I have no quarrel with recovering forgotten histories. The idea that Chinese Australians and mixed families were part of the social fabric at the turn of the twentieth century is fascinating, and interracial life in colonial Australia deserves to be explored. Kate Bagnall makes a solid historical case that such a character could plausibly have existed.

But plausibility isn’t the same as justification. My question is simpler: why does that story have to be inserted into Miles Franklin’s?

My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, is a work of its time — its assumptions, tensions and blind spots included. I wasn’t looking for a contemporary Australia retrofitted into the book when I first read it. I was discovering a different one through Franklin’s eyes. Literature can be a window precisely because it doesn’t look like us. Not every classic needs to be brought into conformity with the present.

And the conversation should be bigger than one character’s casting. Australia has an extraordinary number of untold stories: the Indian hawkers, merchants, sailors, students and families who built connections with Australia long before today’s multiculturalism; the friendships, tensions and exchanges between communities in the colonial era. As someone who came to Australian literature as an Indian student, I’d love to see those stories told.

Just not by rewriting the ones we already have.

If I wanted to write about an Indian-Australian family in Federation-era Australia, I wouldn’t take Franklin’s characters and make them Indian, or alter Henry Handel Richardson’s, or rework a classic Indigenous text to fit my narrative. I’d write the story that hasn’t been written yet. That’s the more exciting form of representation.

This isn’t only about race. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey makes the same point from another angle. Homer has been reinterpreted for centuries, and no one seriously expects a literal twenty-first-century retelling — Nolan has every right to his own version. But that hasn’t stopped debate over what he changed, omitted or invented. Artistic freedom to reinvent a canonical work doesn’t put that reinvention beyond criticism. The same logic applies to My Brilliant Career: the question isn’t whether Netflix can reinterpret Franklin, but whether changing the classic is really the best way to serve representation — when there’s a third option.

Write a new one.

The Ghost in the Shell controversy is instructive too. When Hollywood cast Scarlett Johansson as Major in the 2017 adaptation of the Japanese manga, the backlash wasn’t really about her talent — it was about a powerful industry reshaping another culture’s property to fit its own expectations, instead of making something original. That question should cut both ways. If it’s a problem for Hollywood to alter a Japanese work rather than create something new, we should ask the same of ourselves when we alter an Australian one. The direction of cultural power differs; the principle doesn’t.

Here’s a harder question: would we be as enthusiastic if a celebrated Indigenous, Chinese-Australian or Indian-Australian novel were substantially reimagined by an outside production team — its characters’ ethnicity and relationships rewritten and called reinterpretation? I doubt it. And maybe it shouldn’t be treated differently. Respect for literary heritage shouldn’t depend on the author’s race — Franklin’s work isn’t untouchable because she was white, any more than a migrant writer’s would be fair game because they weren’t.

Both things can be true: Australia’s multicultural history deserves telling, and existing literary works deserve to keep their integrity. If the canon underrepresents Chinese, Indian and other migrant communities, expand it. If film and TV have overlooked colonial-era interracial life, fund the filmmakers who’ll tell those stories properly. Give writers from those communities the resources to make the work — don’t just change the characters in the books we already have.

I want to read the Chinese-Australian and Indian-Australian stories that haven’t been told yet. I want the stories of the people who crossed oceans, built businesses and made lives here long before today’s Australia took shape. I just don’t want them told at the expense of My Brilliant Career — and if I told one myself, I wouldn’t do it by rewriting a classic. I’d write my own.

Representation shouldn’t mean inserting new characters into old stories. It should mean giving new writers the chance to create stories of their own. The challenge for Australian culture isn’t to keep repainting the canon — it’s to expand it. The real achievement would be today’s Chinese-Australian, Indian-Australian, and migrant writers creating the classics future generations will argue about, adapt and love.

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To understand the desperation behind this pact, you need to understand a little Islamic history. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Hijaz—home to Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. After World War I, the Ottoman territories were dismantled and redrawn by European powers, creating much of today’s Middle East. Modern Turkey embraced secularism, while the House of Saud emerged as custodian of the Hijaz; but the rise of Saudi Arabia and the transformation of secular Turkey into Erdoğan’s increasingly Islamist, neo-Ottoman power project have created two competing centres of influence in the Sunni Muslim world. Erdoğan invokes the Ottoman legacy and Turkish influence, while MBS seeks to position Saudi Arabia as the modern centre of the Muslim world. Pakistan’s desperation to join this pact is understandable after its stunning military defeat against India—but the real story is the desperation of two historic rivals, Riyadh and Ankara, putting old competition aside and joining hands.

So why the sudden embrace? The honest answer is that this isn’t a marriage of shared vision — it’s three parties, each in genuine trouble, pooling their weaknesses and calling it strength. Tehran, for its part, wasted no time saying as much. Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of its parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, wrote on X that “Saudis must know that a paper agreement with Türkiye and Pakistan will not bring them security, just as years of one-sided nursing to the Americans did not bring them security,” adding that Riyadh should “reform your policies so that you do not need to beg for security from others.” Coming from the country these three governments have implicitly organised against, the jibe lands with unusual precision.

A Pattern of Contempt and Failure

Strip away the ceremony and the underlying relationship looks less like partnership and more like a patron humiliating its client while still finding it useful. Saudi Arabia deported roughly 24,000 Pakistanis rounded up as beggars through 2025, on top of a formal warning to Islamabad, even as the two governments prepared to call each other strategic allies. That is the real texture beneath the pageantry: Pakistan as a source of cheap labour and expendable manpower, not an equal.

Pakistan’s attempt to buy relevance by mediating between Washington and Tehran collapsed just as predictably. Any serious observer could have told you Islamabad had neither the leverage over Iran nor the standing with Washington to broker anything durable — it had no cards, only geographical proximity and an eagerness to be useful to Donald Trump. Islamabad nonetheless plastered its own capital with posters celebrating a ceasefire it claimed credit for, only to watch the truce unravel within weeks as the wider Iran war reignited. It ended up looking exactly like what common sense predicted: a messenger running errands for a bigger power, mistaking the errand for a diplomatic triumph, and exposing to the whole region how little actual weight it carries.

The pact itself has already failed its two real tests, despite a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement Riyadh and Islamabad signed as recently as September 2025. When a militant ambush killed twenty Pakistani soldiers in October 2025 and Islamabad struck back at targets inside Afghanistan, plunging into open conflict with the Taliban government in Kabul, Saudi Arabia offered mediation and nothing more — no material or military backing for its supposed ally. Then the reverse happened: as Iran rained missiles and drones on Saudi territory during the escalating regional war in 2026, Pakistan’s contribution was its foreign minister publicly reminding Tehran that a defence agreement existed. Not troops. Not aircraft. A phone call citing a clause. Whatever this arrangement is, it isn’t collective security in any meaningful sense. A pact signed with fanfare produced, in both directions, nothing more than words when it actually mattered.

The Muscle That Isn’t There

Look closely at who’s supposed to supply the actual defence in this new triangle, and the logic collapses further. In May 2025, after a terror attack in Pahalgam, India launched Operation Sindoor, striking nine terrorist camps deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in a matter of minutes.

When Pakistan attempted retaliation, India escalated further, hitting a string of Pakistani military air bases with near-total impunity. Within days, it was Pakistan’s own military that picked up the hotline to plead for a ceasefire.

A country that had to implore for a ceasefire after its air defences were exposed and its bases struck at will is not in a position to guarantee anyone else’s security.

The economics tell the same story. Pakistan has spent the past two years inside an IMF bailout programme just to keep its economy from collapsing outright, and even that has needed constant Gulf life support. In 2026, with a $3.5 billion loan repayment to the UAE coming due and its foreign reserves under severe strain, Islamabad had to turn around and ask Saudi Arabia for fresh money — Riyadh deposited $3 billion directly into Pakistan’s central bank, money that went straight back out the door to settle what Islamabad owed Abu Dhabi. One has to wonder what does a state that has to borrow from one Gulf capital to settle its debt to another Gulf capital bring to the table if not hired foot soldiers. Add to that a resurgent militant insurgency along the Afghan border, the eight decades old freedom movement in Pakistan-occupied Balochistan intensifying, growing unrest in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir over sheer economic neglect, and the picture is of a state fighting for its own survival on three fronts internally. Whatever value Pakistan brings to this pact, it clearly isn’t credible defence — at best it is bodies and a nuclear flag that can be pointed at, at most the Houthis, nothing more.

That, ultimately, appears to be the real backdrop to Saudi Arabia’s sudden warmth toward old rival Turkey and a de facto failed state like Pakistan. Its oldest Gulf partnership is fraying — Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have gone from wartime allies in Yemen to open rivals, clashing directly over rival factions in Aden and the country’s east, which explains why the Kingdom may be attempting to hedge with whoever it can, rather than trusting a Gulf Cooperation Council that can no longer agree with itself.

Saudi Arabia in fact had made a request to Pakistan in 2015, asking for fighter jets, naval ships and ground troops for its Yemen war, but Nawaz Sharif’s government then wisely declined, mindful of Pakistan’s sectarian sensitivities and sizeable Shia population. However, a decade later, Pakistan’s economic and strategic desperation has changed the calculus, enabling Riyadh to use Pakistan’s military as a source of manpower for conflicts it may prefer not to fight directly.

Meanwhile Washington’s security umbrella looks thinner than it has in decades: Iran put missiles into Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest American air base in the region, in June 2026, and saturated Saudi, Emirati, and other Gulf skies with drones and missiles for weeks without a conclusive American answer — a visible marker of receding US deterrence that is pushing Gulf states into a chaotic security situation.

And Turkey arrives at this table not as a rising power but a desperate one: the Turkish lira has suffered a spectacular collapse against the dollar over the past seven years leaving Erdoğan’s Ottoman ambitions dependent on Gulf money he cannot raise at home.

Pakistan’s desperation to be part of such a pact is understandable after the bludgeoning it received from India and the unravelling of its nuclear bluff—but the pact offers no reassurance: Turkey is unlikely to materially alter the stark military asymmetry with India which is among the world’s most powerful militaries while Saudi Arabia is unlikely to shoot itself in the foot by jeopardising a strategically and economically important relationship with New Delhi for the sake of Islamabad. India is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching US$41.88 billion in FY2024–25—while Pakistan’s entire annual goods exports are only around US$32 billion so you can do the maths.

Put together, this isn’t a Sunni bloc, a civilizational alliance, or a rising axis of power. It’s three governments, each cornered by a different crisis — a fraying Gulf order, a collapsing currency, a state fighting itself on three fronts — signing a document that had already failed its first real tests before the ink was dry, and one that Tehran itself is happy to dismiss as paper.

Strip away the religious and civilizational language, and what’s left is transactional to the point of bluntness. Turkey needs money it cannot print its way out of needing. Saudi Arabia needs hired soldiers and diplomatic cover as its own Gulf order fractures and Washington’s guarantee looks shakier by the month. And Pakistan, staring at an existential crisis on three internal fronts and a treasury that survives on borrowed cash, has effectively put its military up for hire. That’s not an alliance. It’s a desperate transaction dressed up as one.

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Growing competition in outer space provides India with a unique opportunity to shape a narrative in which collaboration, rather than confrontation, drives space exploration. Recognised as a trustworthy and cost-effective spacefaring nation, India is now well placed to transform its technological advances into enduring international partnerships that contribute to scientific progress, economic growth, and sustainable development.

India’s journey into space has been distinctive. Unlike many space programmes that emerged from Cold War rivalries, India’s programme was conceived as an instrument of national development. Dr Vikram Sarabhai anchored India’s space vision in practical applications that would improve the lives of ordinary people. Under his leadership, satellites were developed to strengthen communications, weather forecasting, disaster management, healthcare, agriculture and education. This development-oriented philosophy remains central to India’s space programme and resonates strongly with the needs of countries in the Global South, which seek practical applications of space technology rather than prestige alone.

Today, India’s achievements extend  beyond developmental applications. The Chandrayaan missions, the Mars Orbiter Mission, the Aditya-L1 solar observatory, and the forthcoming Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme have established India as a nation capable of executing sophisticated and reliable space missions. Chandrayaan-3’s successful soft landing near the Moon’s south pole placed India among an exclusive group of space powers while demonstrating that world-class innovation can be achieved at comparatively modest cost.

India’s growing credibility comes at a time when the global space economy is expanding rapidly. Valued at over US$600 billion today and projected to approach US$1.8 trillion by 2035, the sector is increasingly driven by commercial activity in satellite communications, Earth observation, navigation, climate services, broadband connectivity, and emerging fields such as in-orbit servicing and lunar exploration. Many countries aspire to participate but lack indigenous capabilities. They seek dependable long-term partners rather than merely launch providers.

India possesses the capabilities to meet these requirements. The liberalisation of the space sector in 2020 transformed the ecosystem by opening it to private participation. The establishment of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), the expanding commercial role of NewSpace India Limited, and the growth of private enterprises have created one of the world’s most dynamic emerging space ecosystems. Indian startups are developing launch vehicles, satellite platforms, geospatial applications and propulsion technologies that are attracting global investment and customers. Companies such as Skyroot Aerospace, Pixxel and Agnikul Cosmos have demonstrated that Indian private enterprise can compete internationally in advanced space technologies.

The next step is to internationalise this ecosystem.

Rather than positioning itself only as a low-cost launch destination, India will offer comprehensive partnerships encompassing satellite design, launch services, mission operations, ground stations, astronaut training, capacity building and downstream applications in agriculture, disaster management and maritime security. Such integrated partnerships would be valuable for countries across the Global South and the Indo-Pacific seeking affordable, customised and reliable technologies to meet their development priorities.

India has demonstrated the diplomatic value of such cooperation. Through the South Asia Satellite, it provided communication and developmental benefits to neighbouring countries. Indian launch vehicles have successfully placed hundreds of foreign satellites into orbit for governments, universities and commercial operators around the world. India’s decision to join the Artemis Accords reflects its willingness to participate in the peaceful exploration of the Moon through international collaboration. Cooperation with  NASA, the European Space Agency and JAXA has strengthened India’s scientific and technological capabilities.

These partnerships reinforce India’s standing as a leading voice of the Global South. India offers development partnerships based on affordability, reliability and mutual respect rather than creating technological dependence. Space cooperation has therefore become an increasingly important instrument of Indian diplomacy, strengthening bilateral relationships while delivering tangible developmental benefits.

To realise its full potential, India will aim to sustain the momentum of reform. Faster regulatory approvals, greater access to venture capital, stronger intellectual property protection, and closer collaboration among research institutions, industry and academia will be essential. Public procurement policies would continue supporting Indian startups, enabling them to scale up, innovate and integrate into global supply chains.

India is positioned to play a larger role in shaping the governance of outer space. Orbital congestion, space debris, responsible resource utilisation and equitable access to emerging space opportunities are becoming pressing international concerns. As space activities expand, there will be an increasing need for countries capable of building consensus on responsible norms and practices. India’s long-standing commitment to the peaceful uses of outer space, combined with its growing technological capabilities, equips it to contribute meaningfully to the development of rules that promote transparency, sustainability and equitable access.

The coming decade will determine not only which countries lead in space but also how space is governed. With its scientific capabilities, entrepreneurial ecosystem and international credibility, India is uniquely placed to bridge the gap between established and emerging space nations. By building collaborative partnerships founded on inclusivity, mutual benefit and innovation, India can transform its space programme into a major pillar of its global engagement.

In an increasingly divided world, India’s space sector offers a powerful reminder that the greatest achievements in space are those that bring nations together. That may well become India’s most enduring contribution to humanity’s next frontier.

Contributing Author: Gurjit Singh is a former Ambassador of India to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN and the African Union. He also served concurrently as Ambassador to Djibouti, IGAD and Timor-Leste. He has chaired the CII Business Task Force on Trilateral Cooperation in Africa, including the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor with Japan. He regularly comments on international affairs in the media and has written extensively on India-Africa and trilateral cooperation, with a particular focus on private-sector engagement.

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From February 2 2027, passengers on Jetstar will only be able to bring one small bag that fits under the seat for free. Anyone wanting to store a bag in the overhead locker will need to pay an additional fee, with prices varying by route.

The airline says the change will provide “more choice” while helping keep base fares low. It also reduces the need to weigh as many carry-on bags at the gate and improve boarding efficiency. Passengers who pay for the overhead baggage option will receive priority boarding.

While the policy is presented as offering greater flexibility, it also raises a less obvious question: does giving travellers more choices necessarily improve the travel experience?

More choice isn’t always better

Jetstar’s CEO, Stephanie Tully, said the new carry-on baggage model means passengers will “only pay for what you need”, presenting the paid option as giving consumers more choice.

But psychology research suggests that more decisions can also create more mental effort.

Booking a flight now involves deciding whether to pay for checked baggage, seat selection, overhead cabin space, and other optional extras, each carrying a financial cost. As these choices accumulate, passengers may experience what psychologists describe as “choice overload” – when having more options makes decisions harder rather than easier.

The travel experience begins during the planning and booking process, not when passengers board the aircraft. Additional purchasing decisions can therefore shape perceptions of the journey even before the trip begins.

If increased choice adds new burdens, those trade-offs may be easier to justify if the policy delivers real operational improvements. Whether it will do so, however, remains to be seen.

Will the policy achieve what it promises?

Jetstar says the new policy should reduce the need to weigh bags at the gate, and will improve boarding efficiency.

Priority boarding, however, works when only a proportion of passengers receive it. If large numbers choose to pay for overhead baggage, priority boarding risks becoming less meaningful – while competition for locker space remains.

Passengers may still spend time searching for available locker space, rearranging luggage and competing for overhead storage. This could offset any operational efficiencies the airline hopes to achieve.

From the passenger’s perspective, the burden has not disappeared. It has changed form, but now comes with an additional financial cost.

A strict size limit for the underseat bag has also been introduced. However, this may require travellers to buy smaller bags that comply with the dimensions, adding another expense to the trip.

It also raises practical questions about value for money. While passengers will get an increased weight allowance of up to 10 kilograms per item, the reduced cabin bag size means many bags may simply not have enough capacity to hold that weight. In practice, travellers could pay for a higher weight allowance without being able to fully use it.

Jetstar claims the change will help keep fares “low”. However, the airline has not indicated base fares will fall as a result of this new policy.

A spokesperson for Transport Minister Catherine King said Jetstar would need to demonstrate the change will in fact keep fares affordable, adding:

it will be up to them to demonstrate that to passengers.

What does this mean for passengers?

Charging separately for overhead cabin baggage is not new.

It is standard practice among many low-cost airlines in Europe and North America, but the Australian market differs in two important respects.

First, consumers have fewer low-cost airlines to choose from. Second, European passengers benefit from stronger passenger rights, with rules governing airline obligations, delays, cancellations and pricing transparency.

In Australia, the federal government has proposed an independent Aviation Consumer Ombuds Scheme to resolve passenger complaints. It was expected to begin operations in 2026, but the legislation is still before Parliament and the scheme is not yet operational. https://www.youtube.com/embed/iuV4_0AeNDs?wmode=transparent&start=0

Consumer rights stuck in a holding pattern

For now, an interim ombudsperson has been appointed within the Department of Infrastructure and Transport. However, the role has limited functions and cannot formally investigate or resolve complaints between consumers and airlines.

In practice, little has changed for passengers. As the first step, consumers must still complain directly to the airline.

If the matter remains unresolved, passengers can escalate their complaint to the Airline Customer Advocate. However, the advocate is funded by the airline industry and cannot issue legally binding decisions.

Alternatively, passengers can pursue broader consumer issues through state consumer protection agencies or the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Whether travellers continue to choose the low-cost model or decide full-service airlines offer better value may depend not only on price, but also on how many trade-offs they are willing to accept before they fly.

Cindy Lee, Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality, Torrens University Australia and Anita Manfreda, Associate Professor, Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, Torrens University Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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There are now many more people walking the streets in Australia wearing glasses that can subtly film and record the world around them. That’s in large part thanks to Kmart, which recently introduced – and then rapidly sold out of – cheap “camera glasses”.

These glasses are from Kmart’s in-house brand, Anko. They sell for only A$89 – quite the discount from similar products offered by Meta and Ray-Ban, which start at $337.

The push to make camera glasses a major consumer trend comes at a cost to the privacy of the wearer, and everyone around them. We know little about what happens with data from the devices, or who will see the images. Indeed, on Friday, federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland asked Australia’s privacy commissioner to urgently review the technology.

So are current privacy laws strong enough to handle this new wave of wearable tech?

More than a decade of development

Smart glasses themselves are not new. Google launched Google Glass in 2013 to much media fanfare and celebrity endorsement.

Yet that basic variant failed to break into the market because the technology was underwhelming, the clunky and obvious appearance left much to be desired, and users were widely derided as “glassholes”.

Modern iterations are far more aesthetically pleasing. And they are less obtrusive: it is less obvious to you and everyone else that you are wearing a high-tech computer on your face.

Kmart’s budget camera glasses perform similar functions to the higher-end models (albeit perhaps in a slower, more limited way).

Running on HeyCyan software, they have embedded cameras to analyse and record photos and videos of what the wearer sees, microphones to record sound, and speakers to enable the wearer to take phone calls and listen to podcasts or music.

Images, video and sound are recorded onto memory in the device, but can be downloaded into a connected app on the wearer’s phone, enabling recorded content to be edited, shared and uploaded to websites.

From covert filming to falling over

The risk receiving the most attention is the capability of these glasses to covertly film bystanders and unsuspecting women in public for social media content, potentially leading to a rise in harassment, voyeurism and stalking in public for social media content.

Uploaded videos compound the abuse. And there’s the potential harm from distraction if the wearable tech “augments” the wearer’s view with digital information in their line of sight, creating a very real potential for physical risks such as falls, trips and car accidents.

Companies and employers should also consider the risks, for example, that smart glasses will record confidential information, trade secrets or bank account details.

It’s also worth noting Meta is reportedly developing “super-sensor” glasses that could record even when you aren’t interacting with them. This would provide companies with unprecedented access to the most private parts of your life, whereabouts and preferences.

Such data could be sent to data-labelling firms and, depending on the product and terms, used to train AI models.

So, what of the law?

It isn’t clear how Australia’s highly fragmented, partial and out-of-date privacy laws apply to advances in privacy-intrusive and ambient technologies such as camera glasses.

Most of the federal Privacy Act, including the parts about collection, storage and use of personal data, apply only to public and private-sector organisations (the latter only above a certain size). The activities of individuals who wear camera glasses and record and share video or photos are not covered – although a company that collects and uses personal data, including photos, through the apps would need to obey privacy law.

But wearers might face other legal risks.

The Privacy Act does include a a right to sue in cases where a person seriously invades your privacy by intruding on your seclusion or misusing information relating to you – if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

It can also be illegal to record conversations without consent under surveillance laws. These laws vary from state to state.

In New South Wales, for example, it’s illegal to record or publish private conversations without consent (with some exceptions).

Online publication of personal information about a person (or members of some groups) “in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, menacing or harassing” is an offence under the new federal anti-doxxing provision.

The eSafety Commissioner has also powers to seek to take material offline where it is bad enough to be considered cyberbullying or cyberharrassment.

In other words, we have laws, even if they are a bit all over the place. And victims of the worst kinds of abuse of camera glasses’ capabilities could have some way to get recourse.

It’s time for privacy by design

But do we really want to live in a world full of constant low-grade recording?

As we are surrounded by technologies that degrade the privacy of people who never even got the chance to click through a privacy policy, do we want to be constantly second-guessing our conversations, or confronting strangers about their recording? Are there better options? Should the technology be banned?

In our view, a more nuanced conversation would be better. After all, these technologies can be a life-changer for people with disabilities, opening up spaces and opportunities otherwise closed to them.

There are ways to more actively balance different rights and interests as this new wave of technology hits us.

Major employers and social institutions (such as schools or universities) could consider policies that protect their shared spaces.

And perhaps, rather than putting all the responsibility on individuals to negotiate this new world, what Australia also needs is a more serious discussion about making sure our privacy (and other consumer) laws really push for better privacy by design in consumer and commercial products.

After all, the form technology takes is not inevitable, it is a choice: one where we should have some say over the terms.

Kimberlee Weatherall, Professor of Law, University of Sydney and Milica Stilinovic, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Governing Immersive Tech Project, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This is not a fringe cleric or a rogue post online. It is the Pakistan Army’s chief spokesperson, reaching for the language of religious bigotry as his sharpest available line of argument. The statement which was made in the context of relations between the Indian government and the Afghan Taliban—an organisation that Pakistan supported, nurtured and sheltered for decades—exposed the explicitly communal nature of the Pakistani Army. Coming from a senior spokesperson, the language was particularly striking, openly invoking religious identity in commenting on India’s relationship with Afghanistan.

And it lands at a moment when the state has rather more pressing things to explain: its own forces have been shooting civilians in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir for weeks, an armed independence movement persists in occupied Balochistan, its northwest along the Afghan border remains a live conflict zone, Sindh has its own currents of unrest, and the press is being squeezed tighter by the month.

Confronted with all of that, the best the institution could produce was communal invective — which says a great deal about what ails this artificially assembled state. It also helps explain why, despite decades of billions in aid and financing from the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, Pakistan remains financially threadbare: on its 24th IMF programme since 1958, and only months ago drawing $3 billion from Saudi Arabia to shore up reserves strained by a $3.45 billion repayment coming due to the UAE.

While Shehbaz Sharif’s government claimed on 5 August to speak for Indian Kashmiris, Pakistani Rangers and police were firing on Kashmiris under its occupation. Disputed local elections and long-standing grievances over the cost of living and self-government tipped into weeks of unrest around Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot and Mirpur. The death toll climbed steadily through the crackdown — reported at 22 in the standoff’s early days and past 40 within a fortnight, with reports continuing to mount. Islamabad’s response was to proscribe the protest group under anti-terrorism law and have its defence minister brand the dead and their fellow demonstrators enemies of the state. Even Amnesty International that is well known for its anti-India rhetoric called the reports of lethal force “disturbing” and demanded an independent probe.

Warning: Disturbing visuals

Unable to control the story, Islamabad reached for censorship. Al Jazeera’s extensive coverage of the Muzaffarabad election boycott and crackdown got the network’s access restricted inside Pakistan, with the information ministry branding it “yellow journalism.”

Critics of the network have long argued its coverage tilts toward Islamist movements across the region — which makes it a curious source for Islamabad to now denounce as biased, but the substance of what it filmed — heavy security deployments, blackouts, low turnout — is what actually triggered the ban. Alongside that came sweeping new Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines requiring foreign journalists to obtain government clearance before travelling anywhere outside Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The architecture exists to keep reporters away from exactly the places — PoJK foremost — where the state’s own conduct doesn’t match its rhetoric.

Seven years ago, this week on 5 August, India amended its own constitution to fully apply it in its region of Jammu and Kashmir, ending the legal discrimination that Article 370 and 35(A) had entrenched against women and minorities in the region.

What has followed is a period of stability and economic growth. Jammu and Kashmir’s tourism department recorded roughly 78.5 million visits across 2023–25, more than 60% above the 47.6 million recorded in 2016–18 — a region drawing tens of millions of tourists a year, not one that needs a permission slip to let a journalist in. Even in 2025, a year shadowed by the April terror attack at Pahalgam, the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir still logged over 16 million tourist arrivals.

Indians Kashmiris now openly challenge the fake narrative emanating from Pakistan which for decades fuelled cross-border terrorism responsible for thousands of civilian deaths in Jammu and Kashmir.

India today has emerged as the third superpower in an increasingly multipolar world, while Pakistan closes itself off from its own journalists to hide a body count. The price one pays for religious fundamentalism and bigotry couldn’t be starker.

*Kashmir has been an integral part of the Indian civilisational and cultural landscape for thousands of years, with the name “Kashmir” itself derived from the Hindu sage Kashyapa in ancient Indian texts and tradition.

*Pakistan is an Islamic state carved out of India in 1947. India is the world’s oldest surviving continuous civilisation and the world’s largest secular democracy.

*Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry is the son of Mahmood Sultan Bashir-Ud-Din, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who was designated a terrorist by the United Nations Security Council in 2001 under its al-Qaeda sanctions regime for his links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

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If you’ve ever visited Papua New Guinea you’ll have been struck by the friendliness of the people, and their welcoming smiles. You might also have noticed some of those smiles are red.

It’s caused by the chewing of “betel quid”, a mixture of unripe areca nut, mustard stick and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide).

Chewing betel quid is commonly practised by the Indigenous people of PNG and ingrained in their culture. It is used as way of greeting guests, a meeting snack and even a conversation starter.

The primary alkaloid found in areca nut is arecoline which stimulates the release of dopamine and explains the pleasant feeling chewing betel quid delivers. It may also be why betel quid can be addictive.

But arecoline is also categorised as probably carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer administered by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Betel quid’s other ingredients can affect the arecoline concentration, too. A study comparing the betel quid chewed in five regions of Indonesia found the highest concentration was in the mixture chewed by the people of the West Papua.

The WHO’s Global Cancer Observatory has estimated Papua New Guinea has the highest incidence rate of oral cancer among 185 countries, closely followed by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan (with tobacco also implicated in these statistics).

Combating cultural practice

To tackle this quiet epidemic, the dentistry division of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea is planning a national research project on the prevalence of oral submucous fibrosis – the chronic disorder associated with increased risk of oral cancer.

To date, the country still does not have a national cancer registry and the true burden of oral cancer is unknown. But we do know how widespread the practice of betel quid chewing is.

Initially, it was mainly practised in the coastal regions where areca nut is grown. With urbanisation came easier access to the nuts throughout the country.

Once the non-coastal regions discovered betel quid chewing and the dopamine effect, it became rampant. Today, in the nation’s capital city of Port Moresby, the constituents of betel quid are sold everywhere.

Indeed, it’s hard to miss the street vendors standing at the main road intersections, taking advantage of a pause in the traffic to sell areca nuts (and often cigarettes) to motorists. They may be a hazard, but they are only there because of the demand for their product.

There is also no age limit to betel quid chewing in Papua New Guinea, and it’s common to see young children chewing and even helping sell areca nuts.

Screening and reporting

One important aspect of combating the problem has been to determine why oral cancer patients have been presenting for treatment when their disease is so advanced.

We needed to know if there was a referral protocol for oral cancer patients in the provincial hospitals.

A survey of dentists in 2024 showed there was a knowledge gap limiting the identification of what are known as “oral potentially malignant disorders” (OPMDs).

In collaboration with Australian experts, a program was begun to upskill dentists on oral visual examination and early recognition by identifying changes in the colour or thickness of the inner lining of the mouth.

Annual workshops have been held for dentists working in the 22 provinces of Papua New Guinea’s four regions.

Attendees should now be able to carry out visual oral examinations to recognise OPMDs. Their provincial dental clinics can now report cases of OPMDs and oral cancer.

Spreading the knowledge

Unlike the WHO’s tobacco control initiatives, there is no global policy to control areca nut.

More research is needed in Pacific and South East Asian countries on the detrimental effects of areca nut chewing so that global control policies can be developed.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Papua New Guinea, the oral cancer screening and early detection project is making progress. Dentists from 12 of the country’s provinces have attended the workshops.

Ideally, they will return to their provincial hospitals and clinics and pass on the knowledge and skills they have gained. Their oral health teams are required to conduct rural outreach, so this knowledge should begin to make a difference over time.

It is also hoped they can advocate to hospital management for dedicated screening areas to be set up within the dental clinics.

If we can succeed in this, it should improve early detection and screening, and increase the reporting of oral potentially malignant disorders and oral cancer in the provinces. Eventually, the quiet epidemic caused by betel quid chewing might recede.

The author gratefully acknowledges the following people for their support with this project: Professor Nakapi Tefuarani, Executive Dean, and Dr Mahmood Siddiqi, Head of Dentistry, School of Medicine & Health Sciences, UPNG; Dr Paki Molumi, CEO, Port Moresby General Hospital; Professor Michael McCullough, Melbourne University; Dr Elizabeth Sari and Professor Leonard Crocombe, La Trobe University.

Nerida Bun, Lecturer in Dentistry, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, The University of Papua New Guinea

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Much of the public debate focuses on GDP rankings and stock markets. Yet these headline figures tell only part of the story. A more revealing question is not simply how big an economy is today, but how much debt it has accumulated to get there.

For investors, businesses and policymakers alike, debt may prove to be one of the defining economic indicators of the next two decades.

Economic size is typically measured in US dollars. By that measure, the United States remains the world’s largest economy, followed by China.

India remains the world’s fastest-growing major economy (economies with GDP above US$1 trillion), consistently expanding at a pace well above most advanced economies.

Yet its position in the nominal GDP rankings has fluctuated in recent years (between fourth and sixth) —not because of slowing economic growth, but largely because nominal GDP is calculated in US dollars. When the rupee weakens against the dollar, the size of India’s economy appears smaller in dollar terms even if domestic output continues to grow.

One important factor placing pressure on the rupee has been rising global oil prices, exacerbated by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. As one of the world’s largest oil importers, India imports around 85 per cent of its crude oil, making its currency particularly sensitive to spikes in energy prices.

This helps explain why nominal GDP rankings can paint a different picture from economic reality. While exchange-rate movements may temporarily affect India’s position in dollar-based league tables, they do little to alter the country’s underlying productive capacity or long-term growth trajectory.

The United States benefits from the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, giving it extraordinary financial flexibility and allowing it to finance deficits more easily than other nations. China, meanwhile, manages its currency through a tightly controlled exchange-rate regime, meaning market movements do not always fully determine the yuan’s value.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) offers a different perspective. By measuring what money can actually buy within each country, PPP adjusts for differences in living costs and removes many of the distortions created by exchange rates.

On a PPP basis, India has ranked as the world’s third-largest economy for several years, behind China and the United States.

But GDP—whether nominal or adjusted for PPP—is only one side of the equation.

Debt: The Economic Indicator Often Overlooked

If GDP measures economic size, debt is an important indicator of an economy’s financial health and resilience. Debt is not necessarily harmful—borrowing can accelerate investment, infrastructure development and economic growth. However, debt does not represent wealth; it represents an obligation. Just as an individual who owns assets worth $100 but owes $120 is technically in a negative net position, an economy carrying debt greater than its annual economic output faces a significantly higher level of financial vulnerability.

When debt exceeds 100 per cent of GDP, a country’s liabilities are larger than its annual economic output, creating a heavier financial burden that can constrain future policy choices. Such high levels of leverage reduce fiscal flexibility and increase vulnerability to major shocks, whether from financial crises, geopolitical disruptions, rising interest rates or a sudden loss of investor confidence.

An economy can grow rapidly by borrowing heavily. But excessive debt eventually comes at a cost through higher interest payments and greater vulnerability during economic downturns.

This is where the world’s three largest economies begin to look very different.

China’s total debt—including government, corporate and household borrowing—now exceeds 300 per cent of GDP, making it one of the world’s most leveraged major economies.

The United States also carries an enormous debt burden. Government debt alone is above 120 per cent of GDP, while total economy-wide debt is estimated at around 266 per cent of GDP.

India’s overall debt stands at roughly 173 per cent of GDP—close to half of China’s and significantly lower than that of the United States.

Private debt is calculated alongside public debt when assessing macroeconomic health because the stability of an economy depends not only on government finances but also on the strength of households and businesses.

GDP represents the income-generating capacity of the entire economy—the pool from which both private and public obligations are ultimately supported. While private debt is not the same as government debt, excessive borrowing by households and companies can become a public concern if defaults rise, banks face instability, or major sectors such as real estate collapse. That is why overall debt levels provide a more complete picture of an economy’s financial resilience.

_{Important note on data transparency:
While the United States, India and Australia publish relatively transparent economic and fiscal data through independent statistical agencies and central banks, China’s economic figures are more difficult to independently verify. Analysts have long noted concerns around the transparency of local government debt, state-owned enterprise liabilities and broader measures of public-sector borrowing. As a result, estimates of China’s true debt burden vary widely, with some assessments placing its overall leverage significantly higher than official figures suggest.}

_{Understanding debt measures: Gross government debt shows the total outstanding obligations of a government, while net debt subtracts financial assets such as cash holdings and investments. International comparisons generally use gross debt because it captures the scale of liabilities governments must service. Net debt provides additional context by showing the government’s financial position after accounting for liquid assets. Overall debt includes government, household and corporate borrowing. It is measured against GDP because GDP represents the income-generating capacity of the economy that ultimately supports the repayment of both public and private obligations.}

Why This Matters

Lower debt provides governments with something increasingly rare among major economies: flexibility.

Countries with manageable debt have greater capacity to respond to recessions, invest in infrastructure, strengthen defence, fund healthcare and education, or manage future crises without dramatically increasing borrowing costs.

Highly indebted economies have fewer options. Larger shares of government revenue are diverted towards servicing debt rather than investing in future growth.

For Australia, this distinction matters. India is rapidly becoming one of Australia’s most important strategic and economic partners. Bilateral trade continues to expand, while cooperation in critical minerals, education, technology, defence and renewable energy is deepening.

A large economy that is also comparatively underleveraged may offer greater long-term stability than one whose growth has been fuelled by decades of borrowing.

China’s remarkable rise was powered by extraordinary investment in infrastructure and property, much of it financed through debt.

The United States continues to enjoy unparalleled financial advantages because of the dominance of the US dollar, but those advantages have also enabled persistent deficits and rising debt levels.

India’s path has been different. Its growth has been driven more by domestic consumption, digital innovation, services, and manufacturing than by debt-fuelled expansion.

This does not make India immune from economic challenges, including creating sufficient employment opportunities for its expanding workforce and continuing to improve infrastructure. However, compared with the US and China, it enters the coming decades with a considerably lighter debt burden.

For governments, investors and businesses planning for the next twenty years, debt may prove to be the more important number.

The United States remains the world’s financial superpower. China remains an industrial giant.

Yet India combines the scale of a major economy with one of the lowest debt burdens among the world’s largest economies—a combination that could become one of its greatest strategic advantages.

None of this suggests that debt alone determines economic success. Productivity, innovation, demographics, institutional quality and geopolitical stability will all continue to shape national prosperity. However, when countries face future recessions or unexpected crises, those entering with lower debt burdens are generally better positioned to respond without placing additional strain on public finances.

For Australia, whose economic future will increasingly be intertwined with all three nations, understanding that distinction may matter more than simply knowing who sits at the top of the GDP table.

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The spread of H5N1 birdflu is worsening.

At the time of writing, Australia has 53 confirmed detections in wild seabirds across five states. In South Australia there are 39 confirmed cases, including a silver gull at Robe and 19 greater crested terns found along the Limestone Coast and Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island.

South Australian authorities are also investigating 49 dead and 35 sick greater crested terns found by aerial surveillance teams at an offshore location south of Cape Jaffa.

Samples are still being tested, but if confirmed, this would represent the first mass mortality of Australian animals associated with the virus.

Until recently, Australia’s detections were mostly isolated migratory seabirds arriving from the Southern Ocean. But these detections show this has changed, with local transmission among wildlife that live in Australia.

Which species are most at risk?

Animals that gather densely in breeding colonies face the greatest danger. Terns, gulls, gannets and albatrosses can transmit the virus rapidly through close contact and contaminated environments, with these groups experiencing devastating mortality in other parts of the world.

The silver gull infections are particularly concerning because they move between beaches, towns, rubbish tips, wetlands and inland waterways. A suspected case at Monarto, SA, does not prove H5N1 is yet established inland, but it shows infected seabirds cannot be “coastally contained”.

Seals and sea lions also require urgent surveillance. H5N1 killed more than 17,000 southern elephant seals in Argentina in 2023, with 95% pup mortality at one monitored colony. Around 13,000 elephant seal pups later died on Heard Island. While it was not possible to carry out postmortem examinations on all individuals at this remote location, H5N1 was confirmed as present and recorded as the most likely cause of death.

Five infected terns have now been confirmed at Seal Bay, a critical breeding site for the endangered Australian sea lion. Australian sea lions and fur seals breed in dense colonies where disease could spread quickly.

Can we predict how far it will spread?

We cannot reliably predict the spread of H5N1 in Australia. The 53 confirmed detections are not the true number of infections – they are the birds found, reported and tested. Many infected animals will never be detected.

Cases from the rest of the world show this strain of H5N1 is capable of spreading huge distances, carried by migratory wildlife. Every other continent, including Antarctica, has been infected by this strain of H5N1 over the past five years, with deaths in the millions.

Hundreds of species of birds have been infected, and the virus has evolved to spread more efficiently between mammals. This pattern makes it very difficult to confidently predict how the virus will spread in Australia, but we must be prepared for a widespread and devastating outbreak.

What about poultry farms and backyard chooks?

There are still no detections of H5N1 in Australian poultry or other livestock, but the risk has increased as confirmed infections rise among resident wild birds.

Wild birds can introduce influenza to poultry through direct contact or by contaminating water, feed, footwear and equipment.

Backyard owners should prevent contact with wild birds, cover feed and water, avoid untreated surface water, and clean footwear and equipment. Sudden illness or deaths should be reported immediately.

Australia’s response now needs to evolve

Sadly, the impacts of bird flu on species and ecosystems will play out for decades to come.

Australia’s pre-outbreak preparation and coordination has been strong. Federal and state governments established response plans, increased surveillance and prepared the poultry industry before H5N1 arrived.

As wild bird infections increase, the poultry industry needs to be supported in implementing biosecurity procedures, and strategic surveillance is needed for both farms and wildlife.

Reliable mortality estimates are essential to understand the long-term impacts, and support species to recover. Australia should also assess whether vaccination could protect vulnerable marine mammals before mass deaths begin.

We cannot stop wild birds from flying. But we can decide whether this becomes an unmanaged wildlife catastrophe or a closely tracked outbreak, with farms and vulnerable species given timely protection.

Please do not touch sick or dead birds or marine mammals. Record the location, take photographs from a safe distance, keep pets away, and report the sighting to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888.

Jane Younger, Senior Lecturer in Southern Ocean Vertebrate Ecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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US President Donald Trump has announced that Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have agreed to disarm. He’s calling it a “critical step” toward lasting peace and security in the strip.

Trump said Hamas’ disarmament would allow for a Palestinian committee to take over governing in Gaza and Israel’s military withdrawal from the enclave, as mandated under his 20-point peace plan, to which Hamas and Israel agreed last October.

Hamas officials say they have agreed to the process, though a member of the negotiating team cautioned that its disarmament was dependent on Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza.

So, is this a major step forward, or are there still too many questions left unresolved?

Hamas’ legitimacy

If Hamas does agree to a complete disarmament, this would be an enormous concession by the movement in its nearly 40-year resistance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Hamas was launched in 1987 with the dual goals of resisting Israel’s occupation and challenging the Fatah party’s domination of Palestinian politics.

In its 2017 charter, Hamas said it “rejects any attempt to undermine the resistance and its arms”. It added that “armed restistance … is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people”.

Additionally, Hamas’ armed resistance lies at the heart of its legitimacy among Palestinians. And for Palestinians, this resistance is linked inextricably with the advancement of efforts to attainment statehood.

This means that while Palestinians may not necessarily support Hamas politically or agree with its Islamist agenda, they do respect the movement. Many view its continued armed resistance to Israel’s occupation as either advancing efforts to achieve statehood or inhibiting Israel’s efforts to make its occupation permanent.

In the most recent polling of Palestinians by the People’s Company for Polls and Survey Research (PCPSR) in October 2025, 60% of respondents (66% in the West Bank and 51% in Gaza) were satisfied with Hamas’ performance and 69% (87% in the West Bank and 55% in Gaza) were opposed to the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Given this, it is hard to believe Hamas will risk this level of support among Palestinians.

Details are vague

According to initial media reports, Hamas’ disarmament would consist not only of surrendering its weapons, but also the dismantling of its military infrastructure in Gaza. This would include its tunnel network, heavy weapons, production facilities and weapon depots.

Given the wholesale destruction of the Gaza Strip, it is unclear how much of this infrastructure still exists.

It’s also unclear how many weapons its military wing actually has. Recent reports suggest it may have tens of thousands of automatic rifles and heavy weapons like anti-tank rockets, but it could be far fewer now.

Other details also remain unclear: who would undertake the task of disarming Hamas and how it would be confirmed? A US official told the BBC a third-party committee would be responsible for this, without elaborating.

Also, Hamas does not just exist in the Gaza Strip – it has a presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, too. It’s unclear whether the disarmament would extend to those elements of the group.

Given the continued violence being perpetrated by radical Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it is not inconceivable that members of Hamas or other Palestinian armed movements may seek to resist this violence with their own.

Agreeing to disarm and give up its administrative responsibilities in Gaza could very well be a strategic move on the part of Hamas. It could enable the group to recover organisationally from the severe battering it took from Israel, while still retaining its resistance agenda among the broader Palestinian population.

What will Israel do?

Israel’s response to the agreement is the other major challenge. Initial reports suggest the government is objecting to Trump’s plan.

According to an Israeli official quoted by the Times of Israel:

There will be no Israeli withdrawal from the Yellow Line in the Gaza Strip before Hamas is disarmed and the Strip is fully demilitarised.

Just two weeks ago, Israel’s far-right defence and finance ministers also proposed the creation of three “nahal” outposts in northern Gaza.

These types of outposts combine a military presence with agricultural and community activities. Historically, they have been the precursor for permanent Israeli settlements.

This opposition from Israel is where the agreement could likely break down, unless Trump can put suitable pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow the peace process to continue. This pressure was already starting to mount on Friday, with a US official saying Trump would be “very disappointed” if Israel stood in the way.

Martin Kear, Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Today’s inflation figures showed inflation pressures have eased, just a day after the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) warned inflation was still too high.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.8% in the year to June, down from 4.0% in the year to May. The RBA’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, the trimmed mean, was steady at 3.6%.

(The trimmed mean shows core inflation after excluding or “trimming” away the items with the largest price rises or falls, leaving the weighted average of the middle 70% of items.)

This is the most important piece of domestic economic data the RBA will receive before its next interest rates meeting on August 10–11.

Financial markets cut the chances of a rate rise next month to close to zero after the softer-than-expected inflation report. But there is still a meaningful chance of one more rate rise later in the year if inflation risks rise.

How the picture has changed since June

The largest contributors to annual inflation were housing (up 6.8% in the year), food and non-alcoholic beverages, and transport. The largest monthly decline was in automotive fuel prices in June, as global oil prices fell.

Services inflation remained persistent, particularly in housing-related categories such as rents. This suggests underlying domestic price pressures have not fully subsided.

Although inflation moderated in June, slightly below the RBA’s forecasts, it remains well above the central bank’s 2–3% target.

However, the world has changed since June.

This month, a renewed escalation in the conflict in Iran sent oil prices back above US$100 a barrel, although they have eased again this week. This has created fresh inflation risks that are not reflected in the June report. The June CPI tells us where inflation was. The RBA must decide where inflation is heading.

Last week’s employment figures reinforced the complexity of the RBA’s task. Employment rose by a stronger-than-expected 76,300 in June. The figures suggest labour market conditions remain resilient, giving the RBA scope to focus on inflation risks.

Australia’s inflation problem has changed markedly over the past two years.

The broad-based inflation that followed the pandemic has eased as supply chains recovered and higher interest rates slowed demand. While trimmed mean inflation remained at 3.6% in June, it was considerably lower than the post-pandemic peak of 6.8% in December 2022.

Remaining price pressures are concentrated in services such as rents, insurance and healthcare, where inflation has proved more persistent.

Why higher oil prices remain a threat

Looking ahead, global energy markets have been shifting dramatically in recent weeks, with oil briefly surging back above US$100 a barrel.

Higher oil prices do far more than increase the cost of filling up the car. They raise transport, freight and production costs throughout the economy. Businesses eventually pass some of those higher costs on to consumers, placing renewed upward pressure on inflation.

Australia is less vulnerable to oil shocks than it once was, but sustained oil prices above US$100 would still complicate the inflation outlook. Unlike demand-driven inflation, this is a supply shock that interest rates cannot directly offset.

Close to the RBA’s worst-case scenario?

A sustained oil price near US$100 is remarkably close to the scenario the RBA has been warning about, with inflation still tracking above the RBA’s 2–3% target.

The RBA has already raised the cash rate three times this year — in February, March and May — as it sought to return inflation to target.

On Tuesday, RBA Governor Michele Bullock warned the bank was “prepared to act as required” to get inflation under control, including by increasing the cash rate further.

When the RBA raises interest rates, it slows economic growth and helps bring down inflation. Bullock’s comments suggest the RBA remains prepared to raise rates further if new inflationary pressures emerge.

She made clear the RBA is not simply assessing today’s inflation numbers. It is assessing the risks to inflation over the months ahead.

If higher oil prices prove temporary, the RBA is likely to look through the direct effect on inflation. The greater concern is that higher energy costs begin feeding into transport charges, business costs, wages and inflation expectations, making inflation more persistent and more difficult to bring back to target.

What happens next?

Today’s CPI figures confirm inflation was continuing to move in the right direction through June. But because the figures predate the recent surge in oil prices, they are unlikely to settle the policy debate on their own.

When the RBA meets on August 10–11, it will weigh evidence that inflation was continuing to ease against the risk it might prove short-lived.

Whether another interest rate increase becomes necessary will depend on how persistent the oil shock proves to be – and whether businesses pass higher energy costs on to consumers.

The RBA’s challenge is no longer understanding where inflation stood in June. It is judging where inflation is likely to be over the months ahead.

Stella Huangfu, Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Every generation inherits institutions that need repair and India has no shortage of them.

Education, the police and the judiciary all need reform, each having accumulated structural weaknesses over decades. In many respects, India’s policing and judicial architecture still bear the imprint of a colonial state, designed to govern and control rather than serve citizens in a confident democratic republic.

The education system, meanwhile, has struggled to keep pace with the aspirations of a young and ambitious nation. Too often, it rewards rote learning over curiosity, conformity over creativity, and examinations over genuine education. Layered onto these weaknesses is a reservation system that many Indians increasingly regard as inequitable, fuelling resentment and raising difficult questions about how India can balance social justice with merit in the decades ahead.

It is education, however, that now finds itself at the centre of national debate following the NEET paper leak.

Questions over accountability are entirely legitimate, and public anger is understandable. This government, simply by virtue of being in office, bears responsibility not only for addressing the immediate failure but also for repairing systemic deficiencies that have disadvantaged students for decades.

India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on 25 July after 36 days of protests by the Cockroach Janta Party led by 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke. But the debate extends far beyond one examination or one minister. It raises a more fundamental question: How should a democracy pursue reform?

The challenge is not merely to protest when institutions fail, but to ensure that protest ultimately produces better institutions rather than deeper political divisions.

Peaceful protest is one of democracy’s essential safety valves. Throughout history, it has exposed institutional weakness that governments were reluctant or slow to address.

The greater concern, however, is that many now believe peaceful, reasoned engagement is no longer enough. Across political parties, governments too often appear deaf to measured criticism and proposals for reform. The lesson citizens increasingly draw is a troubling one: unless they take to the streets, they simply will not be heard.

That is precisely where the problem begins. Once a protest gathers momentum and starts exerting political pressure, it rarely remains the preserve of those who initiated it.

Political parties, ideological groups, public personalities and professional activists inevitably hitch their wagons to the movement. The success of a protest often attracts new actors whose priority is no longer the original grievance but the political opportunities it presents.

They certainly bring organisational muscle, funding and media attention, amplifying a movement far beyond its original reach. Too often, however, they also bring their foot soldiers, veterans of agitation politics and performative outrage that overwhelms the cause they claim to champion.

The conversation gradually shifts from repairing a failing institution to assigning political blame. Cameras drift away from students and settle on politicians, celebrities and, increasingly, social media influencers. Television studios stop debating reform and begin keeping score of political winners and losers.

Soon, citizens are left wondering what the protest is actually about. Is it examination reform, ministerial accountability, institutional credibility or simply another opportunity to weaken a political opponent? Once those questions eclipse the original grievance, the movement has begun to lose its way.

There were other signs that the conversation had travelled well beyond NEET. Alongside demands for examination reform, some slogans carried overt religious overtones, including remarks that many viewed as deliberately provocative towards the country’s majority community and its revered deities.

Whatever the intent behind those slogans, they had little to do with the integrity of a national examination. Their presence suggested that, for some participants, the protest had become a vehicle for airing far broader ideological and cultural grievances.

And once substance gives way to spectacle, the quality of public debate also declines with it. What also disturbed many citizens during the recent demonstrations was not merely the anger but the coarsening of public discourse. Political disagreement gave way to crude abuse, sexualised insults and the dehumanisation of opponents. Regardless of one’s political persuasion, that represented a lowering of democratic standards rather than an elevation of democratic debate. It also left many wondering whether those who dominated the headlines genuinely represented the students whose future was at stake.

Some of those who attracted the greatest attention appeared more intent on creating the next viral sensation, using language calculated to shock, than on explaining what had disillusioned them or why they had taken to the streets in the first place. Whether that reflected youthful exuberance, the incentives of online platforms or political coaching is open to debate.

A Prime Minister who has repeatedly been returned to office by the electorate became the central character in a debate that ought to have remained focused on students, examinations and structural reform.

Encouragingly, the conversation now appears to be moving back towards where it always belonged. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen to communicate directly with young Indians, acknowledging both their anxieties and the need to restore confidence in the examination system. More significantly, the constitution of a high-powered committee to recommend systemic changes signals an acceptance that the answer lies not merely in fixing responsibility for one paper leak, but in fixing the system itself.

That is a welcome shift. Committees, however, are only the beginning. The real test will be whether their recommendations translate into a more secure, transparent and resilient examination system.

Yesterday’s (27 July) debate in Parliament exposed the difference between supporting a protest and supporting reform. Several parties that had stood shoulder to shoulder with the protesters chose to oppose the introduction of the Anti-Paper Leak Bill. They are fully entitled to challenge the contents of any legislation. But opposing reform at the very moment it enters Parliament inevitably raises questions.

It is one thing to march with students demanding change. It is another to engage with the legislative process when change is actually placed before the House. Citizens are entitled to ask whether the objective was always examination reform or whether the protest had become another instrument in a larger political contest.

The question, therefore, is why reform in India has become so politically charged?

The immediate controversy may be about NEET. The larger story is about India itself and a political landscape transformed by successive electoral victories for one side and repeated setbacks for the other.

As the Opposition has seen its footprint shrink over successive elections, the incentive to convert public discontent into political momentum has only grown stronger. That reality now forms part of the backdrop against which almost every major national protest unfolds.

Politics alone, however, does not explain the intensity of these contests. The other part of the story is India’s own transformation.

For decades, India was dismissed as being trapped in what economists famously called the Hindu rate of growth. It became shorthand for a country supposedly destined for permanent mediocrity. Slow growth, bureaucratic inertia and a lack of ambition were assumed to be permanent features of the Indian story.

Today, India stands among the world’s fastest-growing major economies. A nation once lectured about its limitations now finds itself being studied for its scale, resilience and growing strategic importance.

Economic transformation has been accompanied by something equally significant – a renewed confidence in its civilisational identity.

Increasing numbers of Hindus today express their faith publicly and unapologetically, much as followers of other major religions have long done.

Whether one welcomes or questions that change, it represents a profound departure from the cultural hesitancy that characterised much of post-Independence India.

A society that for decades often viewed itself through borrowed intellectual frameworks is increasingly seeking to understand itself through its own history, traditions and civilisational memory.

That shift has generated admiration in some quarters and unease in others. The trajectory of a nation of 1.4 billion people inevitably matters beyond its borders, ensuring that India’s internal debates attract growing international attention. For some, they also present opportunities to amplify existing political and social fault lines.

Indeed, a pattern has become discernible over the past decade, one sufficiently consistent that it now merits examination as something more than coincidence. A local grievance erupts; within days, a coordinated ecosystem of activists, commentators and sympathetic platforms mobilises around it; and sections of the global media amplify it as fresh evidence of a democracy supposedly in crisis.

The sequencing repeats itself with a regularity that appears too structured to be organic. What this pattern suggests, on analysis, is that the underlying objective is rarely confined to the original grievance at all — it appears, instead, to extend toward destabilising India and weakening, or ultimately dislodging, a government that has been repeatedly re-elected by its own citizens.

Underpinning this ecosystem, moreover, is what looks increasingly like a layer of foreign funding, channelled through advocacy networks and non-profits — an architecture whose deeper aim seems to be fraying India’s internal cohesion and, in its most extreme expression, nudging the country toward balkanisation. No single grievance proves this by itself; it is the recurrence of the pattern, protest after protest, that makes the analysis compelling. The shape of this phenomenon is now familiar enough that it cannot be dismissed and requires serious investigation.

Given the above, India is likely to see one agitation after another between now and 2029 till the next general elections are held in the country. Some will arise from genuine public grievances. Others will be driven principally by electoral strategy or even more nefarious motives. That is the geo-political reality of the unease caused by India’s rise as a global powerhouse.

The challenge now for India is to ensure that every legitimate public grievance becomes an opportunity to strengthen institutions rather than deepen political divisions and become issues to be hijacked by the enemies of the state.

This generation has inherited a country that requires courage to reform its systems. The next generation will inherit the consequences of whether we succeeded.

Building stronger institutions is rarely dramatic work. There will be setbacks and we know there will be resistance. There will also be days when progress appears painfully slow. Yet that is the nature of nation-building. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

In all of this, it is worth remembering that history rarely remembers who shouted the loudest. It remembers who built what lasted.

Contributor: Nandini Bahri Dhanda is an Interior Architect. She has lived across sixteen states in India and travelled extensively around the world. She is a well-known commentator whose interests span art, culture, history and politics.

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Senator Hanson has often been clumsy in how she expresses these concerns. Perhaps “monoculture” is not the right term for what she intended to convey, as it could suggest cultural homogeneity rather than a shared value system rooted in 21st-century liberal principles. But on the core proposition—that Australian values are worth defending and that those who migrate here should embrace them—she is right, and her critics are wrong. The fact that this position is now considered controversial tells us more about the state of public discourse than about the merits of the argument.

Australia is one of the most successful multicultural nations on earth. Nearly half of us were born overseas or have a parent who was. We eat each other’s food, marry across ethnic lines, and celebrate our diversity as a national strength. But this multiculturalism thrives precisely because it rests on a ‘monocultural’ foundation: a shared commitment to liberal democratic values that are non-negotiable. You can replace ‘monoculture’ with bedrock, core, or anchor if you find the word too controversial, but the essence of the argument does not change.

These values are not complicated. Freedom of speech, including the freedom to criticise religion and government. The rule of law applied equally regardless of faith or background. Equality of opportunity between men and women, between people of all sexualities, between citizens of every ethnicity. The separation of religious authority from state power.

The uncomfortable truth that polite society refuses to acknowledge is this: all cultures and religions contain admirable and objectionable elements, but they are not all equally good or bad, nor equally compatible with liberal democracy. A culture that prescribes death for apostasy is not equivalent to one that protects religious freedom. A tradition that prescribes discriminatory laws regarding marriage and inheritance for women is not the equal of one that enshrines gender equality by law. To say otherwise is not tolerance—it is the abandonment of the very principles that make tolerance possible.

For too long, the Australian left has conflated any discussion of cultural compatibility with racism. This is intellectually dishonest and practically dangerous. When I wrote in 2011 that David Cameron was right to declare state multiculturalism a failure or when I argued that we should not import cultural practices that oppress women or minorities, the attacks came thick and fast. But the position I held then is the position I hold now: being brown-skinned does not obligate me to defend practices I would condemn if they occurred in white communities.

The critics will say that emphasising values is merely a cover for excluding people based on race or religion. This is precisely backwards. A values-based approach to immigration is the most inclusive framework possible, because it judges people not by their ancestry or appearance but by their commitment to shared principles. The question is never where you come from or what god you worship. The question is whether you accept that in Australia, your neighbour has the right to worship differently or be an atheist, speak freely even if it means criticising your god or cultural practices, and live as an equal citizen under secular law—whether they are a man or woman, heterosexual or homosexual. In a liberal society, respect must be commanded, not demanded.

What I am describing is not an abandoning of one’s heritage. I am proud of my Indian cultural roots and thankful for the wisdom of Hindu spiritualism into which I was born. Cultural diversity is a gift. But there is a difference between the expression of cultural identity and the public imposition of cultural values that conflict with liberal democracy. You can keep your language, your food, your religious observances, your family traditions. What you cannot do is demand that Australian society accommodate practices that violate the fundamental principles of equality for all its people. There is also a fundamental difference between being proud of one’s roots and being a cultural or religious chauvinist.

Those who exploit our openness to advocate for values fundamentally hostile to Australian society—and the activists who provide them cover by screaming “racism” at anyone who raises concerns—are damaging social cohesion and the fabric of Australia. The radical Islamist who preaches antisemitism or homophobia is not a victim of Australian intolerance; he is a beneficiary of it, protected by the very freedoms he seeks to destroy. And the leftist activist who defends him in the name of diversity is not progressive but regressive, sacrificing the hard-won rights of women and minorities on the altar of cultural relativism.

Australia’s migration program should remain practical enough to attract the best and brightest minds in the world with numbers that are economically and environmentally sustainable. Otherwise, we risk stagnation. We should continue to welcome people from every corner of the globe, as we have for generations. But generosity does not require naivety. We can and should admit only those who align with Australian values—including accepting that women are equal to men, that religious criticism is protected speech, and that the law applies equally to all. These are not trick questions designed to exclude. They are the minimum requirements for participation in a free society.

A multiculturalism that refuses to privilege liberal democratic values, that treats all cultural practices as equally valid, that condemns any concern about compatibility as racist—leads not to a richer society but to a fragmented one. It leads to parallel communities that never integrate, to women trapped in oppressive family structures with no recourse to Australian law, to gay teenagers afraid to come out because their community follows different rules. This is not diversity. It is the failure of diversity.

So yes, I find myself in agreement with Pauline Hanson. The Australia that welcomed me and millions of others is worth preserving. Its values are not arbitrary impositions but the foundation of a free and equal society. And asking newcomers to embrace those values is not bigotry—it is the very condition that makes our remarkable multicultural experiment possible.

Those who call this position racist have it exactly backwards. It is the most anti-racist position imaginable: the belief that people of every background are capable of embracing freedom, equality, and the rule of law—and that we should expect nothing less.

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But the movement must now confront uncomfortable questions of its own.

After weeks of demonstrations, the campaign has expanded beyond examination reform into an increasingly political confrontation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its credibility has also been damaged by violence, unauthorised marches, attacks on security personnel and repeated allegations that journalists were threatened, heckled and physically assaulted while covering its protests.

This matters because a movement demanding accountability cannot exempt its own supporters from accountability.

The CJP emerged in May as a satirical online platform founded by political communications strategist and former Aam Aadmi Party volunteer Abhijeet Dipke. It later developed into an organised protest campaign demanding action over examination irregularities, the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and wider reforms to India’s education and recruitment systems.

The underlying grievance is real. Allegations surrounding leaked examination papers have affected millions of students, while protesters say that cancellations, uncertainty, and prolonged investigations have damaged careers and intensified anxiety among young applicants. The movement’s supporters have also linked the dispute to unemployment and broader dissatisfaction with public institutions.

However, what began as a student-centred agitation has increasingly been absorbed into a wider anti-government campaign.

Protesters have demanded not only Pradhan’s dismissal but, in some demonstrations, Modi’s resignation. Opposition parties have disrupted Parliament, staged demonstrations near the Prime Minister’s residence and publicly aligned themselves with the movement. Reports described the protests as providing India’s opposition with a rare political opening against Modi, particularly because of the electoral importance of younger voters.

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have sought to place personal responsibility on the Prime Minister. Rahul Gandhi demanded an apology and Pradhan’s removal, while Priyanka Gandhi accused Modi of claiming credit for national achievements but avoiding responsibility for the treatment of students.

There is nothing illegitimate about opposition parties questioning the government or supporting students. Nor should criticism of Modi automatically be labelled anti-national.

The concern is that a specific campaign about examination integrity is being converted into a general political mobilisation in which every slogan, confrontation and grievance is channelled towards removing the democratically elected Modi government by force. Once that happens, students risk becoming supporting actors in an opposition campaign rather than the central beneficiaries of a reform movement.

The CJP has described itself as independent and resistant to conventional political control. Yet its founder’s previous association with the AAP, its growing support from Congress and other opposition leaders, and the rapid expansion of its demands make scrutiny unavoidable. Political independence must be demonstrated through conduct, not merely declared in social media statements.

The violence surrounding the protest is even more concerning.

On July 20, thousands of protesters attempted to move towards Parliament during the “Chalo Sansad” mobilisation. Delhi Police said permission had neither been sought nor granted for the march. Police used tear gas and batons as demonstrators pushed towards restricted areas, while subsequent reports described stone-throwing, confrontations and attacks on personnel.

Images and videos circulated from the disorder have presented competing accounts. Protest groups accused the police of excessive force and said students were beaten. Police and government-aligned outlets said members of the crowd threw stones, breached barriers and attacked officers. NDTV reported that about 90 students were injured, with most later discharged, while CJP representatives sought to minimise injuries sustained by police by arguing that most were minor.

That response was troubling. Whether a police officer’s injuries were described as minor or serious is not the central issue. A movement that claims to practise peaceful democratic resistance must categorically condemn assaults on officers rather than debate the percentage who required extensive treatment.

Others reported that footage showed an RAF officer being chased, deliberately tripped and attacked after falling. Such reports and circulating videos require proper investigation, and individual responsibility must be established through evidence, but no political cause justifies a group assault on a person lying on the ground.

The same standard must apply to police conduct. Any unlawful use of force against peaceful protesters should be investigated. Students do not lose their rights because some people in a crowd behave violently. But protesters do not acquire immunity from the law merely because their original grievance is legitimate.

The reported treatment of journalists further weakens the movement’s moral position.

Times of India reported that journalists said they had been assaulted while covering the march. Its been documented a series of alleged incidents involving reporters from Times Now, ABP News and other organisations, including claims of slapping, kicking, punching, pushing, bottle-throwing and surrounding media crews while shouting “Godi Media”.

Times Now reporter Dev Kotak said he and his cameraman were surrounded while leaving part of the protest site and were subjected to verbal and physical attacks. Earlier incidents reportedly involved journalists being manhandled or intimidated after questioning protesters about slogans and the purpose of the gathering.

These allegations should not be dismissed merely because some of the affected journalists work for outlets disliked by the protesters.

Press freedom does not belong only to sympathetic journalists. A reporter does not become a legitimate target because a crowd considers the reporter’s employer pro-government. Protesters are entitled to refuse an interview, challenge a question or criticise coverage. They are not entitled to grab cameras, push crews, threaten reporters or physically punish journalists for asking inconvenient questions.

A movement presenting itself as a defence of democracy cannot reproduce the same intolerance it accuses the government of displaying.

The campaign has also attracted claims that it is being used to promote hostility towards Hindu identity. Those claims require careful handling.

Verified mainstream reporting strongly supports the conclusion that the demonstrations have become intensely anti-Modi and anti-BJP. It does not establish that every CJP participant, or the movement as a whole, is anti-Hindu.

However, controversies around religious rhetoric cannot be ignored. OpIndia reported that some participants raised “Azadi” slogans, while social media footage has circulated alleging offensive remarks involving Lord Ram. Another dispute erupted after online commentators attacked a Hanuman temple for reportedly not sheltering protesters during clashes, while praising a mosque and a gurdwara said to have assisted people.

The authenticity, context and representativeness of individual viral clips must be verified before broad conclusions are drawn. A slogan by one participant cannot automatically be attributed to thousands of protesters.

Yet political activists also cannot pretend that religiously abusive language is harmless merely because it is directed at India’s majority faith. Criticism of the BJP or Modi is political speech.

Insulting Hindu deities, mocking Hindu worshippers or collectively portraying Hindus as morally inferior is religious hostility.

Opposition parties supporting the movement have a responsibility to draw that distinction clearly. They should condemn anti-Hindu remarks with the same seriousness they would demand if protesters targeted Islam, Christianity, Sikhism or another faith.

Prime Minister Modi has now responded personally to the crisis.

In his first direct message on the examination leaks, Modi said nothing was more important than the welfare and future of young people. He announced that the government would establish fast-track courts to ensure swift and stringent punishment for those responsible for leaking papers, and said officials had been instructed to take all necessary steps.

“Those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared,” the Prime Minister said in his July 23 statement.

Modi later released a video message saying paper leaks were not an ordinary matter and that further stringent measures would be taken up at a Cabinet meeting on Friday. Reports said the video was his second intervention on the issue that day, indicating an attempt to address students directly rather than leaving the response solely to ministers and officials.

The announcement of special courts is a serious response, but it cannot be the final one. Fast prosecution matters only if investigations are credible, cases are filed promptly, and convictions follow where guilt is proven. Examination agencies also require stronger security, independent oversight and transparent procedures for compensating students affected by cancellations or wrongdoing.

The government reportedly reached out to protest representatives several times, but discussions became stalled over the proposed venue. CJP leaders insisted on a neutral location or talks at Jantar Mantar, while continuing to demand Pradhan’s resignation.

By immediately rejecting Modi’s announcement and insisting that the protest would continue until the minister resigned, the CJP reinforced the perception that its campaign is now tied to a predetermined political outcome rather than an open process of reform.

The movement now faces a choice.

It can return to a disciplined campaign focused on secure examinations, speedy prosecutions, institutional accountability and relief for affected students. That would require isolating violent participants, protecting journalists, cooperating with lawful investigations and refusing to become an instrument of any political party.

Or it can continue expanding into an all-purpose anti-Modi mobilisation, tolerate intimidation around its protests and allow ideological groups to inject religious hostility into what began as a student issue.

The government must answer for examination failures. Police must answer for any excessive force. But the CJP and its political supporters must also answer for the violence, threats and intolerance taking place under the banner of youth justice.

Young Indians deserve reform, not political theatre. They deserve examinations they can trust, not another movement in which their genuine hardship is used to settle old ideological battles against Modi, the BJP or Hindu public life.

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It’s not news that young Australians are less religious than their parents and grandparents. Census data has shown a steady decline in religious affiliation for decades, particularly among Christians, who remain Australia’s largest faith group.

Yet over the past few years there have been reports that seemed to point in the opposite direction. As I wrote about religious revival in countries as diverse as Japan, Thailand, China, India, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, a common theme emerged. Some young people appeared to be returning to religion.

More surprising still, in many places the trend seemed increasingly driven by young men rather than young women.

To figure out what was happening in Australia, I crunched the numbers. While Australia is continuing to secularise overall, beneath that trend, Gen Z appears to be the first generation where men are more likely than women to identify with a religion.

That divide is closely tied to political ideology and may reflect wider gendered political polarisation.

The research

Using Australian Election Study (AES) data collected between 1987 and 2025, I examined religious affiliation across six generations:

• the war generation (born during the 1920s)
• builders (born 1930–1945)
• baby boomers (1946–1960)
• generation X (1961–1979)
• millennials or Gen Y (1980–1994)
• and Generation Z (born after 1994).

Across these cohorts, I analysed responses from 27,478 Australians.

In this analysis, I focus primarily on religious affiliation: whether respondents identify with a religion at all.

While church attendance tells us about participation in organised religion, affiliation captures something broader about identity, belonging and self-understanding.

Religious affiliation is linked to age

The overall pattern was exactly as expected: religious affiliation declines sharply across generations. Older Australians remain significantly more likely than younger Australians to identify with a religion.

The gender pattern showed for every generation from the war generation through to millennials, women are more likely than men to report a religious affiliation.

I then zoomed in on the two youngest generations to see how the gender gap in religious affiliation has evolved over time.

Millennials (gen Y) largely follow the familiar pattern seen in older generations. Both men and women have become less religious over time, but women consistently remain ahead. In the 2025 Australian Election Study, 46.2% of gen Y women reported a religious affiliation compared with 40.3% of gen Y men.

Gen Z tells a different story.

In the 2025 survey, 55.7% of gen Z men reported a religious affiliation, compared with 43.2% of gen Z women.

And this is more than just a one-off quirk. While religious affiliation among gen Y men remained relatively stable between 2019 and 2025 (41.0% to 40.3%), affiliation among gen Z men rose from 35.3% in 2019 to 49.1% in 2022 and 55.7% in 2025.

The pattern survives after accounting for other influences. It’s also still present when political ideology, parental birthplace, marital status and place of residence are controlled for.

The gen Z sample is smaller than those for older generations, meaning the estimates are less precise. Even so, the result remains statistically significant and points to a markedly different religious landscape among the youngest cohort of Australian voters.

Gender, politics, or both?

The obvious next question is: why? I wanted to know whether the emerging gender gap was really about gender, or whether it reflected deeper political differences between young men and women.

To explore this, I estimated a second model that incorporated gender, generation and political ideology together. Here, the reference group was right-leaning gen Z men, allowing me to compare every other gender-generation-ideology combination against arguably the most religious segment of the youngest generation.

The results suggest political identity plays an important role in shaping the new religious divide. Religious affiliation was highest among older Australians on the political right, particularly women from the war and builder generations.

At the other end of the spectrum, the least religious groups were found among younger Australians on the political left. Left-identifying gen Z women were the least likely to be religious. Left-identifying gen Y men and women also displayed comparatively low levels of religiosity.

This finding echoes a pattern scholars have increasingly documented across many democracies. Young women are becoming more progressive while young men are drifting in a more conservative direction. The growing gender gap in religion may be part of the same broader realignment.

One other finding that was particularly striking was that women remained more religious among older generations regardless of political beliefs.

Yet among gen Z, the gap appears to be concentrated among those on the political left.

In other words, the story is not simply that gen Z women are less religious than gen Z men. It is that left-leaning gen Z women appear especially likely to reject religious affiliation, while right-leaning gen Z men remain comparatively attached to it.

Why might this be happening?

I suspect the answer has less to do with church attendance and more to do with identity.

Religion may increasingly function as a source of belonging, meaning and community, particularly for young men. In a world characterised by economic insecurity, social isolation and uncertainty about traditional masculine roles, religion can offer purpose, structure and a sense of place.

Research suggests religion may even help buffer the psychological stress associated with feeling disconnected from conventional expectations of masculinity. Religion offers not only beliefs, but a framework for understanding oneself.

The online world may be amplifying this trend. Social media has made religion more visible, accessible and culturally relevant in ways that do not necessarily require institutional participation.

Influencers, podcasts, self-help figures and online communities increasingly blend spirituality, personal development and cultural commentary. For some young men, religion may therefore serve as a social identity before it becomes a religious practice.

For many young women, however, the trend appears to move in the opposite direction. Gen Z women are more progressive and more likely to embrace feminist values than previous generations.

So while Australia is not experiencing a religious revival in the conventional sense, religion appears to be becoming increasingly tied to the same gendered political divide reshaping many other aspects of social life.

Intifar Chowdhury, Lecturer in Government, Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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2026 has been an unsettling year in terms of Australian security. It opened with the nation still reeling from its worst terrorist attack on home soil. This sense of insecurity has since been compounded by regional and global events, including the conflict in Iran and, more recently, the Chinese ballistic missile test in the Pacific Ocean.

Surveys by the Australian National University and the Lowy Institute have demonstrated a growing sense of insecurity among Australians. But what does this mean in terms of wider attitudes towards defence issues, and why do these attitudes matter?

Last year, the War Studies Research Group surveyed Australians to get a sense of their attitudes towards the Australian Defence Force (ADF). We fielded a second iteration of this survey in January 2026 to see if anything had changed in the past year.

The survey involved 1,529 Australians aged 18 or older. They were asked many of the same questions from the 2025 iteration, as well as some new ones. Our survey found Australians are increasingly worried about security, but the issues that are at the front of the public mind are not necessarily those that dominate the political debate.

Terrorism and cyberattacks the most significant threat

Both Defence Minister Richard Marles and his Coalition counterpart James Paterson discuss national security issues in the context of the threat of great power competition and conflict.

Yet our survey found that Australians rank terrorism (33.7%) and cyberattacks (29.8%) as more significant threats than either high- or low-intensity conflicts. They also believe the ADF is far more likely to be engaged in peacekeeping missions or the delivery of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief than it is to be involved in a major conflict.

In contrast to armed conflict, terrorism and cyberattacks have affected many Australians, both directly and indirectly. The survey was conducted in the weeks following the December 2025 Bondi attack, which meant terrorism was front-of-mind for our respondents.

Meanwhile, 47% of Australians were found to have experienced a form of cybercrime in 2025. It is unsurprising these two threats ranked so highly.

Navy not the priority, despite AUKUS

This focus on non-traditional security threats fed into limited public support for additional funding for the ADF. In line with our findings from last year, roughly one third of respondents believed more money should be spent on defence. Just over half felt current spending levels were appropriate. Support for funding cuts was slightly higher at 15% compared with 11% in 2025.

Since the 2023 Defence Strategic Review there has been a significant shift of emphasis within defence. This has seen a renewed focus on Australia’s immediate region, and a prioritisation of maritime capabilities needed to fight in the oceans and coastlines that comprise it. Yet our survey suggests this shift is not reflected in public attitudes to defence.

42% of respondents felt the army was the most important service in providing defence for Australia. Around one quarter favoured the air force (24%) or the navy (23%). Similarly, 37% felt the army should be the priority for funding, slightly ahead of the air force (33%) and navy (30%). Navy’s lower priority in the public mind is particularly relevant in the context of AUKUS, and the need for both the Department of Defence and the government to justify its huge price tag.

2 in 5 Australians support introduction of conscription

Recently, several countries have again adopted some form of national service. This has led some commentators to advocate for similar programs in Australia amid the perceived deterioration in the strategic environment.

According to the results of our survey, 43% of Australians support introducing a form of compulsory national service, with 33% opposed and 24% expressing neutral views.

Yet this overall picture disguises considerable variation across demographics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given they would be most directly affected, young Australians aged 18–24 were least supportive of conscription. More than one third (36%) were opposed, though slightly less than one-third supported national service. By contrast, 71% of those aged 75 and over supported conscription, with only 17% opposed.

There were also significant differences by political affiliation. Half of Liberal party supporters in our survey backed conscription and only 21% opposed. In contrast, only 26% of Greens voters thought it was a good idea, with half (51%) opposed.

Australians show greater support for self-reliance

Some of the largest shifts in public attitude when compared to our 2025 survey related to the roles of the ADF, and Australia’s approach to security.

Overall support for a collaborative and regional approach to security fell, with respondents increasingly favouring a narrower focus on self-reliance and the defence of Australia as the best way forward. Respondents were also more likely to believe that Australian security would be best served by prioritising the development of a strong military over diplomacy and foreign aid.

When it came to the ADF working closely with allies and partners, especially the United States, public support dropped sharply from 75% in 2025 to 54% in 2026. Public backing for the deployment of the ADF in support of allies and partners such as the United States was even lower, coming it at 50%, down from 64% last year.

While support for working with allies and partners continues to outweigh opposition, the substantial growth in opposition in these areas represents one of the most significant year-on-year shifts within the survey.

Again, this is in line with other surveys, which have highlighted downward trends in public opinion regarding the US.

Australians’ growing sense of insecurity

Overall Australians are feeling increasingly insecure, and global events including the actions of the US are clearly affecting how they view security.

However, the way the public frames security does not align with the narrative coming out of the politicians and commentators in Canberra.

Our survey indicates there remains very limited interest in the ADF as an organisation, and little support for a major change in defence policy settings. For those who believe Australia faces its most uncertain strategic situation since the second world war, shifting this perception is arguably the most profound challenge.

Richard Dunley, Senior Lecturer in History and Maritime Strategy, UNSW and Nicole Townsend, Lecturer in War Studies, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Globalisation is often imagined as the triumph of economics over geography. Capital moves instantly, information ignores borders and markets connect societies separated by oceans. Yet the physical foundations of this system remain surprisingly fragile. Much of the world’s energy still passes through a handful of narrow waterways, where a relatively weak state can impose costs upon countries far more powerful than itself.

The Strait of Hormuz now illustrates this contradiction. On 16 July, only three commodity vessels crossed it, while no LNG carrier or very large crude tanker completed the passage for the second consecutive day. Iran did not need to build an impenetrable naval blockade. It merely created enough danger for shipowners, insurers and crews to withdraw voluntarily. Fear accomplished what the Iranian navy could not.

For decades, economic sanctions have reflected the hierarchy of international power. The strongest states could exclude weaker ones from financial networks, restrict their access to technology and determine which goods they were permitted to sell. Iran has lived under precisely such a system. Hormuz, however, gives Tehran an opportunity to reverse this relationship.

It cannot remove the United States from the global financial order, but it can threaten the ships, energy supplies and trading interests of countries aligned with it. The sanctioned state is attempting to become the sanctioning power. By turning passage through an international waterway into something conditional, Iran is not merely retaliating against military pressure. It is constructing an informal sanctions regime of its own, enforced not through banks and institutions, but through fear.

This emerging regime is already visible in the diplomacy surrounding the strait. The arrangement reached in June between US and Iran connected the restoration of safe commercial passage with limited sanctions relief for Iran. When it began to unravel, Tehran again restricted passage for vessels it considered unauthorised, turning a legal right of transit into a negotiable privilege. The distinction is important.

A complete and permanent closure would damage Iran and its partners as well as its adversaries. Selective access offers far greater leverage. Friendly traffic can be tolerated, hostile commercial interests threatened and neutral states encouraged to seek separate assurances. Iran may therefore be attempting something more ambitious than closing Hormuz. It may be claiming the authority to decide who is allowed to pass through it.

The crisis has already created a market for precisely this kind of permission. In April, shipping companies received fraudulent messages offering Iranian “clearance” through Hormuz in exchange for payments in Bitcoin or Tether. The messages did not come from Tehran, but they revealed what its strategy had made possible. Once captains could no longer know whether international law, nationality or private payment determined their safety, even criminals could begin selling passage through one of the world’s most important waterways.

The fraud worked because the underlying uncertainty was real. A route that should have remained open to commercial traffic had begun to resemble territory controlled by an armed group, where travellers seek private assurances before crossing. Iran had not formally imposed a toll. It had created the conditions in which protection itself could be sold.

The most revealing response came from Washington itself. In July, President Donald Trump proposed a 20 per cent charge on cargo passing through Hormuz to recover the cost of American maritime protection. The proposal was abandoned a day later after opposition from the International Maritime Organization and shipping companies, but its implications were considerable. Iran’s coercion had begun to alter how even the power defending freedom of navigation understood the strait. An international waterway was being discussed as a service that could be controlled, secured and monetised.

The countries paying this price are not necessarily those fighting the war. Nearly 80 per cent of the oil and petroleum products passing through Hormuz in 2025 were destined for Asia. The strait also carried more than 110 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas, including approximately 93 per cent of Qatar’s and 96 per cent of the UAE’s LNG exports. These volumes cannot simply be redirected through another waterway. Iran’s confrontation may be primarily with the United States and Israel, but much of its economic punishment travels eastward. India, Japan, South Korea and poorer Asian economies can remain militarily neutral and still suffer higher energy prices, transport costs and inflation. In an interdependent world, neutrality may keep a country outside the battlefield. It cannot keep the battlefield outside its economy.

Not every country can absorb this shock equally. Wealthy states have strategic oil reserves, multiple suppliers and enough money to protect consumers temporarily. During the Hormuz crisis, the International Energy Agency coordinated the release of up to 400 million barrels to contain the rise in prices. Poorer importers have far fewer options. They must buy expensive energy, reduce consumption or divert public money from welfare and development. The result is deeply unequal. Iran claims to be resisting Western power. Yet the cost of that resistance is increasingly borne by societies far poorer than the West.

The damage also travels far beyond the fuel pump. Natural gas is a major input in the production of nitrogenous fertilisers, which means disruption at Hormuz can eventually affect the price and availability of food. Sudan receives 54 per cent of its seaborne fertiliser imports through the strait, while Sri Lanka receives 36 per cent. For such countries, a delayed shipment can collide with planting seasons that cannot simply be postponed. Oil reserves may buy governments a few weeks, but agriculture follows a calendar that diplomacy cannot reset. A missile fired near a tanker can therefore reappear months later as a smaller harvest or a more expensive bag of grain. Maritime coercion becomes most effective precisely where its victims are least visible and least capable of responding.

Behind these figures are the people who physically carry globalisation across the sea. By late April, the International Maritime Organization had verified 29 attacks on vessels around Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, killing at least 10 seafarers. Nearly 20,000 others remained aboard some 1,600 vessels in the region. Yet merchant crews rarely appear in discussions dominated by oil prices and naval strategy. A ship may be owned in one country, registered in another, insured in a third and staffed by Indians, Filipinos or Bangladeshis carrying cargo to a fourth. This fragmentation makes responsibility easy to evade. No government feels complete ownership of their safety. They become combatants without citizenship in the conflict, placed in danger by political decisions over which they have no influence.

The attack on the tanker MT Settebello in June made this human cost impossible to reduce to an economic statistic. Three seafarers were killed near the Strait of Hormuz while performing civilian work aboard a commercial vessel. They were not soldiers enforcing a blockade or officials designing sanctions against Iran. Their vulnerability was precisely what gave the attack its wider power. Violence against one ship communicates danger to every crew approaching the region, every company considering a shipment and every government dependent upon its cargo. This is where Iran’s maritime strategy begins to acquire the logic of terrorism. The immediate victims are civilians, but the intended audience is global. The physical attack remains local. The fear is designed to travel.

Iran, long subjected to economic exclusion, is now attempting to build an exclusionary system of its own at sea. If this coercion earns political concessions, the world will not merely have reopened a waterway. It will have legitimised an authoritarian to decide which countries may trade, which economies must suffer and which sailors may pass safely. Hormuz cannot become Iran’s private checkpoint. No state can be allowed to turn geography into immunity and globalisation into a human shield.

Contributing Author: Omer Ghazi is a proponent of religious reform and extensively writes on geo-politics, history and culture.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the author’s personal opinions. The Australia Today is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article. The information, facts, or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of The Australia Today, and The Australia Today News does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

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Last week, the US software company Turnitin revealed 53.6% of Australian tertiary education submissions run through its system used some form of AI in the period from October 2025-April 2026. The company, whose plagiarism-detection technology is widely used in universities, also reported 10% of these submissions contained more than 80% AI-written content.

Meanwhile, separate data from AI safety company Anthropic showed Australia now leads in per capita use of its Claude chatbot. Coursework makes up a significant share of that use.

Our 2026 analysis found while most Australian universities have introduced generative AI policies, significant gaps remain in translating these into practice.

So what can unis do to keep up?

How AI is used matters

The headline figure is striking, but it should be interpreted with care. AI detection tools estimate the likelihood that assisted writing is present, not whether a student breached university rules. A high AI score could reflect disclosed use rather than academic misconduct.

The real concern is not whether AI is present in students’ work, but how it is being used and assessed.

Generative AI can be used in many ways to assist in learning, such as brainstorming ideas, refining structure, improving grammar, generating practice questions, or receiving formative feedback. These activities are increasingly recognised by universities as appropriate when used transparently and within institutional guidelines.

Experts say AI can become problematic when it replaces, rather than supports students’ thinking.

Rethinking how units are taught

A big challenge for universities is distinguishing whether students are using AI to help or as a substitute for learning. Unis need to ask whether their current approach to AI is effective in providing students with the knowledge, judgement and skills required for their degree.

One way unis can approach this is by modifying units to focus on the learning process rather than the final assessment.

For example, instead of asking students to submit a single essay at the end of the semester, an educator might ask them to document how they used AI throughout the unit. They might be asked to evaluate the accuracy of AI responses and reflect on why they accepted or rejected particular suggestions. The final grade would therefore recognise not only the finished product, but also the student’s reasoning, judgement and learning process.

But changing assessment alone is unlikely to improve learning outcomes. Students need repeated opportunities to practise the kinds of thinking, judgement and AI-supported decision-making in adapted assessments. This is why highlighting the learning process as part of a unit restructure is important.

Still, this sort of curriculum change takes time. Teaching activities, assessments, learning outcomes and staff development all need to be reviewed and tested before being introduced at scale.

Tools designed for education

The Turnitin report also found educators are increasingly demanding education-specific AI tools to help them navigate AI use in tertiary education.

Generic AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, are designed to answer almost any question. Universities, however, need AI systems designed around learning, assessment and institutional policies.

Used well, education-specific AI tools can support students through structured brainstorming, provide them with tailored feedback, and guide them to relevant course resources. For teachers, education-specific AI tools can allow them to set limits in how AI can be used by students, and to see how students have used AI in assessments.

Many universities now provide institutionally supported AI tools. Other unis are piloting the technology.

The goal is not to replace educators or automate assessment. It is to create AI that supports learning, transparency and academic integrity. If AI becomes an accepted, routine part of university study, these education-specific systems may become as important to learning as the technologies and software platforms universities currently rely on.

We also need to remember, there is not one simple fix around AI. It’s not something that can be solved by a one-off solution. Unis therefore need to treat AI as an ongoing educational and governance challenge. Effective responses require continuous evaluation, adaptation and investment in teaching, assessment and policy as the technology changes.

Meena Jha, Associate Professor, College of Information & Communication Technology, CQUniversity Australia and Amara Atif, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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In January 2025, Fiji’s Minister for Health Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu declared a national HIV outbreak. New case notifications rose twelvefold in seven years, from 131 in 2018 to 1,583 in 2024. Modelled estimates put the real number of people living with HIV at about 6,100, meaning more than 40% of those infected do not know it. Of patients who started antiretroviral therapy in 2024 and for whom exposure data was recorded, 48% named injecting drug use as their primary route of infection. Fiji’s HIV epidemic is not primarily sexual; it is a syringe epidemic.

A rapid assessment commissioned by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Programme and conducted by the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW Sydney, published in December 2025, gives the clearest account yet of how HIV is spreading among people who inject drugs in Suva. Every person interviewed had shared a needle or syringe at least once. About half injected crystal methamphetamine the first time they used it, often with a syringe already used by someone else. Most injected daily. Pharmacies, the only realistic source of sterile equipment, frequently refuse to sell syringes without a prescription. The practice has no basis in Fijian law but persists.

The rapid assessment documents a practice called koda: blood is drawn from a vein into the barrel of a syringe, mixed with the drug crystals and reinjected. It is commonly used because it is said to produce a more intense effect. It is also an efficient mechanism for HIV transmission. The drug is mixed in potentially infected blood, in a syringe that will often be passed on.

Bluetoothing, the practice of drawing blood from one person’s injection site and injecting it into another, has dominated public commentary but was reported by only two of 56 participants. The driver of transmission is shared syringes, forced by the near-total absence of sterile equipment.

None of this is surprising to public health researchers. What is surprising is that the solution has been available for decades and is not in use in Fiji. A needle and syringe program (NSP) provides free sterile equipment to people who inject drugs, without prescription, registration or any requirement to return used kit. NSPs cut HIV transmission, do not increase drug use and are highly cost-effective. Australia has run them since 1987. New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, Canada and dozens of other countries have built them into standard public health infrastructure. The countries that moved early avoided or contained epidemics that, elsewhere, became catastrophic. In Indonesia and the Philippines, where authorities did not implement such schemes, HIV epidemics among people who inject drugs grew quickly and proved very hard to reverse.

Fiji’s legal framework, comprising mainly the HIV/AIDS Decree 2011, the National HIV Surge Strategy 2024-2027 and the National Counter Narcotics Strategy 2023-2028, provides the policy foundation for action. In addition, Fiji is a signatory to the 2021 UN Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS. In December 2025, in response to the publication of the assessment, the Health Ministry confirmed that a NSP would be implemented.

The latest update from Lalabalavu during the June 2026 budget indicated that preparations for the NSP’s implementation were “nearing completion”. Meanwhile, in the extended period of time between announcement and delivery, people are contracting HIV and hepatitis C, developing infective endocarditis and dying in emergency departments. One healthcare worker quoted in the assessment described a steady flow of young people arriving in septic shock, many of whom do not survive.

The barriers are not legal or technical. They are cultural and political. Some health officials, police and religious leaders told Talanoa discussions (community consultations) that providing sterile equipment amounts to endorsing drug use. The assessment’s reply, paraphrased: Fijian society is defined by dignity, compassion, care and reciprocity, and those are the values a NSP enacts. The Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Sydney, Australia, is run by the Uniting Church. In Tonga, religious leaders have worked alongside health agencies on HIV prevention. The moral question is whether to withhold help and watch the epidemic grow.

The recommended model is practical, low-cost and immediately implementable. Free sterile needles and syringes should be available through sexual and reproductive health (SRH) hubs already serving key populations in Suva, through community pharmacies without prescription, through peer distribution networks and through community-based organisations. Services should be low threshold: no registration, no requirement to return used equipment and no HIV test as a condition of access. The research found that the main barriers to access are fear of exposure and stigma, not lack of interest. Participants described entering pharmacies and inventing stories about diabetic grandmothers to explain why they needed syringes. They described leaving empty-handed when the pharmacist looked suspicious or deciding to share rather than face the counter.

Implementation should proceed in stages. First, pharmacies should be encouraged, through engagement between the Ministry of Health and the pharmacy sector to sell single-use syringes over the counter without prescription. This requires no new infrastructure and no budget. It removes the most commonly reported barrier overnight. Second, within months: SRH hubs in the Central and Western Divisions should be resourced to distribute sterile needles and syringes alongside HIV testing, condoms and referral. Medical Services Pacific’s (MSP) Moonlight Programme, which already reaches sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender individuals and people who inject drugs through night-time outreach in Suva, is a natural delivery platform. Third, within a year: a peer distribution model, drawing on people with lived experience, should be established and funded. The rapid assessment notes that there is no drug user organisation in Fiji and that building one is critical.

Australia and New Zealand’s aid investment in Fiji’s HIV response, channelled partly through the International Planned Parenthood Federation and civil society organisations, has so far focused on testing, counselling and condom distribution among key populations. The moonlight testing program has achieved reactive case rates of nearly 9%, strong evidence that it is reaching the right people. An 8.9% positive rate also means one in every 11 people tested in the Suva night-time economy is newly diagnosed. Testing identifies cases but does not prevent transmission. The next phase of aid investment should include direct support for NSP establishment: commodity procurement, peer workforce development and integration of harm reduction into existing SRH service delivery.

Modelling estimates in the Kirby Institute report project total HIV cases in Fiji reaching 25,000 by 2029 without intervention. The trajectory is already visible in the data. Cases among 15–19-year-olds jumped from six in 2022 to 165 in 2024. Deaths recorded among people newly diagnosed in 2024 include eight children under 15 years. No version of this epidemic gets better on its own, and no harm reduction program is sophisticated enough to reverse a concentrated epidemic once it becomes generalised. Hence, the window for prevention is now.

The people interviewed described wanting to access services and described positive experiences at MSP’s clinic: welcoming, discreet and non-judgemental. They said they would go to an NSP if one existed. One participant put it plainly: “Either protect them or lose them.” Fiji has the values, the legal framework, the civil society infrastructure and the international support to act. What is missing is the willingness to make the first move — to supply free needles, without prescription or registration.

This article appeared first on Devpolicy Blog (devpolicy.org), from the Development Policy Centre at The Australian National University.

Disclosure: The author leads Voices of Resilience, a Pacific-wide HIV program, implemented by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and funded by the Australian and the New Zealand Governments. The views expressed are those of the author only.

Contributing Author: Uate Tamanikaiyaroi is Architect of Cooperation — Pacific SRHR and Humanitarian Hub at International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Sub-Regional Office for the Pacific, based in Suva, Fiji.

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The post Fiji’s HIV crisis is a syringe crisis and the fix is sitting on a pharmacy shelf first appeared on The Australia Today.

In the months since the Bondi terror attack in December 2025, One Nation’s popularity has surged. Opinion poll after opinion poll has support for the right-wing populist party surging, mostly at the expense of the Coalition, which has been unable to find its footing since its drubbing at the 2025 federal election.

There was always going to be a point at which that surge would abate, and recent opinion polls show we might have reached it. In the latest Resolve poll, for example, One Nation’s primary vote dropped three percentage points to 26%. At the same time, leader Pauline Hanson, who has been shown to be the most popular pick for prime minister in some recent polls, dropped 8 points to 25%.

Other polls have also shown One Nation’s momentum stalling, with its primary dropping back below Labor’s – but remaining well ahead of the Coalition.

Does this mean it will head back to being, and polling like, a minor party?

It’s not that simple.

Other pollsters such as YouGov paint a more mixed picture, showing some growth in One Nation support – but an improvement for the Labor government after the distribution of preferences.

Taken together, these polls tend to suggest that One Nation is struggling to move its primary beyond the 30% barrier. However, it is maintaining a solid second place in the electorate – ahead of the Coalition.

There are two factors that might explain the recent tapering of its support: Hanson’s controversial appearance at the National Press Club, and the government’s recovery from its immediate post budget slump.

The press club address – a mask-off moment?

Pauline Hanson’s press club address announced no new policies. However, it offered Hanson a first-time platform to reiterate her core messages. It also afforded some of One Nation’s less conspicuous policy positions greater visibility.

Particularly blunt was Hanson’s advocacy for a “monocultural” Australia. As noted by eminent historian Frank Bongiorno, this is not a new for position for Hanson. But it was a clear expression of anti-immigrant and anti-diversity sentiment. https://www.youtube.com/embed/rcZXVcFqV9A?wmode=transparent&start=0

Hanson also attacked young workers for being lazy – with calls for stronger employers’ rights to hire and fire. This was combined with strong criticisms of maternity leave and working-from-home arrangements, and scepticism of the gender pay gap. Economically, Hanson outlined orthodox neo-liberal policies at odds with much of her populist positioning.

The speech can be seen as something of a “greatest hits”: she attacked “transgender ideology”, “radical Islam” and Indigenous reconciliation.

However, while hitting traditional One Nation issues – Hanson’s wider industrial relations positions may be cause for pause for working class supporters in outer suburban areas, which have helped fuel One Nation’s polling surge amid housing and cost-of-living crises.

Can One Nation’s support hold up?

Essential research polling suggests low support for some of One Nation’s key positions.

Only 20% of respondents supported ending Australia’s support of multiculturalism and an even lower 18% favoured strengthening industrial laws in favour of employers at the expense of workers. Only 15% supported Hanson’s call to defund the ABC and just 11% supported her plan to abolish SBS.

These attitudes in the electorate have perhaps helped Labor to staunch its slow bleed of support to One Nation.

After initially being panned by the electorate, Labor’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax signalled a break from the status quo.

Being perceived as part of politics as usual and promising orthodox economic policy is one of One Nation’s greatest electoral dangers. Many voters see it as a wrecking ball against the existing political establishment, and are willing to support the party as a disruptive influence. This is despite not endorsing key planks of its policy platform.

Without this outsider appeal – One Nation’s path to gaining support becomes more difficult.

Despite the challenges, One Nation’s support will endure

One Nation is likely to retain the support of around a quarter of the electorate, unless the Coalition can recover some of its core voters.

The Coalition is in a catastrophic position, losing support to both the left and right. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor recently outlined an immigration policy based on values discrimination to try to recapture support from One Nation. So far, polls have not shown any gain for this position.

Comparative research suggests that mainstream centre-right parties struggle to win back support from far-right challengers if they simply parrot the policy positions of far-right parties.

Lessons from across the globe suggest the Coalition’s path to winning back support from One Nation is by simultaneously establishing One Nation as illegitimate and dangerous, while appealing to the policy preferences of their supports.

Hanson’s engagement with far-right extremists such as Tommy Robinson might help the Coalition make this case.

Contrasting with Hanson’s embrace of Robinson, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage left his previous Brexit Party following Robinson joining its membership, arguing Robinson was “entirely unsuitable to be involved in any political party”.

Despite this recent polling stagnation federally, Redbridge polling has One Nation in first place in a tight three-way context in Victoria in advance of the November state election. The party also faces a key contest in the Secret Harbour state by-election in Western Australia. This is an outer-suburban Labor fortress – but one that also fits within Andrew Hastie’s federal seat of Canning.

Both these contests will offer insights into whether economically insecure voters who are feeling cost of living pressures are backing One Nation’s anti-establishment challenge, or whether concerns over policies might cause them to stick with the major parties.

Josh Sunman, Associate Lecturer in Public Policy, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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That distinction matters, and it is one Congress under Rahul Gandhi keeps failing to make.

‘Melbourne Meets Modi’ was not a mystery. Registrations opened weeks in advance, both for individuals and through more than 400 community organisations, all publicly invited.

Around 30,000 people showed up — doctors, nurses, engineers, academics, tradies, students, small business owners, the unglamorous backbone of the Indian-Australian community that politicians in Canberra and Wellington now routinely credit for economic and multicultural success.

Some came on chartered buses and flights. That is not evidence of manufacture. It is evidence of organisation — the same organisation that fills stadiums for cricket finals, Vaisakhi mela, or a Diwali function in any major Australian city.

I have covered enough of these gatherings, and organised a few myself through community and academic networks, to know the difference between a rented crowd and a mobilised one. This was the latter.

What troubles me more than the mischaracterisation is where the talking points came from.

Watching Congress figures recycle “taxpayer-funded” and “inappropriate political exercise” framing — language lifted almost verbatim from Australia’s anti-immigration commentariat — is not just lazy politics. It is a party borrowing the vocabulary of people who do not particularly want Indians in Australia to succeed, and turning it against the very community it claims to speak for back home.

I have spent years writing about the corrosive edges of that rhetoric when it comes from One Nation or the far right. It is no less corrosive coming from the Indian National Congress.

The deeper problem is one I have been tracking since I first coined the idea of ‘paraspara diplomacy’ a decade ago — the notion that a healthy relationship between India and its diaspora has to be reciprocal, built on recognition rather than extraction. Congress has never fully made that shift.

Congress under Rahul Gandhi still treats the diaspora as a nostalgia account to be drawn on during elections — NRI cells for fundraising, photo-ops for visiting leaders, the occasional invocation of “brand India” — rather than as a genuinely global constituency with its own institutions, its own political judgment, and increasingly, its own influence on how India is perceived abroad.

I feel a party that cannot organise its own leader a comparable reception in Melbourne or Auckland has no standing to dismiss one it didn’t build.

That is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a testable claim. If Congress believes these gatherings are stage-managed, the remedy is simple: book Marvel Stadium, or something half its size, for Rahul Gandhi. Fill it with people who came because they wanted to, not because a hashtag told them to. Let the diaspora decide, in person, whether the enthusiasm is real. Until that happens, the “paid crowd” line is not analysis. It is an alibi for a dynast’s party that has lost the ability to read a community it once assumed it owned.

There is a second remedy, and it does not require booking a stadium. Rahul Gandhi, as Leader of the Opposition, should apologise — plainly and without qualification — on behalf of the party colleagues who have spent two days describing thirty thousand of his own countrymen as a rented mob. This is not a large ask. It does not require him to praise Modi or soften his politics. It requires him to say, in effect, that the Indian diaspora does not deserve to have its judgment mocked by the party that wants its votes at home and its remittances abroad. Congress has apologised for less. The silence so far speaks for itself.

It is also worth asking who else was standing in that stadium when Congress decided the crowd was rented. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not merely attend Melbourne Meets Modi — he walked in alongside Modi, addressed the more than 30,000 people gathered, and later posted that the Indian community had made Australia “a better place.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan introduced both leaders, telling the crowd that Victoria’s Indian community had “helped build this state with hard work, compassion and ambition,” and calling the turnout one of the largest ever assembled for a visiting world leader in Australia.

These are not bit players who wandered into a stage-managed event by accident. They are the sitting Prime Minister of Australia and the Premier of its second-largest state, appearing on record, on camera, in front of tens of thousands of their own constituents.

If Congress’s charge is to be taken seriously, it has to answer an uncomfortable question: does it believe Anthony Albanese and Jacinta Allan lent their offices to a rented mob? Does it think two of Australia’s most senior elected leaders were duped, or complicit, or simply didn’t notice? There is no version of the “paid crowd” theory that stands up to scrutiny. Either the enthusiasm was genuine—in which case the Congress party owes the diaspora an apology—or the Prime Minister of Australia and the Premier of Victoria were somehow misled in full public view, a proposition that no one, not even the Congress party, can seriously believe.

Pawan Khera reached for ‘Game of Thrones’ to make his point about insecure popularity. It is a serviceable line, but it cuts in exactly the wrong direction. The insecurity on display is not Modi’s. It belongs to a party whose default response to thirty thousand people voluntarily giving up a Sunday is to assume they must have been bought — because the alternative, that the diaspora simply prefers what it is being offered, is harder to sit with.

I, as many others, did not attend Marvel Stadium as a Congress supporter or a BJP one. I attended it, and have written about it, as someone who has spent thirteen years building a life in this country while staying tethered to India through work, family and half a career’s worth of scholarship on exactly this relationship. What I saw, both in Sydney 2023 and Melbourne 2026, was not a manufactured spectacle. It was a diaspora that has outgrown the categories Indian politics still tries to fit it into — no longer defined by homesickness, but by influence, investment and a confidence that no party back home fully understands yet.

Congress does not have a Modi problem in the diaspora. It has a recognition problem. And crowds, unlike parties, do not need permission to show up.

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Australia’s Bharatiya diaspora witnessed a truly historic and memorable occasion on 9 July as the leaders of two of the world’s great democracies shared the same stage to articulate their shared vision, mutual respect and commitment to a stronger Australia-India partnership.

The much-anticipated visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded with a spectacular community celebration at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium. More than 25,000 members of the Australian Indian community, together with dignitaries, elected representatives and distinguished guests, gathered to celebrate the deepening friendship between the two nations.

The atmosphere was one of pride, excitement and unity. Cultural performances showcased India’s rich heritage, while official meetings, media interactions and community engagements highlighted the growing strategic, economic and people-to-people ties between Australia and India.

The audience enthusiastically welcomed both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose speeches reflected a shared commitment to peace, prosperity, innovation and collaboration. Premier Jacinta Allan also addressed the gathering, emphasising that multiculturalism remains one of Australia’s greatest strengths. She acknowledged the invaluable contribution made by multicultural communities, including the Australian Indian community, in shaping Victoria’s economic, social and cultural success.

While the entire event was memorable, one moment stood out as particularly meaningful. As both Prime Ministers made their way towards the stage, they were welcomed by an inspiring line-up of accomplished women from the Australian Indian community. This powerful tribute to Naari Shakti (Women Power) was much more than a ceremonial welcome. It symbolised the respect, dignity and reverence accorded to women in Hindu culture and reflected the important role women continue to play in strengthening both Australian and Indian society. The women chosen for this honour represented a remarkable cross-section of the community.

They included successful entrepreneurs, journalists, academics, researchers, professionals and dedicated community volunteers who have made significant contributions across business, education, media, healthcare, social services and community leadership.

Among them were Dr. Anjali Bhagwat, Clinical Research Professional.; Rutuja Bhonde, Chartered Accountant and Co-Founder of Sohum Yog Music Division; Krishna Sevak Bhatt, Entrepreneur and high-altitude Trekker; Bina Shah, Senior Executive and Chairperson of JITO Australia; Dr. Richa Shukla Potdar, Operations Manager for a leading organisation; Raji Aiyer, Digital Entrepreneur; Rajashree Datta, Senior Executive and Founder of the Australia Bengali Cultural Association; Smitha Shine, Clinical Nurse Specialist; Aparna Menon, Supply Chain Professional; Heta Nanawala, Senior IT engineer at FinTech company; Kavitha Satheesh, Nurse Consultant; Arathi Upadhyaya, Product Integration lead at a leading WHS software company; Sunyana Mewundi Gadgoli, Technology professional and Vice President Melbourne Kannada Sangha; and Pallavi Jain, Co-Founder and Editor of The Australia Today, reflecting the diverse leadership, professional excellence, and community contributions represented at the event.

Their presence acknowledged not only their individual achievements but also the countless women whose efforts continue to strengthen families, communities and the nation. Standing before the leaders of Australia and India, these women represented the shared values of two democracies that increasingly recognise women’s leadership as central to national progress.

They were not simply welcoming two Prime Ministers. They embodied resilience, service, excellence and leadership. For many Australian Hindus and Australians of Indian origin, the moment also carried deeper emotional significance. It reflected gratitude for India’s continued commitment towards the safety, dignity and empowerment of women, including the decisive actions taken during Operation Sindoor.

The recognition of women’s strength and leadership resonated strongly with many in attendance and reinforced the values of courage, protection and respect. The message conveyed throughout the evening was unmistakable. Australia and India are nations where women are not viewed as secondary participants in society, but as leaders, innovators and nation-builders.

They are mothers, wives, sisters and daughters within their families, while also serving as educators, professionals, entrepreneurs, policymakers, volunteers and changemakers who help shape the future of both countries.

The celebration at Marvel Stadium was therefore far more than a community gathering. It was a powerful expression of friendship between two nations, a reaffirmation of democratic values, and a recognition that inclusive leadership and the empowerment of women will continue to define the future of the Australia-India relationship. As the stadium echoed with applause and pride, the event left behind a lasting message: when two vibrant democracies come together with shared values, mutual respect and a commitment to equality, the possibilities for future generations are limitless.

Contributing Author: Aditi Kirtane is a business owner and Victoria Co-ordinator for Optics Australia. She was the driving force behind the Naari Shakti tribute at the Melbourne Meets Modi event.

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The post A night that celebrated Democracy, Diversity and Naari Shakti first appeared on The Australia Today.

For the best part of a century, Australian property investors have enjoyed a generous tax arrangement found in few other countries: the infamous “negative gearing”.

Now, sweeping reforms to limit negative gearing to new builds and also change the way capital gains are taxed have become law.

The federal government hopes to give first-home buyers a better shot at buying existing homes and at the same time redirect investor cash towards increasing housing supply.

However, some of the practical implications of these changes haven’t received much attention. Here are three possible side effects which could now distort the property market in unexpected ways – including favouring investors.

What is negative gearing?

Most people associate negative gearing with real estate. But it can apply to any kind of investment.

Here, gearing simply means borrowing money to invest. And if an investment is negatively geared, it means the expenses related to owning it (such as the interest payments on a mortgage) are greater than the income it generates (rental payments).

For property investors, these expenses could also include other costs, such as real estate agent fees, council and water rates, and so on.

Under the old rules, high income earners were able to use a rental loss immediately to reduce their tax bill on other income, such as a salary.

Coupled with the way capital gains were taxed at a 50% exemption, the arrangement allowed many property investors to tolerate – perhaps even welcome – a rental property running at an apparent loss for tax purposes, while the property’s value continued to climb.

What’s changed?

Importantly, negative gearing hasn’t been abolished altogether. It has just been heavily restricted in the context of residential property.

Under the old rules, any rental expenses exceeding rental income could be deducted against an investor’s salary, business or other income. For purchases made after the cut-off time of 7:30pm on budget night on May 12, this arrangement is reserved for new builds only.

For existing properties, unused excessive expenses are now “quarantined”. This means they can only be used to offset future rental profits or the profit an investor makes when they eventually sell the property – not against other forms of income.

At the same time, the 50% capital gains exemption has been replaced by an “indexation system” that adjusts the cost of a property to take inflation into account.

Importantly, anyone who purchased a property before the cutoff time has had their arrangements “grandfathered”, meaning they can continue to deduct excess rental expenses from other income.

However, some workarounds and other distortions still exist.

Converting home into an investment

First, for people who currently own just one property to live in, a unique door remains open.

Under the legislation, to be eligible for the old negative gearing arrangements, a property only needed to be owned (or under binding contract) at the cutoff time. It did not need to be an investment property at this time.

By buying another property in the future and moving into it, some people may be able to technically give an existing build (their former home) the traditional negative gearing treatment once it becomes a rental property.

While this “loophole” may not have huge impacts on the housing market, some economists have speculated it could disincentivise some homeowners from selling property, to retain the option to negatively gear later.

A big advantage for ‘grandfathered’ landlords

Under the new laws, “grandfathered” landlords (who owned properties before budget night) get a massive structural advantage. And this isn’t just because they can continue to negatively gear their existing properties.

If those older properties become profitable (positively geared) as the mortgage is paid off and rents rise over time, these investors would normally start paying tax on their rental profits.

However, the new tax law allows these investors to use the excess profit from their old portfolio to immediately absorb and offset the quarantined losses of newly acquired properties.

Basically, they keep some of the tax advantages of negative gearing – even though their properties aren’t making a loss for tax purposes.

Rental losses could get ‘trapped’ in property

As a result of the new “quarantine” rule, some investors will end up with rental property expenses they have not been able to deduct, leading to a pool of undeducted rental property expenses.

Those expenses are not completely lost − they can potentially be used to reduce the tax on any capital gain realised when the property is sold.

However, because these losses can’t be used to offset any other types of income (only those related to property), landlords have an incentive to hold onto property until they are sure of a capital gain large enough to make use of these undeducted rental property expenses, which are otherwise “trapped”.

If investors delay selling for tax reasons, the reforms may reduce the supply of established homes available for sale, placing upward pressure on housing prices.

Making housing more affordable?

Supporters of these changes argue that this is a great chance to make houses more affordable and create opportunities for new entrants to get into the property market more easily.

The theory is straightforward. If you strip away the tax benefits of buying existing houses, wealthy investors will stop outbidding everyday people just trying to buy a home, cooling down property prices.

The are early signs Australia’s housing market is beginning to cool. However, it remains to be seen if the end of negative gearing will have a more long-term impact on housing affordability in Australia.

Disclaimer: This article is not tax advice, it is for educational purposes only. Taxpayers should seek advice from a registered tax agent or suitably qualified professional.

Fei Gao, Lecturer in Taxation, Discipline of Accounting, Governance & Regulation, The University of Sydney, University of Sydney and Richard Krever, Professor of Tax Law, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The post How Australia’s new negative gearing rules might accidentally favour some property investors first appeared on The Australia Today.

Thirty thousand people filled the stadium to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi — up from twenty-three thousand when he addressed the Indian community in Sydney in 2023. The numbers matter, but not as spectacle. They matter as evidence of a community that has stopped waiting to be noticed and started announcing itself.

I told The New York Times on the day of the Melbourne Meets Modi event that the welcome was the proud roar of a community coming into its own. Having moved to Australia from Delhi in 2013, and having stood in both stadiums — Sydney in 2023 and Melbourne this week — I can say the shift is not in the size of the crowd alone but in its posture. “The Indian diaspora is not a wallflower anymore,” I said. “They are confident in their identity, confident that they are contributing.” That confidence was written across Marvel Stadium on Thursday night, in flags, in language, in the unselfconscious ease with which a community occupied the centre of Australian civic life.

Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan understood this instinctively. Addressing Modi and the more than thirty thousand Indian Victorians before her, she said Victoria’s Indian community “has helped build this state with hard work, compassion and ambition,” adding that its members had “cared for our loved ones, started businesses, taught our children, driven innovation, created jobs, enriched our culture.”

Allan’s line that Victorians should never have to choose between being proudly Indian and proudly Victorian, “because here, you can be both,” was more than hospitality. It was a recognition that hyphenated identity is no longer a compromise in this country but a source of strength — and that Victoria, as she put it, is home to more Indian Australians than anywhere else in the nation, the beating heart of what she called Australia’s multicultural capital.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese struck a similar note, telling the crowd that Australians of all backgrounds had been enriched by Indian Australians bringing their culture and adding it to the nation’s multicultural character, and thanking the community for contributing so much to the story of modern Australia. His presence beside Modi was itself a message: two democracies, increasingly comfortable narrating their partnership through the lived experience of their diasporas rather than through communiqués alone.

Modi, for his part, returned the warmth with characteristic fluency. He called Albanese’s speech outstanding, “reflecting his deep commitment to India-Australia friendship,” and described the Melbourne community’s energy as unmatched, calling it “one of the strongest pillars of India-Australia friendship.” His closing words — “Thank you Melbourne! Thank you Australia! Today was electrifying” — were pure Modi: brief, rhythmic, built for repetition.

What Melbourne witnessed this week was not simply a state visit. It was the maturing of a diplomatic idiom I first sensed a decade ago, one in which the diaspora is not a talking point appended to bilateral relations but the relationship’s living infrastructure.

The Indian-Australian diaspora today is confident of its contribution to this nation, and that confidence shows in what it now asks for. In 2023, it wanted the best seat in the house. In 2026, it wanted the first dance. Modi remains the message. But increasingly, it is the Indian diaspora that decides how loudly it is heard.

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Australians woke up this morning to a major outage affecting Telstra, the largest telecommunications network in the country. But mobile phones weren’t the only thing knocked out of action.

Some EFTPOS payment services, taxi payment systems, electric vehicle charging platform Chargefox, and public transport ticketing in Canberra were all affected. There have been conflicting reports over whether Triple Zero calls were impacted, as they were in a recent Optus outage.

Most notably, train services were affected in Victoria and New South Wales. Victoria’s regional train system, V/Line, suspended services across all lines due to the national Telstra outage.

As of Wednesday mid-morning, there has been no estimated time for when trains will start running again, and limited coach replacements are available. With the outage having started about 4.30am, this threw the morning commute into chaos for many.

But how does a mobile network crash affect trains? Let’s look at the underlying tech connections.

How do trains use a mobile network?

Trains have roof-mounted antennae that connect them with control centres. Voice and data communication between trains and control centres takes place on frequency channels that are used in mobile networks.

Trains can use these channels to either “talk” to the control centre as required, or share real-time information such as the train’s location, speed, arrival times and so on. This ensures safe and reliable travel across the rail network.

Roof-mounted antennae on trains can also provide mobile phone services to on-board passengers. Train service providers can use this connectivity for specific purposes like retrieving and managing ticketing information, and also for providing passengers with access to the Internet.

Why can trains not go if the Telstra network is down?

If the mobile network is down, trains lose their connection and can’t send or receive traffic-related information. This includes any time-critical traffic alerts, such as delays, cancellations or other changes to the route.

Trains also often send diagnostic data through mobile networks – these are factors such as engine and braking performance.

All this means that while trains can technically still run (they used to before mobile networks were invented), this lack of mobile connectivity wouldn’t allow for a safe and secure journey.

The government-owned Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), which manages more than 9,600km of rail tracks in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, upgraded their train-to-network communications to 4G on the Telstra network in 2024. VicTrack, which runs V/Rail, also uses the Telstra network, and ARTC is one of its transport partners.

Therefore, any glitches in the Telstra network will make it extremely difficult to control train traffic on railways that rely on it. Most train networks would fall back on satellite systems, but they don’t provide the same service level as terrestrial mobile networks – notably, they have a slower speed.

Could there have been back-ups to prevent such an outage?

Because trains travel at fast speeds, using multiple networks would ensure continuous connectivity along the entire route.

Some areas on a route may only be served by one mobile service provider, in which case if that service provider is not available, that entire area will suffer from a loss of connectivity.

Financial feasibility concerns often affect decisions that ensure continuous mobile coverage, particularly in regional and rural areas. Satellite communication is often used as backup where mobile coverage is not present.

Train operators should be mindful of putting all their eggs in one basket when it comes to mobile network coverage.

Why did the Telstra network go down?

As the company still investigates the cause of the outage, Telstra’s acting chief executive Michael Ackland said at a press conference there was a timing issue with several nodes in the network. He said:

The time synchronisation in those nodes wasn’t working as it should. We don’t know why yet.

All the bits and pieces of a telecommunications network have to maintain time synchronisation – which means all devices across the network have the same accurate time.

Time synchronisation allows multiple devices to share information on wireless channels without affecting each others’ transmissions. Loss of time synchronisation may result in devices talking over each other, not being able to maintain mobile connectivity, and failure of authentication sequences (verifying users).

Ackland assured the media there was no sign of “malicious activity” and has apologised for the disruption:

Our teams are working, right now, as quickly as possible to get things back online. We will share updates with you as we have them.

Faraz Hasan, Director of Research, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The post How does a Telstra outage bring down trains? A telco expert explains first appeared on The Australia Today.