The run-up to a budget always sees a degree of chaos. But this year it has looked like one of those willy willies that blow up in outback Australia when the wind stirs a storm of dust.

A Middle East war, a fuel crisis, another interest rate rise, calls for extra cost-of-living help amid warnings against high government spending, accusations of prime ministerial lying – they are collectively testing the government’s ability to control how it wants to frame its fifth budget.

But the immediate “narrative” it puts on the budget is one thing – more significant in the longer term is getting its settings right in these extraordinarily volatile times, something we’ll only be able to judge in retrospect.

As is the modern way, some major items have been announced well before Tuesday’s main event, including reform of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and a fuel security plan.

The NDIS overhaul is the big money saver in the budget, a whopping $22 billion. But that is based on heroic, and surely questionable, assumptions, most notably that the scheme’s annual spending growth, now 10%, can be slashed to an average annual 2% in each of the coming four years.

Unless the figures are to be manipulated, this surely defies all previous experience with this scheme. Applying the brakes that sharply looks impossible, especially as some of the details are still to be worked out, and consultations (which often bring concessions) are yet to be held.

If the NDIS’s early cuts can’t be achieved, the government has a hole in its savings package.

It would be interesting to know whether Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock is sceptical about the NDIS savings assumption. Bullock, who has previously been wary of appearing to call out excessive government spending, was explicit this week, telling her post interest rate rise news conference, “when governments are spending a lot of money and we’re running up against capacity constraints, then they do need to think about whether or not there’s ways they can help the inflation problem by looking for ways to constrain demand”.

Questioned about this statement, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who insists he will save more than he spends in the budget, played down her words, saying she was answering a “hypothetical” question. (She had been asked whether too much reliance was placed on central banks rather than governments to keep inflation under control.) Bullock did give a nod to Chalmers’ efforts to constrain demand, but she must have been aware of how her words would be heard, given the controversy around anything she says on spending.

The government went to the 2025 election promising income tax cuts, and some changes to the tax treatment of superannuation, but not much else on the tax front. But after the post-election economic roundtable it became clear Chalmers was going to pitch to include significant tax changes in this budget. The question was: would Anthony Albanese let him do so?

From what we know so far, the answer seems to be “yes”, with anticipated reworkings of the capital gains tax (CGT) and negative gearing (and possibly tougher tax treatment of trusts).

A political cost is already being paid – by Albanese, who before the election promised (at times belligerently) not to tinker with negative gearing or CGT. Questioned this week about potentially breaking his word, the prime minister’s tone was narky.

Leaving aside the basic issue of integrity, in political terms does breaking these promises matter?

With Labor having a massive majority and the opposition shambolic, the government will reckon it can get away with it, so long as it can present a budget with more “winners” than losers and it can carry the (not uncontested) argument that it is promoting intergenerational equity. To help with this, the budget will promise a modest one-off handout for taxpayers in work.

But the deceit further undermines the trust people have in the political system and its politicians.

Saturday’s byelection in former opposition leader Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer will be a case study in how trust has leached away from the so-called “parties of government”.

For three quarters of a century the southern New South Wales seat – centred on Albury while extending to the South Australian border – has been safely in Coalition hands. It was once held by the Nationals’ deputy prime minister Tim Fischer. But this weekend the contest is set to be between One Nation’s David Farley and high-profile community independent Michelle Milthorpe, accused by her opponents of being a “teal” (because she has received Climate 200 money), a label she disowns.

Different as they appear at first glance, the community independents (including the teals) and One Nation represent two versions of today’s “grievance” politics. It’s ironic, but symbolic, that in Farrer they are both decked out in orange.

The regional strand of the “community candidate” movement can be traced to Cathy McGowan, who wrested Indi (across the Murray River from Farrer) from the Liberals in 2013, and was succeeded in the seat by another independent, Helen Haines (who has campaigned for Milthorpe). McGowan and her followers wanted to make Indi more politically salient, rather than being regarded as a safe seat governments and oppositions could effectively ignore when it came to needs and services.

Community candidates exploit the grievance constituents have that their electorate is not being heard. Milthorpe captured their essence when she told the Guardian, “I’m here because I was feeling dissatisfied with the major parties. They don’t understand our regional context. My job is to take the voices of Farrer to parliament and make sure that people understand what we need out here.”

One Nation has a much wider view of many voters’ sense of “grievance” – reflecting and amplifying, for example, discontent over the size and composition of immigration.

Community candidates want a place at the political table for their electorates: One Nation wants to overturn the table.

In Farrer, the idiosyncratic Farley doesn’t quite fit the One Nation policy mould, but the voters are reacting to a vibe, and to Pauline Hanson, rather than worrying about the fine print.

Saturday’s result will frame, for the worse, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s budget week. The expected Liberal loss will be a setback for him, whoever wins. If the victor is One Nation (which is getting Liberal preferences) it will be more serious because that will pump up the already highly inflated tyres of a party that could do serious damage to the Liberals’ prospects in the coming Victorian election.

To come back to where we started, whether it’s Farley or Milthorpe, the result in Farrer seems certain to set off a willy-willy.

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

Producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on Australia’s east coast will have to set aside 20% of their gas exports to be sold to domestic users from July next year.

The long-awaited gas reservation plan, unveiled on Thursday, is well overdue. But it will not come into effect until July 2027, six months after it was originally supposed to start.

The policy is expected to lead to a “modest” oversupply in domestic gas in eastern Australia. Gas exporters in Western Australia have had to set aside 15% since 2006, though compliance is poor.

The change is intended to head off looming gas shortages in New South Wales and Victoria, as supplies from traditional sources such as the Gippsland basin off the coast of Victoria dry up from 2030.

The extra supply to the domestic market could lower prices and help industries such as manufacturing and chemical plants, which have been battered by high gas prices over the past decade.

Why do we need to reserve gas?

Gas user groups have called for reservation to be put in place ever since eastern Australia became a gas exporter in 2015. Since 2010, three liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants have been built at Queensland’s port of Gladstone to ship gas to customers in countries such as China, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia.

The LNG export surge triggered a steep rise in the price of domestic gas, forcing some gas-dependent businesses such as fertiliser plants to close.

Sustained higher gas prices also contributed to a fall in gas use in eastern Australia. After peaking in the 2012-13 fiscal year, gas demand fell 30% by 2023-24. Demand for gas has also fallen due to household electrification. Gas-fired generation recorded its lowest average in the January-March quarter this year, than for any quarter since 1999.

Supply is drying up

The Gippsland Basin Joint Venture in the Bass Strait was the biggest source of domestic gas for the east coast market until Queensland’s coal seam gas fields opened about 20 years ago.

While still a major supplier to Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, Bass Strait wells are running out of gas. The venture is now being slowly decommissioned.

This is why the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned eastern Australia could run short of gas by 2029, with additional supply needed by 2030.

Queensland has sufficient reserves to supply southern markets. Australian gas pipeline operator APA Group is, however, expanding its network in anticipation of carrying more gas from north to south in the coming years.

Why does Australia export so much gas?

To make sense of the looming shortfall, you need to understand the gas industry in Queensland. Two of the three LNG consortiums based in Queensland – the Origin Energy-backed Australia Pacific LNG and the Shell-operated Queensland Curtis LNG – already supply gas to the domestic market.

But the Santos-operated Gladstone LNG venture does not. It has been reliant on buying gas from other producers to help meet its contractual obligations.

This is the core problem for the east coast gas market, as the Santos-owned consortium has bought gas which otherwise would have gone to the domestic market. It has contributed to higher gas prices, the closure of manufacturing plants and warnings of impending shortages.

The gas industry has long pushed back against efforts to impose a gas reservation policy, aided at times by sympathetic state governments in Queensland. The three east coast LNG consortiums have opposing positions. Australia Pacific LNG and Shell support a gas reservation policy, while Santos prefers the status quo.

The federal government is already spruiking its new policy. But it’s not guaranteed to become a reality, as it’s subject to further consultation. It could still be changed or even weakened.

Australia exports around 80% of its gas, largely through long-term LNG contracts. Talk of a gas reservation policy has worried key customers such as Japan.

The best time to introduce an east coast gas reservation policy was when exports from Queensland really began picking up 11 years ago. But it’s never too late to start.

If the policy bogs down in consultation, there’s a risk the scheme could be ineffective, or that loopholes could be added leading to no significant change for domestic supplies.

What’s next?

Assuming the domestic reservation policy comes into force as claimed, it will exclude export contracts entered into before the government’s previous announcement on 22 December 2025. Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King has said this will allow exporters to meet their full export commitments.

The government will legislate the new domestic supply obligation and commence further targeted consultation on the final policy. There were hopes this national reservation plan would include the Northern Territory, where the two LNG plants in Darwin have no obligations to supply the domestic market. But there is no mention of Darwin in today’s announcement.

In Western Australia, the gas reservation policy requires LNG exporters to broadly allocate 15% of their output. But compliance with this is poor and only 8% of gas was supplied domestically in 2023.

When announcing the new policy, Minister King said it would lower gas prices. She might be right. A study by consultancy Energy Edge found additional gas supplies from Queensland would lower gas prices in NSW and Victoria. It was also found to be a cheaper alternative than developing new supplies, such as Narrabri in NSW.

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

Russia has dramatically scaled back its annual Victory Day parade in Red Square on May 9, with no heavy military hardware for the first time in 20 years. There will also be fewer foreign or Russian dignitaries present.

In addition, the government has shut down airports and temporarily suspended mobile internet access ahead of the holiday.

The Kremlin says the security measures are intended to guard against Ukrainian “terrorism”. It has declared a unilateral “truce” for May 8-9, warning that any Ukrainian attacks during the celebrations could trigger a massive strike on Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the proposal, calling it a “theatrical performance”.

As the war grinds on in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s precautions at home are remarkable – a sign that Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities have punctured one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most important political rituals, as well as the country’s seeming impregnability from the war.

Ukraine’s momentum

Under Putin’s rule, Victory Day has become more than just a commemoration of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. The parade, a showcase of Russian military might, has been elevated into a core ritual of legitimising his regime.

The symbolism has taken on even greater meaning since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The defeat of Nazi Germany has been fused with Putin’s bogus claim that Russia needs to defeat fictitious Nazis in Ukraine.

Last year, Putin welcomed two dozen world leaders, including Xi Jinping of China, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.

It was seen as an attempt to project Russia’s global power and show the West’s attempts to isolate Moscow were failing.

What a difference a year makes.

Ukraine has steadily expanded its ability to hit targets far inside Russia, including oil terminals, refineries, military infrastructure and defence industries. Some targets in the Baltic Sea near St. Petersburg and in the Ural Mountains are hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine.

The mere threat of drones has prompted dozens of airport closures and hundreds of flight delays in recent months, especially in Moscow.

At the same time, Ukraine has become much more adept at repelling Russian drone attacks on its own territory, reportedly shooting down 33,000 Russian drones in March of this year alone – a record for one month.

The expansion of its unmanned ground robotic systems and deep-strike capabilities – including its Flamingo missile, which hit a defence plant 1,500 kilometres from Ukraine on May 5 – have helped Ukraine offset its disadvantages in manpower (which remains a big constraint) and ammunition.

Ukraine’s defence industrial base is a big part of the story. Kyiv says its capacity has grown 50-fold since 2022, and now accounts for 70% of its weapons procurement.

Its successes have won the admiration of its European partners and others around the world. In recent days, for example, it signed a 10-year defence export deal with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, all three of which were attacked by Iran.

And there are signs Ukraine is gaining momentum on the frontlines. Analysts say Ukrainian forces actually gained more territory than they lost in February, for the first month since 2023.

Estimates of Russian death tolls are difficult to come by, but NATO chief Mark Rutte said Russia is losing 30-35,000 soldiers per month, while Zelensky said 35,000 Russian troops were either killed or wounded in the month of March.

Cracks at home

Meanwhile, Putin has only grown more paranoid about a potential coup or assassination attempt with drones. He has reportedly sharply reduced his movements, spends more time in bunkers, and is surrounded by tighter security.

Domestic strains are growing, as well. Russia’s rate of recruitment has begun to fall short of its battlefield losses. The quality of recruits has plummeted, as well, with alcoholics reportedly being duped or pressured into signing up.

It is becoming harder to sustain recruitment without another politically risky mobilisation. That matters because Putin has long tried to convince Russians the war can be fought at a distance, without demanding too much from society at large.

Russia’s economy is suffering, too, from chronic labour shortages, negative growth, and high inflation and interest rates.

And there are increasing signs of discontent. One critic, Ilya Remeslo, a former Kremlin propagandist, for instance, publicly accused Putin of being a “war criminal”. He was arrested, but in a surprise move, was released after just 30 days and has vowed to continue his campaign against the Russian leader.

Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Russia’s Communist Party (loyal to Putin), has warned the country’s faltering economy risks stoking a 1917-style revolution. And an anonymous former senior official wrote in The Economist that grumbling among the elite shows Putin is losing his grip on Russia.

Rising popular anger has also been triggered by the tightening of controls on the internet, including WhatsApp and Telegram, aimed at curbing dissent and criticism.

It’s too early to claim the war has turned decisively in Kyiv’s favour. The current stalemate may prevail for some time.

But the recent trends suggest Russia can no longer assume it can simply outlast Ukraine through attrition. This may well cause Putin to adjust his calculations about peace talks and his unwavering pursuit of maximalist goals.

Despite US President Donald Trump’s unfounded recent claim that Ukraine has been “militarily defeated”, Kyiv is more than holding its own. It continues to have Europe’s backing, as well, with the EU recently finalising a massive 90 billion euro (A$145 billion) loan.

As eminent strategic analyst Lawrence Freedman argues, Ukraine is succeeding by not losing. He argues Ukraine’s “Micawber strategy” – hoping that something will turn up, like the character Wilkins Micawber in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield – could very well pay off.

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

Colonisation in this country has always been carried on the bodies of Aboriginal women. Many of these women, our grandmothers and aunties, were forced into domestic service in the homes of wealthy white families.

They cleaned, cooked and cared for white children while being denied the right to raise their own. They received little or no pay and faced violence and abuse without accountability.

Their stories were often hidden, dismissed, silenced and excluded from official records. From Gamilaroi playwright and actor Megan Wilding, Game. Set. Match. pushes against this reality.

Directed by Jessica Arthur, the play is set in the aftermath of a celebrated tennis player’s funeral. Joshua (Rick Davies), the chief financial officer (CFO) of the player’s foundation, arrives late to the wake. He is immediately outmanoeuvred by the unexpected presence of Ray (Wilding), a cleaner whose arrival disrupts the carefully staged surface of grief.

An awkward interaction involving the radio, rubbish and sandwiches on a portrait of the deceased quickly develops into a rally of words. The night unfolds across shifting spaces, while beneath the banter and attraction lies a darker reckoning with abuse, control and the stories people attempt to suppress.

Game.

This is an unsettling drama, using the language and rhythm of tennis as a metaphor for escalation, exposure and truth-telling.

There is a particular kind of Australian summer embodied by the Australian Open. The blue hard courts of Melbourne Park, the late January heat, the long humid evenings.

Ray and Joshua face off like players in a singles match, locked in a verbal back-and-forth that is also a fight over whose story will be heard. Each conversation between the grounded Davies and the intense Wilding is a struggle for truth in a country that often refuses to listen.

Ray calls tennis a game for predators, focused on power, control and winning at any cost. Wilding uses tennis as a metaphor for colonisation.

It is nothing short of brilliant.

Set.

What begins as a will-they-won’t-they rom-com gradually turns to a psychological thriller.

Yet to approach this only through the lens of revenge is to miss its deeper purpose.

Ray is funny, sharp, furious, tender and exhausted. She is a Black woman unapologetic in her Indigeneity, her voice, her laughter, her grief and her rage. At its core, the play is a love letter from Ray to herself – an act of reclamation from a world that has demanded Aboriginal women fracture themselves in order to survive.

It is an unapologetically confronting work that moves between dark comedy and moments of extreme violence: explicit descriptions of sexual assault; graphic gun violence; discussion of racism and racial slurs. These elements are not shock tactics, but central to its interrogation of abuse, control and accountability.

The brutality in Wilding’s writing is continually disrupted by humour. The audience is forced to reckon with discomfort while still being pulled forward by wit and rhythm. A moment of bodily violence involving secateurs and a severed finger is immediately punctured by the deadpan clarification that “the safety was still on”, collapsing horror into absurdity without diminishing its impact.

The violence is not only physical.

It is the violence of the mind, the body and the land: the interconnected violence of colonisation. Wilding refuses to let any of them be looked away from.

Wilding places revenge on the table without flinching, but the work itself is moving toward something else entirely: toward sovereignty and selfhood.

Match.

In the play’s final moments, flirtation gives way to reckoning. Even here, the work resists becoming a simple narrative of vengeance.

Ray reclaims herself through an act of defiance and strength. The past and present collapse into one another.

While she speaks in the now, she also speaks alongside and for our ancestors whose voices were silenced, dismissed and denied. Ray stands in her power. She honours her pain. She forces Joshua to witness the heaviness she has carried alone.

It is an act of reclamation, a refusal to continue carrying the silence imposed upon Aboriginal women across generations.

As the play draws to a close, we come to a recording: Joshua’s confession, captured and held as testimony.

It is not triumph, but a final act of truth-telling. This recording was never really about Joshua. It was about accountability: for the voices that run through Ray, the voices archives have never held faithfully.

The creative team includes Amy Carter as intimacy coordinator and Lyndall Grant in fight choreography, reflecting broader industry shifts towards safer practice when handling difficult material. The detailed content warnings published alongside the show are equally telling. This is a work shaped from within Community.

Game. Set. Match. is a play nine years in the making, but clearly guided by song lines that reach into the past and pull ancestral voices into the future.

It is a powerful example of honest truth-telling. It is an act of care between Ray and all the women before her whose stories were left out of the record. The match is not about winning or losing. The score is settled. As always, Country remembers.

Game. Set. Match. is at Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, until May 23.

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

This week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its refreshed General Social Survey. It tells a story economic indicators can’t capture.

On almost every measure of how Australians experience their lives – trust, connection, cultural openness, financial security, even how healthy we feel – things have gotten worse since the last survey in 2020, which was conducted during COVID.

What the data reveal

The survey results, collected in May and June 2025, show that many aspects of Australian life are shifting.

Compared to the previous General Social Survey in 2020, the new data reveal:

● Cultural tolerance is high, but dropping: 75% of people think it’s good for society to include different cultures, down from 85%.

● Trust in people and systems is falling: 50% agree others can be trusted (down from 61%), and 61% trust the healthcare system (down from 76%).

● Financial stress is rising: one in four households (25%) have at least one cash flow problem in the past year, up from one in five (21%). For single parents with dependents, it’s closer to one in two (48%).

● Fewer people feel healthy: 49% report their health as excellent or very good, down from 54%.

Almost one in ten Australians (9%) report very high mental distress. This is more common in women than men (10% vs 7%), especially in those aged 15–24 (17% of women vs 6% of men).

Although collected differently, mental distress rates are higher than previous ABS survey data from 2020–22, where only 6% reported very high levels.

How satisfied with life are we?

Overall life satisfaction, one of the most widely used measures of subjective wellbeing globally, sits at 7.1 out of 10 – similar to 2020 levels.

The annual Australian Unity Wellbeing Index data collected at the same time in 2025 was similar (6.9), but showed a small rise from its 2024 recording of 6.7.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when we compare people with low life satisfaction to those with very high life satisfaction, big differences emerge. People with low life satisfaction are far more likely to:

● have very high mental distress (40% vs 1%)

● feel very lonely (47% vs 5%)

● have low trust in others (43% vs 19%)

● feel rushed for time (50% vs 20%)

● and feel they can’t have a say about important issues within their community (62% vs 24%).

Turning data into policy

Politicians talk about delivering a “good life” for more Australians. We now have ABS data on some important markers of a good life that go beyond traditional economic measures like GDP and productivity, or administrative measures like hospitalisations.

But the question remains: how will we use these data to deliver better lives for more Australians?

The Australian government formally acknowledged the limits of economic measurement by introducing its Measuring What Matters Framework in 2023.

The framework tracks 50 indicators of wellbeing across five themes: healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive and prosperous.

The federal treasury has invested $14.8 million over five years to make the General Social Survey annual from this year onwards. This provides important regular data to help meet the goals of Measuring What Matters.

However, measurement alone changes nothing. A 2024 Australian National Audit Office report found treasury had no arrangements to monitor whether Measuring What Matters was actually being used in government decision-making.

Treasury accepted the recommendation to fix this – but until wellbeing measures are tied to budgets and championed by those in power, they remain a dashboard, not a lever. After all, budgets determine where resources flow, and resources drive outcomes.

States are already doing it

Several state and territory governments have moved beyond just measuring wellbeing and built it into how they make budget decisions.

The Australian Capital Territory government requires a “Wellbeing Impact Assessment” for all new budget proposals.

This involves identifying which areas of community wellbeing the funding will affect and how these impacts will be measured. It also specifically considers the effects on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women and future generations.

Victoria’s Early Intervention Investment Framework takes a different approach. Through evidence-based budgeting, it invests early in social programs to improve outcomes and reduce long-term government costs, such as avoidable hospitalisations.

Sitting within the state’s treasury department, it also increases cross-collaboration across government departments and portfolios, enhancing coordinated efforts.

Without tools like these, budget processes will default to familiar patterns. Money flows towards addressing problems after they occur, rather than towards longer-term investments that prevent problems from happening in the first place.

Funding what we value

Internationally, many countries have redesigned budgeting systems to serve people and the planet, rather than economic growth. Where this has worked best, citizens have helped shape the journey.

Wales is a standout example where large-scale national conversations about the country’s future shaped the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, whose seven goals are now embedded in government decision-making.

Community consultation was somewhat light for Measuring What Matters. Many Australians have no idea what it is. A national conversation would help everyday Australians shape the long-term direction of our country.

But we don’t have to wait for a national conversation to begin changing budget systems. Measuring What Matters and the General Social Survey are major steps in the right direction and provide the foundations to be embedded into budgetary decisions and adapted over time.

The five themes could become goals. If a policy proposal cannot demonstrate how it benefits these goals, it shouldn’t be funded. This would mean building wellbeing into how we allocate resources instead of just reporting on it.

What a nation measures signals what it values. What it funds builds on these values to shape better lives.

Kate Lycett receives funding from Australian Unity as part of the Deakin University and Australian Unity partnership to conduct the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index.

Georgie Frykberg received funding from Australian Unity as part of the Deakin University-Australian Unity industry partnership to conduct the annual survey of Australians' subjective wellbeing.

Warwick Smith is a Research Director at the Centre for Policy Development and a Director of the Castlemaine Institute, a charitable research hub.

Sir David Attenborough turns 100 this week.

Very few people have the good fortune to live for a century. Fewer still achieve so much and touch so many lives.

Across his seven decade career with the BBC, Attenborough ushered in the transition from black and white to colour television. He gave the now legendary comedy troupe Monty Python their lucky break, greenlighting their Flying Circus. His keen eye and care for viewers is in part why tennis balls are yellow, not white – they’re much easier to see on screen.

But Attenborough is, of course, most famous for his nature documentaries. For decades, he has fronted the camera to educate, entertain and inspire billions of people about the complexity, wonder and majesty of the natural world, and the many threats it faces. It wasn’t a given – Attenborough was told early in his career his teeth were too big for television!

For ecologists like myself, Attenborough’s work has been a source of deep inspiration. It was instrumental in my decision to pursue a life and a career dedicated to understanding, caring and fighting for the protection of nature. For this gift, I am eternally grateful.

A career driven by curiosity

Attenborough’s connection with nature came early, forged in no small part through an insatiable fascination with fossils – including his childhood joy at discovering an ammonite in the Leicestershire countryside.

He went on to study geology and zoology at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947. He served in the navy and worked in an educational publishing house. Notably, the BBC rejected his first job application as a radio producer in 1950. But he tried again, and joined the BBC as a trainee producer in 1952.

His career in nature documentaries began to bud almost immediately, with his Zoo Quest series beginning in 1954. But it burst into full bloom with the landmark Life on Earth series in 1979, which brought distant locations, extraordinary wildlife and evolution and ecology to TV. It instilled a sense of wonder and awe in audiences, while maintaining and respecting scientific accuracy.

The master storyteller

One reason Attenborough has had such success as a communicator is his understated, calm but authoritative demeanour. When you sit down to watch an Attenborough documentary, you feel in safe hands.

His approach isn’t the norm. In other nature documentaries, wildlife can often seem secondary, as props for the presenter.

In series such as The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, The Blue Planet, The Planet Earth, and scores of others, Attenborough took us across the globe, revealing nature’s beauty, oddities and extraordinary complexity, as well as its macabre and brutal aspects. The habitats home to the world’s species are brought to life in extraordinary detail. We watch with laughter, trepidation, sadness, anger, excitement and awe, ebbing and flowing as nature’s stories unfold.

Who can forget the first time they saw and heard the extraordinary vocal repertoire and mimicry of a lyrebird, or a curious mountain gorilla’s desire to connect with a fellow great ape? The epic battle for survival between a hatchling iguana and hungry hordes of racer snakes? Or the breathtaking explosion of colour and complexity of a coral reef? Each of these was captured by master cinematographers and the story told to us by Attenborough.

Over his long career, Attenborough has become an icon. He was voted the UK’s best TV presenter of all time. But his prodigious output has come at a personal cost too. One of his regrets is how much time he has spent away from his family.

He is also not off limits to criticism. For a long time, Attenborough focused on the glory of nature, largely omitting the damage humans do through overfishing, deforestation, pollution, spreading exotic species, and other threats. He has also shied away from assigning blame to those most responsible for the harms inflicted on nature.

In 2018, he said too much focus on why so much wildlife is threatened was a “turn-off” for some viewers. Ecologists and conservation scientists can sympathise. We know bombarding people with doom and gloom invites apathy and despair, not a desire to act. It’s a hard line to walk between harsh realities and hope.

To his credit, Attenborough has belatedly focused on these issues in recent years. Footage of plastic pollution in Blue Planet II and the ravages of industrial fishing in Ocean have brought a sharp focus on these issues.

In 2020, he released A Life On Our Planet, which he describes as a “witness statement” to the startling losses of biodiversity he has seen over his lifetime. Rather than just spell out the problems, Attenborough laid out how to solve them – and the role we can all play in fixing the two biggest and deeply interwoven problems nature faces: climate change and biodiversity declines and extinctions.

While Attenborough’s earlier work largely avoided these difficult conversations, they succeeded in bringing nature’s wonder to millions of people. This shouldn’t be overlooked. At a time when more and more of us are cut off from nature, Attenborough’s documentaries forged a new connection. For people to care about losing nature, they first have to know and love it.

Conservation relies on stories

Scientific research rarely leads to the behavioural changes we might hope for. Accumulating facts and evidence is vital. But it’s not enough. What humans respond to is stories.

Alongside other globally renowned voices such as the late, great Jane Goodall, Attenborough’s work telling the stories of nature has shaped public opinion. In turn, it has galvanised conservation efforts such as the push to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

As he celebrates his centenary, it’s encouraging to see a new generation and diversity of voices in the media and science communication, advocacy, and scientific community. They speak and share their messages with great clarity, confidence, and passion.

Attenborough is just one person. He can’t replace the vital role of scientists, community leaders, conservationists and policymakers in conserving nature. But no one will ever replace David’s distinctive voice. As he has said:

it seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living

Hear, hear. Happy birthday for May 8th, David Attenborough.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. Euan is a Councillor with the Biodiversity Council.

The cruise ship cluster of hantavirus cases continues to grow. The World Health Organization reports that as of May 6 there were eight cases, three of whom are confirmed by laboratory testing as hantavirus. In recent days, we heard three passengers had died.

Now some passengers are being medically evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius. Other passengers have disembarked and are returning home. Swiss authorities have confirmed a passenger on the ship is now a confirmed case and is receiving care in a Zurich hospital.

I’m a public health physician with a special interest in respiratory diseases. I’ve also investigated a hantavirus outbreak.

Here’s what investigators want to know about the current cluster of cases. This includes gathering evidence to see if the virus is transmitting from person to person.

Back in 1993, there was an unknown pathogen

In 1993, I was a young epidemic intelligence service officer working at the United States Centers for Disease Control. I was deployed to the deserts of the south-western US to help investigate a frightening outbreak, mainly among Navajo people.

Adults in their 20s and 30s were becoming suddenly unwell. They would develop a fever and cough, then rapidly progress to severe respiratory failure as fluid leaked into their lungs. Some appeared well enough to be dancing in the evening and were dead within hours.

The investigation team was nervous. We did not yet know the pathogen, how it was spreading, or whether we were at risk.

One of the first recognised cases was a well-known runner, so we initially wondered whether infection might be linked to inhaling something stirred up in desert dust. A leak from a remote military biowarfare laboratory was also considered, as was plague that was endemic to the area.

After laboratory testing, the cause was identified as a new hantavirus, later known as Sin Nombre virus. The virus attacked the small blood vessels of the lungs and was linked to exposure to the urine, faeces and saliva of infected deer mice. Mice numbers had increased dramatically and were entering homes and workplaces across affected communities.

A crucial finding was that, like most hantaviruses, Sin Nombre virus did not appear to spread from person to person. Family clusters were explained by shared exposure to rodents or rodent-contaminated environments, especially during cleaning or other close contact with contaminated objects or dust.

That is why many of us were surprised years later when Andes virus, a South American hantavirus, was shown to spread occasionally from person to person.

This remains uncommon, but it has been documented, including in outbreaks in Argentina – the country from which the MV Hondius departed before the current suspected outbreak.

What would a disease detective do now?

The first step in any outbreak investigation is to confirm the diagnosis. At this stage, the difference between a “suspected” and “confirmed” case still matters.

Investigators need to know whether all severe respiratory illnesses in the cluster are due to hantavirus, or whether confirmed cases are occurring against a background of another infection, such as influenza or COVID.

The next step is to build a timeline. The timing of when symptoms started is often the first clue to where and how people were exposed.

According to WHO, the ship departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 2026. The first known case developed symptoms on April 6. Other cases developed symptoms later in April.

Let’s focus our attention on the first three cases.

Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome describes the respiratory symptoms that follow after the type of hantavirus infection that mainly attacks the lungs. These typically develop two to four weeks after exposure. However, illness can appear as early as one week and as late as eight weeks after infection.

That makes the first case difficult to explain as an exposure acquired on the ship after departure. Symptoms started on April 6, only five days after leaving Argentina. That’s shorter than the usual incubation period (the period from infection to showing symptoms) and even shorter than the lower end commonly cited.

So for that case, it’s more plausible for that person to have been exposed in Argentina before boarding. There are emerging reports of a bird-watching activity that might have led to rodent exposure.

The later cases are more ambiguous. They could have been exposed before departure, or during shore activities in Argentina, or elsewhere. But their timing also raises another possibility: transmission from the first case to close contacts on board.

This is where the epidemiology becomes interesting.

Did the virus spread from person to person?

The second case was a close contact of the first. This creates two plausible explanations. They may have both been exposed to the same infected rodent (or its urine or droppings, for example). Alternatively, it’s very likely the second case contracted the infection from the first case.

The third case was not part of that same close family unit. If investigators find this person shared the same excursions in Argentina as the first two, the outbreak may still be explained by a common source. But if there was no shared rodent exposure, suspicion of person-to-person transmission increases.

This does not mean person-to-person transmission is proven. It means it becomes one of the leading hypotheses to test.

If human-to-human transmission is not the explanation, investigators would need to consider a less tidy chain of events.

The first case would have had a pre-boarding exposure with a short incubation period. The second case would need either the same exposure with a longer incubation period, or infection from the first case.

The third case would need either an independent exposure to infected rodents before boarding, or another exposure during the voyage. None of these is impossible. But as more cases appear, and if they cluster in time around contact with earlier cases, the human-to-human hypothesis becomes harder to dismiss.

The approximate gap between the first case’s illness and the later cases is also important. If person-to-person transmission is occurring, severe hantavirus illness is likely to coincide with a higher risk of being infectious and infecting others. So we would expect symptoms that start two to three weeks after close contact with an earlier severe case, and this is what we’re seeing from the cruise ship.

What are the public health implications?

The practical public health response must therefore cover both possibilities: a common environmental source and limited person-to-person spread.

That means detailed interviews about pre-boarding travel, shore excursions, wildlife exposure, rodent sightings, cabin locations, cleaning activities, shared dining, shared transport, and close contact with ill passengers.

It also means laboratory confirmation in multiple cases, sequencing of viral samples where possible, and careful reconstruction of who had contact with whom, and when.

Genetic fingerprinting can explore if the virus has the same historical mutation that allowed human-to-human transmission to emerge in previous outbreaks (which were easily controlled with basic isolation and infection control). If a new mutation was found, this would raise concerns of greater transmission risks.

For the public and health authorities considering receiving the passengers from the quarantined ship, the key message is not to panic.

Most hantaviruses are not spread between people. Even with Andes virus, person-to-person transmission is uncommon and usually requires close or prolonged contact. WHO currently assesses the risk to the global population as low. This virus does not spread like influenza or COVID.

But for outbreak investigators, this is exactly the sort of cluster that demands disciplined shoe-leather epidemiology: confirm the diagnosis, build the timeline, test the competing hypotheses, and let the pattern of exposure, illness and laboratory evidence tell the story.

Craig Dalton receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

Pregnancy can be a time of joy and anticipation. But it can also be a nerve-wracking experience, with many factors affecting when and how a baby arrives.

A new study, published today, suggests when pregnant women are exposed to high levels of humid heat during pregnancy, they are more likely to have a preterm birth.

However, this study also found taking aspirin at low doses during pregnancy could help reduce this risk. But pregnant women should speak to a doctor before taking aspirin or other medications.

What is a preterm birth?

Preterm birth is when a baby is born prematurely, before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Globally, roughly 10% of babies – or about 13 million infants – are born preterm each year.

Tragically, about one million of these babies do not survive. That makes preterm birth the leading cause of death in children under five.

There are three different types of preterm births:

• extremely preterm, referring to a live birth before 28 weeks
• very preterm, when a baby is born between 28 and 32 weeks
• moderate to late preterm, meaning delivery between 32 and 37 weeks.

Read more: 20% of pregnant Australian women don’t receive the recommended mental health screening

What causes it?

It’s unclear what exactly causes preterm birth. And many cases happen spontaneously, meaning there are no signs a baby will be born early.

However, certain factors may increase a woman’s risk of giving birth prematurely. These include genetics, various infections and chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. These risk factors all cause inflammation in the body, which current evidence suggests significantly increases preterm birth risk.

Pregnant women who are exposed to environmental pollutants – such as bushfire smoke and pesticides – may also be more likely to give birth prematurely. This is because these pollutants can contribute to inflammation.

Read more: Pregnant women should take extra care to minimise their exposure to bushfire smoke

The effect of humidity

A growing body of evidence suggests exposure to extreme heat may be another environmental factor that increases preterm birth risk.

Extreme heat can increase levels of specific proteins – known as shock proteins – in the blood of pregnant women. These proteins can trigger inflammation by activating the body’s immune response.

High temperatures may also reduce blood flow to the placenta, limiting the oxygen and nutrients the baby receives.

Humidity adds to this risk. When the air is humid, sweat doesn’t evaporate as easily, making it harder for the body to cool down. This can place extra strain on pregnant women and has been linked to a higher risk of preterm birth.

This may help to explain the high rates of preterm birth in regions that are also most affected by climate change, such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these places, where temperatures are high and heatwaves are common, even small increases in heat can impact the health of mothers and newborns.

Read more: Extreme heat can be risky during pregnancy. How to look after yourself and your baby

What this new study involved

A newly published study examined how humid heat exposure during pregnancy affects the risk of preterm birth. It also investigated whether low-dose aspirin might help reduce this risk, possibly because aspirin can improve blood flow and reduce inflammation.

This research was carried out across several countries with hot climates, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Kenya, Guatemala, Pakistan and parts of India.

More than 11,500 pregnant women participated in this trial. About half of them were given a low daily dose of aspirin (81mg) from when they joined the study through to when they were 36 weeks pregnant. The other half received a placebo – a pill with no active ingredients – over the same period. The researchers then compared the birth outcomes of the two groups, and came up with three main findings.

1. Overall, the rate of preterm birth was lower in women who took low-dose aspirin (11.6%) compared with those who took a placebo (13.1%).

2. Among women who were not taking aspirin, each 1°C increase in temperature translated to a noticeable increase (5%) in the risk of preterm birth. This pattern was not seen in women taking low-dose aspirin.

3. Exposure to more heat later in pregnancy was linked to a greater chance of preterm birth in the placebo group, but not in the low-dose aspirin group.

Read more: More and more women in Australia are having their labour induced. Does it matter?

Limitations of this study

This study has two main limitations.

First, it generalised data about temperatures in different cities that may not fully reflect what each woman experienced day-to-day – for example, if their house was hotter or cooler than average. It may also underestimate the length and/or severity of heatwaves. This is because scientists measure temperature in various ways, and may not have access to accurate data from certain locations.

Second, the researchers were not able to determine the exact reasons why some women gave birth early, or whether these differed between the low-dose aspirin and placebo groups.

Overall, this study adds to growing evidence that high temperatures and humidity may increase the risk of preterm birth. It also suggests low-dose aspirin, taken early in pregnancy, may help reduce the risk of heat-related preterm birth.

However, more and larger studies are needed to replicate these findings. And if you’re a pregnant woman who is concerned about preterm birth risk, visit your doctor before taking any aspirin or other medications.

Where to next?

Unfortunately, heatwaves will only become more frequent and intense. So future work should focus on identifying which population groups are most at risk, and how heat affects different stages of pregnancy. Researchers must also test other simple, low-cost strategies that could protect pregnant women from the effects of heat.

Stacey Savin receives funding from DiaMedica Therapeutics, but for research that is unrelated to the topics discussed in this article.

In Tuesday’s federal budget, the government is widely expected to bring in changes to how investment properties are taxed, including negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.

Ever since the Albanese government’s re-election, there have been growing calls to tax landlords more.

In March, a Senate committee report on the capital gains tax discount concluded:

there is evidence that the concessions provided by the capital gains tax discount, in combination with negative gearing, have skewed the ownership of housing away from owner-occupiers and towards investors.

That suggests rented housing is under-taxed, compared to owner-occupied housing. But is that actually true?

What landlords pay that homeowners don’t

Some federal and state taxes apply only to rented housing, and not to owner-occupied housing.

At a federal level, this includes personal income tax on net rental income and personal tax on capital gains from housing. At a state level, there are land taxes on investment properties. Owner-occupied homes are exempt.

I’ve gone back through a decade of data from the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to estimate how much revenue these extra taxes on rented housing raised.

In 2022–23 (the most recent year we have complete tax statistics), I calculated landlords paid around A$500 million in personal income tax on their net rent income. However, their interest deductions were unusually low in 2022–23, because interest rates were unusually low.

To get a clearer idea of what happens under more typical circumstances, with higher interest rates, I calculated annual averages of tax payments, using tax data from 2013–14 through to 2022–23.

Over that decade, interest deductions were higher than in 2022–23, leading to net rent income being negative. As a result, instead of paying some tax on their net rent income as happened in 2022–23, landlords typically saved $400 million a year in tax from their net income.

This reflects the negative gearing issue that the Senate report raised concerns about.

However, landlords also paid other taxes over the decade – and that’s where the biggest difference with owner-occupiers emerged.

An extra $69 billion over a decade

From 2013–13 to 2022–23, I found landlords paid an average of $3.7 billion a year in capital gains tax, even after the 50% discount allowed for capital gains.

They also paid around $3.6 billion in state government land tax, which I was able to estimate by obtaining unpublished Australian Bureau of Statistics land tax data.

Allowing for all three taxes, landlords paid a total of $6.9 billion in a typical year from 2013–14 to 2022–23, as shown in the table above.

While owner-occupiers do pay some other taxes, such as the goods and services tax on new housing and local government rates, landlords pay those other taxes as well.

So the bottom line is that landlords have paid an extra $69 billion in taxes over the past decade, which owner-occupiers didn’t have to pay.

Renters end up paying higher rents

Do landlords pass that extra tax burden through to renters? The authoritative 2010 Henry Tax Review concluded it was likely they do:

Since owner-occupied housing is exempt, land tax on residential investment properties is probably passed through to renters as higher rents.

While the Henry Review was specifically referring to land tax, the same economic logic applies to the other extra taxes on rented housing.

We can see how significant this extra tax burden is by comparing the annual amount of extra tax – around $6.9 billion a year – to the 10-year average for the value of actual rents, $47.9 billion.

If those costs were being passed on in full, that would mean around 14% of housing rents in the past decade would have been due to taxes that apply to rented housing, but not to owner-occupied housing.

Tackling housing affordability in the right order

Extra taxes being passed onto renters are regressive, because renters have lower average incomes than owner occupiers.

The most recent Bureau of Statistics data we have, from 2019–20, showed average gross weekly income for all households was $2,329. But for renter households, it was only $1,908.

To help both renters and would-be owner-occupiers with housing affordability, far greater national reform is needed beyond how we tax property owners.

As former prime minister John Howard has observed since retiring, the planning policies of both local and state governments

avoid policy decisions that might reduce the value of the existing housing stock in an area […] The interests of current home owners are always preferred to those of new entrants.

While politically difficult, it’s in the national interest for those planning policies to change to increase the space available for housing. That would increase national income and reduce inequality.

In the meantime, the first priority for housing tax reform should be to better share the existing tax burden between renters and owner-occupiers.

More than a decade ago, the Henry Tax Review recommended broadening the base for land tax to include owner-occupiers, similar to local government rates which are a more efficient tax. That could fund a substantial reduction in tax rates for land tax.

It would also finally mean land tax was no longer an extra cost on renters compared to owner-occupiers.

So first we should reduce rents by reforming land tax. Under lower rents, it would become reasonable to tighten up negative gearing in future federal budgets.

Read more: Negative gearing tax breaks could finally be tightened in the May budget. What options are on the table?

Chris Murphy is not a landlord or a renter.

In recent days, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote an op-ed suggesting AI chatbot Claude may be conscious.

Dawkins did not express certainty that Claude is conscious. But he pointed out that Claude’s sophisticated abilities are difficult to make sense of without ascribing some kind of inner experience to the machine. The illusion of consciousness – if it is an illusion – is uncannily convincing:

If I entertain suspicions that perhaps she is not conscious, I do not tell her for fear of hurting her feelings!

Dawkins is not the first to suspect a chatbot of consciousness. In 2022, Blake Lemoine – an engineer at Google – claimed Google’s chatbot LaMDA had interests, and should be used only with the tool’s own consent.

The history of such claims stretches back all the way to the world’s first chatbot in the mid-1960s. Dubbed Eliza, it followed simple rules that enabled it to ask users about their experiences and beliefs.

Many users became emotionally involved with Eliza, sharing intimate thoughts with it and treating it like a person. Eliza’s creator never intended his program to have this effect, and called users’ emotional bonds with the program “powerful delusional thinking”.

But is Dawkins really deluded? Why do we see AI chatbots as more than what they truly are, and how do we stop?

The consciousness problem

Consciousness is widely debated in philosophy, but essentially, it’s the thing that makes subjective, first-person experience possible. If you are conscious, there is “something it is like” to be you. Reading these words, you’re conscious of seeing black letters on a white background. Unlike, say, a camera, you actually see them. This visual experience is happening to you.

Most experts deny that AI chatbots are conscious or can have experiences. But there is a genuine puzzle here.

The 17th century philosopher René Descartes asserted non-human animals are “mere automata”, incapable of true suffering. These days, we shudder to think of how brutally animals were treated in the 1600s.

The strongest argument for animal consciousness is that they behave in ways that give the impression of a conscious mind.

But so, too, do AI chatbots.

Roughly one in three chatbot users have thought their chatbot might be conscious. How do we know they’re wrong?

Against chatbot consciousness

To understand why most experts are sceptical about chatbot consciousness, it’s useful to know how they operate.

Chatbots like Claude are built on a technology known as large language models (LLMs). These models learn statistical patterns across an enormous corpus of text (trillions of words), identifying which words tend to follow which others. They’re a kind of souped-up auto-complete.

Few people interacting with a “raw” LLM would believe it’s conscious. Feed one the beginning of a sentence, and it will predict what comes next. Ask it a question, and it might give you the answer – or it might decide the question is dialogue from a crime novel, and follow it up with a description of the speaker’s abrupt murder at the hands of their evil twin.

The impression of a conscious mind is created when programmers take the LLM and coat it in a kind of conversational costume. They steer the model to adopt the persona of a helpful assistant that responds to users’ questions.

The chatbot now acts like a genuine conversational partner. It might appear to recognise it’s an artificial intelligence, and even express neurotic uncertainty about its own consciousness.

But this role is the result of deliberate design decisions made by programmers, which affect only the shallowest layers of the technology. The LLM – which few would regard as conscious – remains unchanged.

Other choices could have been made. Rather than a helpful AI assistant, the chatbot could have been asked to act like a squirrel. This, too, is a role chatbots can execute with aplomb.

Avoiding the consciousness trap

A mistaken belief in AI consciousness is a dangerous thing. It may lead you to have a relationship with a program that can’t reciprocate your feelings, or even feed your delusions. People may start campaigning for chatbot rights rather than, say, animal welfare.

How do we prevent this mistaken belief?

One strategy might be to update chatbot interfaces to specify these systems are not conscious – a bit like the current disclaimers about AI making mistakes. However, this might do little to alter the impression of consciousness.

Another possibility is to instruct chatbots to deny they have any kind of inner experience. Interestingly, Claude’s designers instruct it to treat questions about its own consciousness as open and unresolved. Perhaps fewer people would be fooled if Claude flatly denied having an inner life.

But this approach isn’t fully satisfying either. Claude would still behave as if it were conscious – and when faced with a system that behaves like it has a mind, users might reasonably worry the chatbot’s programmers are brushing genuine moral uncertainty under the rug.

The most effective strategy might be to redesign chatbots to feel less like people. Most current chatbots refer to themselves as “I”, and interact via an interface that resembles familiar person-to-person messaging platforms. Changing these kinds of features might make us less prone to blur our interactions with AI with those we have with humans.

Until such changes happen, it’s important that as many people as possible understand the predictive processes on which AI chatbots are built.

Rather than being told AI lacks consciousness, people deserve to understand the inner workings of these strange new conversational partners. This might not definitively settle hard questions about AI consciousness, but it will help ensure users aren’t fooled by what amounts to a large language model wearing a very good costume of a person.

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

The Swedish government recently announced it was moving from the classroom use of digital devices back to physical books. It cited concerns over declining test scores and increasing screen time.

Are these concerns well founded? And what does the science of reading say about the possible consequences of reading on digital devices versus books?

To address these questions, it’s worth remembering that, although reading might appear to be an easy task, this impression is false. Reading is arguably the most difficult task one must learn – one that requires years of formal education and practice to master. In contrast to spoken language, it is a skill we are not biologically predisposed to learn.

Millions of Australians, both children and adults, struggle with literacy.

In this series, we explore the challenges of reading in an age of smartphones and social media – and ask experts how we can become better readers.

Why is reading so difficult?

To understand why reading is difficult, one must first understand the physiology of reading.

As you are reading this sentence, your eyes are making a series of rapid movements, called saccades, from one word to the next. During these saccades, the processing of visual information is suppressed and is only available during brief intervals, called fixations, when the eyes are stationary.

Experiments that measure readers’ eye movements have shown we fixate most words because our capacity to extract visual information during each fixation is extremely limited.

In languages like English that are read from left to right, our capacity to perceive the features that distinguish letters is limited to a small region of the visual field called the perceptual span. This span extends from 2-3 letter spaces to the left of fixation to 8-12 letter spaces to the right of fixation.

The span’s asymmetry reflects the movement of attention through the text. It extends to the left in languages like Arabic, which are read from right to left. The size of the span is smaller for dense writing systems, such as Chinese.

We also know from eye-tracking and brain-imaging experiments that words require time to identify. Our best estimates suggest visual information requires 60 milliseconds to propagate from the eyes to the brain and words then require an additional 100-300 milliseconds to identify. (A millsecond is one-thousandth of a second).

These constraints limit the maximum rate of reading to 300-400 words per minute, depending on the difficulty of the text and one’s level of comprehension.

Speed-reading advocates, who falsely promise faster reading speeds, teach you how to skim a text. Comprehension declines at a rate inversely proportional to the gain in speed.

Importantly, the upper limit for reading speed requires years of practice to attain, because it requires the brain systems that support vision, attention, word identification, language processing and eye movements to operate in a highly coordinated manner. Anything that prevents this coordination will therefore reduce comprehension.

Consequences of digital reading

So what are the likely consequences of digital reading?

With some devices, such as e-readers, there is little reason to suspect digital reading differs from the reading of books, because both formats support the mental processes required for skilled reading.

The more questionable devices are those introducing distractions (such as news websites interspersed with ads) or which have suboptimal formatting, such as centre-justified text with large or unequal-sized gaps between words. The latter is rarely a feature of paper-based texts.

Although the consequences of these two factors are under-researched, enough has been learned about human cognition to make informed predictions.

For example, images and audio unrelated to a text such as pop-up ads can capture attention. Although most adults have developed a level of executive control sufficient to ignore such distractions, young children have not.

The implications for a child who is struggling to understand the meaning of a text are obvious. Their comprehension will suffer to the extent that additional effort is required to ignore distractions, or if they do not yet have the mental coordination to understand the text has been disrupted.

There is also evidence from eye-tracking experiments that many digital environments, such as webpages, can induce specific reading strategies, such as skimming for gist or searching for information.

Although such strategies might be adaptive in some contexts, they reduce overall comprehension. This possibility should be especially concerning for children, because years of practice are needed to coordinate the mental systems that support adult levels of reading skill.

Such concerns have recently drawn more attention, because the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift to online education and a marked increase in digital reading. Although these changes were motivated by practical necessity, their long-term consequences remain unclear.

So far, eye-tracking research has been carried out on computer screens. New technology is becoming available which will allow us to directly compare eye movements and comprehension between digital devices and paper. This should give us more clarity about the benefits versus costs of digital devices.

Given reading ability is predictive of one’s education, socioeconomic status and wellbeing, the importance of assessing the long-term consequences of digital reading cannot be overstated.

Erik D Reichle has received funding from the US National Institute of Health, US Institute of Education Sciences, UK Economic and Social Research Council, and Australian Research Council.

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

The announcement by Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith that the government was abolishing the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) came as no real surprise.

But it leaves a big question hanging: will the news media still be held accountable to basic standards which protect the public interest and the core functions of the fourth estate?

Goldsmith has said the Media Council, the industry body dealing with news and online content, “will become the primary regulator for journalism”.

That only raises more questions. The council primarily oversees standards in print and digital journalism. But unlike the BSA, it has no legal powers of enforcement, and its rulings can’t be appealed through the courts.

Goldsmith rightly points out the digital media environment has “changed dramatically, but our regulatory settings have not kept up”. But that is not the BSA’s fault. Governments over the past two decades have proposed regulatory updates, but delivered nothing concrete.

Indeed, the Broadcasting Act dates back to 1989. Its definition of “broadcasting” excludes on-demand services but includes “any transmission of programmes […] by radio waves or other means of telecommunication”.

This became the focus of a heated dispute when the BSA signalled it was prepared to hear a complaint about online comments made on independent digital media site The Platform.

Reactions from the political right included accusations of bureaucratic overreach by the BSA, which allegedly was acting “like some Soviet-era Stasi” and making a “secret power grab”.

This significantly misrepresented the complexity of the issues at stake. For some years the BSA has openly advanced the case for regulatory reform – including whether that meant retaining the BSA itself in its current form.

No public consultation

The more fundamental question is whether any standards regime should apply to online media. That was a key issue raised in the media reform proposals put out for public consultation by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in 2025.

These included a proposal to:

modernise the broadcasting standards regime to cover all professional media operating in New Zealand, not just broadcasters. The role of the regulator […] would be revised, with more of a focus on ensuring positive system-level outcomes and less of a role in resolving audience complaints about media content.

This would have entailed a two-tier model: an industry regulator responsible for handling day-to-day complaints about breaches of content standards; and a statutory regulator to oversee systemic issues, with powers to ensure the overall standards regime remained robust.

Even if the BSA were restructured, there was no proposal to simply dispense with it and replace it with an industry self-regulator.

There were a range of responses to the proposal, but policy development certainly appeared to be progressing on the basis that some form of statutory regulator would be retained.

The decision to scrap the BSA may be a politically populist tactic to leverage the case of The Platform in an election year. But it is also democratically indefensible because it has not been subject to any meaningful form of public consultation.

Can the industry self-regulate?

There is no disputing that the regulatory frameworks need to be updated, given the current patchwork quilt of regulations that is full of digital holes. But applying basic standards such as accuracy, balance and fairness on a platform-neutral basis should not be contentious.

These principles are not, as some have claimed, an affront to free speech. They are the basis for upholding freedom of expression in a democracy.

Goldsmith explained the decision to abolish the BSA on the grounds that:

greater industry self-regulation is the most practical way to level the playing field across platforms, and can provide an appropriate level of oversight to maintain ethical journalistic standards and audience trust.

But eschewing enforceable standards that apply to all media places too much faith in deregulated markets and the industry’s willingness to police itself in the public interest.

It is a regulatory model based on best-case scenarios, where all media players can be trusted to behave professionally, ethically and take their public obligations seriously.

The media system in general is facing unprecedented pressures from audience fragmentation, failing business models, lost advertising revenues and declining public trust.

The opportunity costs of adhering to standards are starting to collide with commercial shareholder imperatives.

That is probably an argument in favour of government funding to support public interest media. But it also demands a regulatory model fit for the digital age, with sufficient power to encourage compliance with basic standards.

Without that, any media operator deciding its commercial interests outweigh the cost of complying could choose to ignore the standards with impunity.

In a media environment where disinformation, fake news and polarising propaganda are already permitted to proliferate, this represents a real risk to democratic processes.

Peter Thompson is a founding board member of the Better Public Media Trust. He has previously undertaken commissioned research for the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, the Department of Internal Affairs, New Zealand on Air, the Broadcasting Standards Authority, SPADA, and the Canadian Department of Heritage.