By Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology
Calls for an overhaul of New Zealand’s freedom-of-information rules have gone largely unheeded for years. But momentum for reform seems to be building.
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By Simon Adams, Professor of Human Rights, Murdoch University
In his farewell address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, António Guterres reminisced about his time as secretary general.
In his words, it was a decade during which wars:
dragged on with despicable cruelty. Civilians were targeted. Human rights trampled. Hunger weaponised. Humanitarians killed. International law cast aside.
It’s true Guterres and the UN faced increasingly difficult challenges…
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By Marta Yebra, Director, Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence, Australian National University
Laura Alonso, Postdoctoral Fellow, The Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University
As the weather starts to warm in Australia, people are beginning to look ahead to the bushfire season.
The national Seasonal Bushfire Outlook, released in August by the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, identifies areas where fire risk is expected to be higher than normal this spring, based on factors including weather, climate and fuels.
The council also emphasises that bushfires can occur in regions with a normal seasonal outlook, and…
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By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne
An unprecedented boom is underway in Australia’s electric vehicle market.
Almost 158,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in the first six months of 2026, according to the Electric Vehicle Council’s latest report, released today. This is more than in all of 2025.
EVs accounted for one in four new cars sold in the first half of 2026, with their market share more than doubling from 12.1% in the first half of 2025 to 25.8% over the same period this year.
This surge has come amid…
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By Sven Bilén, Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, Penn State
Starship’s heat shield is made of up of an array of ceramic tiles. Each is a small component, but together they have large consequences.
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By Deven Desai, Professor of Business Law and Ethics; Associate Director for Law, Policy, and Ethics at the Machine Learning Center, Georgia Institute of Technology
A hit 1983 movie illustrates what computer scientists have long known: If you give an AI agent a goal but don’t control what it can and can’t do, you shouldn’t be surprised by what it does.
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By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
The Albanese government is strengthening its defences against rogue AI activity in the wake of the OpenAI breach of a government website and ahead of the report from a taskforce it established to investigate the incident.
A direction has been given to departments to “harden” cyber security defences on their “legacy” technology systems.
The Australian Signals Directorate reported…
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By Jamaica Cass, Associate Dean, Indigenous Health, York University, Canada; Queen's University, Ontario
Commitments to Indigenous health research cannot be clawed back as part of proposed dismantling of equity, diversity and inclusion criteria for federal research funding.
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By Matt King, Professor of Polar Geodesy and ARC Laureate Fellow, University of Tasmania
Nancy A.N. Bertler, Professor of Earth Sciences, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Earth Sciences New Zealand
If all the ice in the Wilkes Subglacial Basin melted, it would raise global sea levels 3 to 4 metres. It happened before – at temperatures we’re heading towards
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By Dennis Wesselbaum, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Otago
Economic growth may have returned to NZ, but lifting living standards will require more than a cyclical recovery. What should voters be looking for in policies?
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