The Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in Florence is home to a wealth of public documents and records of decisions issued by EU institutions along with artefacts illustrating pro-European movements and initiatives led by prominent personalities that helped shape the EU as we know it today. May 9 is Europe Day which celebrates the European Union’s founding values of unity, solidarity, democracy, human rights and shared prosperity. This year marks the 76th anniversary of Robert Schuman’s historic declaration. In 1950, the birth of a union of coal and steel was at the centre of the vision of a united Europe backed by the governments of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Dieter Schlenker is the Director of the Historical Archives of the European Union at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence which is now in its 50th year and has grown into a thriving community centred around interdisciplinary research and public engagement. We asked him to walk us through the archives that retrace the history of the European Union and its institutions, and the trajectory of the EUI from its conceptual beginnings in the post-war period to its consolidation as an international centre for research and intellectual exchange.

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The Conversation: The historical archives provide the public with a written memory of the European integration process since the early 1940s. What is available to visitors, and which resources would be of particular interest to researchers?

Dieter Schlenker: The HAEU has received over the last 40 years more than 300 holdings that comprise almost 1 million paper files stored at Villa Salviati on 10 kilometres of dedicated roller shelving. During the Open day on May 9 visitors will have the unique opportunity to discover archival documents, artefacts and materials in various forms, in a high security, climate-controlled environment that is normally closed to the public. Almost 1.000 visitors will be invited to take a tour through the Villa and the Archives on the open day. They will be accompanied by a professional archivist who will explain the mission and holdings of the archives and show them a selection of documents including the authentic copy of the Maastricht Treaty, historical letters, notes, photos and even objects that belonged to European politicians and EU officials, plus a selection of media formats for audio-visual and digital archives that have become obsolete (magnetic tapes, floppy disks, CDs, etc), and which show the volatility of modern archives and the challenge of preserving and maintaining them so they remain accessible to the general public.

Researchers can consult the archives in the reading room at Villa Salviati from Monday to Friday. Approximately 40% of the hard copies of the archives have been digitised, so they are available online in the archives database. The holdings comprise the archives of EU institutions, such as the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliament along with a unique collection of archives from other highly relevant European organisations, such as the European Space Agency, the European Free Trade Association, and the European Cultural Foundation. The HAEU is also home to the archives of various European movements and associations, and political groups in the European Parliament. Finally, more than 100 personal papers have been deposited by important European political figures, from pioneers, such as Alcide De Gasperi and Altiero Spinelli, through to Commission Presidents, such as Jacques Delors and Romano Prodi, and numerous Commissioners and Members of European Parliament.

How are the archives organised, and what are visitors most drawn to?

D.S.: Visitors can discover the physical infrastructure and how the numerous archives are stored in different rooms, in boxes and files, organised according to where they originate from and by the type of archive. They also get to see the complex coding and classification systems in place that facilitate the storage and retrieval of the documents. Guided tours also allow visitors to see documents on display and extended photo collections that are mounted on the walls, and can ask questions about their conservation and access conditions, the history and context of the creation of the documents and the people featured on the photos.

Monetary policy or EU expansion, what significant moments are captured in the archives?

D.S.: The Historical Archives of the European Union’s mission is to collect and provide the broadest possible archival legacy of European integration and European Union in a single location. This is why many different topics of European history since World War II can be studied on the basis of numerous original primary sources. These reach from the first pro-European federalist movements emerging during WWII, the important Congress of The Hague 1948 that led to the creation of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the whole negotiation process of the Schuman Plan and the European Coal and Steel Community, then all the policies and actions taken by the Commission created by the Rome Treaties in 1957, all plenary and committee sessions of the Parliament, the Council and European Council meetings, the various enlargments, all procedure files of the European Court of Justice, etc. All EU documents are opened to the public after a 30-year period and shipped here to Florence by the respective institution for public access, which is why the documentation currently available approximately goes up to the mid-1990s.

How are the archives used and which documents have proven to be the most thought-provoking for academic research?

D.S.: The archives provide such a large base for research that the points of view, research interests and findings change all the time. More than 120 researchers register every year at the archives reading room and conduct 1.000 research sessions. The output reaches from the first works on European integration, mostly biographic studies on the founders, such as the works of Raymond Poidevin on Robert Schuman and the Biography of Jean Monnet by François Duchêne, or institutional history, such as Dirk Spierenburg’s book on the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community. Today, historical research covers practically all different areas of European policies, and we may highlight the many diverse publications produced by the members of the European Union Liaison Committee of Historians that also edits the Journal of European Integration History (JEIH), or mention the current EUI Chair on European integration history, Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, who works on European Monetary Union.

The HAEU also hosts the historical archives of the European Space Agency including the records of the continent’s earliest major efforts to develop a space programme, what are the highlights on display?

D.S.: The European Space Agency in Paris decided to entrust the HAEU with their historical archives in 1989 and revised the deposit contract in 2020 to deepen cooperation and set focus on digital access, data protection and information security. This included the archives of the forerunner organisations ELDO and ESRO and therefore provides researchers with thousands of paper files documenting all aspects of European ambition in space since the early 1960s. These archives provide unique insight into the various joint European satellite, earth observation and human space flight projects of the past 60 years.

Looking back at the archives, what insights do we gain about European identity today? What values still stand and how are they reflected in visitors’ feedback?

D.S.: Looking at the recently published catalogue commemorating the 40th anniversary of the archives, we can see how all the many facets of European cooperation and integration are covered and referred to in the archival holdings preserved in Florence. It offers a fascinating trip back in time. Certainly, the documents on a peaceful and democratic post-War Europe expressed by those resisting against the Nazi and Fascist regimes provide a highly visionary humanistic picture of a united Europe, while the later negotiations on European treaties, policies, enlargements and external relations become much more multi-faceted, detailed, technical and concern very concrete political, economic and social arguments.

Nonetheless, the fascination of how it all started in Hour Zero in 1945 as a vision of peace, democracy and solidarity remains very strong until today. Visitors often refer to the founders of the European Union and their foresight and long-term vision securing peace amongst European states since 80 years, which is particularly important as visitors are rather worried about the present and future of Europe in a multipolar globalised world.

Interview by Carly Lock, Journalist at The Conversation Europe & The Conversation France.

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A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

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Dieter Schlenker ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount on housing (and probably other assets) are now considered certain in Tuesday’s budget.

We don’t know all the details but the driving idea is to tilt the balance away from investors towards first home buyers.

More broadly, the measures will be part of the budget wider theme of intergenerational equity.

On this podcast we speak to Alan Kohler who, among other roles, is a financial commentator for the ABC. He authored The Great Divide: Australia’s Housing Mess and How to Fix It, published in 2024.

On why Labor is more willing to tackle negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount when it lost elections with such policies in 2019 and 2016, Kohler’s says politics has moved on:

I think now we’ve got to the point where housing affordability is that much worse than it was in 2019, and I think everyone’s ready for something to happen.

[However][…] that will not in itself bring house prices down. But it’ll make everyone feel a bit better.

Asked if there’s any reason for optimism given the multiple challenges in the housing market, Kohler says:

My optimism is simply focused on it not getting any worse. I very much doubt that house prices will go back to where they were in relation to incomes. When they started rising in 2000, house prices were about four times average incomes. And now they’re nine times roughly, maybe ten, depending where you are.

I think that the proportion of people who have to rent for their entire lives will increase. And that’s not so bad. I mean, it’s not the end of the world. A lot of people in Europe and everywhere, they rent all the time.

Kohler says continuing to make suburbs more densely populated can’t be the only solution and Australia should look at better transport to regional cities:

What’s required is better transport infrastructure through the regional centres. So fast trains to regional towns like Bathurst and Newcastle and not just fast trains between Melbourne and Sydney, but fast trains between Melbourne and Bendigo and Geelong.

There are a lot of new suburbs going up around Geelong. So a lot of housing is being built there. [But] there’s a limit to what you can do there, because it’s hard to commute to Melbourne.

On trying to recruit skilled tradespeople from abroad, Kohler points to the problem of migrants not having their trade qualifications recognised:

The countries from which the migrants come now, which is mainly India and China and other Asian countries, the trade qualifications that exist in those countries are not recognised in Australia. So the people who migrate from those countries are not allowed to work as tradies in Australia.

I think there are possibly some good reasons that the trades aren’t recognised, but it’s hard to know. I don’t know whether a lot of tradies would be emigrating from India and China if their qualifications were recognised, but you think that there’d be more of them.

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.

While some of us enjoy curling up with a good book, others prefer watching a series or playing videogames. But from the perspective of neuroscience, reading is much more than just entertainment.

This is especially true for children and teenagers. In the young brain, reading stimulates specific cognitive processes that can make a major difference in adult life.

Reading is important during adolescence because it is a stage where the brain is still developing. Throughout this stage, there is an intense reorganisation of the neural networks that strengthen reasoning, planning and behavioural control.

One of the key brain structures in this process is the prefrontal cortex, a region associated with what are known as executive functions, which are responsible for sustaining attention, inhibiting distractions and controlling information processing. Certain experiences during this stage can catalyse cognitive development, and help to consolidate these abilities.

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Leer más: Teens discover books on social media. What will the under-16s ban do to their reading?

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Understanding a long text activates many of the mental processes that the adolescent brain is still constructing: sustaining attention over a prolonged period, recalling prior information, making connections between ideas, forming predictions, spotting inconsistencies and actively constructing the meaning of the story. Far from being a passive activity, reading involves considerable cognitive effort.

Precisely because of this cognitive demand, reading does not always generate the same immediate engagement as other, more passive activities. While many digital leisure activities offer instant gratification and a constant stream of new stimuli, reading requires an initial period of concentration and engagement before the narrative reward becomes apparent.

Reading and flow states

As reading skills become more established, something interesting happens: reading begins to flow. As the processes of decoding words, accessing their meaning and integrating the information needed to understand the text become automatic, cognitive effort diminishes and readers are able to become immersed in the story.

Attention then shifts away from deciphering sentences and towards understanding the narrative world and the characters. This is the point where reading becomes, for many people, a pleasurable activity.

And regular reading doesn’t just bring enjoyment: it also boosts cognitive development. In fact, its link to progress during adolescence is particularly significant, and even outweighs other factors like parents’ educational attainment.

It also helps us to interpret other people’s thoughts and emotional states and to understand and analyse our own mental processes, evaluate information, and distinguish between strong and weak arguments. By strengthening our critical thinking skills, it protects against fake news and misinformation.

Not all leisure activities activate these processes as deeply.

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Leer más: Thinking aloud: what happens when children read for pleasure in classroom clubs

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Does it matter what you read?

Literary fiction, such as novels or other stories featuring unpredictable characters and ambiguous situations, is particularly effective in fostering an understanding of the mental and emotional states of others, as it immerses the reader in complex social worlds. Informative or educational books, on the other hand, contribute more to the development of reasoning.

The ideal thing is to read what you most enjoy. Nevertheless, reading more varied and high quality texts will develop a wider range of different skills.

And what if you don’t like reading?

Not everyone finds reading inherently appealing. Psychological research suggests that, when it comes to demanding activities, starting early and practising frequently can be key to making them ultimately rewarding. Reading is no exception.

If you are exposed to reading at an early age, you are likely to develop positive feelings towards books. And if your early experiences were negative – you were forced to read things that did not interest you, or struggled and found reading boring – motivation will be much lower.

That is why it is so important that in classrooms and homes we have access to all kinds of books, and that we can choose what to read, read together, and find stories that resonate with our interests and concerns.

For those who feel that “reading isn’t their thing”, it is important to remember that initial difficulty does not indicate a lack of ability – indeed, it is actually part of the learning process. With experience, reading comprehension becomes easier and less demanding, so it is best not to give up before it starts to become enjoyable. Even those who struggle most with reading can benefit from it.

Ultimately, reading journeys, like life journeys themselves, are diverse, and skills can develop in many different ways over time. But it is especially important for children and teenagers. In adolescence, reading is more than a cultural practice – it trains attention, imagination, reasoning and complex thought at a time when the brain’s development is in full swing.

Choosing not to read doesn’t just mean missing out on a pastime. It also means renouncing a powerful tool for cognitive development, and for a well-rounded cultural, critical and civic education.

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A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

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Javier Roca receives research funding from the Spanish State Research Agency, the Valencian Regional Government and the University of Valencia.

Pilar Tejero Gimeno receives research funding from the Spanish State Research Agency, the Valencian Regional Government and the University of Valencia.

Eva Mª Rosa Martínez, Lucía B Palmero Jara y Marina Pi-Ruano no reciben salarios, ni ejercen labores de consultoría, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del puesto académico citado.

The 2026 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala has delivered, as per usual, the who’s who of Hollywood, decked out to the nines.

This year’s dress code was “Fashion is Art”, linked to the Met’s new Costume Art exhibition, open to the public from May 10.

The theme invites us to focus on the human silhouette as a kind of canvas – pushing beyond haute couture into the domain of wearable art. Here’s our pick of ten attendees who we think nailed the brief.

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Read more: The 2026 Met Gala dress code is ‘Fashion is Art’. But is it?

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1. Heidi Klum

Model Heidi Klum wowed spectators as she made her way up the famous Met stairs. Her outfit was inspired by Italian sculptor Raffaele Monti’s (1818–81) iconic Veiled Vestal statue, replicated in latex and foam to give Klum a stony look.

Marble statues with draped fabrics gained popularity in the 1700s, with many giving the illusion of translucence through careful composition.

Klum is well-known for pushing the envelope and embracing complete bodily transformations during themed events.

2. Luke Evans

Actor Luke Evans brought up the temperature up with an iconic head-to-toe leather outfit designed by Palomo Spain and inspired by Finnish drawing artist Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920–91), known by his pseudonym “Tom of Finland”.

Laaksonen developed a series of artworks depicting homoerotic fantasies which have become part of wider queer culture symbolism. He pioneered a recognisable gay aesthetic embraced by the likes of Freddie Mercury, and which pushed the boundaries of queer representation globally.

3. Ben Platt

Singer and actor Ben Platt wore a custom hand-painted and embroidered Tanner Fletcher suit inspired by the work of French post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859–91).

Specifically, his suit jacket references Seurat’s 1884 painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This painting was also the inspiration behind Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical A Sunday in the Park with George.

Seurat was known for his incredibly small paint strokes, which inspired the term “pointillism”.

4. Dree Hemingway

Wearing a look shown on Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Spring Summer 2026 Couture runway, along with draped lab-grown diamond jewels by Pandora, actor Dree Hemingway embraced an oversized and fluid interpretation of an Elizabethan collar decorated in gold.

5. Miles Chamley-Watson

American fencer Miles Chamley-Watson embraced this year’s theme by turning himself into a Cubist artwork, walking down the Met carpet in an abstract painted suit and fencing kit.

Cubism is an abstract art movement popularised in the early 20th century by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It depicts figures, objects and scenes through radical fragmentation.

6. Kendall Jenner

Media personality Kendall Jenner wore a GapStudio by Zac Posen dress reminiscent of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. This 2nd century Greek statue of the goddess of victory sits proudly the top of the Daru staircase in the Louvre.

With a digitally-scanned leather corset and breast plate that hides yet celebrates the nipple, it is yet another example of marble reinterpreted through textile. Discussing the look, Posen explained how he stretched, twisted and reinterpreted a white Gap t-shirt to bridge the gap between accessible fashion and costume.

7. Hunter Schafer

Euphoria actor and transgender rights activist Hunter Schafer’s custom empire-waist Prada look was directly inspired by Gustav Klimt’s (1862–1918) seven-foot painting Mäda Primavesi.

This portrait is part of the Met’s permanent collection. It depicts 9-year-old Mäda, the daughter of Otto and Eugenia Primavesi, two patrons of Austrian art.

8. Gracie Abrams

Another nod to Klimt came from actor and singer Gracie Abrams. Abrams’ gold Chanel dress was inspired by the Austrian painter’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), popularly referred to as the Woman in Gold.

The look was an embodied representation of the painting, which itself has had a tumultuous history. It was once stolen by the Nazis (as recounted in the 2015 movie Woman in Gold).

9. Anne Hathaway

Actor Anne Hathaway’s ball gown by Michael Kors Collection was hand-painted by artist Peter McGough and inspired by John Yeats‘ 1819 poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. A large, instantly recognisable figure reminiscent of a Greek goddess turns Hathaway into an object of art herself.

10. Naomi Watts

Actor Naomi Watts graced the red carpet in a floral, strapless, floor-length Dior gown inspired by the still life paintings of Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750). Most notable here was Watts’ manicure by nail artist Iram Shelton, who spent five hours installing 30 hand-sculpted 3D flowers.

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.

About a year and a half ago, Jaclyn Symes replaced Tim Pallas as Victorian treasurer, ending Pallas’ record-breaking ten years in the role.

A lot was expected of Symes in not much time. She needed to find cash for an election less than two years away, but the state’s finances were already badly stretched by high net debt and elevated pandemic-related spending.

To add to the challenge, the main Victorian public sector union was primed for a fight following a change of leadership elected to protect pay and jobs.

The Victorian budget released today shows Symes has delivered the goods. That’s partly through good management and partly because of good luck.

Back in black

Symes has managed to announce that this financial year the budget will have an operating surplus (which excludes infrastructure spending) for the first time since the pandemic.

Not only that, at A$700 million, it’s roughly $100 million higher than had initially been forecast in last year’s budget.

For the next financial year (2026-27), the operating surplus is budgeted to be almost $1 billion ($900 million less than was budgeted for).

The budget is back in the black despite $2 billion of new “output” initiatives (spending on day-to-day activities of government) for the remainder of this financial year, and – remarkably – $4 billion in 2026–27.

That is a lot of cash, to which can be added an additional $1.8 billion for new infrastructure spending next year.

The big winners

The big winners (in a budget where there were mostly winners) were health, transport and education.

Health gets an additional $1 billion next year, with around 40% allocated for treating more patients.

Transport will benefit from an extra $1 billion in 2025-26 and a further $851 million the following year.

The big ticket items here are a 20% rebate for car registration ($800 million) and free public transport ($430 million).

Education gets an extra $720 million next year, with the biggest beneficiary being additional supports for children with disabilities – $265 million next year, rising to over $700 million in four years’ time.

And all this is to happen while Symes has projected a $600 million fall in stamp duty revenues next year, with higher interest rates cooling the housing market.

The surplus secret

So, how did she manage to do all this?

First, through good management. One of the first things Symes did last year was announce a budget review to be done by well-respected former senior public servant Helen Silver.

That review is already delivering several billion dollars in savings over four years, mainly as a result of cleverly crafted departmental restructures.

This has included replacing highly paid senior public servants with junior ones.

But more than anything else, Symes has benefited from the good fortune of having a Labor government in Canberra, which next year will chip in $4.4 billion more to the state’s coffers than the government had expected this time last year.

Victoria has done very well from the latest GST carve-up, and now expects to receive almost $2 billion more in 2026–7 than was expected last December.

The new federal health agreement includes new disability programs to be delivered at the state level. And the federal government is also providing capital grants to help pay for the Suburban Rail Loop and other projects.

The elephant in the room

The elephant in the budget papers is the state’s level of net debt, which is set to hit $165 billion next year. If you add in all public sector entities and not just those covered by the budget (such as water boards, Homes Victoria and Victorian Rail Track Corporation), that figure is $212 billion.

In four years’ time, debt is projected to rise to $199.3 billion ($248 billion for the entire public sector).

This raises the question: why not make use of all that extra cash to shore up the budget?

Symes points to an electorate doing it tough thanks to the cost of living and to state assets exceeding $440 billion.

Polling day looms

But top of mind will be the election, scheduled for November 28, with Labor’s popularity in the doldrums and its leader on the nose.

For the opposition, which is also struggling in the polls, this budget is not good news. Labor has spent the chocolates.

It is hard to see how the Liberal party will be able to achieve its stated goals of reducing debt while cutting taxes at the same time, without a radical program of cuts. Such cuts would not go down well in an electorate primed for spending.

Symes has tucked away $5 billion in contingencies in case things turn unexpectedly sour, and also to partly fund an election war chest.

Is this budget enough to win votes?

The one bright spot for the opposition is that the budget does not crank up spending on law and order to the degree that might have been expected.

There’s a little for additional jail services, police and crime prevention, but with over 1,000 unfilled positions in the police service at a time of soaring crime, that looks like a problem still in need of a fix.

The Victorian treasurer has crafted a clever budget for an election year. But with only six months until election day, it may be a bit late to ensure an unpopular Labor government secures the additional and record fourth term it desperately craves.

David Hayward 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 Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has lifted the official cash rate by another 25 basis points, the third hike this year as it struggles to keep inflation under control.

The increase takes the cash rate to 4.35%, and fully reverses the three rate cuts delivered in 2025. The hike had been widely expected by economists after a sharp rise in inflation figures last week. RBA Governor Michele Bullock told a media conference:

Inflation in Australia was already too high before the recent conflict in the Middle East began. We must get on top of inflation now so it doesn’t get get away from us.

Why the RBA moved

The reason is clear: inflation is too high. The latest figures showed annual consumer price inflation rose to 4.6% in March, up from 3.7% in February.

The jump was driven heavily by higher fuel prices triggered by the war in Iran, which began on February 28.

The RBA cannot simply dismiss this as a temporary oil price shock. Its preferred measure of underlying inflation, the trimmed mean, was still 3.3% in March. That is above the RBA’s 2–3% target band. It suggests price pressures are not only coming from petrol prices, but are spreading across parts of the domestic economy.

As the RBA noted in its post-meeting statement,

Higher fuel prices are adding to inflation and there are indications that this is likely to have second-round effects on prices for goods and services more broadly.

This is why the RBA acted. Higher interest rates will not produce more oil, bring down global shipping costs, or end geopolitical conflict. But they can reduce demand in the economy and, just as importantly, signal that the RBA will not allow a temporary price shock to become a lasting inflation problem.

The increase will add about $100 to monthly repayments on the average new mortgage loan of A$700,000.

Another split vote

The decision was again split, with eight members voting to raise the cash rate and one voting to keep it unchanged. “We had a lot of debate,” Bullock said.

The 8–1 vote shows there was a strong majority in favour of acting on inflation, but not complete agreement. Most members appear to have judged that the risk of inflation staying above target outweighed the risk of weaker growth.

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The policy dilemma: rising inflation, slowing growth

The move comes just a week before the federal budget, with reports the government is considering further cost-of-living support with an “earned income offset” for wage earners of $200 to $300.

The potential extra spending adds to the policy dilemma facing the RBA: inflation is rising, but the economy is likely to slow. And consumer confidence has collapsed to recessionary levels, risking a further slowdown in spending.

In the worst case, Australia could face a mild form of stagflation – a situation where inflation remains too high while economic growth weakens. This is one of the hardest environments for a central bank to manage.

When inflation is high because the economy is growing too strongly, the solution is more straightforward. Higher interest rates cool demand, slow spending and help bring inflation down.

But today’s problem is more complicated. Higher interest rates will not ease the oil supply shock. They can only work by slowing domestic demand.

That means the RBA faces a difficult trade-off. If it does too little, inflation could stay high for longer and expectations could become harder to control. But if it does too much, it risks pushing the economy into a sharper slowdown or even a recession.

This tension was clear in the RBA’s assessment of the outlook:

Australian GDP growth is forecast to be a little lower than previously expected due to higher fuel prices and the assumed higher path for interest rates.

Inflation to stay higher for longer

The updated quarterly forecasts released with today’s decision underline this difficulty.

In February, before the war began, the RBA expected headline inflation to peak at 4.2% and underlying inflation to peak at 3.7% in June.

It now expects headline inflation to peak at 4.8%, with underlying inflation reaching 3.8% at the same time.

This upward revision means the RBA is no longer looking at a gradual return of inflation to the target band. It is now dealing with a renewed inflation shock, on top of domestic price pressures that had not yet fully disappeared.

The risk is that higher fuel prices feed into broader prices and wages. If that happens, inflation could become harder to bring down, even after the original shock fades.

That is why the RBA has moved again. It wants to prevent a temporary global price shock from turning into a more persistent inflation problem.

What it means for households and government

The RBA’s message is uncomfortable but clear. It is prepared to accept a weaker economy and a softer labour market if that is what is needed to return inflation to target.

For households, the rate rise will increase repayments for borrowers on variable-rate mortgages and put more pressure on household budgets.

For the government, it means fiscal policy needs to be careful in next week’s budget. Any cost-of-living support must be designed in a way that helps vulnerable households without adding too much extra demand to the economy.

The narrow path ahead

Today’s decision was not an easy one. The RBA is trying to stop a temporary global shock from becoming a permanent inflation problem.

But the more it raises rates, the greater the risk that the economy slows more sharply than expected.

That is the narrow path the RBA is now walking: doing enough to control inflation, without doing too much damage to growth.

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

As high poll numbers are increasingly emboldening One Nation, Pauline Hanson now says she might seek to move to the House of Representatives.

Her adviser James Ashby first floated the idea on Sky News on Monday, saying he would “throw a new one into the mix”.

“Pauline Hanson might step down from the Senate […] and run for the seat that she lives in,” he said.

On Tuesday Hanson confirmed a lower house tilt was a possibility, saying, “It’s under consideration; no decisions have been made.

"We’re still two years outside the election.”

The speculation around Hanson follows One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce repeating in recent days that he might stand for the party in his present seat of New England, rather than run for the Senate at the next election, which has been his more likely option since he defected from the Nationals.

He told Sky on Sunday, “If it looks like we’re going to get […] a reasonable number of House of Representatives seats, then the party will no doubt make the request that I stand for New England,” he said.

“We have to have some oversight and some process to make sure we look like a professional diligent outfit in the House of Representatives.

"If that is not the case, then we continue with Plan A, which is stand for the Senate.”

Hanson lives in the Queensland seat of Wright, which is held by the Liberals. An alternative for her would be the Labor-held seat of Blair.

But hard heads will be warning Hanson of the dangers of trying to make a shift to the lower house. Failure to pull it off could not only see her out of parliament but could lead to the collapse of the party, which is built around its 71-year-old leader.

Hanson started her parliamentary career in the House of Representatives when she won the seat of Oxley as an independent. She had been disendorsed by the Liberal Party because of remarks about programs for Indigenous people, but given the timing she still had the Liberal tag beside her name on the ballot paper. She lost the seat in 1998.

Hanson is up for re-election at the 2028 election.

One Nation’s surge in the polls in recent months is leading to some muscle-flexing and a degree of hubris. Senior party figures have been saying that if there were a hung parliament, One Nation would give confidence and supply for a Coalition government but would want to obtain concessions on policy in return.

The party’s federal support is about to be tested in real time this weekend in the Farrer byelection, seen as a tight contest between One Nation’s David Farley and independent Michelle Milthorpe. Farley is receiving preferences over Milthorpe from both the Liberals and the Nationals.

If Farley wins Farrer, this will be the first time One Nation has won a House of Representatives seat.

A win would give it an important platform for trying to win regional seats in the November Victorian election.

Hanson was in Adelaide on Tuesday for the swearing in of the One Nation team in the new South Australian parliament. The party there has four lower house members and three in the upper house; its leader is Cory Bernardi, a one-time Liberal senator.

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.

Across the world, concern about democratic backsliding – the erosion of democratic institutions and civil liberties – is growing.

It has become a live issue even in established systems, where erosion can often occur through the steady degradation of institutions and processes.

A recent report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) highlights the role of parliamentary processes in this dynamic.

The core insight of this report is deceptively simple: parliamentary rules are not just procedural technicalities. They are often important institutional guardrails for democracy.

The IDEA report identifies several ways in which these guardrails can be undermined. Governments may compress legislative timelines, limit debate, or curtail committee scrutiny in ways that reduce the capacity of parliaments to perform their core functions. Procedural tools – for example, control over the legislative agenda or the structuring of committees – can be used to entrench executive dominance.

These insights resonate in how democracy in practised in Australia. There is a growing chorus of concern – from academics, research-based organisations such as the Centre for Public Integrity, professional bodies such as the Law Council of Australia, and non-government parliamentarians – that the Australian parliament is being undermined in different ways. As a result, policies and accountability are suffering.

Law-making with little parliamentary oversight

A first area of concern is the heavy reliance on executive law-making with little respect for parliamentary oversight. This was particularly apparent during the COVID pandemic, where governments understandably required flexibility to respond to rapidly evolving circumstances.

The Senate Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee’s inquiry showed how easily significant executive lawmaking was undertaken outside of parliamentary control. In just the first seven months of 2020, 249 legislative instruments were made. Of those, 48 — around 20% — were exempt from parliamentary disallowance (that is, the parliament cannot veto them). Experts queried whether such exemptions were required even in the context of the pandemic.

The committee also found reduced parliamentary sittings meant less oversight. The committee recommended stronger safeguards, including limiting exemptions and ensuring emergency instruments remain subject to scrutiny.

While executive law making is a necessary feature of modern governance, there are serious concerns when it happens without parliamentary scrutiny. The expansion of such powers raise questions about the balance between efficiency and accountability. These concerns were exacerbated within, but extend beyond the pandemic response.

Disrespect for parliament’s constitutional role

A second issue concerns the integrity of primary lawmaking processes. The Centre for Public Integrity’s recent report, Lawmaking with Integrity, documents a pattern of legislative practices that, while not unprecedented, have become increasingly common. These include

• compressed timeframes
• limited or opaque consultation
• the curtailment of parliamentary scrutiny in the name or urgency.

The Law Council of Australia has expressed similar concerns. In 2025, it too released a Best Practice Legislative Development Checklist.

A small selection of case studies illustrate these trends.

The first involves the passage of the 2025 reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. Concerns were raised about the limited consultation preceding introduction and the “urgent” progression of the bill through parliament before the conclusion of the Senate Committee inquiry – even before public submissions had closed. This required the suspension of the Senate Standing Order that requires committees to report on bills before passage.

The proposed 2025 changes to freedom of information laws provide another stark illustration of how parliamentary processes can be abused. The FOI amendment bill was developed with no public consultation. The government’s approach to the parliamentary scrutiny process did little to restore confidence.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry was conducted by a government-dominated, government-chaired committee. Notably, it did not call a number of prominent expert submitters to give evidence.

Equally troubling, reporting later suggested that in seeking to secure passage of the bill, the government had offered additional staffing resources to the opposition. If this allegation is true, it raises serious concerns about the use of public resources in negotiating legislative outcomes.

Government dominance of parliamentary committees

A third area of concern, also highlighted in the IDEA report, is the functioning of parliamentary committees. Committees are central to the scrutiny function of parliament. Yet their effectiveness depends on their composition and operation.

Where committees are dominated by government members, or timelines are truncated, their capacity to perform this role can be diminished. This is why the Centre for Public Integrity has called for best-practice models that ensure at least integrity scrutiny committees are not government-dominated (which remains the norm across most Australian jurisdictions).

Government control of information

A further dimension of democratic erosion is the control of information. Parliamentary procedure also determines what information is available to the parliament, and therefore what scrutiny is possible. Parliament requires appropriate access to information to make laws and hold the executive to account. These functions are central to responsible government.

It is in this context that growing concerns about information control in Australia must be understood. There has been an increasing pattern of government resistance to providing documents to parliament when requested.

The Centre for Public Integrity’s 2025 report, Still Shrouded in Secrecy, documented a significant increase in refusals to comply with Senate orders for the production of documents. Governments are more frequently asserting broad public interest immunity claims and, in some cases, failing to provide adequate justification for withholding information. There is no independent procedure to very such claims.

Parliamentary procedure dictates how the parliament can respond to such refusals. To date, this has had limited success.

At the same time, concerns have been raised about the quality of information provided to parliament in the legislative process itself. In a number of cases involving complex and uncertain reforms, governments have declined to release the underlying evidence or legal advice informing legislative proposals. Instead, it has asked parliament, and the public, to accept assurances that appropriate advice has been obtained.

In at least one instance, such assurances have later been called into question.

Resisting backsliding

In Australia, what may be dismissed as procedural trends are actually concerning signals of democratic backsliding. In particular, the Albanese government, armed with commanding parliamentary numbers following the 2025 election, has too often used that position to undermine the constitutional role of the parliament as a legislative and oversight body.

A healthy democracy requires maintaining democratic guardrails. In the current environment, this will require vigilance. Civil society must be willing to call out poor process, and oppositions, minor parties and independents must be prepared to defend parliament’s role. Importantly, those within the governing parties must be willing to uphold the constitutional function of the legislature rather than acquiesce to the demands of leadership.

Gabrielle Appleby works as the Research Director for the Centre for Public Integrity. She has previously received grants from the Australian Research Council.

Eighty-one years after Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker, a viral video on TikTok shows an AI-generated vision of the Nazi dictator standing in Antarctica, shoulders broad and face smiling, sipping a White Monster Energy drink while Men at Work’s iconic song Down Under plays.

It’s an absurd image, but one that makes sense in the context of the “Agartha” trend on TikTok, which is quietly bringing white supremacist narratives into the mainstream to be seen by millions of users.

The modern myth of Agartha, a supposed utopia hidden inside the hollow Earth, was constructed from older pieces by esoteric authors after the second world war. It blends “Aryan” white supremacist themes with ideas of an occult SS and Third Reich spaceships.

Literal belief in hollow-Earth myths or Nazi UFOs is not the point. Instead, it’s an aesthetic – one that can host both coded far-right messages and explicit ones, fused with pop-cultural references such as the White Monster Energy meme.

Mainstreaming through borderline content

Agartha videos on social media are “awful but lawful”: the content is objectionable but legal. It allows extremists to embed their narratives into mainstream social media spaces, without triggering moderation or outright rejection by the audience. As a result, they can reach large, young audiences.

To understand how the underlying esoteric myths are used, we analysed a network of more than 43,000 Agartha-related TikTok videos and closely studied selected examples. This analysis is part of an ongoing project led by researchers at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The goal is to understand how extremists abuse platform features to carry radical narratives into the mainstream.

We identified four key mechanisms which far-right actors use to push radical narratives to unsuspecting audiences: aesthetic camouflage, dog-whistles and split-second glimpses, network building, and weaponised irony. Let’s unpack each of these terms.

Aesthetic camouflage

Moderation systems on social media platforms aim to remove overt extremist propaganda. These systems work imperfectly, but overt propaganda is unlikely to reach mass audiences before being removed.

Instead, far-right actors often use generative AI to mask racial ideology behind seemingly benign tropes from science fiction and fantasy. This allows a “de-demonising” of their ideas. Elf-like depictions of the “Aryan” inhabitants of Agartha, or footage of an underground utopia, make the idea of a white ethnostate seem palatable.

The engaging aesthetic keeps people watching longer. In turn, this triggers the algorithm to push the video to wider audiences.

Dog whistles and split-second provocations

Far-right actors infuse their content with dog whistles that communicate to a certain audience without triggering moderation.

Our research identified recurring visual symbols in Agartha videos. “Raw milk” signals white supremacy. The number 271, which appears in hundreds of the videos, is a code for Holocaust denial.

Agartha videos also sometimes include overt extremist markers such as the Hakenkreuz (the Nazi symbol of the “hooked cross” or swastika). They are often flashed for only fractions of a second.

This is a calculated provocation. It tests and pushes platform boundaries, normalising the presence of far-right markers and slowly desensitising viewers. At the same time, successful inclusion of forbidden symbols in videos with viral reach serves as a badge of honour within the in-group.

Building network bridges

The Agartha community is not an isolated echo chamber. Our analysis shows the Agartha network connects to others on TikTok. Around 87% of these connections come via the inclusion of mundane, mainstream hashtags on Agartha videos.

Extremists may deliberately “hijack” benign, high-traffic hashtags, such as #roblox or #loganpaul, to push their content into everyday feeds. Agartha is also strongly connected to gym and fitness content. Hashtags such as #gymtok serve as a bridge, potentially funnelling users towards radical narratives.

Here, we also observed targeted appeals. Agartha videos would commonly include hashtags associated with “looksmaxxing” – a trend for extreme physical self-optimisation – to push their videos towards audiences seen as potentially susceptible, such as insecure young men. Well-known looksmaxxers were also sometimes depicted in Agartha videos.

Weaponised irony

As the example of Adolf Hitler drinking a Monster Energy illustrates, Agartha videos rely heavily on absurd situations, frequently co-opting mainstream social media trends.

Because White Monster Energy is a popular meme within non-extremist spaces, users familiar with the trend are particularly likely to get algorithmic recommendations fused with extremist narratives.

Similarly, actors superimpose mainstream figures into Agartha to force association, such as YouTuber Logan Paul or actor Mads Mikkelsen.

Such co-opting is also done through music, with many hollow-Earth edits set to Men at Work’s 1980s hit Down Under. The track serves as a darkly ironic nod to the subterranean utopia.

This increases the chances for algorithmic amplification while providing creators with plausible deniability. Criticisms can be dismissed as a misunderstanding of dark humour or current trends.

Recognising the threat

Agartha is more than just a digital resurfacing of fringe occultism. It is a blueprint for how to design extremist content for algorithmically curated short-video platforms.

It’s also a reminder that extremist content on social media does not exist in isolation. Instead, it lives in what researchers call “hybridised spaces”, where users move in and out of extremist discourse. In such spaces, borderline content, outright extremism, mundane trends and humour blend seamlessly – and participants may find their mainstream interests lead them to radical narratives.

Marten Risius receives funding through the Distinguished Professorship Program via the Bavarian Hightech Agenda from the Bavarian Ministry of Sciences and Arts.

Christopher David 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.

If you’ve decided to separate from your partner, and you have kids together, it’s normal to worry about the potential impact on them.

Although some studies have shown a higher risk of mental health problems for children of divorced parents, separation is not inherently harmful.

And if the household has a lot of tension and conflict, evidence shows “staying together for the kids” can actually be worse for their mental health and wellbeing.

Still, change can be hard for everyone – especially children, who thrive with routines, boundaries and stability.

So, what’s the best way to talk about separating? And how can you keep things as consistent as possible?

How to talk about separating

Be clear and direct with your children about what the change in your relationship means to them and their day-to-day lives and be open to hearing how they feel.

Will you continue living together for a while? Will one of you move out of the family home? Or maybe the kids will stay at home while the parents take turns living there (sometimes called “birdnesting”).

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Read more: Soaring house prices may be locking people into marriages, new research shows

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Have this conversation first with your co-parent and plan how you’ll tell the kids. It can be helpful to make some key dot points and assign a parent to each.

This doesn’t mean telling your kids everything. Focus on the details impacting them (such as care arrangements) and not the specific story of relationship disrepair.

Details depend on their age

Younger children will need fewer details than older children and teens. For example, you might say:

we are still a family and love you so much. But some families look different and are happier in two houses.

For younger kids, reading a picture book – such as Two Homes by Claire Masurel or The Invisible String by Patrice Karst – can be a helpful follow up that you can keep revisiting.

Older children and teens may benefit from more nuanced discussions about why you are separating. For example:

we both love you more than anything. But we’re not in love with each other anymore and have decided that it’s best to separate and live in two houses.

Try not to talk badly about the other parent, even if your child asks if one parent did something wrong. It’s important to allow your kids the chance for a meaningful relationship with both parents and to develop their own perspectives.

Where possible, include older children in the decisions that will affect them, such as how they split time between houses or how they want their parents to share information about them. This can increase their sense of belonging and protect against mental health problems.

What about co-parenting?

Effective co-parenting after separation improves mental health outcomes for children and parents.

Keep communication with your co-parent clear and direct and keep your emotions in check. Raising concerns can help you stay aligned on parenting and aware of any potential issues brewing. Speak to your co-parent directly and not via your child.

If there’s conflict, aim to focus on problem-solving rather than getting personal. Stay calm, try to be receptive, and don’t raise issues in the heat of the moment. It’s OK to say “I’ll get back to you” or to communicate by email or text if that takes the heat out.

And call out the good – if you notice your co-parent nailing something, tell them.

But stay safe

If you are leaving a violent or unsafe relationship with an ex, the rules for engagement change – what will keep you and your children safe is most important.

Seek help if you feel scared into agreeing with parenting decisions or are experiencing attempts to control you or your child.

In an emergency, call triple 0.

Strategies for maintaining consistency

Consistency is good for kids living across two houses. If possible, try:

• keeping certain routines in place, such as morning chores, what happens at bedtime, and when that is

• creating a shared online diary – having clear dates and shared expectations about care and events can reduce conflict

• scheduling a regular, check-in meeting with your co-parent where you can discuss things like mood or behaviour changes in your child or any concerns, maintaining routines, upcoming events, and managing holidays, sport and schooling.

If collaborating with your co-parent doesn’t work, maintaining routines at your own place will still benefit your kids.

When does my child need extra support?

Children’s ability to regulate emotions often decreases during stress and change. Areas to keep an eye on include changes to behaviour, emotions, sleep, eating and friendships.

If particular behaviours are causing a lot of distress to your child (or others), impacting their day-to-day life, and are very different to others their age, it may be time to get some extra help.

Online tools such as the Growing Minds Australia Check-In can be a good place to start to check how well your child is coping.

Evidence-based online parenting programs, such as Triple P for Family Transitions and Parentworks can also help you build skills for responding to difficult behaviours in your child and reduce parental conflict.

Other helpful resources include:

• Relationships Australia’s guide to parenting post-separation

• The Raising Children’s Networks resources for talking to children and managing new living arrangements

• Headspace’s supporting a young person through separation.

If you need more support, talk to your GP about finding a psychologist for you or your child, and whether you’re eligible for a Medicare rebate.

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The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Jaimie Northam has received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund.

A person fleeing persecution may not travel with extensive documentation, legal advice or even a neatly ordered account of their situation.

Trauma, fear, language barriers, fragmented evidence and a distrust of authority can significantly shape how they share their story.

This is why New Zealand, like many other countries, has a refugee determination system to assess claims carefully and fairly against a backdrop of someone’s forced displacement.

New Zealand’s proposed Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill seeks to shift this system away from its humanitarian orientation and toward one built on suspicion and control.

While the United States provides a clear example of how such a shift can unfold, it is not unique. Across a number of jurisdictions, asylum systems have increasingly been reframed through the language of risk and compliance, with greater emphasis on deterrence and enforcement.

In many countries, immigration policy has been increasingly organised around a preemptive logic – suspect first, verify later – enabled by expanded surveillance and reduced transparency.

New Zealand’s legislative language and political rhetoric about “risk”, “compliance”, and “system integrity” signal a similar shift. Asylum becomes less about protection and more a problem to manage.

Submissions on the Immigration Amendment Bill have now closed, with the select committee due to report by mid-August. But many organisations working within the refugee and asylum sector have said the proposed changes risk undermining fairness, proportionality and the core purpose of refugee protection.

Reduced humanitarian appeals

Some of the proposed changes are technical, but their implications are not.

One provision introduces the idea of “bad faith”, meaning a claim could be discounted if a person is seen to have contributed to their own risk, such as drawing attention to themselves through media or political activity.

This creates a paradox: remain invisible and your claim may lack evidence; become visible and your claim may be questioned.

The bill also narrows what people can do while they await a decision, often for extended periods. Someone who has found a job or formed a committed relationship would be unable to shift onto a work or partnership visa.

For people already living with uncertainty, this undermines efforts to rebuild stability and dignity.

Access to humanitarian appeals would be reduced. These appeals have functioned as an important safeguard, allowing decisions to be revisited when circumstances change. Limiting access narrows the system’s ability to correct itself.

Combined with faster processing and removal of a person from New Zealand, this leaves less room for error and can have potentially life-altering consequences.

This is particularly concerning given research demonstrates the Immigration and Protection Tribunal’s review function operates as a key safeguard, upholding human rights by preventing abrupt removals, or allowing more dignified transitions for those who have to leave.

‘Fortress New Zealand’

The government’s own analysis of the bill identifies a small number of asylum cases involving individuals with serious criminal histories, while acknowledging significant uncertainty in the data.

It notes the difficulty in distinguishing between claims that lack merit and ones that fall short of the legal threshold for establishing fears of persecution under refugee law.

In other words, the scale of the problem is not clearly established. Despite this, concerns about risk appear to have become the government’s central justification for pursuing such wide changes.

This is where the underlying policy logic matters. When uncertainty is treated as risk, and risk as something to be preemptively controlled, thresholds for intervention lower. Measures designed to manage outlier cases can reshape the entire system, affecting many legitimate claims.

Our research on 11,000 asylum claimants in New Zealand over 25 years shows how emphasis on credibility, risk and system integrity have resulted in a pattern we have described as “fortress New Zealand”.

These latest proposed changes are part of an incremental slide away from a protective orientation toward control, efficiency and risk management. It happens not through a single decisive reform but by cumulative adjustments that reshape the system’s character.

Policy drift

Now, National’s coalition partners are calling for tighter immigration controls in general. ACT has proposed extending deportation liability indefinitely, while NZ First leader Winston Peters used social media to say ACT’s proposal “doesn’t even touch the sides”.

This shift toward harsher, enforcement-first immigration settings is not unique to New Zealand. The US experience, particularly under the second Trump administration, illustrates how quickly a protection framework can change.

Deportations increase, access to asylum is constrained, enforcement capacity grows, and refugee admissions are reduced. At the same time, access to judges narrows, enforcement extends into everyday spaces, and personal data is repurposed for immigration control.

New Zealand is not there yet, but the direction of policy drift is recognisable.

At its core, the Immigration Amendment Bill poses a simple question: what kind of asylum system should Aotearoa New Zealand have? One that begins from a position of suspicion, where claims are treated as risks to be managed? Or one grounded in protection while addressing instances of misuse?

Public confidence and system integrity matter. But both depend on balance. When the system tilts too far toward enforcement, it risks undermining the principles it is meant to uphold.

Jay Marlowe received funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (New Zealand) through a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, which supported the research informing this article.

Timothy Fadgen 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.

Hostage-taking by nation-states is emerging as an overlooked consequence of the more unstable and dangerous world that’s been created by the fracturing rules-based order.

In an increasingly might-is-right system of international relations, malign actors have become even more emboldened to take the citizens of Western democracies hostage.

Once primarily the domain of non-state actors, including terror groups, drug cartels and armed gangs, hostage-taking has become a lucrative bargaining chip in the hands of countries like Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela. (I was imprisoned by Iran for more than two years on false charges of espionage.)

It has become an unorthodox yet highly effective means of forcing concessions, including prisoner swaps, financial payments and the removal of sanctions.

The unfortunate truth is that hostage diplomacy works, and there is usually a lot to gain and not much to lose for the countries that practice it.

However, very little scholarly research has examined the phenomenon. The data we do have on cases is patchy. This is in part because the governments whose citizens have been taken hostage usually prefer to negotiate in the shadows. We only tend to hear about select cases that attract media coverage.

Part of the challenge in proposing ways to tackle an amorphous problem like state hostage-taking is that, while out-of-the-box thinking is required, some approaches may not be feasible or may not work at all. We shouldn’t shy away from this.

Treating state hostage-taking as a consular issue to be solved via traditional diplomacy hasn’t worked. Bad actors haven’t been deterred; rather the opposite. An innovative new approach is long overdue.

What we’ve found

A new, special edition of the the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (which I guest edited) highlights some possible policy solutions.

Grappling with this issue requires us to ask: what kinds of dynamics are motivating states to take hostages in the first place? And how can governments take better care of former hostages and their families?

The special issue is a collaborative effort between practitioners and scholars, featuring contributors from a variety of backgrounds. These include human rights lawyers who have represented victims, the current UN special rapporteur on torture, activists, specialists in trauma recovery, and even former hostages themselves.

Some of the ideas put forward in our research include:

1) Expanded international legal approaches

This includes reframing state hostage-taking as a form of torture and, under certain conditions, even a war crime or crime against humanity.

UN torture rapporteur Alice Edwards argues this would help open avenues for victims seeking justice. Many have been frustrated by impediments to restitution when a nation-state is responsible for hostage-taking, not an individual.

Legal academic Carla Ferstman suggests governments should look to existing models in the US and Canada and consider passing legislation to allow victims of state-sponsored terrorism to sue hostage-taking states in their domestic courts.

2) Stronger government-led responses to hostage-taking

Many countries don’t have a designated office or role within government to coordinate domestic and multilateral responses to hostage-taking.

These positions exist now in the US and Canada. This step was also proposed in a 2024 Australian Senate inquiry into the wrongful detention of Australian citizens overseas. The government has yet to respond to the inquiry.

3) Innovative models for multilateral rapid responses to hostage crises

Several contributors to the journal have proposed new ideas for how states can do this, including former Canadian Justice Minister and Attorney General Irwin Cotler (with international human rights lawyer Brandon Silver) and former hostage Michael Kovrig (with international security and diplomacy expert Vina Nadjibulla).

Their recommendations include:

• developing rapid-response mechanisms to hostage-taking in pre-existing multilateral groupings, such as the G7 or NATO

• strengthening the Declaration on Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations (launched by Canada and now supported by more than 80 nations)

• imposing multilateral sanctions and other tools of economic leverage against states that engage in hostage-taking.

4) Greater investment in post-detention recovery care for both victims and families

Proposals for taking better care of former detainees came from the NGO Hostage International, human rights lawyer Sarah Teich and an Israeli team involved in designing reintegration programs for Gaza hostages.

These proposals include:

• passing legislation to mandate a “duty of care” by governments to former hostages

• developing new strategies for helping former hostages overcome their psychological challenges, based on emerging research in the field.

Learning from specific cases

It’s also important we learn from the recent incidents of hostage-taking around the world. These need to be viewed as a global problem, not a series of separate incidents to be managed in isolation by governments.

For instance, in an innovative study on Israeli public opinion in the wake of the mass hostage-taking by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, 2023, our contributors found that feelings of connectedness to hostage families had an impact on how the public perceived hostage deal-making. This emphasises the importance of family advocacy in cases like these.

Other research shows Russia escalated its strategy of taking US citizens hostage as the relationship between the two countries deteriorated, particularly following the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

Russia’s approach differs from that of other hostage-taking states as it appears to be primarily used to target Americans. As such, it should be viewed as a feature of the bilateral relationship.

A way forward

If the world wants to do something about hostage diplomacy, we need to brainstorm, exchange ideas and test solutions, no matter how radical.

What has emerged from our research is that hostage diplomacy is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to identify and even harder to deter and prevent.

This is where scholars and practitioners can play an important role. They are the ones who can gather data, identify trends and focus the attention of policymakers trying to tackle this growing international issue.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert 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.