are likely to increase.

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Read more: What to do if you, or someone you know, is targeted with deepfake porn or AI nudes

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Challenges in supporting victim-survivors

The study found a range of challenges and barriers for practitioners in supporting victim-survivors in the Pacific.

One of the prominent barriers was cultural practices and norms. Practitioners said these norms are shaped by traditional communal values, family honour, kinship systems, faith, ideals of modesty and respect for hierarchy.

Sexual and cultural taboos, strongly ingrained within traditional Pacific value systems, were also seen to discourage women from seeking help.

Participants said the controlling of phones by perpetrators and the shared device problem was also restricting women’s opportunities to connect with support networks, to identify their situation as abusive and to seek help.

Another major barrier identified by 37% of practitioners was the poor handling of cases by police. Cases are simply not taken seriously by authorities, according to 32% of participants. In this context, practitioners observed perpetrators were rarely held accountable, leaving victim-survivors without justice or protection.

Where to next?

While the findings in our study are similar to those in other countries, they highlight the importance of social and cultural contexts in addressing these issues. These contexts should inform how technology-facilitated violence in the Pacific is prevented, and how victim-survivors are supported.

There are a range of things governments, technology providers, police and the legal sector can do to address the problem. One would be to fund and prioritise practitioner and police training to better understand and respond to technology-facilitated violence.

Another is to develop culturally-sensitive community education initiatives that stop victim-survivors from being silenced.

And finally, religious and faith-based organisations should be brought on board to help prevent and respond to technology-facilitated violence.

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The authors would like to thank Siân Human from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women for her insights and support during the process of writing this piece.

– ref. Women in the Pacific are increasingly subject to digital abuse: new research – https://theconversation.com/women-in-the-pacific-are-increasingly-subject-to-digital-abuse-new-research-278990

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/30/women-in-the-pacific-are-increasingly-subject-to-digital-abuse-new-research-278990/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Arkell, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, School of Health Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology

Your doctor has just prescribed medicinal cannabis. You think it’s helping. But you rely on your car to get to work and pick up the kids.

Are you allowed to drive? And more importantly, is it safe?

Here’s what the evidence says and what it means for you.

Medicinal cannabis is now widely prescribed in Australia for conditions such as chronic pain, anxiety and sleep disorders.

You can take it in a variety of different ways – for instance, by inhaling it using a vaporiser, or by ingesting an oil. There are many different active compounds. However, the main ones – known as cannabinoids – are delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).

THC is also the intoxicating part of cannabis that gets you “stoned”. So this is where things get complicated.

What happens when you take medicinal cannabis?

When cannabis is inhaled, the effects peak in the first hour. They taper off over two to three hours, but can last for up to four to six hours.

When taken orally – for example as an oil – the effects don’t start straight away and can last for up to 8 to 12 hours. That’s because the cannabinoids are absorbed by your gut and metabolised more slowly.

THC negatively impacts cognitive functions, such as attention and memory. It impairs driving in a simulator and in the real world on a highway.

The effects of THC on driving are roughly comparable to low blood alcohol concentrations. But this depends on the dose and how often someone uses cannabis.

Medicinal cannabis used for insomnia does not cause impairment the next day, and regular cannabis users show no driving impairment after 48 hours or more of abstinence.

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

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Unlike alcohol, THC can make people more cautious behind the wheel. So drivers sometimes try to drive more carefully or leave a larger gap behind the car ahead.

However, such strategies may not be enough to offset the impairing effects of THC, and they become less effective under more complex driving conditions.

CBD does not impair cognition or driving.

Most cannabis and driving studies have used healthy volunteers and deliberately intoxicating doses of THC. So we don’t know whether people are as impaired when using prescribed medicinal cannabis to manage a chronic health condition.

In theory, a patient is likely to be less impaired if they use a low dose of THC, if they use the exact same amount of medicinal cannabis on a regular basis, or if medicinal cannabis relieves symptoms that can affect normal functioning, such as chronic pain.

Can I legally drive after taking it?

In every Australian state and territory, except Tasmania, it is illegal to drive with any detectable amount of THC in your system.

Roadside drug testing, which checks for the presence of THC in saliva rather than impairment, cannot distinguish between prescribed medicinal cannabis and illicit cannabis.

In Tasmania, you can lawfully drive with THC in your system so long as you are unimpaired and your medicinal cannabis was prescribed and dispensed in Tasmania.

Other medications that can impair driving – such as opioids and benzodiazepines – do not carry the same prohibition on driving. You can drive with these medications in your system so long as you are unimpaired and using your medication as prescribed.

Driving while impaired (as opposed to driving with the presence of a drug in your system) is a separate offence and applies to both medicinal cannabis and other medications.

The discrepancy between how medicinal cannabis and other impairing medications are treated has been the focus of a parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales and broader law reform discussions.

Victoria has now amended its road safety act to give magistrates the power to decide whether or not to cancel someone’s licence if they test positive for THC, are unimpaired, and have a valid medicinal cannabis prescription. Nonetheless, it remains illegal to drive in Victoria with THC in your system.

You can lawfully drive if you are using a CBD-only medication, so long as you are not impaired.

How can I drive safely?

If you have been prescribed medicinal cannabis, there are practical steps you can take to reduce your risk when driving.

First, speak to your doctor. Let them know you drive, especially if you rely on driving for work or caring responsibilities, or if you work in a safety-sensitive environment, such as construction. Together, you can discuss whether a product containing THC is appropriate, or whether a CBD-only product might be more suitable.

Second, don’t just rely on how you feel when determining whether you are safe to drive. Even if you feel completely normal, your driving ability may still be compromised.

Even if you are unimpaired, you can still test positive on a roadside drug test for hours after taking medicinal cannabis. The length of time is highly variable and depends on factors such as the dose, route of administration, and how often you take medicinal cannabis.

The penalties for driving with THC in your system vary by state and territory. They range from fines to licence disqualifications and potential jail time for repeat offences.

A blood test can detect THC days after taking it. So if you are involved in a crash and have THC in your blood, you could face severe legal penalties, and your car insurance may be voided.

Roadside drug tests do not check for CBD.

What don’t we yet know?

Studies are underway to look at how medicinal cannabis impacts driving in people who take it for long-term health conditions, such as chronic pain. Researchers are also testing to see if sensors can detect cannabis impairment in real time while driving.

Once these and other studies are complete, we’ll have a clearer picture of how medicinal cannabis affects drivers who take it for long-term medical conditions.

To find out more about medicinal cannabis and driving, visit the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s medicinal cannabis hub or ask your health-care practitioner.

– ref. Can I drive when taking medicinal cannabis? Is it safe? – https://theconversation.com/can-i-drive-when-taking-medicinal-cannabis-is-it-safe-271090

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/30/can-i-drive-when-taking-medicinal-cannabis-is-it-safe-271090/