Business + Economy – The Conversation

Is NZ defence and intelligence policy aligning with AUKUS in all but name?

2026-02-03T23:00:43Z

Across the Pacific and the Southern Ocean, New Zealand has been trying to strike a careful balance in its defence and surveillance approach.

While strengthening its security partnerships and expanding military capabilities, the government has so far said it is only assessing joining Pillar II of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Pillar I of AUKUS involves Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, while Pillar II focuses on cooperation in advanced military technologies, including cyber systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms, undersea capabilities and space-based surveillance.

Yet key documents, including the Defence Capability Plan 2025 and a government procurement process for long-duration aerial surveillance, suggest many of the practical steps Pillar II would involve are already underway.

These far-reaching strategic decisions are being made largely out of public view. And they raise an important question: is New Zealand effectively aligning itself with AUKUS in all but name?

From patrols to permanent surveillance

The Defence Capability Plan is the government’s long-term blueprint for upgrading New Zealand’s military. It proposes a NZ$100–300 million investment in long-range, uncrewed, remotely-piloted aircraft to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance across vast ocean areas.

As part of a broader $14 billion defence overhaul, a further $300–600 million is projected for space-based capabilities. This is aimed at integrating New Zealand within shared satellite networks and increasing operational cooperation with security allies.

In parallel, the Persistent Surveillance (Air) Project tender (which recently closed for submissions) invites industry and academia to help design a system for long-duration surveillance across the southwest Pacific and Southern Ocean, involving aircraft, spacecraft and data-management software.

Taken together, these initiatives signal a shift from periodic surveillance patrols to continuous, networked monitoring. This aligns closely with the concept of “multi-domain maritime awareness” under AUKUS Pillar II.

Mindful of public concern about joining AUKUS and any association with nuclear proliferation or deployment of autonomous weapons systems, successive NZ governments have approached the issue cautiously.

The current government appears to be maintaining this careful line. But the proposed New Zealand Defence Force investments and procurement plans suggest a more substantive shift.

The long-range drones, satellite surveillance, data integration and counter-drone technologies outlined in the Defence Capability Plan closely mirror AUKUS Pillar II priorities.

New Zealand may be avoiding formal alignment for now. But defence officials have already been holding talks with the US, UK and Australia about advanced military technologies and surveillance systems.

The risk of being locked in

These policy shifts undoubtedly have benefits for a small country like New Zealand. High-quality surveillance capabilities boost its strategic value to defence partners and give Wellington a stronger voice in maritime monitoring across the Pacific.

But there are also risks. Research suggests integrating surveillance systems with allied networks can create lasting technical and political dependencies.

In turn, this could narrow New Zealand’s capacity to make independent decisions in the Pacific region, or calibrate its engagement with other regional stakeholders, including China and Pacific Island governments.

Arrangements such as the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness – involving Australia, India, Japan and the US, known as the “Quad” – allow countries to merge surveillance data and build a “common operating picture” of activity across the region.

The same is true of the Pacific Fusion Centre’s information-sharing network, PacNet #28. The catch is that these surveillance arrangements tend to lock countries in, with one host controlling how data is gathered and filtered.

Embedding NZ in surveillance networks

New Zealanders are broadly supportive of contributing to regional security. But polling suggests they are uneasy about being drawn into distant conflicts or military spending that mainly serve the priorities of larger powers.

Autonomous weapons, AI-assisted targeting and militarised space systems are particularly contentious, raising legal and ethical questions about human control.

Defence officials frequently argue that drones and space-enabled surveillance reduce risks to personnel and enhance humanitarian and disaster-response missions. While this may be true, there remains a need for clearer public discussion about how such technologies are deployed and where limits are being set.

For decades, the New Zealand Defence Force has been valued for its nimbleness and principled diplomacy. But the emerging surveillance approach being shaped through procurement decisions, tenders, space-launch licences and software standards is steadily embedding New Zealand within allied security networks.

The government has assured New Zealanders would be kept informed “at every step” about any future partnership with AUKUS.

Such transparency needs to extend to defence policy and strategy in general, before foreign-designed, militarised surveillance systems become the norm across the region.

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

The fall of Peter Mandelson and the many questions the UK government must now answer

2026-02-03T17:31:52Z

Peter Mandelson and Keir Starmer pictured in February 2025. Flickr/Number 10, CC BY-NC-ND

No accident waiting to happen can ever have delivered on its promise so spectacularly as Lord Mandelson, with the continuous revelations of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The decision by the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, to appoint Mandelson as ambassador in Washington DC always appeared a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But no reward could ever have repaid such risk.

There is a grim fascination in seeing a prominent public figure’s reputation incinerated in real time. Mandelson’s entreating emails to a convicted abuser and trafficker of minors were still quite recently sufficient of an embarrassment before he was then photographed urinating in public.

The new normal is to appear on front pages in his underpants. Next will come questions about the meaning of emails that appear to show him betraying the most cardinal principles of public office, for monetary gain, from a criminal.

Mandelson had clearly started 2026 with the intention of rehabilitating himself and re-entering public life: a Sunday morning BBC interview, columns in the Spectator, an interview in the Times. Journalists’ requests for comment were replied to. No longer.

What was striking across these appearances – given Mandelson’s talents – was his maladroitness. Not to have apologised to the victims of trafficking when pressed in that initial high-profile interview, only to realise his error and concede the following day did not bear the hallmark of a master of public relations.

The rehabilitation plan, moreover, evidently did not include a strategy for the documents that were to be released as part of another huge cache of material relating to Epstein.

There is now the suggestion that Mandelson may have forwarded government-sensitive information to a foreign banker while he was, effectively, the deputy prime minister and that he encouraged that banker to intimidate his colleague, the chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling. The banker allegedly did “mildly threaten” Darling. Darling knew someone was leaking, but, having died in 2023, never knew who. Now we have an idea.

To separate the procedural from the human, for now, the issue that leaves the current government most exposed is Starmer’s personal choice of Mandelson as US ambassador. One of two things must have happened: a catastrophic failure in vetting and in due diligence, or the government ignoring red lights from vetting and due diligence.

This is also an origin story scandal for the Labour party, in which Mandelson has deep roots. It has always lived in fear of its leaders succumbing to the charms of plutocrats. It happened in 1931, in the “great betrayal”, when Labour leader Ramsey McDonald formed a government with the Tories and Liberals to resolve a financial crisis – one reason the saintly Clement Attlee nationalised the Bank of England in 1946. Attlee’s deputy leader was Herbert Morrison, Mandelson’s grandfather.

This matters more now because Mandelson’s influence in the party meant that he has acted as a mentor to so many – not least the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, the man arguably more responsible for this government than Starmer himself, and the person said to have pushed for Mandelson to be given the ambassadorship. The fissures of the Blairites and the soft left are reopening.

Removing Mandelson

There will be those who take pleasure from so public a defenestration of so polarising a figure. Two such will be the Reform and Green party candidates in the Gorton and Denton byelection.

A room of scriptwriters could not have devised a situation calculated to land more effectively for a canvasser from an insurgent party to stand on a doorstep and asks a voter how satisfied they are with the way the country’s run, and in the qualities of their leaders.

Even before the revelations about his friendship with a billionaire paedophile, Mandelson was the personification of the increasingly maligned and resented globalist, lanyard-wearing, chauffeured classes. The online conspiracist hares that have already been sent running are unnecessary: this scandal is in no need of embellishment.

Some always knew. Mandelson masterminded Labour’s electoral approach for a decade, but when he succeeded Neil Kinnock as leader in 1992, John Smith would have nothing to do with him. Smith died suddenly, and Tony Blair’s sudden ascent was facilitated by Mandelson, to the undying enmity of Gordon Brown.

Brown appointed Mandelson his first secretary of state, but from a position of weakness. He is now making his fury known. The current prime minister appointed Mandelson his ambassador to the UK’s closest and most important ally, but from a position of weakness. Brown, at least, can vent his fury – he no longer has office to lose.

Mandelson with the US president, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office in June 2025. Flickr/UKinUSA, CC BY-SA

In the space of a few hours, Mandelson’s future shifted from the certainty of ignominy to the possibility of prison. We are already beyond historical parallel. For 60 years, John Profumo has been the yardstick for political scandal in the UK (and another where the exploitation of women was lost in a voyeuristic melee). We have a new one.

In other political cultures, Mandelson would by now have been airlifted to a safehouse outside Moscow or Riyadh, given sanctuary, never to be seen or heard of again. But the prime minister will be seeing and hearing of Mandelson for some time to come.

When it comes to making appointments – a prime minister’s elemental power – Starmer has frequently made the wrong choices, through innate caution and timidity, to the detriment of his government. It is the one exception to this cautious approach that may prove to be the most consequential of all.

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

The rise and fall (and rise again) of gold prices – what’s going on?

2026-02-03T17:31:48Z

i viewfinder/Shutterstock

In late January, the gold price reached an all-time peak of around US$5,500 (£4,025). January 30 saw one of the largest one-day falls in prices, which sank by nearly 10% after hitting a record high only the day before.

This was a dramatic about-turn, from a bullish gold market that rose by more than 300% in the last decade, over 150% in the last five years and (perhaps more pertinently) by 75% since US president Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs announcement. To make sense of it, we need to understand some of the factors that led to the rise.

The reasons broadly break down into two categories. The first concerns market uncertainty and gold in its “safe haven” role. As a financial asset, gold offers no income, unlike shares (which might provide dividends) or bonds (which offer coupon payments). So during good times, gold is eschewed for the former and during periods of high interest rates for the latter.

However, during periods of heightened risk and uncertainty, the tangibility of gold gives it value. This was seen during the financial (and subsequent sovereign debt) crisis and at the beginning of the COVID period. Here both share prices and interest rates were low (interest rates historically so) and gold became the favoured asset because it offered the chance of greater returns relative to risk.

These crisis periods can often be geopolitical in nature, and that is the case now with the war in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, as well as ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

But at the moment, what is providing a further boost to the gold price is the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariffs. This is not only about international trade and growth but also its implications for the global financial system. The US dollar is used as a vehicle currency and means of payment for international trade and the currency in which commodities are priced.

The use of tariffs in this way undermines confidence in the dollar, especially where tariffs are threatened as a punishment – as Trump recently did against European countries for opposing his desire to annex Greenland.

Trump threatened increased tariffs over his designs on Greenland. Stig Alenas/Shutterstock

And further buoyed by the weak US dollar, which has fallen by 10% in the last year, there has been significant gold-buying, including by central banks as part of their reserves.

As an important aside, while a lot has been said about central banks replacing the US dollar as a reserve currency, overseas holdings of treasuries (US government bonds) are at a record high, countering that view.

The level of debt that countries are building up shows no sign of abating. For example, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which outlines tax cuts and increases to border security and defence spending among many other budget measures, is expected to add several trillion dollars to US debt.

The second reason for the long-term increase in the gold price is its greater use in investor portfolios for speculative purposes. The “safe-haven” role of gold implies a negative correlation between stocks and gold. That is to say, when one rises the other falls – and vice versa.

However, with the S&P500 (the index tracking the top 500 companies listed in the US) also reaching record highs, stocks and gold have instead been moving in the same direction. This indicates that investors are buying both asset types.

A major component in the growth of gold as an investment asset (as opposed to only a safe haven) is the rise of gold ETFs (exchange-traded funds) that make it easier for non-professional investors to purchase gold.

So why the fall?

Rather than a single event, there has been an accumulation of small changes, combined with the usual sways in investor sentiment. Geopolitical risk remains high, both in Ukraine and the Middle East (while the situation in Israel and Gaza is calmer, that is not the case with Iran). But there are some positive signs.

Trump’s on-off use of tariffs as a means of political negotiation (this time regarding Greenland) also contributed to a rise and fall in the gold price. And the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the new governor of the US Federal Reserve is expected to lessen economic risk.

While Warsh generally supports Trump’s preference for lower interest rates now (although investors are expressing concerns that this could fuel inflation), Warsh also has an equal desire to reduce the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. So it would be unlikely to be an unreserved loosening of monetary policy.

But there is also the investor side. Profit is only realised when the asset is sold. Part of what we have seen is investors selling gold in a high (arguably over-priced) market to make a profit. The price fall associated with these trades then arguably led to further selling.

This included stop-loss trading (when assets are automatically sold when they dip below a certain price) and sales by the likes of hedge funds and other institutional traders. These investors need to unwind positions to prevent major losses.

After the huge fall on January 30, gold prices surged back a couple of days later in the biggest one-day rise since 2008.

There are always corrections, and in fact current movements are likely to be over-corrections. But it’s safe to assume that after this, the market will stabilise and most likely resume an upward trajectory albeit at a slower pace than immediately before the fall.

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

A brief history of table tennis in film – from Forrest Gump to Marty Supreme

2026-02-03T17:31:43Z

Table tennis and film have a surprisingly entangled history. Both depended on the invention of celluloid – which not only became the substrate of film, but is also used to make ping pong balls.

Following a brief ping pong craze in 1902, the game largely disappeared and was widely assumed to have been a passing fad. More than 20 years later, however, the British socialite, communist spy and filmmaker Ivor Montagu went to great lengths to establish the game as a sport – a story I explore in my current book project on ping pong and the moving image.

He founded the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and codified the rules of the game in both a book and a corresponding short film, Table Tennis Today (1929).

Montagu presided over the ITTF for several decades. In 1925, the same year he founded the ITTF, Montagu also co-founded the London Film Society. The society helped introduce western audiences to experimental and art films that are now considered classics.

The game of table tennis has subsequently appeared at a number of moments when filmmakers and artists were experimenting with new technologies. An early example appears in one of the first works of “visual music”: Rhythm in Light (1934) by Mary Ellen Bute.

Table Tennis Today (Ivor Montagu, 1929)

Meanwhile, an early work of expanded cinema, Ping Pong (1968) by the artist Valie Export, invited audiences to pick up a paddle and ball and attempt to strike a physical ball against the representation of one moving on the cinema screen. Atari’s adaptation of the game into the interactive Pong (1972) is often considered the first video game.

Perhaps the most familiar cinematic example of all, however, is the digital simulation of a photorealistic ping pong ball – made possible by a then-new regime of computer-generated imagery. It helped Tom Hanks appear to be a ping pong whiz in the Academy-Award-winning Forrest Gump (1994).

The ping pong scene in Forest Gump.

There are a number of other fascinating moments in which the game surfaces meaningfully: in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Jacques Tati’s M Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), and Agnes Varda and JR’s Faces Places (2017).

And every day for more than two years, from 2020 to 2022, one of the world’s most beloved filmmakers, David Lynch, uploaded YouTube videos in which he pulled a numbered ping pong ball from a jar and declared it “today’s number”. It was a fittingly Dada-esque gesture that stands among the last mysterious works he shared with the world.

Enter Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. The title sequence alone discovers a new way of visualising the game’s iconography, as we see a sperm fertilise an egg, which then transforms into a ping pong ball (the digital effects first witnessed in Gump are now fully integrated into popular cinema).

Why Marty Supreme is different

Marty Supreme is very loosely based on the real-life player Marty Reisman (here Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet). What sets it apart from earlier cinematic appearances of table tennis is that it centres the game as a sport.

When table tennis has previously appeared in film, it is usually to help show off new special effects or as a brief plot device. Or it frequently appears in the background, helping to furnish the mise-en-scene of an office, basement, or bar. In these instances, we might not notice the game or its materials at all. When it does have a narrative function, it usually occupies a single scene, frequently serving to stage or resolve fraught interpersonal relations between the characters who are playing.

In Marty Supreme, however, table tennis seems neither tethered to special effects nor, certainly, to the game’s “background” status. Chalamet trained extensively over the seven years he spent preparing for the role, even taking his own table to the desert while filming Dune (2021). And despite the film’s sometimes compelling eccentricities, Marty Supreme in many senses follows the generic blueprint of a sports film.

The trailer for Marty Supreme.

Safdie has made a sports film, coincidentally or not, like his frequent collaborator and brother Benny Safdie, whose wrestling film The Smashing Machine was also released this past year. Marty Supreme, though, revolves around an athlete who plays a game that generally has been assumed to not have enough gravitas to command a place in the genre or to hold an audience’s interest.

The absence of sports films about ping pong certainly speaks to ways in which it is perceived as something not worth taking too seriously, for reasons that are surely at least partially linked to the same reasons for which the game is often celebrated. It is perceived to be what I refer to as an “equalising” sport, open to people and bodies of all backgrounds and types.

As actor Susan Sarandon, who founded her own chain of ping pong bars, puts it: “Ping pong cuts across all body types and gender – everything, really – because little girls can beat big muscley guys. You don’t get hurt; it is not expensive; it is really good for your mind. It is one of the few sports that you can play until you die.”

This perception of the game has perhaps also led it to appear in more comedic contexts, with athletes embodied by actors we might more readily laugh at, as source material for visual and sonic gags, from a slapstick scene in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939) to the widely panned Balls of Fury (2007).

The tension between the game’s perceived triviality and Mauser’s extreme dedication lends Marty Supreme a vast blank canvas – or ping pong table – onto which its oscillations can be painted, or played… and in turn felt by the audience, with its high highs and low lows.

While it’s great that a talented director has poured his heart into a cinematic treatment of Reisman for the screen, I’m holding out hope for an Ivor Montagu film, which could be even more beholden to its real-life character – and even more wild.

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

Diabetes care in NZ: thousands of patient records reveal who’s being left behind

2026-02-03T17:27:59Z

Getty Images

For the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who live with type 2 diabetes, managing the chronic condition can start to feel like keeping score.

A patient is given a list of numbers by their doctor. Blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels are tracked closely, with targets designed to reduce the risk of complications such as heart attacks, kidney failure, blindness and early death.

In theory, those targets apply equally to everyone. In practice, they are far harder to reach for some New Zealanders than others.

Using health records from more than 57,000 adults with type 2 diabetes, our newly published study found Māori and Pacific people are much less likely than New Zealand Europeans to meet key clinical targets, even when they are seeing a doctor regularly.

The same pattern holds for people living in more deprived neighbourhoods and for many rural patients.

Consider HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin) tests. These measure average blood sugar levels over the past three months. A lower result is better. But fewer than half of all people in the study hit the recommended targets for HbA1c.

Among Māori, just 43% met the targets. Among Pacific people, the rate was lower still, at 36%. By contrast, around one in two Asian and New Zealand European patients were at target. We also found the proportion of people not meeting targets also rises dramatically relative to social deprivation.

These disparities can come with dire consequences. Over time, high blood sugar damages blood vessels and nerves, driving up the risk of amputations.

Māori and Pacific people face these complications earlier and more often than other New Zealanders, often due to being diagnosed much earlier in life. The same pattern shows up for blood pressure and cholesterol, key predictors of strokes and heart attacks.

Clear targets, unequal outcomes

At first glance, they can look like the result of individual choices. A common refrain is that people are simply not trying hard enough. But that explanation doesn’t hold up. It assumes a level playing field, which does not exist.

Most health targets are set as if everyone has easy access to care: a regular doctor, reliable transport and enough income to support healthier choices. But managing diabetes demands more than willpower. It involves regular appointments, blood tests, adjusting medications and building long-term relationships with clinicians.

That may be easy to write into a guideline, but it is much harder if a patient lives far away, can’t get time off work or is juggling transport, childcare and tight budgets.

For patients in rural areas, a routine appointment can mean taking half a day off work and spending hours on the road, along with the cost of fuel. Specialist services are often even further away. With ongoing workforce shortages, continuity of care can be difficult to maintain.

Many patients end up seeing a different doctor or nurse each visit, which makes it hard to build any kind of relationship with the person managing their care. For Māori and Pacific patients, this lack of continuity can compound care that already feels rushed or culturally unsafe.

When people do not feel heard, it becomes harder to stay engaged. Missed appointments are often labelled as “disengagement”, when they are more accurately a reasonable response to a system that does not fit people’s lives.

Newer diabetes medicines that protect the heart and kidneys are now available, but access is not always straightforward. Although these drugs are funded in New Zealand, tight eligibility rules and follow-up requirements mean many people who qualify never receive them.

Others stop taking them because of side effects, cost, or uncertainty about how the medicines are meant to help.

Cost matters, too. Even in a publicly funded system, people still face co-payments for GP visits, prescriptions and transport. For families already stretched by housing and food costs, diabetes care must compete with everything else.

Accordingly, people living in more deprived areas face greater challenges keeping glucose at optimal levels, regardless of motivation.

What the targets are really telling us

Over time, these small frictions accumulate. Blood sugar creeps up, blood pressure stays high, and targets are missed. The system records a “failure”, but that failure is not evenly distributed.

Clinical targets developed under ideal conditions are not neutral when applied universally. They remain useful, but only if there is honesty about what they capture. In practice, they often reflect how well the health system is working.

More equitable diabetes care would look different: seeing patients closer to home, longer appointments and support that includes whānau as well as individuals. It would mean removing cost barriers, ensuring continuity and investing in rural and kaupapa Māori services alongside urban hospitals.

Read this way, diabetes targets become indicators of system performance. Right now, they show where care is accessible and effective – and where inequity persists. Ignoring these signals risks embedding inequity for another generation.

Lynne Chepulis receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand

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

Not an artefact, but an ancestor: why a German university is returning a Māori taonga

2026-02-03T13:17:31Z

Restitution debates – the question of whether a cultural object should be returned from a museum or other collection to a person or community – often begin with a deceptively simple question: who owns an object?

In colonial contexts, this question rarely has a clear answer. Histories of acquisition are often incomplete, disputed and overwhelmingly recorded from European perspectives. Legal documentation, where it exists at all, usually reflects unequal power relations rather than mutual consent. As a result, many restitution claims cannot be resolved through law alone.

This raises a fundamental question: should the spiritual, social and ancestral significance of an object for its community of origin outweigh unresolved legal arguments about possession?

The case of the Hinematioro pou, which is now being returned from the University of Tübingen to the Māori community Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti on the east coast of New Zealand’s north island, illustrates a restitution process grounded in cultural values. It shows what happens when decisions are guided primarily by spiritual meaning and relational responsibility, rather than by legal uncertainty surrounding colonial acquisition.

A pou is a carved wooden pillar that acts as a marker for tribal boundaries, stories or ancestors. The Hinematioro pou is an early carved panel depicting a standing ancestral figure.

For the Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, the pou is neither a historical artefact nor a work of art in the western sense. It is the material presence of an ancestor, Hinematioro, who was an ariki (high-ranking leader). The pou is part of a living social order, not a testimony to a distant past.

Within Māori cultural logic, such an object is a taonga: a treasure that carries not only material, but also spiritual, social and genealogical value. Taonga possess mana and mauri – agency and life force – and require ritual relationships as well as responsibility.

This meaning became clear when the pou returned in 2019, for the first time in over 250 years, to Ūawa (Tolaga Bay). It was met with a formal pōwhiri (welcome ceremony) with singing, speeches, tears and embraces – as if a long-absent relative had come home.

Witnessing this special moment made us and many others who were part of the event understand that the question of the pou’s future location is not a museological one for the community, but an existential one. It is not about possession, but about relationship.

How the taonga came to Germany

It is not possible to conclusively reconstruct how the taonga came to Europe. What is certain is that, in October 1769, it was taken from Ūawa to Europe aboard the HMS Endeavour during James Cook’s first Pacific voyage.

The panel is widely regarded as one of the earliest surviving carved pou associated with Māori chiefly genealogies to have entered European collections. This occurred within a colonial context of profound power asymmetries.

The Watering Place in Tolaga Bay, Ōpoutama, Cooks Cove sketch by James Cook 1769. British Museum, London

It is also not possible to establish how the pou was transferred. A range of possibilities exists, including gifting, coerced handover, exchange or theft. European sources provide no clear evidence, and perspectives from the source community are not sufficiently recognised in Europe. Therefore, a lack of documented violence cannot be taken as evidence of a voluntary transfer.

The object’s later path to Tübingen can only be partially traced. It may have circulated through several 19th-century scientific and collecting networks connected to the Cook expedition.

What is certain is that, in 1937, the pou entered the Ethnological Collection of the University of Tübingen through Emma von Luschan (1864–1941, wife to the anthropologist, explorer, archaeologist and ethnographer, Felix von Luschan) when their collection was curated by the anthropologist and ethnologist Augustin Krämer.

A turning point came in the 1990s, when the panel was identified using a drawing from the Cook expedition held at the British Library. What proved decisive, however, was the establishment of direct relationships with the Hauiti Iwi (tribe or people).

In the following years, close cooperation developed between the University of Tübingen and the Hauiti Iwi. In 2019 the pou was loaned back to the Māori. A jointly curated exhibition Te Pou o Hinematioro (2025–26) at Hohentübingen Castle back in Germany followed – an expressions of a partnership in which trust could grow. The restitution of the pou is therefore not the outcome of conflict, but the result of a long-term relationship that deepened during the exhibition process.

From a legal perspective, the university was not obliged to return the object. Under German civil law, the pou is considered university property, and no binding restitution framework exists for colonial contexts.

Nevertheless, political approaches to colonial collection material in Germany have shifted in recent years. Recent national guidelines encourage transparency, provenance research, dialogue with source communities and restitution as a possible outcome. This reflects a shift away from narrow legal ownership toward acknowledging colonial power imbalances in collection histories.

Decisions about restitution are primarily political and institutional in nature. These decisions raise questions of responsibility: what obligations do present-day collections have towards the circumstances in which their holdings were acquired, and what role do institutions wish to play in global debates on heritage, memory and justice? Universities, with their extensive collections and deep involvement in colonial knowledge production, are particularly affected by these issues.

Where legal histories are inconclusive – as they often are in colonial contexts – restitution cannot be decided by ownership alone. For source communities to be genuine partners, their social, spiritual and ancestral relationships with heritage must be recognised. Otherwise, restitution debates risk perpetuating the very hierarchies it aims to dismantle.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

RBA raises interest rates as inflation pressures remain high

2026-02-03T04:51:33Z

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has lifted the cash rate by 25 basis points to 3.85%, adding to pressure on households and businesses. While the move was widely expected by markets and most economists, the Reserve Bank says inflation risks remain too high to be comfortable.

The RBA said inflation “picked up materially” in the second half of 2025. Governor Michele Bullock told a press conference:

Based on the data we have seen and the conditions here and around the world, the board now thinks it will take longer for inflation to return to target and this is not an acceptable outcome.

The rate rise reflects concern that inflation will not return to the RBA’s 2–3% target range until June 2027, according to the bank’s updated forecasts also released today.

Stronger than expected economic growth means capacity pressures are rising and keeping inflation higher than expected. Progress could stall unless interest rates are pushed a little higher.

It was the first rate increase since November 2023, and followed three cuts in 2025 when inflation was cooling.

Policy set for a year ahead

In the lead-up to the meeting, there appeared to be a gap between market expectations and the RBA’s own comments. Markets and many economists focused on the latest inflation data, which showed a renewed uptick, particularly in prices for services. That data strengthened the case for a rate rise at this meeting.

The RBA, however, has repeatedly emphasised it does not set policy based on short-term movements in inflation.

That message has been reflected in recent meeting minutes and reinforced in a January ABC interview with Andrew Hauser, the RBA’s deputy governor. He said interest rate decisions are guided by where inflation is expected to be in about a year’s time – not where it has been over the past quarter or two.

Today’s decision suggests that, on that forward-looking view, the RBA became less comfortable with the inflation outlook. Rather than a temporary overshoot, the path back to the 2-3% inflation target will take longer than previously thought.

What’s driving inflation?

The latest consumer price index (CPI) figures help explain the Reserve Bank’s caution. Trimmed mean inflation – the RBA’s preferred underlying measure – was 3.3% in the year to December, up from 3.2% in the year to November. That puts underlying inflation clearly above the target range.

More importantly, recent inflation pressures have been led by services prices. Costs related to rents, insurance, health and education have continued to rise, reflecting domestic pressures such as wages and business operating costs.

In its statement, the RBA pointed to stronger demand and ongoing capacity constraints as key concerns:

Private demand is growing more quickly than expected, capacity pressures are greater than previously assessed and labour market conditions are a little tight.

Services inflation tends to fall slowly. Unlike petrol or food prices, it does not usually reverse quickly once it picks up. For the RBA, this persistence increases the risk inflation could remain above target for longer than hoped.

Why the RBA moved now

Faced with these risks, the bank appears to have concluded that waiting would have been the bigger gamble. If inflation stayed above target for too long, or if expectations began to drift higher, the RBA could later be forced into sharper and more disruptive rate rises.

By lifting the cash rate to 3.85% now, the Reserve Bank is trying to stay ahead of the problem. A modest move today may reduce the chance of more aggressive action later.

Australia is out of step

This decision also puts Australia out of step with several other major economies.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates three times in 2025 and is signalling further cuts are likely this year. The European Central Bank has moved even faster, cutting rates eight times between June 2024 and June 2025 to boost growth.

By contrast, Australia’s inflation challenge appears more domestically driven, particularly through persistent services inflation. That helps explain why it is moving in the opposite direction to many of its global peers.

Credibility and what comes next

The quick turnaround after the last rate cut in August may raise questions about the RBA’s earlier judgement. But inflation risks remain tilted to the upside.

The board judged that inflation is likely to remain above target for some time and it was appropriate to increase the cash rate target.

For households and businesses, the message is clear. Borrowing costs and mortgage repayments are rising again.

What happens next will depend largely on whether services inflation begins to cool and whether wage growth shows clearer signs of moderation.

If inflation resumes a steady decline towards the target band, this increase could be a one-off rise. If not, the RBA has signalled it is prepared to do more.

For now, the message from the Reserve Bank is simple: inflation is lower than it was, but still too high for comfort – and interest rates are likely to stay higher for longer until that changes.

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

Polls are snapshots, not predictions: how to read them critically this election year

2026-02-03T01:00:05Z

With nine months to go, how much can opinion polls tell us about the general election on November 7? Short answer: not much.

Based solely on polls, no one could have predicted the past three elections this early in the year they were held. Trends shifted over the subsequent months, and events (especially COVID in 2020) intervened to shake things up.

Each poll is a snapshot of past public opinion – and it’s out of focus, due to statistically inevitable sampling error. A sample of 1,000 people won’t exactly resemble the whole eligible population, and the percentage of “undecided” voters often goes unreported.

Researchers have an incentive to produce results that are as accurate as possible, but statistical variance happens. Each poll is an estimate. And a small variation between two polls by one or two percentage points is “noise”, not “signal”.

We get a picture of how party preferences have shifted by looking at trends across a number of polls. But past trends aren’t a sound guide to future trends.

What are recent polls telling us?

The Research Association New Zealand’s Political Polling Code requires that projections of the numbers of seats for each party “should state that polls do not predict – they measure a point in time”.

I’d add that no one can “measure” opinions in the precise ways we measure distances and times. An opinion isn’t an object in space.

So, what can we say recent polls indicate, rather than measure?

They seem to show that if an election had been held recently, National would have won fewer party votes than in the 2023 election. Labour may have done better than National, but been let down by potential coalition partners the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

It’s unclear whether or not that hypothetical election could have led to a change of government. Polls held in the weeks immediately before elections are normally pretty close to the election results. But voter turnout can upset that.

A representative sample of eligible people in a survey may not demographically match the population that actually casts their votes.

Unexpectedly high turnout in 2020, for instance, meant polls in the month before the election underestimated Labour and overestimated National.

All the same, political observers can use polls as indicators of where things have been heading. As I write, none of the parties, except NZ First, would be pleased with their recent polling, on average.

NZ First has had results of 9% or more, improving on its previous election result of 6.1%. Labour’s gradual rise over 2025 appeared to be at the expense of the two smaller left-wing parties, however.

Do polls influence election results?

Opinion polls can have self-fulfilling or “bandwagon” effects on people’s voting behaviour. But there’s no A-causes-B theory that allows us to predict whether, or by how much, that will happen. The effects could go in different directions for different people.

If polls show one candidate is way ahead, it may motivate me to vote for that person (to join the bandwagon). Or I might vote for another candidate (to support the underdog). Or I might not vote at all (as it’s a forgone conclusion).

In a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) election, a party that’s been polling below the 5% threshold and isn’t likely to win an electorate seat may get caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Reluctant to “waste” their votes on that party, people may choose another – making it even harder for that party.

People also ask: who will work with whom in government? They may reason that a vote for one party means effectively voting to help put another party into government as well – which may or may not seem desirable.

Because of the potential for polls to lead public opinion rather than follow it, New Zealand bans the publication of polls on election day itself but not during the two-week advance-voting period.

But blackout periods are common in Europe and Latin America, and may be for as long as two weeks, as in Italy.

There’s also a risk that an unscrupulous actor could publish a false poll result in an effort to shift choices or suppress turnout, and that’s one reason why the research industry has a (self-regulated) code of conduct.

Past trends or future outcomes?

In a free society, however, the state shouldn’t prohibit research firms from doing surveys, or media from reporting the results.

Polls can be informative for voters, and a useful part of the democratic process. They also give the parties feedback about their performance (or perceived performance) between elections.

But they can be unhelpful when framed by media in sensationalist or biased ways.

People should be left to make up their minds about which candidate or party best represents them, rather than view an election as a contest narrated in terms of who’s up and who’s down.

In the end, we should read the polls and the media critically, and not take things on trust. It always pays to check, for example, who’s done the survey, who’s sponsored it and what the methodology was.

Above all, remember that opinion polls only indicate past trends; they don’t predict future outcomes.

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

As Australia’s online harm crackdown reshapes the debate, NZ must find its own path

2026-02-02T19:06:32Z

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Around the world, lawmakers are grappling with how to better protect young people from online harms such as cyberbullying, sexual exploitation and AI-generated “deepfake” images.

Recent reforms overseas – notably Australia’s landmark move to restrict young people’s access to social media – have sharpened debate about how far governments should go.

Despite past and current efforts – including a government inquiry shortly due to report its final findings – New Zealand arguably lags other developed countries in tackling a problem that is growing more serious and complex by the year.

In 2026, the question facing the government is whether to cautiously follow overseas models, or to use this moment to develop a response better suited to its own legal, social and cultural context.

What is online harm?

Online harm can take many forms, including exposure to illegal material, AI-driven racial bias, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. As Netsafe highlights, online abuse and harassment can unfold across social media, messaging apps, email and text, and often involves repeated or sustained behaviour.

New Zealand’s legislative response has developed gradually over the past decade. A major step was the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, which introduced civil and criminal penalties for serious online abuse and established Netsafe as the approved agency for complaints and dispute resolution.

Since then, governments have attempted broader reform. In 2018, the Department of Internal Affairs launched a wide-ranging regulatory review, followed in 2021 by the Safer Online Services and Media Platforms review, which aimed to modernise online safety protections and oversight.

However, that process stalled and in May 2024 the review was terminated by Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden. A year later, the government launched a new inquiry into “the harm young New Zealanders encounter online”.

In the meantime, New Zealand’s fragmented and increasingly outdated regulatory framework is struggling to keep pace with fast-evolving digital risks.

What can NZ learn from other countries?

Many submissions to the government’s latest inquiry urged New Zealand to learn from overseas experience, while others noted that not all of those solutions would work at home.

InternetNZ argued that as a small and relatively late mover, New Zealand can “piggyback” on reforms in larger markets, so long as it ensured they reflect the country’s “unique local context, both socially and practically”. The Inclusive Aotearoa Collective – Tāhono similarly stressed the need to protect sovereignty.

Others argued New Zealand should draw on its reputation for innovation and develop its own culturally appropriate approaches.

Amokura Panoho of Pou Tangata Online Safety, for instance, called for updating the Harmful Digital Communications Act to address emerging AI harms such as deepfakes, and creating new Māori-led reporting pathways tailored for young Māori to seek help. Advocates argue this could allow New Zealand to anticipate future risks rather than chase them.

Australia’s move to ban social media for under-16s has loomed large over the inquiry. While France and the United Kingdom are considering similar bans, there are concerns blanket age restrictions can be blunt instruments and that young people often find ways around age-verification systems.

This international focus was reinforced in the inquiry’s interim report, which drew heavily on models from Australia, the UK, Ireland and the European Union. But submitters also pointed to other lessons, including the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation, South Korea’s online safety framework and California’s youth privacy laws.

A further complication is that many international reforms remain largely untested. Australia’s Online Safety Act is still being rolled out in phases, while the EU’s Digital Services Act only entered full force in early 2024. As a result, evidence about their effectiveness remains limited.

The case for a national regulator

One of the clearest options emerging from the inquiry is the creation of a national online safety regulator: a model already adopted in several comparable countries, including Australia, the UK and Ireland.

In the UK, communications regulator Ofcom oversees the Online Safety Act 2023, while Australia’s eSafety Commissioner was granted expanded powers under the Online Safety Act 2021.

A 2021 Department of Internal Affairs report concluded that a central regulator in New Zealand could streamline oversight, provide a single point of contact and improve enforcement. The inquiry’s interim report reached a similar conclusion, pointing to the benefits of coordinated regulation and proactive “safety by design” rules.

But reform has been slowed by political caution, particularly around concerns about freedom of expression. The government’s preference for light-touch regulation has left gaps – notably in addressing emerging harms such as sexualised deepfakes – prompting ACT MP Laura McClure’s member’s bill aimed at closing some of those loopholes.

The inquiry’s final report, and the government’s response to it, offer a rare opportunity to reset direction. The challenge will be to move beyond piecemeal reform and design a system capable of keeping pace with rapid technological change, while placing the voices of young people and Māori at its centre.

Claire Henry receives funding from the Australian Research Council as a DECRA Fellow. She previously received a research grant from InternetNZ (2018) for an unrelated project on "Preventing child sexual offending online through effective digital media."

Michael S. Daubs was commissioned by the Department of Internal Affairs to co-author the 2021 report with Peter Thompson.

From statement sleeves to the codpiece: 5 fashions which should come back from Tudor England

2026-02-02T19:06:05Z

Portrait of Elizabeth I of England, 1588. Woburn Abbey/Wikimedia Commons

There are few dynasties in history as well-known as the Tudors. From Henry VIII’s six wives to Elizabeth I’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Tudors continue to capture imaginations.

While sex, power and public execution provide endless entertainment, if you ask me, the enduring popularity of the Tudors is down to one factor – their magnificent fashion.

Dress was serious business in Tudor England. Clothing was its own language with each textile, colour and style carrying a different meaning. This allowed people to display their identity, status, and even send political messages.

From the Elizabethan Ruff to Henry VIII’s codpiece, here are five Tudor fashions which should make a comeback.

1. The linen shift

Sounds like a boring place to start, but the linen shift was a staple in every Tudor wardrobe.

Linen was inexpensive, breathable and could be laundered daily. Contrary to popular belief, the Tudors were obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene. Linen absorbs sweat, bodily fluids and was believed to protect the skin from diseases such as the plague. Wearing and changing your linen shift daily was the best way to stay clean and protected from infection.

The collar on this linen shift, from around 1540, was larger so it could be seen under the outer garments. ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London, CC BY-NC

A fashionable trend of the Tudor period saw the collar on the linen shift become larger so it could be seen under the outer garments. A clean collar demonstrated that you could afford to change your shift and therefore had good hygiene.

You know what they say, cleanliness is close to godliness.

2. The ruff

If there is a single item of clothing that is most redolent of the Tudors, it’s the ruff.

The ruff was a pleated collar made from linen or lace and given its iconic stiff shape with starch. During the reign of Elizabeth I, large lace ruffs became an elaborate status symbol because they were difficult to set and impractical to wear which meant you had to have a lot of servants helping you.

Large, impractical ruffs – like the one in this 1615 portrait of a woman, possibly Elizabeth Pope – were a status symbol in Tudor England. Yale Center for British Art

For Elizabeth I, the ruff was a significant source of power. The queen’s opulent ruffs commanded deference and situated her as the ultimate object in any room. In Elizabeth’s court, people came to her, not the other way around.

Dior gave the ruff a modern twist in their 2025 Fall–Winter collection, so it looks like they are already making a comeback.

3. Statement sleeves

In the Tudor period, sleeves were a separate garment that were attached while getting dressed in the morning. This allowed the wearer to pair them with different outfits and play around with fabrics, colours and styles.

The most popular style was the trumpet sleeve. This sleeve was narrow at the top of the arm and dramatically expanded in a cone shape over the elbow. A second sleeve would then appear underneath at the forearm.

This painting of Elizabeth I before her accession is dated between 1546 and 1547. The sleeves give the outfit a dramatic and voluminous appearance. Royal Collection/Wikimedia Commons

This gave any outfit a dramatic and voluminous appearance with layers of luxurious textiles. See how this beautiful design looked on a young Elizabeth I.

A modern take on statement sleeves would be a great way to spice up any outfit.

4. Decorative techniques

Tudor tailors used a range of decorative techniques when making clothes. Paning, pinking and cutwork were just some of the more elaborate modes of garment construction but the most common was slashing.

Slashing involved cutting small slits into outer garments of velvet to reveal an inner layer of white silk. The layering and contrast of different colours not only created a striking and vibrant image but showed off your ownership of expensive textiles.

In this portrait of Henry VIII from between 1540–1547, you can see slashing on his doublet and sleeves. Walker Art Gallery/Wikimedia Commons

You can see slashing on Henry VIII’s doublet (jacket) and sleeves in his famous portrait.

In 1991, this technique inspired Vivienne Westwood to produce the collection Cut and Slash, so it definitely has a place in the modern era.

5. The codpiece

Ok, this one is a bit of fun… but for Henry VIII the codpiece was no laughing matter. Starting out as a small triangular piece of material, by the early 16th century the codpiece had evolved into a padded, stiff and bejewelled item symbolic of virility and fertility.

Toxic masculinity was all the rage during the Tudor period, and Henry VIII was under immense pressure to maintain absolute control through his superior machismo.

As the king aged, his vigour waned and his failure to produce a male heir sent him into a crisis of masculinity. The display and exaggeration of his manhood through the codpiece was Henry’s only means of reasserting his masculine identity and fecundity.

Henry’s 1540 tournament armour gives a clear indication of just how exaggerated the codpiece became.

One thing is for sure, fashion in Tudor England was not a flippant pursuit. If the ever-enduring legacy of the Tudors can teach us anything, it’s that we should always dress to impress.

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

I found Australian cult The Family’s left-behind library. Here’s what their books reveal

2026-02-02T19:05:39Z

Books found at The Family's abandoned Santiniketan Lodge. Caitlin Burns

For more than five decades, Australian cult The Family has sparked both fascination and controversy. Founded in the early 1960s by yoga instructor turned spiritual guru Anne Hamilton-Byrne, this New Age group – predominately based in and around Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges – was estimated to have numbered about 200 people at its peak. Many were from educated middle-class and professional backgrounds.

Hamilton-Byrne illegally adopted 14 children, who were raised, along with roughly 14 others, by women called “aunties” at a secluded property in Victoria’s alpine region of Lake Eildon. It was raided by police in 1987. Former child members recall strict schedules marked by spiritual exercises, minimal meals, and harsh discipline.

The Family’s leader claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. She taught an eclectic blend of Christianity, Eastern philosophy and mysticism. LSD use was central, used as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment. When she died in 2019, aged 98, she left behind no formal written doctrine outlining The Family’s alternative beliefs – only a handful of (privately circulated) cassette recordings.

Determined to piece together The Family’s extensive worldview, I visited the abandoned Santiniketan Lodge, once the group’s primary meeting place, shortly after it was listed for sale last year.

In a small room scattered across stained carpet lay remnants of a forgotten library: dust-riddled books on yoga and meditation, histories of medieval saints and mystics, cosmic education, life extension and biographies written via psychography (spirit writing).

With permission, I gathered a selection of these books – 18 in total. I chose titles with similar themes, those referenced in past research on The Family, and books with distinct annotations or identifying names inside their covers.

One by one, I read them. Together, they reveal telling insights into the ideas that shaped Hamilton-Byrne’s eccentric teachings and were used to justify some of The Family’s more coercive practices.

This is what I found.

The books found in Santiniketan Lodge reveal insights into Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s eccentric teachings. Caitlin Burns

Yoga and eastern philosophy

Many of the books at Santiniketan Lodge were devoted to the practice of yoga and meditation: titles like The Collected Works of Ramana Maharishi, Autobiography of a Yogi, Science of Breath, and Hatha Yoga or the Philosophy of Physical Well-Being. Most were written for a Western audience. They would have once circulated among adult members for daily practice.

Prior to establishing The Family, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was a student of Swiss national Margrit Segesman, who pioneered yoga in Australia during the 1950s. Hamilton-Byrne would later go on to instruct her own Hatha Yoga classes throughout Melbourne and Geelong. Eventually, she wove this ancient Indian practice into the core teachings within The Family.

Hatha Yoga emphasises the connection between body and mind, with asanas (postures) held for extended periods to encourage strength, discipline and awareness. Central to yoga philosophy is the belief that a healthy body and nervous system are essential for sustaining mental focus during meditation and concentration. Hamilton-Byrne taught these principles. She encouraged members to adopt a predominantly vegetarian diet and abstain from alcohol as a means of supporting one’s “spiritual energy”.

It wasn’t just the adults who were taught the benefits of yoga: the children were, too. In her 1995 memoir, Unseen Unheard Unknown, Sarah Moore (published under Sarah Hamilton-Byrne) describes the monotony of growing up. Days began with an hour of Hatha yoga, followed by listening to Hamilton-Byrne’s recorded teachings, chanting mantras, completing schoolwork, reading Hindu scriptures and Zen philosophy. Three bouts of meditation were interspersed throughout the day.

Seeking the spiritual path

Dr Raynor Carey Johnson was a renowned physicist and academic, a former master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne. He was fascinated by mysticism and the paranormal. In his later years, he found a guru, or master, in Hamilton-Byrne. He became a prominent member of The Family during the 1960s.

Johnson had been involved with The Family for nine years when The Spiritual Path was published in 1971. The book was intended as a guide for “spiritual seekers” hoping to find God-consciousness, or a spiritual awakening – a state of unity with God.

The text blends familiar Judeo–Christian practices of prayer and service from the West with Hindu–Buddhist concepts of meditation and reincarnation from the East. Elements of Jungian psychology, particularly individuation, are paralleled with spiritual transformation across religious traditions throughout the book.

Johnson explains that once an individual has been initiated on to the path, “a Master will often take charge of their karma”. That master will remove negative experiences, or actions from past lives, to enable spiritual progression.

This is what happened in The Family. Hamilton-Byrne employed a rather distorted version of karma as a tool of control. Members believed without devotion to her, they would continue to experience the cycle of suffering on Earth until it was resolved, delaying their ultimate unity with God.

The idea that a master can resolve one’s negative karma raises serious questions about authority and dependence. This dynamic is often evident in religious cults, where the leader (whether guru, master, or priest) is portrayed as the sole gateway to the divine (or God).

Former member Ben Shenton, raised in the cult, recalls how his mother’s unwavering devotion to Hamilton-Byrne left her vulnerable to spiritual exploitation. She believed any challenges or setbacks in her life were just lessons to be learned, due to mistakes made in previous lifetimes.

Johnson’s goal of helping others find spiritual meaning provides a valuable foundation for understanding The Family’s beliefs. Yet these idealistic teachings stand in stark contrast to Hamilton-Byrne’s real-life practices, where control and power seemed to be the priority over genuine spiritual growth.

Psychedelic exploration

As I flipped through Satsang with Baba: Questions and Answers with Swami Muktananda, one major detail stood out: underlined passages in pencil, focused on the negative use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) during meditation.

This underlined text focuses on the negatives of LSD use.

A name was also pencilled on the inside of the book’s cover, marking it as belonging to one of the former children who grew up at Lake Eildon. To understand why a child might be interested in reading about a guru’s thoughts on hallucinogens, we first have to understand The Family’s relationship with drugs.

When LSD was legalised in Victoria during the mid-1950s, its potential benefits for treating mental disorders were promoted by a small circle of Melbourne psychiatrists, including Dr Lance Howard Whitaker, who would later become a prominent member of The Family.

Whitaker was able to get ampoules of LSD in liquid form straight from Sandoz. It quickly became the drug of choice within The Family and was administered to adult members (and children when they turned 14) during sessions known as “clearings”. It was believed the drug could help unlock unconscious memories from childhood or past lives, bringing buried traumas to the surface, where they could repent and be forgiven.

Satsang with Baba was transcribed from a spiritual discussion between Swami Muktananda and his pupils in India between 1971 and 1974. It was shared and taught among Hamilton-Byrne’s followers, especially the children, who admired the Siddha Yoga guru – possibly more than their supposed biological mother Hamilton-Byrne.

Satsang with Baba mostly addresses broad spiritual concerns from his pupils, but it’s Muktananda’s stance against the use of drugs to expand consciousness that appealed to the book’s owner (judging by the underlined passages). While it might offer a short fix, “one should be able to enter the inner world without the aid of these drugs. That is true growth.”

Traditional yogis have often dismissed drugs as a shortcut to God-consciousness. These underlined passages suggest even the children at the time may have questioned Hamilton-Byrne’s reliance on LSD, which she used as a tool for transcendence and control.

Other texts in the left-behind library included books on Christianity, Catholicism, theosophy and spirit writing – and Raynor Johnson’s personal copy of Letters from Mother: A Family Biography in Two Worlds.

The books I read helped me place Hamilton-Byrne’s teachings in a broader context. The Family’s religious framework blended elements of Eastern philosophy with familiar Christian imagery and interpretations, emerging at a time when New Age spirituality and countercultural beliefs were gaining momentum in Western society.

Its quest for transcendence often came at the expense of ethical boundaries – a pattern that would define its legacy and cause more harm than good. While this doesn’t excuse the contradictions and distortions Hamilton-Byrne later imposed on her followers, it did help me understand the appeal of both her teachings and the era that enabled them.

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

Men rule the Grammys as women see hard drop in wins at 2026 awards

2026-02-02T16:33:11Z

In her acceptance speech for best pop vocal album at the 68th Grammy Awards ceremony last night, Lady Gaga shone a light on the challenges that women face in studios. “It can be hard,” she said. “So, I urge you to always listen to yourself and … fight for your songs, fight for yourself as a producer. Make sure that you are heard, loudly,” she continued, placing the onus on women to take control of the fight for equality in music.

Many well-established and new female superstars were indeed heard loudly last night in the broadcast, which clearly made sure to display gender balance in front of the camera. However, when it comes to awards, nominations and the wider industry the picture is much different.

Working with my business partner, strategist Richard Addy, I looked at gender representation across all 95 of this year’s Grammy categories. Our analysis reveals that women and female bands sustained a dramatic fall in winners compared to last year. They received less than a quarter of all Grammys (23%), a 14 percentage point drop from last year’s high of 37% and the lowest level since 2022.

This fall has been partly a reflection of women’s declining recognition as Grammy nominees. Women’s representation peaked at under a third (28%) of all nominations last year, and this year just one in four nominations (24%) were given to women.

Despite Lady Gaga’s encouraging words for women to own their music as producers, their fight for a seat at the producers’ table is yet to yield results. Since its introduction 51 years ago, no woman has ever won the coveted Grammy for producer of the year, non-classical. Last year, Alissia became only the tenth woman to even earn a nomination in the category but lost out to Daniel Nigro. This year, all five nominees were male.

Addy and I have previously conducted a year-long data-led investigation of over 9,700 Grammy nominations and over 2,200 wins between 2017, revealing that it takes a village of men to raise a superstar, female or male. The winners of record, album and song of the year – three of the four most coveted Grammy awards – typically come on stage to collect their trophy alone.

In reality, however, they share their award with numerous producers, engineers and mixers, who are overwhelmingly male. So music icons like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift collecting their individual awards masks the male dominated structures behind these wins. For example, Bad Bunny, this year’s album of the year winner, has received it alongside 12 male producers, songwriters and technicians who were not on stage with him.

Despite women’s consistently high visibility at the Recording Academy nominee announcements and broadcasts over the year, their recognition across the Grammys has remained peripheral compared to men’s. Since 2017, 76% of nominations and wins across all categories have been awarded to men. By contrast, women have been nominated for and won only one in five Grammys in the same period.

Research consistently shows that the reasons women remain marginalised in the Grammys and in music more generally, are deeply structural and multifaceted.

Although the Recording Academy’s mission is to advance a strong culture of diversity, inclusion, belonging and respect in the music industry, women remain marginalised as Recording Academy members. The proportion of Grammy voting members who are women has grown from 21% (2018) to 28% (2024). But this growth rate will only deliver gender parity in 2051.

This slow growth is likely linked to 69% of voting members being songwriters, composers, producers and engineers, roles in which women’s marginalisation has repeatedly been reported to be highest. For example, the latest Inclusion In the Recording Studio report from from USC Annenberg Initiative revealed the overall ratio of men to women songwriters in Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts across 13 years is 6.2 to 1.

Our assessment of 67 academic papers and reports in our report, The Missing Voices of Women in Music and Music News, revealed that gender discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual violence consistently hinder women’s success in music, as do pay gaps, women’s cultural exclusion from the “boys club” and limited discovery and promotional opportunities. According to Be The Change: Gender equity in music, a 2024 report from consultancy Midia based on research conducted across 133 countries 60% of women in the music industry have experienced sexual harassment while one in five women have survived sexual assault.

The evidence points to a reality in which no matter women’s talent or determination to succeed, they will only be able to do so if the music industry changes. Until then, we are unlikely to see women achieving recognition parity at the Grammys or any other music awards.

Luba Kassova is a co-founder of AKAS, an audience strategy consultancy which works with primarily purpose led not-for-profit organisations. In the past AKAS has received funding from the Gates Foundation for researching the Missing Perspectives of Women reports published between 2020 and 2025. The research of 2026 Grammy nominations and winners, which will form the backbone of a forthcoming report, has not received any external funding.

NZ’s $2.5 billion shoddy building bill: how to fix the ‘build now, fix later’ culture

2026-02-02T00:43:38Z

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New Zealand’s residential construction industry contributes roughly NZ$26 billion annually to the economy and employs around 70,000 workers. Yet despite its significance and scale, the sector’s productivity levels have flatlined since the mid-1980s.

In housing construction, “productivity” isn’t a simple measure of output per worker; it refers to the industry’s ability to deliver the right quantity of high-quality homes without significant delays or flaws.

If a builder spends ten hours rectifying avoidable mistakes, for instance, their productivity for the day is effectively zero. And this has become all too common within the sector.

A 2014 study by the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) confirms 92% of new houses surveyed had compliance defects.

Subsequent analysis carried out for BRANZ by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research estimated the annual cost of defective building to the overall economy:

The results show that economy-wide effects of an increase in productivity would see New Zealand’s GDP rise by $2.5 billion, as the industry’s overall costs of production decrease.

That means nearly 10% of the sector’s total value is lost to systemic quality failure. Based on the average construction cost of an Auckland house, that loss represents around 5,000 missing homes every year.

Recognising the productivity problem, the government last year introduced major reforms aimed at speeding up consent processes and allocating financial liability for defective buildings to those responsible.

But while poor productivity is often blamed on procurement methods, technology or labour, our research suggests better quality management is key to remedying the industry’s “build now, fix later” culture.

Commercial viability before quality control

We surveyed the views of 106 residential construction professionals, including general managers, construction managers, site managers, project managers and subcontractors.

They were asked about the influence of quality management on improving residential construction productivity, and about the effects of government policy. The views expressed suggested a culture prioritising time and cost over quality is a systemic norm at the industry level.

We then traced the industry’s problems back to the major policy shifts that began in the mid-1980s. Before then, building quality was anchored in the prescriptive standards set by the Ministry of Works.

By specifying how to build, the ministry acted as a national governor of technical standards. But by 1988, those standards were viewed as a barrier to efficient market operation, effectively ending the era of the state as master builder.

The New Zealand Building Code subsequently replaced the previous prescriptive system with a performance-based model focused solely on outcomes.

Without strict procedural guidance, the industry moved towards a culture that prioritised speed and commercial viability over rigorous quality management.

A ‘tick-box’ culture

To understand why industry performance stalled, we refer to what’s called the “theory of constraints”, which argues a system is only as strong as its weakest link.

In New Zealand’s residential construction sector, we argue, the weakest link is not just poor quality control but the absence of a quality-focused culture in general.

The 1980s shift to a hands-off, self-regulated model helped foster a “tick-box” culture rather than genuine organisational reform. This has meant that with every step forward, the industry is pulled back by the need to fix previous errors, stalling productivity.

On the building site, this manifested as a disconnect between the “work as imagined” (the manuals and checklists from head office) and the “work as done” by builders and subcontractors.

The worst outcomes are well known. New Zealand is still paying for the nearly $47 billion legacy of the leaky homes crisis, which peaked in the early 2000s. Poor quality, damp and mouldy housing contributes to respiratory illnesses costing $145 million annually in hospitalisations.

While policies such as the healthy homes standards for rental properties now exist, such measures mainly treat the symptoms of a deeper problem.

In Auckland alone, one-third of all projects fail their final inspection. The high volume of remedial work required chokes the entire system’s throughput.

The government must lead

Fixing an annual $2.5 billion problem requires a structural shift. Our research proposes a framework where the state, as the primary funder and driver of major construction, sets the standard the rest of the industry must adopt.

The proposed framework is underpinned by “lean principles” designed to minimise waste and encourage continuous improvement through a “plan-do-check-act” cycle. It uses the ISO 9000 standards New Zealand already has in place for exports.

To help achieve this, we argue the government would need to do two things.

Establish a national construction, productivity and quality commission. This would be a nonpartisan body staffed by industry and academic experts to ensure reform survives beyond three-year election cycles.
Mandate quality management systems that align with existing ISO 9000 standards for all government-funded residential projects.

The aim is to create a trickle-down effect, driving culture change throughout the industry. To win stable government contracts, subcontractors would be forced to up-skill and formalise standards-based oversight of their work.

Improved quality and productivity should not be aspirational. New Zealand has 2.5 billion reasons to create the genuine structural reform required.

The author acknowledges the contributions of Senior Lecturer Funmilayo Ebun Rotimi and Associate Professor Nicola Naismith of AUT to the research described in this article.

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

A knock-off Pynchon without the punchline: George Saunders’ Vigil falls flat

2026-02-02T00:40:41Z

From Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood to Barack Obama and the editors of Time magazine, it seems everyone who is anyone is lining up to sing the praises of George Saunders.

Saunders is the author of Booker Prize winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), a ghost story about the grief of Abraham Lincoln after losing his son, whose undead spirit becomes restless. The success of that novel has somewhat overshadowed the longer career of a talented writer who has written some of the best short fiction of the 21st century.

Does Saunders’ latest novel Vigil live up to the effusive praise? I think not.

Review: Vigil – George Saunders (Bloomsbury)

Vigil’s narrator is Jill “Doll” Blaine, a spectral guide whose duty is to console dying individuals – her deathbed “charges” – as they pass through purgatory into the afterlife. She has overseen this rite of passage hundreds of times, ever since she was accidentally blown up by a criminal seeking revenge on her husband, a police officer.

Then she is tasked with consoling the comatose oil baron K.J. Boone, who

rolled right over whatever life put in front of him. He’d worked his way up. Step by step. To the top. Very top. CEO. About as high as a guy could go. If he did say so himself. Hired and fired, restructured whole divisions, traveled the world, befriended senators, advised presidents.

Boone remains cold, proud and unrepentant about the craterous ecological footprint his business dealings have left on the world, even in his final hours on earth.

To Jill’s surprise, she is joined in her task by a spectral colleague – a Frenchman seeking redemption for his part in the climate catastrophe, having invented the combustion engine. The Frenchman has taken it upon himself to force Boone to atone. He tries to impress upon Boone the gravity of his complicity, as the CEO of an oil corporation, with the catastrophe of climate change.

None of the Frenchman’s attempts have any effect. Boone maintains global warming is a fiction and nothing can convince him otherwise. He is unmoved by visits from the apparitions the Frenchman conjures in a vain attempt to rattle him: his family members, friends and colleagues; the people, animals and natural features his business ventures have obliterated or destroyed. His devotion to oil and Mammon reigns supreme.

This troublesome case raises personal dilemmas for Jill. She is led to reflect on her former life, her view of things, her idealised relationship with her husband (who, it turns out, moved on too soon) and her murderer, who was never brought to justice. As she grapples with her difficult situation, she increasingly detours into questions of mortality and how to find the peace that comes with acceptance, even when there has been no justice.

At last, Jill sacrifices her professional impartiality to defeat and banish Boone’s lackeys, the two “Mels”, who have been waiting for him in purgatory, with the aim of reinstating him as the figurehead for their capitalist propaganda. In doing so, Jill unexpectedly saves Boone’s soul. She makes him realise that he must join with the Frenchman and use his time in purgatory to convince others that we can change course from petrocapitalism to renewable energy.

Jill realises this is merely a symbolic gesture; there are no single villains in the story of capitalism. Many despicable hands are at work, ghost-like, behind the scenes. The CEOs are merely symbolic figureheads. Behind them are other ordinary disciples spreading the gospel of capital: a lineup of Mels, wreaking havoc. Boone’s odious daughter, for example, defends her father by accusing leftists of being hypocrites because they drive to work and tweet their critiques of capitalism on the latest iPhone, as if simply opting out of capitalism were possible without there being a revolution in the mode of production.

George Saunders at the National Book Festival, Washington DC, August 12, 2023. Shawn Miller/Library of Congress Life, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Monstrous magnates

I wanted to like Vigil more than I did. The premise is timely. There are moments of humour and wildly imaginative surrealist play that feel fresh and excuse some of the hackneyed dialogue, sentimentality and moralising.

But for a novel that wants to address the perils of late capitalism and encourage the reader to imagine alternatives to the climate apocalypse we are hurtling towards, Vigil shies away from elaborating the issues. It relies heavily on insinuation. Boone’s crimes against humanity remain indistinct and unconvincing. Whether or not one agrees with the the novel’s spiritual premise, its discussion of petrocapitalism and climate catastrophe is woefully vague, even artificial and trite, in the pages where it ought to feel most acute.

The novel is bereft of the kind of background investigations that might produce genuine insights into the crises we are living through, and which make other great works of the genre – Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier (1911), Upton Sinclair’s Oil! (1927), E.L. Doctorow’s Loon Lake (1980) – so memorable and worth rereading in these times.

Boone is a character we are supposed to find enigmatic, manipulative and complex. But his background story feels underdeveloped and hackneyed. It is told piecemeal, in snippets of memories resembling a pastiche of Citizen Kane and Ebenezer Scrooge.

This is among the more compelling testaments to his power:

So they turned to him, trusted him, feared him, even. Only a handful of people in all of history had ever known that kind of power. Presidents, maybe, depending on the era; kings, sure, but their kingdoms were not worldwide; movie stars and such, but that was all superficial crap. He spoke and markets moved; called a king and the king picked up. He’d decided we were sticking with oil and, goddamn it, we’d stuck with oil and the world got twenty, thirty good years in exchange. […] You’re welcome, world.

Still, it falls flat. I found myself comparing Boone to other tycoons from well-known American novels. He pales in comparison to the heaven-and-earth-moving avarice of the union-busting petrocapitalist J. Arnold Ross in Sinclair’s Oil! and Daniel Day Lewis’ menacing reinterpretation of him as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s loosely adapted film There Will Be Blood (2007). Nor does Boone demonstrate the cunning and brilliance of Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood (based on streetcar magnate Charles Yerkes) or Doctorow’s F.W. Bennett.

In a tradition of Cowperwoods, Bennetts and Rosses, Boone feels about as convincing a villain as Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons, without the wit. It is a particular disappointment, given the abundance of material to work with at a time when there are more vile billionaire CEOs populating our world than at any other point in history.

The unconvincing quality is not simply because Vigil is not a realist novel. Compare Boone to Pierce Inverarity, the dead millionaire in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and he still comes up short, despite the fact we never even meet Inverarity – he is the villain pulling the strings from beyond the grave. Indeed, Vigil feels at times like a knock-off Pynchon novel without the punchline. Jill resembles Pynchon’s bewildered housewife protagonist Oedipa Maas, who must reckon with the restless spirit of Inverarity, another dead CEO who seems to be communicating with and manipulating her.

The dialogue and style of narration are heavy-handed in places. The characters are mostly threadbare and uninteresting, and the frequent entering into different characters’ streams of consciousness often leaves the reader with vertigo. The storyline is busy, but the narrative energy feels forced, lacking the spontaneous energy that emanates from Pynchon’s unambiguous political sincerity, which thrums beneath his verbal silliness and hijinks.

It is as if Saunders hasn’t fully decided or committed to exactly what he wants to say about the material, or how best to go about saying it. Over and over, he misses opportunities to accept the challenge of all speculative novels: to explore not only the limits but the possibilities of utopian thinking. An example is when Boone raises the compelling question of what would happen to civilisation if oil were taken out of the equation.

The ending is disappointingly hollow and deflating, encapsulated in Jill’s evasive epiphany: “Comfort, for all else is futility.” But the deepest disappointment is that Vigil fails to deliver on its promises to follow through on its ambitious political polemics. Others will have to read and decide from themselves, but in a time of rising corporate-sponsored fascism, ecoterrorism, oil-driven land grabs and warfare, the billionaire Boone’s redemption arc feels outdated, defeatist and tone deaf.

Should Vigil really be marketed as a “triumph” for how boldly it reckons with today’s biggest issues? The political commentary in Vigil remains as hollowed out as the ghosts that populate its pages; its attempts to imagine alternatives to the present stall. The political struggles that define our times are instead diluted into a self-defeating moral parable about making peace with ourselves by accepting people and situations as they are.

Tamlyn Avery receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

I’m a former FBI agent who studies policing, and here’s how federal agents in Minneapolis are undermining basic law enforcement principles

2026-01-30T15:35:15Z

U.S. Border Patrol agents stand guard at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 8, 2026. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration says federal agents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution in Minneapolis. Department of Justice and Homeland Security officials have indicated that criminal investigations into the killings by immigration agents of Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti are inappropriate, declaring that both were domestic terrorists.

The killing of Good and Pretti raises legal, tactical and policy questions regarding law enforcement practices by federal agents.

In December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security launched “Operation Metro Surge” to enforce immigration laws in Minneapolis. The operation is being conducted by federal agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. One of the stated goals of Metro Surge is to arrest the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Metro Surge has also affected the lives of U.S. citizens, including citizens protesting immigration enforcement efforts. On Jan. 7, 2026, Good – a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three – was shot and killed in her vehicle by an ICE agent on a residential street in Minneapolis. On Jan. 24, 2026, CBP agents shot and killed 37-year-old Pretti, a U.S. citizen, on a public street in Minneapolis.

As a policing scholar and former FBI special agent, I believe these cases illustrate how some federal agents are engaging with the public in a way that undermines established principles of policing and constitutional law.

Law of deadly force

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons … against unreasonable … seizures.” A law enforcement officer’s use of force – including deadly force – is considered in law to be a seizure and must be reasonable.

In the 1989 decision Graham v. Connor, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the objective “reasonableness” of force based upon “the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” The court explained “reasonableness” in light of the idea that police officers must sometimes make “split-second” judgments.

In Tennessee v. Garner, the Supreme Court in 1985 established that the use of deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect is unreasonable unless the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.

These legal principles form the basis of DHS deadly force policy, which is similar to the policy I followed as an FBI agent: Law enforcement officers, or LEOs, “may use deadly force only when the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO or to another person.”

The legal question raised by the Good and Pretti killings is whether the officers had a reasonable belief that Good and Pretti posed an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officers.

Moments before the ICE agent killed Good, the agent walked around Good’s parked vehicle filming Good with his phone in one hand. Good, sitting behind the wheel in her car, says “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.”

As the shooting agent positions himself in front of Good’s vehicle, a second agent walks quickly toward Good’s vehicle and tries to open the door and reach inside. Good turns her steering wheel and tries to drive away – what a law enforcement agent could interpret as potentially an act of fleeing. The agent in front of Good’s vehicle shoots Good three times as she drives by him. He then mutters, “f-cking b-tch,” and walks away from Good’s crashed vehicle. There is dispute about whether Good’s vehicle grazed the agent.

Moments before Pretti was killed by federal agents, he was standing in a public street when agents approached him and sprayed him with a chemical agent. Pretti’s hands are visible and show that he is holding a cellphone.

The agents wrestle Pretti to the ground and repeatedly beat him with an object. Pretti is not seen brandishing a firearm. However, an agent approaches Pretti during the scuffle and appears to remove a firearm from Pretti’s waistband. Shortly thereafter, agents shoot Pretti 10 times. Pretti had kicked the taillight of a law enforcement vehicle – and was then tackled and tear-gassed by agents – 11 days before he was killed.

Some former federal prosecutors argue that these facts in the Good and Pretti cases warrant a thorough criminal investigation regarding whether federal agents illegally used lethal force in the killings. The central legal question is whether the evidence shows that the agents reasonably feared for their lives, or whether they acted unlawfully out of anger, frustration, retaliation or some other unjustified mental state.

Tactics, policy and split-second decisions

Beyond legal questions, Operation Metro Surge raises tactical and policy questions about DHS law enforcement practices.

State, local and federal law enforcement officers are required to follow firearms safety rules. While training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, I was required to learn and follow the cardinal safety rules, which include (1) treating all firearms as loaded, (2) keeping firearms pointed in a safe direction and (3) keeping one’s finger off the trigger until one is ready to press it.

These rules help keep officers and the public safe, including by preventing unintentional discharges of firearms.

There were multiple bystanders and officers in the immediate vicinity of both the Good and the Pretti shootings. That raised risks associated with unintentional discharges and jeopardizing officers’ ability to meet the requirement to respect human life.

DHS officers specifically are also required to “employ tactics and techniques that effectively bring an incident under control while promoting the safety of LEOs and the public,” which includes avoiding “intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

In both the Good and the Pretti cases, federal agents placed themselves in poor tactical positions that increased the likelihood of using deadly force.

When feasible, DHS agents are required to issue a verbal warning to comply with the agent’s instructions. Agents rushed to physically remove Good from her vehicle and similarly rushed to push Pretti off the street and then spray him with a chemical agent. There is reason to think the agents could have taken a more measured, composed and communicative approach to de-escalate the situation.

These tactical and policy principles reveal that the legal analysis of an agent’s “split-second” decision to use deadly force is not the only issue raised by these cases. Analysis of the seconds and minutes leading to the use of force is also crucial.

Mourners placed candles at a memorial to Alex Pretti on Nicollet Ave. in Minneapolis, Jan. 24, 2026. Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune

Warriors in the community

ICE and CBP federal agents are not police officers. However, they are law enforcement officers engaged in policing. Operation Metro Surge has made these agents highly visible.

Instead of the more traditional, methodical and long-term investigations they normally conduct, federal agents are now routinely taking on more of a traditional police role in the public eye. This role ranges from managing traffic violations to maintaining order during chaotic public protests.

Although the surge has brought these agents closer to a traditional police role, they are pursuing a militarized warrior model of policing.

Masked federal agents in tactical gear roaming the streets of Minneapolis blur the line between civilian and military policing. Coupled with events such as the killings of Good and Pretti, it is unsurprising that public trust is eroding not only in federal law enforcement agencies such as ICE but also in police departments generally.

Policing is difficult work under any circumstance. If federal agents continue to increase their interactions with the public, I believe they will need to embrace tactics from community policing and what is called procedurally just models of policing. These models emphasize building popular legitimacy by reinforcing relationships – through honest cooperation and partnership between law enforcement officers and the public.

The rule of law

Publicly available facts and evidence raise significant questions about whether federal agents acted contrary to established principles of policing and constitutional law in the deaths of Good and Pretti.

The rule of law is a cornerstone of liberal democracies that limits the exercise of discretionary or arbitrary power by government officials. This idea includes holding officials accountable when there is evidence of unauthorized uses of power. A thorough investigation into DHS tactics, I believe, is necessary to preserve the rule of law.

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

NZ’s finance industry is required by law to treat customers fairly – but how do we define ‘fair’?

2026-01-30T01:17:06Z

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Most of us would agree fairness is a good guiding principle in life. Actually defining and applying it in the law, however, isn’t quite so simple.

Since March last year, New Zealand’s financial sector – including banks, insurers and credit unions – has been governed by the Conduct of Financial Institutions regime.

At its centre sits a principle that “financial institutions must treat consumers fairly”. Under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (and amendments made in 2022), the regime is administered and enforced by the Financial Markets Authority.

Each financial institution must establish, maintain and publish a fair-conduct program that satisfies a set of statutory minimum requirements.

These prescribe internal systems, controls, monitoring and governance processes intended to demonstrate the institution treats consumers fairly in practice. Breaches can incur a “pecuniary penalty order”.

On its face, this is uncontroversial. Fairness offers moral comfort and signals decency and responsibility. But translating fairness into a legal obligation is not without cost.

It also risks compromising consumer autonomy and informed choice by forcing financial institutions to limit the shape or scope of products and services that might otherwise be attractive.

Subjective regulation

While section 446C of the act provides broad definitions of fair treatment, it leaves significant scope for interpretation by regulators and institutions.

The result is a regulatory model that is essentially subjective and which shapes the design and distribution of financial products before they go to market.

This presents practical challenges for intuitions adapting to a fairness standard that is inherently vague. But it also raises questions about the balance between consumer protection and potential regulatory overreach.

In 2024, the government consulted on whether the statutory minimum requirements for fair conduct programs should be repealed or amended.

This was in response to industry concerns that some fairness requirements were either unnecessary or duplicated other regulations, or they were unduly prescriptive given the actual risks of harm to consumers.

Industry submissions generally acknowledged the high compliance costs associated with the current framework while supporting the broader objective of fair consumer treatment.

In response, the government chose to amend rather than repeal those minimum fairness requirements. In 2025, it introduced a draft amendment bill proposing changes to the statutory requirements for fair conduct programs.

If enacted, this may make the regime less strict. But it would also force institutions that have already invested heavily in compliance under the existing law to review and modify their programs once again.

Unintended consequences

This revisiting of the law reflects the the difficulty of defining fairness as a legally enforceable standard. Fairness is not an objective concept. It’s subjective and evaluative. What’s fair to one person may not be fair to another.

Yet the law now requires that financial institutions effectively prove they are designing and offering products and services in ways that align with the Financial Markets Authority’s evolving understanding of fair treatment.

As a result, even where consumers understand a product’s features and willingly accept its risks, the fairness obligation may still require institutions to reconsider whether the product should be offered at all.

On the surface, prioritising consumer interests over consumer choice might seem reasonable. But it can have unintended consequences.

In 2021, for example, the government amended the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act to impose highly prescriptive affordability checks on all consumer lending.

A 2022 investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment found the reforms had caused borrowers who should have passed the affordability test were being declined or offered reduced credit.

Fairness and risk

Because the fairness principle is broad and subjective, even if the Financial Markets Authority’s current interpretation is reasonable there is no guarantee future enforcement will be.

Once parliament embeds an open-ended moral concept in law, it hands significant discretion to whoever interprets it next.

Of course fairness matters. But it should be a moral compass for financial institutions and a cultural expectation for financial markets rather than an opaque licence for regulatory paternalism.

It risks turning financial institutions into overseers of consumer behaviour rather than providers of products and services.

It would be more straightforward to enforce existing laws such as the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and the fair-dealing provisions in the Financial Markets Conduct Act.

The aim should be to target specific misconduct, strengthen consumers’ financial literacy through education, and intervene where there is genuine, demonstrated harm.

The law should preserve the space for consumers to make their own decisions, even when those decisions involve risk. Fairness is a virtue, autonomy is a right. We should be careful not to sacrifice the second in the name of the first.

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

What is Nipah virus? And what makes it so deadly?

2026-01-30T00:27:47Z

An outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus in India has put many countries in Asia on high alert, given the fatality rate in humans can be between 40% and 75%. Several countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, have introduced new screening and testing measures, after at least two people died of Nipah virus in the Indian state of West Bengal this month.

But what is Nipah virus, and how concerned should we be?

Here’s what you need to know.

What is Nipah virus?

Like Hendra virus, Nipah is in a category of viruses called henipaviruses. It is zoonotic, meaning it can spread from animals to humans.

As I explained in a previous Conversation article, outbreaks happen in Asia from time to time. The first outbreak was reported in 1998 in Malaysia.

There are three major ways it’s transmitted.

The first is via exposure to bats, and in particular via contact with the saliva, urine or faeces of an infected bat. Infections can also occur from contact with other infected animals, such as pigs in the original outbreak in Malaysia.

The second way it can be transferred is by contaminated foods, particularly date palm products. This means consuming date palm juice or sap that is contaminated with the bodily fluids of infected bats.

The third is human-to-human transmission. Nipah transmission between humans has been reported via close contact such as caring for a sick person. This can mean, for instance, being infected with bodily secretions contaminated with the virus in households or hospitals. This is thought to be less common than the other transmission pathways.

What are the symptoms?

Nipah virus infections happen quickly. The time from infection to symptoms appearing is generally from four days to three weeks.

It’s a terrible disease. Around half the people who get severe Nipah virus infection die of it.

The symptoms can vary in severity. It can cause pneumonia, just as COVID could.

But the illness we worry most about is neurological symptoms; Nipah can cause encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain.

These effects on the brain are why the fatality rate is so high.

Symptoms might include:

fever
seizures
difficulty breathing
falling unconscious
severe headaches
being unable to move a limb
jerky movements
personality changes, such as suddenly behaving oddly or psychosis.

Unusually, some patients who survive the acute phase of a Nipah infection can get relapsed encephalitis many years later, even more than a decade later.

Is there any treatment or vaccine?

Not yet, but in Australia development of a treatment called m102.4 is underway.

There was a phase 1 trial of this treatment published in 2020, which is where researchers give it to healthy people to see how it goes and if there are any side effects.

The trial found that a single dose of the treatment was well tolerated by patients.

So it is still quite a way off being actually available to help people infected with Nipah virus, but there’s hope.

There is currently no vaccine for Nipah virus. In theory, m102.4 it could be a preventative but it’s too early to say; at this point it is being trialled as a treatment.

How worried should I be?

This Nipah outbreak in India is worrying because there’s currently no prevention and no treatment available, and it’s a severe disease. While it is an important disease, it isn’t likely to be a public health issue on the same scale as COVID.

This is because it doesn’t transmit efficiently from person to person, and the main way it is transmitted is from food and infected animals.

For people living outside of areas where cases are currently being reported, the risk is low. Even in the affected areas, the number of cases is small at this stage, but public health authorities are taking appropriate control measures.

If you become unwell after travelling to areas where cases have been reported, you should let your doctor know where and when you travelled.

If someone gets a fever after travelling to affected areas, we would probably be much more worried it was caused by other infections such as malaria or typhoid than Nipah, at this stage.

Overall, though, everything needs to be put in context. We hear about new viruses and incidents all the time. Nipah is important for affected countries, but outside of those countries, it is just something we closely monitor and be alert for.

Allen Cheng receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, including for public health surveillance systems. He has been a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and the Advisory Committee for Vaccines.

Monumental ambitions: the history behind Trump’s triumphal arch

2026-01-28T23:09:10Z

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Donald Trump took time out this week from dramatic events at home and abroad to reveal three new design concepts for his proposed “Independence Arch” in Washington DC.

All three renderings resemble the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris, although one features gilded livery not unlike Trump’s chosen adornments to the Oval Office in the White House.

Commissioned in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the triumphal arch draws on a long history of celebrating military conquest, from Roman emperors to Napoleon Bonaparte.

As such, it aligns seamlessly with Trump’s foreign policy and his stated mission for the United States to control the western hemisphere – as he has dubbed it, the “Donroe Doctrine”.

But as many have been asking, while the design is a copy of an iconic monument, is a personal tribute necessarily the best way to mark the anniversary of America’s break with absolute rule and the British monarchy?

The ‘Arc de Trump’

When Trump first displayed models of the proposed arch last October, a reporter asked him who it was for. Trump replied “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.”

In a December update, the president said the new arch “will be like the one in Paris, but to be honest with you, it blows it away. It blows it away in every way.”

There was one exception, he noted: “The only thing they have is history […] I always say [it’s] the one thing you can’t compete with, but eventually we’ll have that history too.”

The president clearly believes his arch will be part of creating that history. “It’s the only city in the world that’s of great importance that doesn’t have a triumphal arch,” he said of Washington DC.

Set to be located near Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, the site would put the new structure in a visual conversation with many of the most famous landmarks in the national capital.

This also aligns with other projects that will leave Trump’s mark on the physical fabric of Washington: changes to the White House last year that included paving over the famous Rose Garden, decorating the Oval Office in rococo gold, and demolishing the East Wing for a US$400 million ballroom extension.

The “Arc de Trump” (as it has been branded) is now the “top priority” for Vince Haley, the director of the Domestic Policy Council for the White House.

Triumph and design

The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, located at the top of the Champs-Élysées, was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806 to honour the French imperial army following his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. It was not finished until 1836, under the reign of King Louis Philippe I.

Architects for the project, Jean-François Thérèse Chalgrin and Jean-Arnaud Raymond, drew on classical arches for inspiration, with Rome’s Arch of Titus (circa 85 CE) as the main source. It was built by Emperor Domitian (51–96 CE), a cruel and ostentatious tyrant who was popular with the people but battled with the Senate and limited its power to make laws.

Domitian commissioned the arch to commemorate the deification of his brother Titus, and his military victory crushing the rebellion in Judea.

Given its inspiration, Trump’s proposed arch doesn’t reference any uniquely American design features. But the neoclassical style recalls earlier monuments that also reference antiquity.

The Washington Monument, for example, is built in the form of an Egyptian obelisk. A four-sided pillar, it tapers as it rises and is topped with a pyramid, a tribute to the sun god Ra.

But it also incorporated an element that was meant to symbolise American technological advancement and innovation – a pyramid cap made of aluminium.

When the obelisk was completed in 1884, aluminium was rare because the process for refining it had not been perfected. The top of the monument was the largest piece of cast aluminium on the planet at that time.

‘Truth and sanity’

Trump’s triumphal arch is likely destined to join a long debate about the merits of public monuments and what they represent.

During the Black Lives Matter movement, many statues of historical figures were removed from public display because they were seen as celebrations of racism and imperialism.

Trump has since restored at least one Confederate statue toppled during that time, and his desire to add a new monument to himself should come as little surprise.

During the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and throughout the civil rights movement, there was a sharp spike in the number of monuments erected to Confederate soldiers and generals.

Just as tearing down those statues was a statement, so is the creation of a new memorial to promote Trump’s positive interpretation of the nation’s past. It is also consistent with his administration’s declared mission of “restoring truth and sanity to American history”.

Maybe the more immediate question is whether the Independence Arch can even be built by Independence Day on July 4, a tall order even for this president. As for its reception, history will have to be the judge.

Garritt C. Van Dyk has received funding from the Getty Research Institute.

Do trees prevent landslides? What science says about roots, rainfall and stability

2026-01-28T02:53:31Z

DJ Mills/Getty Images

In the days since last week’s fatal landslides at Mount Maunganui, there has been widespread discussion about what may have caused the slopes above the campground to fail, including the possible role of recent tree removal on Mauao.

In the aftermath of such tragedy, it is natural to search for clear explanations. But landslides typically reflect a complex combination of factors – from geology and long-term slope evolution to weather, climate and land use.

A landscape prone to failure

The Tauranga region is underlain by volcanic materials that are well known for their instability. Over time, volcanic rock weathers into clay-rich soils, including a problematic mineral known as halloysite.

During heavy rainfall, water infiltrates these clay-rich soils, increasing porewater pressure between soil particles. This reduces the soil’s shear strength, making slopes more prone to failure.

Similar processes have driven devastating landslides elsewhere: dozens of people were killed in rainfall-triggered landslides in Indonesia’s West Java region just days ago, on comparable volcanic clay soils.

Recognising this risk, Tauranga City Council commissioned landslide susceptibility mapping following the extreme weather events of 2023. These datasets allow the public to view landslide-prone areas and “relic slips” – ancient landslides that still leave visible imprints on the landscape.

Importantly, they indicate where land has failed in the past – and remains potentially vulnerable during intense rainfall or after land-use changes.

While most of the Tauranga district is comprehensively covered by these mapping tools, there is one notable omission: the area west of Adam’s Avenue, where Mauao and the campground are located. Landslide hazard layers for this zone are absent from public web portals, despite Mauao being particularly landslide-prone.

Historical aerial imagery dating back to 1943 reveals dozens of landslides on Mauao’s slopes. Some of the most significant occurred during Cyclone Wilma in January 2011, when 108mm of rain fell in 24 hours.

A detailed University of Auckland study identified at least 80 landslides from that single storm, including debris avalanches extending up to 120 metres downslope. Some of these failures have partially reactivated since, following later heavy rainfall.

A March 2011 aerial image of Mauao (Mount Maunganui), with some of the larger landslides triggered by heavy rain during Cyclone Wilma in January 2011 outlined in yellow. The white box marks the area in which last week’s landslide occurred. Author provided. CC BY-NC-ND

Trees, slopes and stability

In addition to these historic events, older “paleo-landslides” exist on Mauao, including two on slopes above the campground. It was from this general zone that the January 22 landslide appears to have initiated – and much online discussion has also centred on tree removal within it.

Some media reports have pointed to vegetation clearance during 2022–23, but historical imagery suggests removal in this specific area likely occurred earlier, around 2018–19. More broadly, vegetation cover above the campground has declined gradually since the mid-20th century.

A series of aerial images from 1943 to 2025 show changes in vegetation and landform on the slopes above the campground. White boxes mark key areas, and arrows show the approximate location of the January 2026 landslide. Author provided. CC BY-NC-ND

However, the relationship between vegetation and landsliding on Mauao is not straightforward. During Cyclone Wilma, major landslides occurred across both densely vegetated slopes and grass-covered areas.

Trees typically enhance slope stability in two main ways: their canopy intercepts rainfall, slowing water infiltration, and their roots reinforce soil strength. This is why widespread landsliding associated with forestry harvesting – particularly radiata pine – has long been a serious problem in parts of New Zealand.

But trees can also contribute to slope failure under certain conditions. Large leafy trees can act like sails during extreme winds, transmitting powerful forces into saturated soils.

After the 2023 Auckland Anniversary storm, research showed wind loading likely initiated some landslides on the slopes of Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, as trees were rocked back and forth until they uprooted, dragging soil downslope.

As well, when trees grow near the tops of steep slopes, their weight – known as “surcharge” – can increase destabilising forces. In some clay soils, this effect may exceed the stabilising benefit of root reinforcement. Tree roots can also promote long-term weathering by growing into fractures in underlying rock.

All of this means vegetation is only one factor among many.

Why simple explanations fall short

Landslides in New Zealand’s hilly terrain typically result from a combination of preconditioning factors, many of which are influenced by human activity.

These can include reshaping slopes to create building platforms, cutting into slope toes for roads or structures, loading slopes with buildings, redirecting stormwater onto vulnerable terrain, and constructing poorly designed retaining walls that trap water within slopes.

While some trees were certainly removed from the broader source area of last week’s landslide, their role in destabilising the slope remains uncertain.

The slope had already experienced multiple historical failures, was underlain by volcanic clays and was subjected to intense rainfall – conditions that together are well known to trigger landsliding.

There is still much we do not yet know about the precise mechanisms that caused last week’s failures on Mauao. That is precisely why independent investigations and technical reviews are so important.

Martin Brook receives funding from the Natural Hazards Commission.

NZ’s sodden January explained: what’s driven this month’s big wet?

2026-01-27T17:35:57Z

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

It has been a month of umbrellas rather than sunscreen across much of New Zealand, with persistent rain, low sunshine and deadly storms dominating headlines and daily life.

For many people, it has felt like midsummer never really arrived. Is it simply bad luck, or is there something more going on?

As with most aspects of our climate and weather, the answer isn’t straightforward. It reflects the interplay between New Zealand’s geography, warmer-than-average ocean temperatures, large-scale regional climate patterns and long-term global warming.

What the data shows – and why it’s been so wet

Climate observations back up what many New Zealanders have been feeling this month. Across northern regions in particular, sunshine hours have been well below average, while rainfall totals have been far above normal.

In central Auckland, a weather station in Albert Park had recorded around 244mm by January 27 – nearly three times the (1981–2010) average for the month. At Mount Maunganui, the month-to-date total had climbed to roughly 385mm, more than four times the norm.

The left map shows the 1991–2020 average for January rainfall across New Zealand. The right shows how much wetter than normal conditions have been this month, particularly across the upper North Island. Earth Sciences New Zealand, CC BY-NC-ND

Similar patterns have been seen in many parts of the upper North Island, with repeated heavy rain events, high humidity and prolonged cloudy spells. The result has often been soggy soils, swollen rivers and increased risks of flooding and landslides.

While each storm that affects New Zealand is different, many of the systems visiting the country this summer share some common features. Several have originated in the tropics, subtropics or the north Tasman Sea before drifting south toward New Zealand. These systems typically carry warm, moisture-laden air – and the potential for intense rainfall.

When these moist air masses interact with cooler air from the south, or encounter New Zealand’s rugged topography, conditions become ripe for heavy rain.

As air is forced upwards over hills and mountain ranges – particularly along the Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty, East Cape and Gisborne regions – moisture condenses rapidly, producing very high rainfall totals. This is why northern and eastern parts of the country so often bear the brunt of these subtropical events.

The regional patterns loading the dice

One background factor this summer has been the lingering influence of La Niña, part of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system that dominates climate variability across the Pacific.

During La Niña, atmospheric pressure tends to be lower than normal over Australia and the north Tasman Sea, and higher than normal to the south and east of New Zealand. This effectively flips our usual weather pattern on its head, reducing westerly winds and increasing the frequency of easterly and northeasterly flows.

Those northeasterly winds draw warm, humid air from the subtropics toward New Zealand. Because our temperatures are highly sensitive to wind direction, even small shifts can have large effects.

La Niña also tends to be associated with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures, which have again been observed around New Zealand. So, when northeasterly winds blow across these warmer waters, they pick up additional heat and moisture, further fuelling heavy rainfall potential.

Another background driver that constantly shapes New Zealand’s weather and climate is the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which describes the north–south movement of the westerly wind belt that circles Antarctica.

A positive SAM phase, which has dominated much of this summer, tends to bring higher pressures over the South Island and southern New Zealand. This allows storms from the subtropics more room to drift south and linger near the North Island.

Climate change as an intensifier

Overlaying these regional drivers is the broader influence of climate change, which is steadily warming both the atmosphere and the oceans surrounding New Zealand.

As the planet heats, the atmosphere can hold more moisture – about 7% more water vapour for every 1°C of warming. This means that when storms do develop, they have more fuel available, increasing the potential for heavier rainfall and stronger winds.

Climate change does not cause individual weather systems, nor does it directly control large-scale climate patterns like ENSO or the SAM. But it acts as a powerful intensifier.

Event-attribution studies in New Zealand to date have shown climate change can increase the total rainfall from intense storms by around 10–20%.

But for the most intense downpours – when the atmospheric “sponge” is wrung out most vigorously – rainfall intensities can increase by as much as 30%, depending on the frame of time being looked at. These short, extreme bursts of rain are often what cause the greatest damage.

There are still important uncertainties. Scientists are actively researching whether climate change will alter the frequency or strength of La Niña and El Niño events, but so far there is no clear answer. The same is true for long-term trends in the Southern Annular Mode.

What we can say with confidence is that background warming is shifting the risk profile.

As global temperatures continue to rise, the kinds of extremes we’ve experienced this season are likely to become more common. The biggest unanswered question is how quickly we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit how severe these impacts ultimately become.

James Renwick receives funding from MBIE and the Marsden Fund for climate research.

Australia is turning the spotlight on financial abuse in relationships. What can NZ learn?

2026-01-26T23:46:27Z

It’s a problem as old as marriage and money: one spouse, usually the husband, using financial control to dominate the other.

From restricting spending and hiding debts, to forcing someone into legal or financial arrangements they don’t understand, financial abuse has long been a tool of power and coercion within intimate relationships.

While laws that once treated married women as legal minors have been dismantled, financial abuse remains widespread – and largely hidden. Increasingly, it is being recognised not just as a private harm, but as a systemic one, shaped by legal, tax and corporate systems.

The issue has been receiving much attention in Australia, where it has been estimated as many as one in six women are financially abused.

There is no reason to expect the problem is any less severe in New Zealand and the case for closer investigation and policy attention is just as compelling.

As Australia moves to reform its systems, the question for New Zealand is what lessons can – and can’t – be imported.

What is financial abuse?

Broadly, financial abuse can include stealing money or property, failing to repay loans, or coercing someone into handing over assets or selling property for another’s benefit.

Unlike in New Zealand, Australia has a dedicated Tax Ombudsman with statutory powers to investigate whether tax administration benefits the community.

Last year, its office released a report examining how economic abuse plays out within the tax system, following earlier parliamentary inquiries and a national “systems abuse” audit.

The Australian Treasury has also launched a public consultation on tackling financial abuse linked to coerced or fraudulent company directorships.

Together, these initiatives signal growing concern about how legal and financial systems can inadvertently enable abuse, even as the true scale of the problem remains unclear.

One particular issue stands out: fraudulent or coerced directorships, in which people are unknowingly or unwillingly made legally responsible for companies they do not run.

Under Australian law, this can carry severe financial consequences. While the Australian Tax Office is normally treated as an ordinary creditor when a company is liquidated, it also has the power to issue a director penalty notice, which can make company directors personally liable for unpaid tax.

In some cases, this liability takes immediate effect. In others, directors have just 21 days to pay outstanding PAYG (equivalent to PAYE in New Zealand), GST and superannuation debts before enforcement begins.

While these strictly enforced penalty notices act as a strong deterrent to directors who genuinely control companies, they can be highly problematic for innocent people who have been coerced into directorships or appointed without their knowledge.

Consider the example of “Anna”. After she receives a large inheritance, Anna’s husband sets up a company and secretly appoints her as its sole director, without taking on that role himself.

When the business runs into financial trouble and fails to pass on tax deducted from employees’ wages, Anna – who has had no involvement in running the company – becomes personally liable.

Because she is listed as the director, the Australian Tax Office can issue her with a director penalty notice, putting her inheritance and personal assets at immediate risk.

What this means for New Zealand

Different rules apply in New Zealand. Inland Revenue currently has no equivalent power to issue director penalty notices and must generally rely on the liquidation process to recover unpaid tax from insolvent companies.

While the tax department ranks ahead of many creditors, personal liability for directors arises only if a court considers it just: a high threshold.

In practice, it is highly unlikely a court would order compensation from someone who played no role in managing a company and was coerced into becoming, or fraudulently appointed as, a director.

This suggests that the specific weaponisation of company directorships observed in Australia may be far less prevalent in New Zealand. But it does not mean financial abuse is any less common, only that it may operate through different legal and institutional pathways.

Indeed, New Zealand company law arguably treats dishonest directors too leniently, while Australia’s tougher enforcement regime highlights how blunt legal instruments can unintentionally compound harm for abuse victims.

Recent Australian investigations acknowledge this tension, but also reveal how difficult it is to design systems that deter wrongdoing without trapping the innocent.

In New Zealand, we know that financial abuse is common – it is a normal consequence of a power imbalance in an intimate relationship. But we must also understand how it is happening before it can be alleviated. Australian experience doesn’t provide simple answers.

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

A major overhaul of NZ’s local government is underway – will it really fix what’s broken?

2026-01-25T18:44:24Z

Phil Walter/Getty Images

With a general election looming, the largest shake-up of New Zealand’s local government system in three decades sits on the table.

New Zealanders are being invited to have their say on the draft policy proposal, Simplifying Local Government, which would fundamentally reshape how councils operate.

The government’s case for reform is that the status quo is inefficient, confusing to voters and “tangled in duplication, disagreements and decisions that don’t make sense”.

It argues these problems will only intensify as councils take on new responsibilities, from resource management reform to water services and climate adaptation. Its proposed solution: removing an entire tier of elected local government.

While reform may well be overdue, the proposal raises crucial questions about democratic representation, accountability and how regional decisions should be made.

These issues sit at the heart of the consultation – and they matter as much as the promise of efficiency or lower costs.

How the proposed changes would work

The proposal would abolish regional councils and replace them with combined territorial boards made up of locally elected mayors. Voters would elect only one set of local representatives, rather than both territorial and regional councillors.

The new boards would take on the legal responsibilities of existing regional councils, while much of the regional bureaucracy would remain. Mayors on the boards would not have equal voting power; instead, votes would be weighted by population, with adjustments set by the Local Government Commission.

The proposal also allows – though not as a preferred option – for a Crown Commissioner to be appointed to a territorial boards. Depending on the circumstances, that commissioner could have no vote, a veto, or more than half of the weighted votes, to ensure national interests are taken into account.

The boards’ primary task would be to prepare a regional reorganisation plan within two years of establishment.

These plans would aim to encourage cooperation between councils to reduce costs, improve efficiency and deliver services better aligned with regional needs, while safeguarding local voices. They would also examine whether combined councils or alternative regional entities could deliver services more effectively.

Importantly, the plans would consider how local government works with post-settlement governance entities in relation to Treaty of Waitangi settlements.

They would be guided by a central government review of council functions, assessing whether some responsibilities should be reallocated to other agencies, delivered through different models, or removed where national consistency is required.

Once completed, each plan would be assessed against national priorities, financial viability, service quality, governance and treaty obligations. The outcome could range from retaining the territorial board to modifying or dissolving it, depending on the region.

Where the plan falls short

There is little question that New Zealand’s local government system is no longer serving the needs of communities.

The sector is awash in paperwork, rates have increased, services reduced and it seems unable to deal with a multitude of problems that surfaced during the pandemic.

To this extent, the draft proposal, with its focus on shared efficiencies, reducing the number of local institutions and attempting to reinvigorate local democracy, is welcome. But it comes with significant shortcomings.

First, it does not require a prior assessment of national legislation and policy that shapes – and often constrains – local government functions. Many of the costs and inefficiencies councils face stem from nationally imposed mandates.

Reforming governance structures without examining these obligations risks entrenching, or even worsening, existing problems.

Moreover, the proposal does not consider the Local Government Act 2002, which imposes significant procedural and substantive obligations on councils that could be directly affected by legislative reform and any resulting reorganisation plan.

Second, eliminating regional councils before undertaking a comprehensive review of service delivery may exacerbate existing problems rather than resolve them.

Simply removing elected regional councillors while awaiting a central government review of service delivery is unlikely to resolve pressing local problems or uncover issues not already well known to local officials.

Will voter turnout improve?

The government also presumes, without clear evidence, that regional councillors are a major contributor to local government problems. Even under the plan, local government would still face too many nationally imposed obligations and too little funding to operate effectively.

Instead, the new boards have potential to increase parochial non-regional decision-making and create legitimacy issues due to how votes are allocated.

Nor is there much reason to think that restructuring councils in this way would lead to higher voter turnout in local elections. Given New Zealand voters routinely navigate the complexities of MMP, it is unconvincing to attribute low turnout to voter confusion.

A more plausible explanation lies in the growing centralisation of policy making by successive governments – a trend that won’t change under this proposal.

Lastly, by removing regional constituencies, the proposal effectively eliminates the possibility of Māori constituencies at the regional level. Given the likely outcome of more centralised local government, this change would remove an important mechanism for Māori representation and participation as treaty partners.

Retaining the option of Māori wards and constituencies is crucial to reflecting local aspirations, supporting reconciliation and ensuring meaningful involvement in regional decision making.

With changes of this scale on the table, the consultation now underway deserves careful scrutiny of what might be simplified, but also what could be lost.

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

The Mount Maunganui tragedy reminds us landslides are NZ’s deadliest natural hazard

2026-01-23T06:18:08Z

Getty Images

The tragic events in the Bay of Plenty this week are a stark reminder that landslides remain the deadliest of the many natural hazards New Zealand faces.

On Thursday morning, a large landslide swept through the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park at the base of Mauao, triggering a major rescue and recovery operation that will continue through the weekend.

Hours earlier, two people were killed when a separate landslide struck a home in the Tauranga suburb of Welcome Bay. As of Friday evening, six people remain missing at Mount Maunganui.

These events occurred at the tail end of a weak La Niña cycle, which typically brings wetter conditions to northern New Zealand. At the same time, unusually warm sea-surface temperatures have been loading the atmosphere with extra moisture, helping to fuel heavier downpours.

In parts of northern New Zealand, more than 200 millimetres of rain fell within 24 hours in the lead-up to last week’s events – well above the typical thresholds known to trigger landslides.

Regions such as the Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Northland and Tairāwhiti are especially vulnerable to intense rainfall, which weakens surface soils and the highly weathered rock beneath them, allowing shallow landslides to detach and flow downslope.

Most landslides in New Zealand are triggered by heavy rainfall, through a complex interplay of intrinsic factors – such as slope angle, soil and rock strength, and vegetation cover – and extrinsic factors, including rainfall intensity and how wet the ground already is from prior rainfall when a storm arrives.

Much of this risk is invisible, accumulating quietly beneath the surface until a sudden collapse occurs.

This helps explain why landslides have long proved so dangerous. Since written records began in 1843, they have been responsible for more deaths than earthquakes and volcanic eruptions combined.

Much of New Zealand’s steep, geologically young landscape is pockmarked by the evidence of millions of past landslides, most occurring on pasture and remote areas, far from people.

When landscapes tell a story

At Mount Maunganui, the shape of the land itself tells a story. The surrounding hill slopes are riddled with the scars of past landslides, revealing a landscape that has been repeatedly reshaped by slope failure over time.

New high-resolution mapping now allows scientists to see this in unprecedented detail. A 2024 LiDAR-derived digital elevation model, which effectively strips away vegetation to reveal the bare land surface, shows numerous landslide features across the slopes.

Many cluster along the coastal cliffs, but two particularly large ancient landslides can be seen directly above the holiday park.

A high-resolution elevation map of Mauao and surrounding land at Mount Maunganui, drawn from Land Information New Zealand data, showing landslide features. Two ancient landslides, or paleolandslides, above the campground site are labelled L1 and L2. Author provided, CC BY-NC-ND

These older slips left behind prominent head scarps – steep, crescent-shaped breaks in the hillside – indicating where large volumes of material once detached and flowed downslope onto flatter ground below.

Subsurface evidence reinforces this picture. A geotechnical investigation carried out in 2000, near the northern end of the campground’s toilet block, found a 0.7 metre layer of colluvium – loose debris deposited by earlier landslides and erosion – buried beneath the surface.

In other words, the site itself sits atop the remnants of past slope failures.

This image provides two views of the slopes above the campground at Mauao (Mount Maunganui). On the left (A) is a 2023 aerial photo showing the steep hillside and the location of earlier ground testing. On the right (B) is a detailed elevation map revealing two ancient landslides (L1 and L2) hidden in the landscape. The star marks the approximate starting point of the January 22 landslide. Author provided, CC BY-NC-ND

The January 22 landslide appears to have initiated in the narrow zone between the two earlier slips. This is a particularly vulnerable position: when neighbouring landslides occur, the remaining wedge of land between them can lose lateral support, becoming unstable, like a rocky headland jutting out from a cliff face.

Over long timescales, this kind of progressive slope collapse is a normal part of landscape evolution. But when it unfolds in populated areas, it can turn an ancient geological process into a human disaster.

From prediction to prevention

Predicting how far a landslide will travel, and which areas it might inundate, is critically important – but it remains an inexact science.

At its simplest, this can involve rough rules of thumb that estimate how far a landslide is likely to run based on slope height and angle. More sophisticated approaches use advanced computer models, such as Rapid Mass Movement Simulation (RAMMS) which simulate how landslide material might flow across the landscape.

These models were used, for example, to assess landslide risk at Muriwai, Auckland, following Cyclone Gabrielle.

By adjusting inputs such as rainfall intensity and soil properties, scientists can explore a range of possible scenarios, generating estimates of how far future landslides could travel, how deep the debris might be, and which properties could be affected.

The results can then be translated into landslide hazard maps, showing areas of higher and lower risk under different rainfall conditions. These maps are not predictions of exactly what will happen, but they provide crucial guidance for land-use planning, emergency management and public awareness.

New Zealand has made major progress in mapping floodplains, and most councils now provide publicly accessible flood hazard maps that influence building rules and help communities understand their exposure.

In the future, developing similarly detailed and widely available maps for landslide hazards would be a logical – potentially life-saving – next step.

Martin Brook receives funding from the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tu Ake.

Trump’s Greenland grab is part of a new space race – and the stakes are getting higher

2026-01-22T23:56:54Z

Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, in northern Greenland. Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

US President Donald Trump’s position on Greenland has shifted almost daily, from threats to take it by force to assurances he won’t. But one thing remains consistent: his insistence the Arctic island is strategically vital to the United States.

Within hours of the president’s speech at this week’s Davos summit, Reports began circulating that Washington and Copenhagen had quietly discussed giving the US small, remote patches of Greenland for new military sites. Nothing confirmed, everything whispered, but the speed of the speculation said a lot.

What once felt like Trumpian theatre suddenly looked like a real geopolitical move. It was also a hint Arctic power plays are now bleeding into the politics of outer space.

This all happened very quickly. The notion the US might buy Greenland from Denmark (which resurfaced in 2019) was at first treated like a late-night comedy sketch.

But behind the jokes lay a growing unease the Trump administration’s fixation with Greenland was part of a wider geostrategic ambition in the “western hemisphere” – and beyond.

That’s because Greenland sits at the crossroads of two fast-shifting frontiers: a warming Arctic that will change shipping routes, and an increasingly militarised outer space.

As global tensions rise, the island has become a geopolitical pressure gauge, revealing how the old international legal order is beginning to fray.

At the centre of it all is Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base. Once a Cold War outpost, it’s now a key part of the US military’s Space Force hub, vital for everything from missile detection to climate tracking.

In a world where orbit is the new high ground, that visibility is strategic gold.

Space law in a vacuum

Trump has leaned hard into this logic. He’s repeatedly praised Thule as one of the most important assets for watching what happens above the Earth, and has urged the US to “look at every option” to expand its presence.

Whether by force, payment or negotiation, the core message hasn’t changed: Greenland is central to America’s Arctic and space ambitions.

This is not just about military surveillance. As private companies launch rockets at record pace, Greenland’s geography offers something rare – prime launch conditions.

High latitude sites are ideal for launching payloads into polar- and sun-synchronous orbits. Greenland’s empty expanses and open ocean corridors make it a potential Arctic launch hub. With global launch capacity tightening due to fewer available sites and access problems, the island is suddenly premium real estate.

But American interest in Greenland is rising at the same time as the post-war “rules-based international order” has proved increasingly ineffective at maintaining peace and security.

Space law is especially vulnerable now. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was built for a world of two superpowers (the US and Soviet Union) and only a few satellites, not private satelliete mega constellations, commercial lunar projects, or asteroid mining.

It also never anticipated that Earth-based sites such as Thule/Pituffik would decide who can monitor or dominate orbit.

As countries scramble for strategic footholds, the treaty’s core principles are being pushed to breaking point. Major powers now treat both the terrestrial and orbital realms less like global commons and more like strategic assets to control and defend.

Greenland as warning sign

Greenland sits squarely on this fault line. If the US were to expand its control over the island, it would command a disproportionate share of global space surveillance capabilities. That imbalance raises uncomfortable questions.

How can space function as a global commons when the tools needed to oversee it are concentrated in so few hands? What happens when geopolitical competition on Earth spills directly into orbit?

And how should international law adapt when terrestrial territory becomes a gateway to extraterrestrial influence? For many observers, the outlook is bleak. They argue the international legal system is not evolving but eroding.

The Arctic Council, the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation in the Arctic, is paralysed by geopolitical tensions. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space can’t keep pace with commercial innovation. And new space laws in several countries increasingly prioritise resource rights and strategic advantage over collective governance.

Greenland, in this context, is not just a strategic asset; it’s a warning sign.

For Greenlanders, the stakes are immediate. The island’s strategic value gives them leverage, but also makes them vulnerable. As Arctic ice melts and new shipping routes emerge, Greenland’s geopolitical weight will only grow.

Its people must navigate the ambitions of global powers while pursuing their own political and economic future, including the possibility of independence from Denmark.

What started as a political curiosity now exposes a deeper shift: the Arctic is becoming a front line of space governance, and the laws and treaties designed to manage this vast icy territory and the space above it are struggling to keep up.

The old Thule Air Base is no longer just a northern outpost, it’s a strategic gateway to orbit and a means to exert political and military power from above.

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

Beneath Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, a hidden ocean is revealing its secrets

2026-01-21T22:13:59Z

Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND

Beneath Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf lies one of the least measured oceans on Earth – a vast, dark cavity roughly twice the volume of the North Sea.

This hidden ocean matters because it is the ice sheet’s Achilles heel. The ice sheet is the continent’s enormous, kilometres-thick mass of land-based ice, while the ice shelf is the floating platform that fringes it.

If warmer water reaches the underside of the shelf, it can melt the ice that holds back millions of cubic kilometres of Antarctic ice, with consequences for global sea levels.

Yet almost everything we know about this cavity has come from brief snapshots at its edges. Until now, no one had captured a long, continuous record from its central heart. Our newly published study set out to change that.

Inside Antarctica’s least-measured ocean

Ice shelves act as buttresses for Antarctica’s 30 million cubic kilometres of ice, built up over millions of years. The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest, among the coldest and most southerly, and perhaps the most sheltered from a warming ocean.

It spans both West and East Antarctica, where dozens of giant glaciers merge to form a wedge of ice 300 to 700 metres thick that flows northward, melting from below and calving the world’s largest icebergs.

Flying out over the Ross Ice Shelf with the Trans Antarctic Mountains in the distance. Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND

When studying the ocean, snapshots are useful, but long time series are far more powerful. They reveal the rhythms of currents, eddies, tides and mixing, and how these interact with a warming climate. Beneath Antarctic ice shelves, where measurements are vanishingly rare, developing such records is essential.

Our study describes a four-year record of ocean processes beneath the middle of the Ross Ice Shelf, where the ice is 320 metres thick and the ocean below it 420 metres deep.

Most expeditions focus on the edges of ice shelves. We needed to understand what happens at their centre: so that is where we went.

Instruments being deployed through the ice shelf borehole – Mike Brewer is monitoring the lowering rate. Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND

The work was part of a large, multi-year project that began in 2016 with exploratory missions and ice-drilling trials and ended in 2022 when we finally lost contact with instruments suspended from the underside of the ice.

Once the drilling team reached the ocean – despite bad weather and the technical challenges of working in such a remote, extreme environment – we were able to deploy our instruments. These precision devices reported temperature, currents and salinity via satellite. We expected them to last two years before succumbing to cold or transmission failure. Instead, most continued to operate for more than four years, producing a uniquely long and remote record.

Looking downward in the borehole just before emerging into the ocean cavity. The white specks are sediment particles. Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND

The new analysis shows that water properties vary systematically through the year, far from the open ocean and its seasons. The changes in temperature and salinity are subtle, but in a cavity shielded from winds and cold air even small shifts can have large implications.

Our work also reveals how variations in the central cavity align with changes in the Ross Sea Polynya – a wind-swept, ice-free area hundreds of kilometres away where high-salinity water forms. As Antarctic sea ice changes, this connection to the cavity will respond in ways we have not yet fully considered.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the data show persistent layering of water with different properties within the cavity. This unusual structure was detected in the very first measurements collected there in 1978 and remains today. While much remains to be learned, our results indicate the layers act as a barrier, isolating the ice shelf underside from deeper, warmer waters.

What melting ice brings home

Much recent cavity research has treated the ice shelf as a middleman, passing ocean warming through to the ice sheet. Work like ours is revealing a more complex set of relationships between the cavity and other polar systems.

One of those relationships is with sea ice. When sea ice forms around the edges of an ice shelf, some of the cold, salty water produced as a by-product flows into the cavity, moving along the seafloor to its deepest, coldest reaches. Paradoxically, this dense water can still melt the ice it encounters. We know very little about these currents.

Changes to the delicate heat balance in ice-shelf cavities are likely to accelerate sea-level rise. Coastal communities will need to adapt to that reality. What remains less understood are the other pathways through which Antarctic change will play out.

Instruments being lowered down the borehole. Stevens/NIWA/K061, CC BY-NC-ND

Impacts from ice sheets unfold over decades and centuries. On similar timescales, changes around Antarctica will alter ocean properties worldwide, reshaping marine ecosystems and challenging our dependence on them.

In the near term, we can expect shifts in southern weather systems and Southern Ocean ecosystems. Fisheries are closely linked to sea-ice cover, which in turn is tied to ocean temperatures and meltwater.

Weather and regional climate feel even closer to home. A glance at a weather map of the Southern Ocean shows the inherent wobble of systems circling the globe. These patterns influence conditions in New Zealand and southern Australia and they are already changing.

As ice shelves and sea ice continue to evolve, that change will intensify. Ice shelves may seem distant, but through their ties to the atmosphere and ocean we share a common future.

Craig Stevens receives funding from the NZ Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and its Strategic Science Investment Fund, and the Antarctica New Zealand Antarctic Science Platform. He is a Council member of the New Zealand Association of Scientists.

Christina Hulbe receives funding from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment, the Antarctica New Zealand Antarctic Science Platform, and the Ōtākou Whakaihi Waka Foundation Trust. They are a member of the Board of the Waitaki Whitestone Unesco Global Geopark.

Yingpu Xiahou receives funding from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment to support her PhD research. She is affiliated with NIWA, and is a postgraduate member of the Antarctic Science Platform team and a SCAR INSTANT team member.