International trade expert Steven Okun has warned that the “era of uncertainty” in global trade set in motion by US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies is likely to be prolonged as there is no certainty now of a US return to pre-Trump trade policy era
He has advised small economies like Fiji and Pacific countries to band together and try to negotiate a collective trade agreement with the US.
“We’re in a transitional phase and this transitional phase is going to take years,” Okun said in an interview with The Fiji Times during his visit to Fiji earlier this month.
“This isn’t months, this is going to be years and after Donald Trump is no longer president, the question is going to be who replaces him. And we just have no idea.
“If the replacement for Donald Trump is a Democrat, is that Democrat going to be more like Joe Biden — work with partners and allies — or is he going to be more progressive like Bernie Sanders, and he or she is going to have a different approach to trade.
“We don’t know which way the Democrats are going to go.
“We don’t know which way the Republicans are going to go. Either the successor is going to be somebody more of a traditional Republican, somebody like the Governor of Georgia or the Governor of New Hampshire who are both more establishment-type Republicans, or is the next president going to be Donald Trump Jr or JD Vance.
‘Upended’ system
“If it’s going to be one of those two, it’s going to be very similar presumably to what we have right now, which means we’re not going to get certainty any time soon.”
Okun, founder and chief executive officer of Singapore-based business advisory firm APAC Advisors and a former Clinton Administration official, said the United States under President Trump had upended the global multilateral trading system that the world had been operating on for the last 80 years.
The shifting dynamics in response to that had seen countries gravitating towards regional trading blocs, something that Pacific countries, including Fiji, should seriously consider, he said.
“We see from the US perspective the desire to have bilateral trade and we see other countries creating plurilateral systems or regional trading blocs . . . ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) would be one, CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) is such an agreement, RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) is another plurilateral system.
“That’s something that I think a country like Fiji should be looking at, same as a country in Southeast Asia — are there blocs that we can be part of and can the Pacific nations come together and collectively get a better agreement with the United States?”
The Fiji Cabinet revealed last week that negotiations were ongoing with the US for a potential US-Fiji Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART).
Okun, who came to Fiji at the invitation of the Fiji-USA Business Council, was also sceptical about the August 1 deadline set by President Trump in April for the activation of reciprocal tariffs against about 90 countries, which would mean Fijian exporters of goods into the US would pay 32 percent duty at the border.
Sky expected the deal to deliver revenue diversification and uplift of around $95 million a year.
Sky expected Discovery NZ’s operations to deliver sustainable underlying earnings growth of at least $10 million from the 2028 financial year.
Sky chief executive Sophie Moloney said it was a compelling opportunity for the company, with net integration costs of about $6.5 million.
“This is a compelling opportunity for Sky that directly supports our ambition to be Aotearoa New Zealand’s most engaging and essential media company,” she said.
Confidential advance notice
Sky said it gave the Commerce Commission confidential advance notice of the transaction, and the commission did not intend to consider the acquisition further.
Warner Bros Discovery Australia and NZ managing director Michael Brooks said it was a “fantastic outcome” for both companies.
“The continued challenges faced by the New Zealand media industry are well documented, and over the past 12 months, the Discovery NZ team has worked to deliver a new, more sustainable business model following a significant restructure in 2024,” Brooks said.
“While this business is not commercially viable as a standalone asset in WBD’s New Zealand portfolio, we see the value Three and ThreeNow can bring to Sky’s existing offering of complementary assets.”
Sky said on completion, Discovery NZ’s balance sheet would be clear of some long-term obligations, including property leases and content commitments, and would include assets such as the ThreeNow platform.
Sky said irrespective of the transaction, the company was confident of achieving its 30 cents a share dividend target for 2026.
‘Massive change’ for NZ media – ThreeNews to continue Founder of The Spinoff and media commentator Duncan Greive said the deal would give Sky more reach and was a “massive change” in New Zealand’s media landscape.
He noted Sky’s existing free-to-air presence via Sky Open (formerly Prime), but said acquiring Three gave it the second-most popular audience outlet on TV.
“Because of the inertia of how people use television, Three is just a much more accessible channel and one that’s been around longer,” Greive said.
“To have basically the second-most popular channel in the country as part of their stable just means they’ve got a lot more ad inventory, much bigger audiences.”
It also gave Sky another outlet for their content, and would allow it to compete further against TVNZ, both linear and online, Greive said.
He said there may be a question mark around the long-term future of Three’s news service, which was produced by Stuff.
No reference to ThreeNews
Sky made no reference to ThreeNews in its announcement. However, Stuff confirmed ThreeNews would continue for now.
“Stuff’s delivery of ThreeNews is part of the deal but there are also now lots of new opportunities ahead that we are excited to explore together,” Stuff owner Sinead Boucher said in a statement.
On the deal itself, Boucher said she was “delighted” to see Three back in New Zealand ownership under Sky.
While public attention has been focused on the domestic fast-track consenting process for infrastructure and mining, Associate Minister of Finance David Seymour has been pushing through another fast-track process — this time for foreign investment in New Zealand.
There are valid concerns that piecemeal reforms to the current act have made it complex and unwieldy. But the new bill is equally convoluted and would significantly reduce effective scrutiny of foreign investments — especially in forestry.
A three-step test Step one of a three-step process set out in the bill gives the regulator — the Overseas Investment Office which sits within Land Information NZ — 15 days to decide whether a proposed investment would be a risk to New Zealand’s “national interest”.
If they don’t perceive a risk, or that initial assessment is not completed in time, the application is automatically approved.
Transactions involving fisheries quotas and various land categories, or any other applications the regulator identifies, would require a “national interest” assessment under stage two.
These would be assessed against a “ministerial letter” that sets out the government’s general policy and preferred approach to conducting the assessment, including any conditions on approvals.
Other mandatory factors to be considered in the second stage include the act’s new “purpose” to increase economic opportunity through “timely consent” of less sensitive investments. The new test would allow scrutiny of the character and capability of the investor to be omitted altogether.
If the regulator considers the national interest test is not met, or the transaction is “contrary to the national interest”, the minister of finance then makes a decision based on their assessment of those factors.
Inadequate regulatory process Seymour has blamed the current screening regime for low volumes of foreign investment. But Treasury’s 2024 regulatory impact statement on the proposed changes to international investment screening acknowledges many other factors that influence investor decisions.
Moreover, the Treasury statement acknowledges public views that foreign investment rules should “manage a wide range of risks” and “that there is inherent non-economic value in retaining domestic ownership of certain assets”.
Treasury officials also recognised a range of other public concerns, including profits going offshore, loss of jobs, and foreign control of iconic businesses.
The regulatory impact statement did not cover these factors because it was required to consider only the coalition commitment. The Treasury panel reported “notable limitations” on the bill’s quality assurance process.
A fuller review was “infeasible” because it could not be completed in the time required, and would be broader than necessary to meet the coalition commitment to amend the act in the prescribed way.
The requirement to implement the bill in this parliamentary term meant the options officials could consider, even within the scope of the coalition agreement, were further limited.
Time constraints meant “users and key stakeholders have not been consulted”, according to the Treasury statement. Environmental and other risks would have to be managed through other regulations.
Forestry ‘slash’ after Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 . . . no need to consider foreign investors’ track records. Image: Getty/The Conversation
No ‘benefit to NZ’ test While the bill largely retains a version of the current screening regime for residential and farm land, it removes existing forestry activities from that definition (but not new forestry on non-forest land). It also removes extraction of water for bottling, or other bulk extraction for human consumption, from special vetting.
Where sensitive land (such as islands, coastal areas, conservation and wahi tapu land) is not residential or farm land, it would be removed from special screening rules currently applied for land.
There would no longer be a need to consider investors’ track records or apply a “benefit to New Zealand” test. Regulators may or may not be empowered to impose conditions such as replanting or cleaning up slash.
The official documents don’t explain the rationale for this. But it looks like a win for Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, and was perhaps the price of NZ First’s support.
Locked in forever? Finally, these changes could be locked in through New Zealand’s free trade agreements. Several such agreements say New Zealand’s investment regime cannot become more restrictive than the 2005 act and its regulations.
A “ratchet clause” would lock in any further liberalisation through this bill, from which there is no going back.
However, another annex in those free trade agreements could be interpreted as allowing some flexibility to alter the screening rules and criteria in the future. None of the official documents address this crucial question.
As an academic expert in this area I am uncertain about the risk.
But the lack of clarity underlines the problems exemplified in this bill. It is another example of coalition agreements bypassing democratic scrutiny and informed decision making. More public debate and broad analysis is needed on the bill and its implications.
In Chile’s drought-stricken Atacama desert, Indigenous people say desalination plants cannot counter the impact of intensive lithium and copper mining on local water sources
Photographs by Luis Bustamante
Vast pipelines cross the endless dunes of northern Chile, pumping seawater up to an altitude of more than 3,000 metres in the Andes mountains to the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper producer. The mine’s owners say sourcing water directly from the sea, instead of relying on local reservoirs, could help preserve regional water resources. Yet, this is not the perception of Sergio Cubillos, leader of the Indigenous community Lickanantay de Peine.
Cubillos and his fellow activists believe that the mining industry is helping to degrade the region’s meagre water resources, as Chile continues to be ravaged by a mega-drought that has plagued the country for 15 years. They also fear that the use of desalinated seawater cannot make up for the devastation of the northern Atacama region’s sensitive water ecosystem and local livelihoods.
Australia’s government awards rich contracts to Israeli drone makers Elbit and Rafael, which skite to investors about killing Palestinians. Stephanie Tran reports.
Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has posted a video showing an unarmed man being stalked and killed by a drone in Gaza, using the footage to advertise the weapon responsible for his death.
The video, posted to the company’s official account on X, shows a Spike Firefly loitering munition drone as it hovers above a man walking alone through the rubble of a heavily bombed area. The drone silently tracks the man before detonating directly above him, killing him instantly.
Meanwhile, a young Palestinian girl, Hala, was executed yesterday with a bullet to the the head fired by a quadcopter drone. It is even more grotesque that Israeli weapons manufacturers are crowing about their human testing labs – which are the killing fields of Gaza.
The Spike Firefly drone, first unveiled by Rafael in 2018, is a lightweight, soldier-deployed loitering munition designed for urban combat. Weighing just three kilograms, the drone is launched from a canister and can fly silently above a target for up to 15 minutes before striking with high precision.
The drone can be operated remotely with a tablet, and its camera feed allows operators to stalk targets in real time.
According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has increasingly relied on drones like the Firefly to kill civilians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, with quadcopters being deployed in densely populated residential areas and refugee camps. Their report documents multiple instances of drones being used to assassinate individuals in violation of international humanitarian law.
Australia’s financial and military ties to Rafael
Despite mounting evidence that Rafael is complicit in war crimes, the Australian government continues to deepen its commercial and military ties with the company.
Data from Austender reveals that since 2007, the Department of Defence has awarded Rafael-linked entities over $168 million in contracts.
Of this, $42 million went directly to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and $126 million to Varley Rafael, a joint venture launched in 2018 by then Defence Minister Christopher Pyne between Rafael and the Australian engineering firm Varley Group.
The most significant of these is a 15-year missile procurement contract awarded in 2023, worth $108 million. The contract was originally priced at $50 million but was amended and expanded in October 2024, raising further concerns about the government’s ongoing commitment to the company amid the genocide in Gaza.
Beyond procurement, Rafael is also embedded in Australia’s military research ecosystem. The company is a partner in the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise, a cornerstone of the AUKUS defence initiative.
Through this program, Rafael is working with American firm General Atomics to develop a deep-strike missile. The missile system “will be built in the US for delivery to US military customers to support a variety of critical Department of Defence and coalition partners’ precision fires missions”.
MWM put questions to the Department of Defence about its ongoing collaboration with Rafael and whether the government would consider suspending contracts in light of the company’s apparent complicity in war crimes.
The Department did not respond to the request for comment.
“Snuff videos as a sales pitch”
Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who has long called for an end to Australian arms trade with Israel, condemned the video and the government’s silence.
“It’s obscene that we’re seeing weapons companies that are profiting from a genocide sharing snuff videos as part of their sales pitch,” he told Michael West Media. “It’s even more obscene that the Australian government is buying weapons from these companies.”
Shoebridge has previously raised concerns about Rafael’s marketing practices. At the 2024 Indian Ocean Defence & Security Conference in Perth, he witnessed the company using drone footage showing images of Israeli attacks in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon being used to promote Israeli weapons systems.
Israeli arms manufacturers use the fact that they have tested their weapons on Palestinians as a sales pitch.
I saw this last year at a ‘defence’ conference in Perth.
Rafael was selling to the Australian Government by showing images of Israeli attacks in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon
Under international human rights law, the extrajudicial execution of civilians constitutes a grave violation of the right to life. These acts are strictly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and are prosecutable as war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
In her March 2024 report “Anatomy of a Genocide”, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, concluded that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since 7 October 2023 bears the hallmarks of genocide.
The report, presented to the UN Human Rights Council, documents a deliberate pattern of attacks on civilians, the systematic destruction of infrastructure essential to life, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid, actions that violate humanitarian law.
Albanese explicitly condemned the Israeli military’s use of advanced weaponry, including drones, to indiscriminately “target the Palestinian population as a whole”. These attacks, Albanese states, “cannot be proportionate and are always unlawful”.
As Albanese notes in her most recent report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, the commodification of Palestinian death for weapons sales is part of a broader militarised economy in which violence against civilians is used to “battle test” weapons.
She highlighted the role of weapons manufacturers in enabling and profiting from these attacks, calling for international accountability not only for states but also for the companies complicit in atrocities. This convergence of state violence and corporate profit, she warns, reflects “an economy of occupation turned genocidal”.
One of the Australian Government’s top consultants, BCG, has been giving financial advice on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Michael West reports.
A Financial Times investigation last week revealed that the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) undertook a seven-month engagement code-named Aurora, which included modelling the costs of ‘relocating’ Palestinians from Gaza and advisory support related to the establishment of the widely condemned US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
During the $4 million assignment (not carried out by BCG Australia but the US branch), which employed more than twelve people, the BCG team constructed a financial model for ‘relocating’ Palestinians out of Gaza, estimating in one scenario that over 500,000 residents would each require a ‘relocation package’ valued at US$9,000 each, less than the daily rate for one of these ‘management consultants‘ who are known to charge $16,000 a day, before discounts.
Whether this plan envisaged forced relocations requires further investigation to determine the degree to which the firm has provided support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
Since the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” started operating on May 27, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that 410 Palestinians have been killed, with at least 93 others killed by the Israeli army while attempting to approach the very few aid convoys of the UN and other humanitarian organisations. In addition, over 3,000 Palestinians have been injured.
On June 24, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Thameen Al-Kheetan said: “Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food.”
“Each of these killings must be promptly and impartially investigated, and those responsible must be held to account. The killing and wounding of civilians resulting from the unlawful use of firearms constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime,” he said.
The Middle East Eye suggests that BCG was selected for this work in Gaza due to its ties to Phil Reilly, a former CIA veteran and long-time BCG adviser. Reilly subsequently founded Safe Reach Solutions, which became the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s principal security provider, with around six BCG staff joining him, the Middle East Eye reported.
Representatives from BCG are understandably scrambling with much hand-wringing: “Our ongoing investigation by an external law firm has substantiated the deep disappointment we expressed weeks ago.
“The full scope of these projects was not disclosed, including to senior leadership. The work carried out was in direct violation of our policies and processes.”
Their latest breathless sustainability report reflects this, stating: “BCG upholds internationally recognised human rights standards, committing to the principles of the UNGC, which are derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
“We also commit to respect the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These commitments are reflected in our policies and business practices…..Although we aim to prevent or mitigate issues before they occur, we also have processes in place to ensure proper remediation of any negative impact suffered by value chain stakeholders.”
In this context, BCG must explain not only how it became involved but also how it plans to remedy and materially address the harm suffered by Palestinians. Its contribution to the founding and design of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation constitutes a potential “contribution” under the UN Guiding Principles’, to which it is a signatory.
Its endorsement of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s proposal during its formative stage lent considerable credibility to the scheme, to the extent that several former BCG staff members were reportedly able to leave and profit from the initiative.
This should trigger the firm’s responsibility to provide for or cooperate in remedying any adverse human-rights impacts to which it has contributed. Even if BCG did not directly inflict harm, its endorsement and technical support for GHF means it must now take steps to address the consequences of those impacts on affected Palestinians.
Practically, BCG should cooperate with credible, independent processes to ensure that victims can secure restitution or compensation, and it should establish or fund an operational grievance mechanism that is legitimate, accessible and predictable.
The reputational damage to BCG is serious, with many refusing to work with the agency, such as the charity Save the Children which has announced that it is suspending its work with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Will the Australian Government follow suit? Last year’s Senate Inquiry revealed a significant government reliance on management consultants such as BCG, with their use increasing threefold between 2010 and 2020 to over $1 billion, making Australia the fourth-largest user of such firms globally. It’s track record has hardly been unblemished yet the government contracts keep flowing.
It should be said that BCG is hardly alone in paying lip service to good corporate governance and ethics, while avoiding tax, treating statutory disclosure with contempt.
A series of investigations here have identified hypocrisy of major corporate names who are signatories to the UN General Principles on business and human rights while supporting organisations linked to war crimes in Palestine. It is not just governments who fail to stand up to the Israel lobby.
The Federal Government is expected to announce a support plan for struggling Nyrstar, part of a group well known for its toxic activities. Jude Manning reports.
Nyrstar produces lead and zinc and operates smelters in Port Pirie, South Australia and Hobart, Tasmania, which have been running losses of tens of millions of dollars per month amid rising energy costs and a global collapse in treatment fees.
Nyrstar is owned by Trafigura, a Singapore-based multinational with a grubby record ($) of bribes, illegal waste dumping, and attempts to shut down media scrutiny.
Nyrstar’s losses have prompted a review of Nyrstar’s Australian operations by Trafigura. In an effort to mitigate losses, the smelters have cut production by 25%, ceasing operations during peak periods of electricity demand, but have so far avoided any layoffs.
It is asking for the government to contribute ‘transitionary support’ while it conducts a $45m feasibility study of smelter upgrades at Port Pirie and Hobart, whose estimated costs total $1B. The proposed upgrades include expansion of capabilities for critical minerals processing, which can be captured as byproducts of zinc and lead refining.
Protecting the workforce
Over 1400 workers are employed at the two smelters combined, each with hundreds of suppliers underpinning thousands of indirect jobs. Both Tasmania Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff and opposition leader Dean Winter agree on the need to keep Nyrstar running, and the premier has confirmed he is working with the South Australian and federal governments, “To secure the operations of Nyrstar in Hobart.”
Dean Winter pledged $25 million in State funding yesterday morning if elected in the upcoming Tasmanian election on July 19. Stating that if Nyrstar shuts down, “The loss of hundreds of jobs and the flow-on impact to contractors and reliant businesses would devastate the local economy as well as jeopardise the viability of other industrials.”
It is clear to me that the cost of not supporting Nyrstar will be greater than the cost of supporting it.
This might well be true for the Tasmanian economy today. However, if Nyrstar’s operations cannot become profitable, government support for the smelters might only delay the inevitable, at massive cost to the taxpayer.
Nyrstar CEO Matt Howell states, “We’re looking for a hand up, not a hand out.” But what has caused the company’s revenue collapse? How much government support has it received already? And how much more does it really need to become self-sufficient?
Nyrstar claims Chinese subsidisation has created oversupply in metals processing, pushing smelters around the world into the red as it seeks to monopolise global supply of metals refining and the critical minerals that come with it.
According to Mr Howell, China has subsidised companies to purchase Australian raw materials at prices Australian smelters cannot afford. It then subsidises their processing and later places export controls on the finished product, which includes not only refined zinc and lead but also critical minerals such as antimony, bismuth, tellurium, germanium, and indium.
Amongst other uses, these minerals are considered essential in batteries, solar cells, rocket propellants, ammunition and as semi-conductors.
Existing subsidies
Treatment fees for zinc and lead have indeed dropped dramatically. Each year, the benchmark price is set by the contract between Korea Zinc and Teck Resources over the cost of refining ores from Red Dog, the world’s largest zinc mine in Alaska.
In March this year, Korea Zinc agreed to a fee of US$80 a tonne, down from US$165 last year, the lowest in a decade.
However, while market conditions are difficult, there is no indication that China will cease subsidising its smelters any time soon. Furthermore, Nyrstar already enjoys massive government subsidies.
Its shipping is subsidised under the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme, which cost the government $184m in 2023-24, of which Nyrstar is the largest beneficiary. It was promised last year a combined $70 million from the State and federal governments to upgrade the Hobart smelter, which apparently was not enough to go ahead with the investment, even before treatment fees were halved.
It also enjoys cut-price green power, which the Tassie government could instead export to the rest of Australia for a better return.
If existing subsidies haven’t been enough, and increased competition globally has made zinc smelting unprofitable,
why should taxpayers foot the bill to prop up such an uncertain industry?
Trafigura is a “leading supplier of commodities, founded in 1993.” It posted a half-year net profit of US$1.5B, up from a US$2.8B full-year profit in 2024.
Nyrstar’s pitch relies on the strategic value of critical minerals it can capture through upgrades to Hobart and Port Pirie, as well as the maintenance of sovereign industrial capacity that depends on metals processing capabilities.
While aspiring to eventually become profitable, even Nyrstar’s own executives play down the possibility, with chief executive officer Richard Holtum saying earlier this year:
“Critical infrastructure and smelting capacity is a national security issue and therefore needs to probably have some sort of government ownership or significant government support for it because it is not competitive on an international basis comparing it to the Chinese smelters.”
According to Nyrstar, their facilities are the sole locations in Australia with the potential to capture the critical minerals associated with lead and zinc refining.
This means the failure of the smelters would be a big hit to the government’s Future Made in Australia plans. The policy aims to secure critical minerals supply chains for domestic and allied nations, while capturing a higher proportion of the revenue stemming from our natural resources by moving further up the value chain into processing.
However, given they are used in such small volumes, demand for critical minerals does not rival established mining exports such as Iron Ore.
And even if other countries are serious about diversifying their supply chains away from China (for which they will always have to neglect a cheaper product), there are other destinations than Australia. Even Australian mining companies are investing elsewhere. Rio Tinto and BHP’s latest rare earth investments are in South America, not Australia.
Australia has gained no concrete commitments from its allies regarding an appetite for our critical minerals and metals processing, and has so far failed to leverage supply in negotiations with the US over tariff exemptions and military spending.
With future demand far from certain, massive subsidies already being poured into Nyrstar, and market conditions unlikely to improve, the government may be making a significant gamble in continuing to support Nyrstar.
When will governments learn that picking winners is neither their role nor their forte?
BHP ordered to pay fair wages to contractors, while the FWC ignored the more serious issues of wage theft and providing justice to whistleblowers. Stephanie Tran with the story.
In a landmark decision this week, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) ruled against mining giant BHP, ordering the company to pay labour-hire workers the same wages and conditions as its directly employed staff. The decision applies to workers at three Queensland coal mines and is expected to cost the company approximately $66m per year. If extended across BHP’s entire coal operations, the cost of compliance could reach $1.3B annually.
While the ruling is being hailed as a major win for workers and the union movement behind the Albanese government’s “same job, same pay” laws, it fails to address a much larger, unresolved issue: the billions in wages stolen from coal miners over the past two decades.
“The recent Fair Work Commission decision may appear to be a long-overdue step toward correcting unlawful labour hire practices in the coal mining industry,” said former BHP labour-hire worker Simon Turner, “but in truth, it is a calculated cover-up.”
In 2015, Turner was injured at BHP’s Mount Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley. He has been fighting for compensation ever since.
“The Commission’s ruling acknowledges what workers have known and lived for over a decade: labour-hire firms like Chandler Macleod and WorkPac did not provide services. They simply supplied cheap, disposable labour to BHP-operated coal mines under the guise of ‘casual’ employment,” he said.
In February 2015, the CFMEU filed a Fair Work Commission case against Chandler Macleod for failing to fulfil the minimum requirements under the Black Coal Mining Industry Award 2010. The complaint stated that: “[Chandler Macleod] has in excess of 100 employees working at the Mt Arthur Coal Mine and they are depriving those employees of the conditions that should be afforded to full-time employees.”
On 13 April 2014, the CFMEU had an in person meeting with Chandler Macleod and agreed to settle the matter on the condition that:
“The CFMEU would agree to cease from any current and future actions and claims (in its own right or on behalf of members) directed towards ventilating and agitating its view that employees currently engaged by Chandler Macleod companies as casuals to perform black coal mining production work may be entitled to “leave and other entitlements” associated with permanent employment or that Chandler Macleod is not paying employees their “lawful terms and conditions”.
Subsequently, in June 2015, the FWC approved an Enterprise Agreement drafted by Chandler Macleod and negotiated and endorsed by the CFMEU.
The agreement allowed BHP to pay labour hire workers substantially less than the rates set by the Black Coal Award. Under that award, coal miners cannot legally be employed as casuals, and enterprise agreements must pass the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) to ensure workers aren’t worse off than under the relevant award.
The enterprise agreement did neither. The FWC later admitted that no BOOT assessment had been performed on the terms of the enterprise agreement.
“The truth is this,” Turner said,
The FWC greenlit and enabled the industrial fraud they now claim to condemn.
A discontinued class action
Turner was the lead applicant in a 2018 class action against BHP and Chandler Macleod, where another 1200 workers at that mine alone were entitled to compensation. It sought to recover millions in unpaid wages for coal miners wrongly classified as casuals. But the action was quietly discontinued in 2022 after Turner’s lawyers at Adero Law misled the court regarding who the true employer was in the proceedings.
The legal team stated that Turner was employed by Ready Workforce, a Chandler Macleod subsidiary, under a 2007 agreement. In reality, Turner was employed by Chandler Macleod under the Black Coal Award, which should have made him eligible for award coverage and entitlements. The error fatally undermined the case.
Turner alleges that his lawyers deliberately failed to submit a judgment that proved that his employer was Chandler Macleod. The judgment in question was a 2017 ruling concerning an adverse action claim by his colleague Lisa Zoppellaro. On the issue of whether Ready Workforce or Chandler Macleod employed Zoppellaro, the judge found that Chandler Macleod was, in fact, the employer.
“My original 2018 class action statement of claim proves I was right from the beginning,” Turner said. “My employment was not casual, and I was covered by the Black Coal Mining Industry Award. But the court was misled by my own lawyers, BHP and Chandler Macleod, who falsely claimed I was employed by Ready Workforce under a 2007 agreement that never applied. This deception robbed thousands of coal workers of backpay, compensation, and the possibility of civil penalties for those who committed industrial fraud.”
He is now in the process of filing a new claim in the Federal Court to reopen the case. “I lost my home, I lost everything. I’m in constant pain. My injuries have caused me not to be able to work again.”
No remedy
There is no clear pathway for workers to recover these historical losses. The new “same job, same pay” laws aim to prevent future exploitation but do nothing to rectify the past.
“It’s understandable for businesses to attempt to mitigate costs,” said BHP whistleblower James Joseph. “However, it needs to be done in an ethical way, in a legal way.
Over the years, BHP has become renowned for finding the most unethical loopholes to undercut workers.
“For a company that earns such gigantic profits, a lot of which go offshore in the form of expatriated dividends, it can be quite disappointing that Australian workers are being undercut like this.”
The underpayment isn’t isolated to one group or mine, according to Sam Stephens, who also worked at BHP’s Mt Arthur mine.
“Everyone is being underpaid,” he said. “All labour-hire workers engaged either as full-time or casuals have been underpaid. No one wants to admit that because then they’ll have to open up a can of worms.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel — including a full arms embargo — and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide”, reports Al Jazeera.
Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.
“The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic,” she said. “Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history.”
Nearly 57,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war — now in its 22nd month — began, hundreds of thousands have been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded enclave is now under Israeli military control, according to the UN.
Al Jazeera’s Federica Marsi reports that Albanese’s latest document names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. — Google’s parent company — and Amazon.
“[Israel’s] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech — providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability — while investors and private and public institutions profit freely,” the report said.
“Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation — they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” it said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
In an expert opinion last year, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The report stated that its findings illustrate “why Israel’s genocide continues”.
“Because it is lucrative for many,” it said.
Francesca Albanese v Israel’s lobby. Video: Al Jazeera
Military procurements Israel’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world’s largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally.
Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A is listed as a main contributor in the military sector, while Japan’s FANUC Corporation provides robotic machinery for weapons production lines.
The tech sector, meanwhile, has enabled the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, “supporting Israel’s discriminatory permit regime”, the report said.
Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel “virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies”, enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities.
The US tech company IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing the central database of Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA) that stores the biometric data of Palestinians, the report said.
It found US software platform Palantir Technologies expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.
The report said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the company provided automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through artificial intelligence systems like “Lavender”, “Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?”
Companies supporting Israel. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative CommonsOther companies identified in the report
The report also lists several companies developing civilian technologies that serve as “dual-use tools” for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.These include Caterpillar, Leonardo-owned Rada Electronic Industries, South Korea’s HD Hyundai and Sweden’s Volvo Group, which provide heavy machinery for home demolitions and the development of illegal settlements in the West Bank.Rental platforms Booking and Airbnb also aid illegal settlements by listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory.
The report named the US’s Drummond Company and Switzerland’s Glencore as the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel, originating primarily from Colombia.
In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel’s illegal outposts.
Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico’s Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.
Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit downgrade.
Which are the main investors behind these companies? The report identified US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard as the main investors behind several listed companies.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is listed as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir (8.6 percent), Microsoft (7.8 percent), Amazon (6.6 percent), Alphabet (6.6 percent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and the third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 percent) and Caterpillar (7.5 percent).
Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, is the largest institutional investor in Caterpillar (9.8 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent) and Palantir (9.1 percent), and the second largest in Lockheed Martin (9.2 percent) and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems (2 percent).
New Zealand referrals to the International Criminal Court
Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa yesterday released a report saying that it was referring two New Zealand businessmen along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, to the International Criminal Court for investigation over alleged policies relating to Gaza.
The PSNA accused the six individuals of complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by “assisting Israel’s mass killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza”.
In a statement, PSNA co-chairs John Minto and Maher Nazzal said the referral “carefully outlines a case that these six individuals should be investigated” by the Office of the Prosecutor for their knowing contribution to Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
“The 103-page referral document was prepared by a legal team which has been working on the case for many months,” said Minto and Nazzal.
“It is legally robust and will provide the prosecutor of the ICC more than sufficient documentation to begin their investigation.”
Which NZ politicians and business leaders have been referred by the PSNA to the ICC? Image: NZH screenshot APR
The UN has named dozens of multinationals in a report for profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Stephanie Tran reports.
A landmark United Nations report has named dozens of multinational corporations that are aiding and profiting from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in war crimes and calling for urgent accountability.
Authored by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the report details the role of weapons manufacturers, tech firms, energy companies and financial institutions in sustaining an “economy of occupation turned genocidal.”
But the list of named companies is just the beginning. Albanese describes the report as “the tip of the iceberg,” noting that more than 1,000 corporate entities were investigated for their involvement in Israel’s war machinery.
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”.
Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein — whose award-winning book, podcast and film series The Palestine Laboratory exposes how Israel’s occupation has become a global model for repression — told Michael West Media:
“This landmark report goes to the heart of why Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine has lasted so long; the longest in modern times. Far too many corporations and individuals are making money from oppression. I’m honoured that the report frequently cites my work, The Palestine Laboratory, a book, podcast and film series that details how Israel’s occupation is a key model and inspiration for many around the world. Cutting off Israel’s financial lifeline is the only way that this abomination will end.”
Surveillance and Silicon Valley
The UN report devotes substantial attention to the role of Silicon Valley in enabling Israel’s high-tech war.
Palantir Technologies, the U.S. surveillance firm founded by Peter Thiel, expanded its support for the Israeli military after October 2023. The company has provided “automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
In January 2024, Palantir’s board met in Tel Aviv “in solidarity”. In April 2024, CEO Alex Karp dismissed concerns about civilian casualties by stating that Palantir had killed “mostly terrorists.”
Microsoft, operates its largest research centre outside the U.S. in Israel, and has been “integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003”. In October 2023, Microsoft’s Azure platform supported the Israeli military’s overloaded cloud systems. According to an Israeli colonel quoted in the report, “cloud tech is a weapon in every sense of the word.”
Amazon and Google, through their $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, provide Israel with core cloud infrastructure for the military and government agencies.
IBM, which has operated in Israel since 1972, has operated the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, “enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel.”
Hewlett Packard (HP) “has long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel,” supplying technology to the military, prison system, and police.
NSO Group, infamous for its Pegasus spyware, is cited as a textbook case of “spyware diplomacy.” Founded by former Israeli intelligence officers, the company has licensed its tools to repressive governments worldwide and used them to surveil Palestinian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Financing Occupation
The financial industry underpins much of the infrastructure of occupation and genocide. Israeli treasury bonds, underwritten by global banks such as Barclays and BNP Paribas, have provided critical financing to the Israeli government. Asset managers like Blackrock, Vanguard and Allianz’s PIMCO were among more than 400 investors from 36 countries to purchase these bonds.
Blackrock and Vanguard are also among the largest shareholders in Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, and Chevron. Their funds distribute these investments across global markets via ETFs and mutual funds, spreading complicity to millions of unwitting investors.
Energy and resources
Glencore and Drummond Company dominate coal exports to Israel, primarily from Colombia and South Africa. Even after Colombia announced a suspension of coal exports to Israel in 2024, shipments continued through subsidiaries.
Chevron, which supplies over 70% of Israel’s energy, paid $453 million in royalties and taxes to the Israeli government in 2023. The company profits from the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields and owns a stake in the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through occupied Palestinian maritime territory.
BP, the British energy giant, expanded its presence in 2025 with new exploration licences in maritime zones off the Gaza coast, areas Israel occupies in violation of international law.
Machinery
Heavy machinery has long played a role in Israel’s occupation through the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of illegal settlements.
Caterpillar Inc. has supplied the Israeli military with bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure. Since October 2023, Caterpillar equipment has been used to “carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”. In 2025, the company signed another multi-million dollar contract with Israel.
Heavy machinery producers Volvo and HD Hyundai have also been linked to the destruction of Palestinian property. After October 2023, Israel increased the use of this equipment, leveling entire districts in Gaza, including Rafah and Jabalia. The Israeli military reportedly obscured the logos of the machinery during these operations.
Volvo is also tied to the settlement economy through its joint ownership of Merkavim, a bus manufacturer serving Israeli colonies.
Shipping, Tourism and Logistics
Multinational logistics firms are another key part of the war economy. A.P. Moller–Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, is responsible for transporting weapons parts, military equipment, and raw materials to Israel. Since October 2023, the company has facilitated the continued flow of US-supplied arms.
Tourism platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com are profiting from the settlement project. Booking.com listings in the West Bank have increased from 26 in 2018 to 70 in 2023; Airbnb listings have grown from 139 in 2016 to 350 in 2025. These platforms promote illegal settlements while restricting Palestinian access to land and resources.
Calls for sanctions
Albanese’s report is a damning indictment, not only of Israel’s genocide in Gaza but of the global political and economic architecture that enables it. The evidence it presents leaves no ambiguity, multinational corporations are not peripheral actors but central to the machinery of occupation, apartheid and now genocide.
Albanese urged states to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halt all trade and investment ties with companies implicated in violations of international law, and freeze the assets of individuals and entities facilitating human rights abuses.
She called on the International Criminal Court and national courts to investigate and prosecute corporate executives for their role in war crimes and for laundering the proceeds of genocide.
Francesca Albanese will be presenting her report to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday 3 July at 10am Central European Time (6pm AEST). You can watch the livestream here.
Australia’s corporate regulator ASIC is prosecuting coal miner TerraCom’s directors over allegedly misleading statements to the ASX. Stephanie Tran reports.
The whistleblower in the TerraCom coal fraud case has expressed dismay that the corporate regulator has cut him out of proceedings and struck a deal directly with TerraCom, a deal which may conclude the investigation into Australia’s largest coal scandal without a probe into other coal corporations or any criminal charges.
It was the testimony of former executive and whistleblower Justin Williams which was regarded as the strongest evidence in the investigation, say sources close to the case.
There is a growing body of evidence that what happened at TerraCom and across Australia’s coal testing industry was not just spin. It was systemic fraud. And ASIC’s response appears to have barely scratched the surface.
A 2019 report by PwC, cited in ASIC’s originating process, examined 14 coal shipments involving TerraCom and found that in 12 cases, there were inconsistencies between the initial “Shipping Analysis Reports” and the later “Certificates of Analysis” or commercial invoices. In every one of those 12 cases, the changes favoured TerraCom financially.
The altered figures, which inflated the energy content or “Net Calorific Value” (NCV) of the coal, increased the total invoice value by more than $1.15 million across just those shipments. The total value of the shipments involved was approximately $81 million.
More damningly, PwC noted there was evidence of discussions between TerraCom and testing giant ALS between the issuing of the original and final certificates, raising concerns about potential coordination.
The report supported concerns raised by whistleblower Justin Williams, a former executive at TerraCom, who alleged the data had been deliberately manipulated at the company’s direction.
In a statement issued to the ASX in April 2020, ALS admitted that between 45% and 50% of coal quality certificates had been manually amended without justification by staff in several of its Australian laboratories over more than a decade.
The practice had been occurring for more than a decade, across multiple labs in Newcastle, Mackay, Gladstone, and Emerald. Although ALS stated there was no evidence of bribery or third-party payments, the company’s admission alone points to industrial-scale malpractice that directly benefited Australian coal exporters.
Criticism of ASIC’s approach intensified in May after the regulator announced it had dropped whistleblower Justin Williams from its legal proceedings and settled a portion of the case for $7.5m.
Williams, a former executive at TerraCom, was the first to raise concerns about the alleged manipulation of coal quality certificates. His allegations were later supported by findings in the PwC report and underpinned ASIC’s original case.
Williams expressed dismay at the regulator’s decision to exclude him.
“I am disappointed to have missed the opportunity to have my evidence tested in court,” Williams said. “I was their key witness, and they cut me out. ASIC’s decision-making is bizarre. They have harmed me and my right to compensation, and ultimately, they’ve harmed the industry.”
It seems that there are some rocks that should not be looked under.
No answers from police
Despite clear evidence of systemic data manipulation, there is no indication that ASIC or law enforcement agencies have pursued criminal charges over the falsification of coal testing data, either against TerraCom or other companies named in connection with similar practices.
On 5 June 2025, NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann put questions to the Legislative Council about whether the NSW Police were investigating the matter reported by ALS in 2020 under Section 316 of the NSW Crimes Act, and whether any victims, including foreign utilities companies, had been notified.
The answer, delivered on 30 June, was startling in its vagueness. The NSW Police Force claimed it could not provide information “without further details.” It is not clear whether the investigation remains open or whether any foreign companies impacted by the falsified data have even been contacted.
ASIC’s broader performance under scrutiny
The regulator’s handling of the TerraCom case comes amid growing national scrutiny of its broader enforcement record. In July 2024, the Senate Standing Committee on Economics released a scathing report, concluding that ASIC had “comprehensively failed to fulfil its regulatory remit.”
The report found that ASIC was ill-equipped to keep pace with the complexity and scope of Australia’s corporate sector. It described the agency as “overburdened,” with a remit that had “outgrown its abilities,” resulting in a system of corporate regulation that lacks effective enforcement.
Despite ASIC being granted significant investigative and enforcement powers, the committee found these were “frequently underutilised,” leading to enforcement outcomes that were often mild and out of step with the seriousness of alleged offences.
Independent economist John Adams has also criticised ASIC’s enforcement record. According to Adams, just 0.3 per cent of all complaints to ASIC result in any form of enforcement action.
“If you’re a white collar criminal in this country, you would feel fairly confident of actually being able to engage in white collar crime”, Adams told ABC News in 2022.
New York, June 30, 2025—Hong Kong, an international financial hub and once a beacon of free media, is now in the grip of a rapid decline in press freedom that threatens the city’s status as a global financial information center.
Three journalists told CPJ that investigative reporting on major economic events, a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s financial transparency, has nearly disappeared amid government pressure and the departure of major outlets.
The sharp decline in press freedom, the journalists said, is a direct result of the National Security Law. This law, enacted on June 30, 2020, was imposed directly by Beijing, bypassing Hong Kong’s local legislature, and included offenses for secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign forces, with penalties ranging from a three years to life imprisonment.
In the five years since it was enacted, authorities have shut down media outlets and arrested several journalists, including Jimmy Lai, the founder of one of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers, the pro-democracy Apple Daily. Several major international news organizations have either relocated or downsized their operations in Hong Kong, leading to a decline in reporting on the city and its financial hub.
“Hong Kong’s economic boom happened because journalists could work without interference,” said a veteran reporter with 11 years’ experience in television, newspapers, and digital platforms in Hong Kong, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
While markets still function, at least three media professionals told CPJ that the erosion of press freedom — often overlooked — is a key factor behind Hong Kong’s fading financial appeal to market participants. One reporter described the media as “paralyzed.”
Another hastily passed security law enacted in March 2024 in Hong Kong further deepened fears that it would be used to suppress press freedom and prosecute journalists.
Jimmy Lai walks through the Stanley prison in Hong Kong in 2023. (Photo: AP/Louise Delmotte)
“There has never been an international financial center in history that operates with restrictions on information,” Simon Lee, an economic commentator and former assistant CEO of Next Digital Group, the parent company of Apple Daily, told CPJ.
Hong Kong long served as a base for reporting on China’s economy and power structures, said a former financial journalist on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.
“Most Hong Kong-listed companies come from the mainland [China]. Foreign media used Hong Kong to observe China’s economic operations or wealth transfers,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “Now the risks feel similar to reporting from inside China.”
Crackdowns, shutdowns, and an exodus of major media
Since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020, at least eight media outlets have shut. These included Apple Daily, news and lifestyle magazine Next Magazine, both published by Lai’s Next Digital group, and the online outlet Stand News, after they were raided by authorities.
At least four other media organizations —Post852,DB channel,Citizen News, andFactWire — ceased operations voluntarily, citing concerns over the deteriorating political environment.
China had the world’shighest number of imprisoned journalists in CPJ’s latest prison census — 50 in total, including eight in Hong Kong.
The New York Timesmoved part of its newsroom to Seoul in 2020. In March 2024, Radio Free Asiaclosed its Hong Kong office, and in May, The Wall Street Journalrelocated its Asia headquarters to Singapore.
“With fewer foreign correspondents based in the city, there’s simply less reporting on Hong Kong,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “As a result, the city’s economy may receive less objective attention on the global stage.”
The former financial journalist said that one of the biggest losses after the security law was the disappearance of Apple Daily. Unlike most local media, which focused on routine market updates, Apple Daily connected business to politics and mapped interest networks — an increasingly rare practice.
Copies of the last issue of Apple Daily arrive at a newspaper booth in Hong Kong on June 24, 2021. (Photo: AP/Vincent Yu)
Next Digital, through Apple Daily, built a reputation for investigative financial reporting. A former staff member told the BBC that the company once spent over 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) tracing dozens of property owners to uncover a developer’s hidden ties with a bank.
“From a financial news perspective, one of our biggest problems is losing Apple Daily,” the former financial journalist told CPJ.
Local business reporting also fades away
As Hong Kong’s financial hub reputation comes under question, stories on high unemployment rates, struggling small businesses, and store closures are increasingly out of sight.
“One direct effect is feeling increasingly unable to grasp what’s happening in the city; important information no longer seems easy to access,” Lee said. “Previously, competition among professional outlets encouraged source sharing and helped maintain a power balance. Now, one-way government-controlled information faces little resistance.”
Lee told CPJ that changes in Hong Kong’s media landscape are particularly evident in major financial events, pointing to the coverage of the 2024 sale of Li Ka-shing’s port assets, in which local outlets failed to question the deal’s structure, rationale, or political implications.
“Beijing called it a national security matter, and the other side of the story disappeared,” Lee told CPJ. “Many focus on the judicial system when discussing fairness, but true fairness also depends on the free flow of information … Without information freedom, public oversight fades, and the market’s system of checks and balances collapses.”
Lee also cited the case of Alvin Chau, a casino tycoon in Macao who was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years for illegal gambling. While foreign media uncovered his alleged links to oil smuggling operations to North Korea, local media offered little follow-up.
“These investigations and reports simply no longer exist,” Lee said.
Sources can’t speak freely
Two journalists told CPJ they have noticed increasing reluctance from interviewees.
During previous years of the Annual Budget Speech, Hong Kong’s yearly announcement of its public spending and economic plans, the media would host analysis shows with economists debating government spending and policies.
“We would ask about the fiscal surplus, support for the poor, and whether measures were targeted,” the veteran reporter told CPJ, adding that now, “only one professor is willing to speak openly.”
Lee told CPJ that the atmosphere of “not being allowed to criticize” the broader structure or government policy has also extended to the reporting on how financial markets operate.
Market participants should be free to take either optimistic or pessimistic views of the economic outlook, Lee told CPJ, adding that today in Hong Kong, it is discouraged to express pessimism, and even silently shifting toward defensive investment strategies or risk-averse behavior may be interpreted as making a political statement.
“It’s hard for any place with such high information costs to remain a global financial hub,” Lee said. “Because even pulling back on investment can send a signal. If investors are accused of intentionally dragging down the market just because they try to hedge or take a cautious view, they may decide it’s safer to avoid the market altogether.”
In response to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred CPJ to a statement that said the security law has enabled the city to “make a major transition from chaos to order” and “the business environment has continuously improved,” while press freedom is protected under the law.
Sparkies say the companies handling the smart meter rollout are pushing down wages to the point of putting lives at risk. Zacharias Szumer investigates.
Australia’s smart meter rollout could end in tragedy for workers or a member of the public unless standards and rates are lifted, industry insiders say. The industry is plagued by such poor rates that qualified electricians are stuck between cutting corners on safety or making a pittance, MWM has been told.
MWM has seen evidence that meter installers in NSW are sometimes making less than $100 per day, or half the minimum wage of $24.95 per hour.
While the rollout is basically finished in Victoria, other states and territories lag behind.
Smart Meter rollout status by state
State or Territory
Smart meters installed
Installation rate
ACT
93,344
40.27%
NSW
1,929,057
39.17%
QLD
1,285,299
42.63%
SA
488,325
46.49%
TAS
279,296
78.06%
VIC
3,247,638
99.12%
Nationwide
7,322,959
56.96%
Data source: Australian Energy Market Commission, 28 November 2024
The government wants every house in Australia to be fitted with a smart meter by 2030.
Over the past fortnight, MWM has talked to over ten electrical contractors working on the smart meter rollout. NSW-based contractor Mike* told MWM that electricians are promised that they’ll make between $700–$1000 a day installing smart meters.
MWM has also seen promotional material that promises, “Long-term term reliable work, no crawling under floors or in roof spaces and career growth opportunities.”
Given these promises, many sparkies get set up with the required company structure plus additional qualifications and equipment – something that “often exceeds” $10,000, Mike said, adding,
These substantial up-front costs can leave metering contractors feeling trapped in the role, despite the lower-than-expected income.
While contractors sometimes earned between $800-$1000 per day, such days were few and far between, he added. It was far more common to make less than $500, and that’s before you subtract costs like fuel, vehicle insurance and everything else.
MWM has seen evidence Mike was sometimes paid under $100 a day.
“The pay rates must be designed by an algorithm that’s been programmed to only factor the most favourable installation conditions they could have ever dreamt up,” Mike said, adding that business expenses “aren’t considered at all” in set rates,
The focus is solely on the time it takes to complete the job, without factoring in the true cost of running our businesses.
Another electrician, Sam, said he’d experienced multiple days of being paid $150-$300 before finally giving up and leaving the industry.
A noose around the neck
Most sparkies said the main cause of such days is the number of jobs that can’t be completed.
A range of factors can prevent meter installation, from old buildings with electrical faults to anti-smart meter residents who don’t let electricians into their properties. Payslips shown to MWM show that contractors are paid between $26 and $36 for attending jobs that can’t be completed.
This rate is fixed even though it may take well over an hour to reach a destination and discover the reason a job can’t be completed, several contractors told MWM.
Mike said:
These tactics are driving technicians to rush work under unsafe conditions that could lead to serious injury or death.
“I’ve spoken to a few techs that I’ve met while driving around, some tell me that they have heard that techs are skipping the initial testing procedure to speed up the job,” he added.
Another contractor, Pete*, said he was aware of several incidents that had already occurred.
“One guy turned on a circuit breaker that was originally off and became financially liable when the owner’s kitchen burnt down,” he said.
“One guy didn’t tighten any connections on the meter he installed, which could’ve led to a fatality or fire.”
Other contractors, while not sharing details of incidents, agreed with Mike’s sentiments, “The rates aren’t in line with the work required … [so] contractors are putting themselves at risk by skipping steps,” said Eric*.
“We’re in a rush … because the margins are so low, it’s easy to miss something. People do take shortcuts; I was taking shortcuts,” Sam* said, while Allen* said the low piece rates made it “financially unviable” for contractors to issue defect notices at every house where they found electrical faults.
The advertised earning rates just weren’t consistently achievable without burnout or corner-cutting, he said. In terms of getting the rollout completed safely and on time, “They’ve tied a noose around their necks.”
Give ’em an inch, they’ll take a meter
Like much of today’s economy, the metering industry is a vertically disaggregated beast. Here’s a little chart to illustrate the parts that are relevant here:
Retailers: The ones who send you your electricity bill. They don’t own the meters.
Metering providers: They own the meters and contracts with the retailers to install them.
Field service providers (FSPs): Paid by providers to recruit electricians to install smart meters.
Those are some pretty big players involved in the metering game.
Canadian multinational giant Brookfield has over a trillion dollars in assets. IFM Investors, owned by 28 Australian not-for-profit pension funds, has about $86 billion.
As Mike told MMW, “There’s a reason world-class asset managers own the meters,”
because nothing beats a captive customer base and predictable, growing margins.
Sham contracting
Electricians mainly deal with field service providers (FSPs), who employ them as contractors.
However, several contractors told MWM that the arrangements with FSPs verge on ‘sham contracting’.
MWM has seen evidence that independent contractors are not permitted to switch to a new FSP without either a month’s stand-down period or a letter from the previous FSP.
Multiple FSPs simultaneously introduced the stand-down period to ensure that contractors couldn’t jump between them to seek better wages, Mike said.
Another contractor, Andy*, said the contract’s electricians’ sign is “not worth the paper they are written on as job conditions, procedures, and rate schedules can get changed with a day’s notice and no negotiation”.
“If the work volume drops, then they will drop the rates, because they know the contractors are desperate to keep their roles,” he said, adding that in his eyes, FSPs were employing dirty money-making tactics.”
*All names have been anonymised to protect identities.
MWM contacted Skilltech and Service Stream for comment, but didn’t receive any response.
Retailer says ‘internationally recognised’ abuses take place in nations including Russia and Syria
The Co-op is to stop sourcing goods from Israel, Iran and 15 other countries where it says there are “internationally recognised” rights abuses and violations of international law.
The mutual, which operates about 2,300 grocery stores in the UK, has drawn up a list of about 100 products affected by the change, including Israeli carrots and mangos from Mali.
For the firsttime since 2021 — the start of the Biden administration — banks have ramped up their financing of fossil fuel projects, a changing tide that reflects the Trump White House’s close ties to and energetic support for Big Oil. That’s based on the annual “Banking on Climate Chaos”report, which analyzes the lending patterns of the 65 largest banks in the world, and some 2,730 firms with fossil fuel interests that they’ve lent to.
The report, published June 17 and authored by a group of eight environmental nonprofits, found that banks financed oil fields, pipelines, and coal mines to the tune of $869 billion in 2024 — up by $162 billion, or almost 25 percent, from 2023. Over the past eight years, the 65 banks profiled in the report financed almost $8 trillion in fossil fuel expansion.
Meanwhile, in 2024, the world passed the much-feared 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, which Trump again withdrew the U.S. from almost immediately after returning to office. Experts attribute the increase in many natural disasters to climate change; in the U.S. alone, 27 separate natural disasters in 2024 individually surpassed $1 billion in damages, with a cumulative 568 fatalities and $182.7 billion in costs.
But banks abandoned net-zero and climate-friendly pledges in droves last year, in addition to backing fossil fuels. “This year, banks have shown their true colors,” said Lucie Pinson, one of the co-authors of the report.
With President Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders, even more commercial lenders ditched climate agreements in the first half of 2025. Sierra Club’s Jessye Waxman described the retreat as a “clear capitulation to political pressure.”
Overwhelmingly, the report found, both the banks financing fossil fuels and the companies they financed were U.S.-based. Four of the 5 top banks investing in fossil fuels were also U.S.-based.
Liquid natural gas is the fastest-growing fossil fuel in the world, and the U.S. is its largest exporter. When calculating the 20-year emissions footprint of both liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and coal, researchers have found that LNG has a 33 percent larger footprint than coal.
Climate impacts aside, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says that there’s no need for more LNG projects — and that the “glut” of projects will likely lead to higher gas prices for consumers in the long run, in addition to community impacts zeroed in on by the “Banking on Climate Chaos” report.
In Mozambique, for example, four active LNG projects have forced hundreds of families to relocate, with a Mozambican NGO receiving more than 1,000 complaints about compensation, resettlement, and housing from families forced to relocate. TotalEnergies, one of the project’s owners, helped fund a paramilitary to “ensure the security of Mozambique LNG project activities,” which investigations have found abused and killed residents. Fifteen separate banks finance the four projects, including a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase.
A 2024 report from theBullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice catalogued parallel harms to U.S. communities near natural gas projects, finding that predominantly low-income communities of color near such developments had higher rates of pollution, emissions, asthma, and cancer.
“Facilities [are] being sited in our most vulnerable communities and placing our most vulnerable populations at risk — while providing the lion’s share of economic benefits to more affluent populations and communities,” said Dr. Robert Bullard, the center’s head.
“I dream of a time when we don’t have to produce this report any more,” said Diogo Silva, one of its co-authors and a campaigner with the nonprofit BankTrack, “as we would finally be protecting present and future generations from catastrophic living conditions.”
For the first time ever, a lab-grown seafood company has met the United States Food and Drug Administration’s requirements for demonstrating the safety of a new cell-cultured product. Wildtype’s cultivated salmon is now for sale in Portland, Oregon.
This marks the first time that lab-grown seafood (also known as “cultivated seafood” or “cell-cultured seafood”) is available for sale anywhere in the world, according to the Good Food Institute, a think tank that advocates for alternative proteins — substitutes for conventional meat made without relying on industrial animal agriculture. It’s a major milestone for the emerging cultivated protein industry, which aims to deliver real meat and seafood at scale without replicating the environmental harms of large-scale livestock operations.
It’s also a sign that the Food and Drug Administration under the second Trump administration is allowing the regulatory process around lab-grown meat to continue without political interference, despite widespread Republican skepticism of the technology.
Wildtype, which manufactures sushi-grade salmon by cultivating fish cells under laboratory conditions, is the fourth cultivated protein company to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, to sell its product in the U.S. The company first reached out to the FDA to discuss the safety of its cultivated salmon during the first Trump administration in 2019, said co-founder and CEO Justin Kolbeck, adding that Wildtype underwent eight rounds of questioning from the agency over the next six years. Kolbeck described the experience as “a science-driven, data-driven process” and said the team of regulators working with Wildtype stayed largely the same across the three presidential terms.
“Did it feel like a long time in the lifespan of an early-stage startup? Yes,” said Kolbeck. “But it is completely appropriate, in my opinion. And the reason is that this is a new way to make food. And I think consumers have a right to feel like our food authorities turned over every stone that they can think of.”
In a letter to the company, the FDA stated that it had “no questions” about Wildtype’s conclusion that its cell-cultivated salmon is “as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods.” However, the agency did add that if Wildtype’s manufacturing processes change, it should contact the FDA again for further consultation. The FDA did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.
Wildtype’s salmon is the first cultivated seafood ever available for sale. Wildtype
The company is now partnering with Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland helmed by the James Beard Award-winning chef Gregory Gourdet. The restaurant began serving Wildtype’s salmon weekly on Thursdays this month; in July, the fish will be on the menu full-time.
Kolbeck said that Kann sold out of all its cultivated salmon portions on the first night of service. “I don’t think people saw this as some crazy, wild new thing,” he said. Instead, it was “another option on the menu, which is ultimately what we’re working for. We want to provide consumers with another option for seafood.”
Consumers have an increasing number of choices for alternative proteins at grocery stores and restaurants — from plant-based burgers and chicken nuggets to faux meat made from fermented fungi. Like other alternative protein companies, cultivated protein brands often position their means of production as more sustainable than animal agriculture, the leading source of methane emissions in the U.S. But cultivated meat differs from other alternative proteins in that it’s not vegan; it is meat, just without the mass animal slaughter.
Even though federal regulators have approved only a handful of these products for sale, there has been growing political backlash to cultivated meat.
Last month, three states with Republican-led legislatures enacted bills banning or temporarily banning the sale of such products: Nebraska, Montana, and Indiana. They join three other states with similar bans: Mississippi, where a law prohibiting cultivated meat sales unanimously passed in both the state House and Senate earlier this year; Alabama; and Florida.
The governors of these states have framed these laws as necessary to protect consumers from “fake meat” (as the Nebraska governor’s office puts it) and ranchers from unfair competition in the marketplace. This posture casts doubt not just on the safety of cultivated foods, but also their legitimacy as meat. The Montana bill defines cultivated meat as “the concept of meat … rather than from a whole slaughtered animal.”
However, recent outcry from ranchers suggests these state officials do not speak for all agricultural producers and consumers; in Nebraska, for example, ranchers have welcomed competition from cultivated protein companies.
Madeleine Cohen, who heads the regulatory team at the Good Food Institute, argued these states are sacrificing a chance to create jobs and tax revenue. “There are a small number of states that have chosen to put political wins over consumer choice and over our general free market system,” said Cohen. “And they will now kind of be sitting on the sidelines, and they will miss out on economic opportunities.”
In May, three states with Republican-led legislatures enacted bills banning or temporarily banning the sale of cultivated proteins. Wildtype
But Kolbeck and other proponents argue that biotechnology is needed to meet the rising demand for meat and seafood without depleting the world’s natural resources. Both overfishing — which happens when wild fish are harvested at a rate faster than they can reproduce — and warming temperatures pose risks to global food security. Research has shown that climate change has already impacted fish and shellfish populations around the world. Fish farms are an increasingly common alternative to wild fisheries, but these energy-intensive operations can pollute waterways.
Kolbeck framed cultivated salmon as a way to reduce the food system’s impact on aquatic ecosystems, protecting them for “future generations so that people can continue to fish sustainably.”
“How do we take a little bit of pressure off of wild fish stocks and keep these places beautiful?” he said, referring to areas like Bristol Bay in Alaska, where the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery is located.
Suzi Gerber, head of the Association for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, or AMPS, a cultivated protein trade group, expressed optimism about the industry’s future. She noted that Trump recently released an executive order calling to boost U.S. seafood production.
“The timing is perfect,” said Gerber. “Wildtype and other seafood producing members of AMPS are very happy to answer this call and to ensure a bright future for American seafood alongside our agricultural colleagues in aquaculture, wild, and farmed fisheries.”
Eric Schulze, an independent consultant for cultivated meat companies and a former federal regulator, said that the FDA’s thumbs-up to Wildtype should put Americans’ mind at ease about cultivated meat.
“The U.S. produces some of the safest food in the world — conventional and cultivated — and this clearance only elevates food safety and enhances consumer choice,” said Schulze. “Everyone wins.”
CEO Vanessa Hudson’s strategy of making Qantas a majority low-cost airline has become with the closure of Jetstar Asia subsidiary. The unions are not happy, Michael Sainsbury reports.
Vanessa Hudson’s strategic vision is facing pushback from increasingly restive pilot unions as Qantas continues to quietly move mainline routes to Jetstar and other subsidiaries, where flight deck and cabin crews are paid about 30% less.
A spokesperson for the Australian Federation of Airline Pilots (AFAP), which covers about 80% of Jetstar pilots, told MWM, “Jetstar Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations are underway. Both parties are approaching discussions in good faith, and meetings have been going well to date with Jetstar management.”
However, the EBA does not expire until November, and things can go south quickly for the pilots when negotiating with Qantas’ aggressive industrial relations team. Qantas Freight pilots have moved a step closer to industrial action with the Fair Work Commission approving an application for protected industrial action on Thursday (June 11), with a pilot vote to begin Monday.
Qantas Freight holds contracts with Australia Post and FedEx, and strike action would severely interrupt the delivery of online purchases.
“After six months of negotiation, Qantas has refused to improve an offer that in some cases would see pilots paid less than if they were employed under the Air Pilots Award 2020 and would entrench poor work-life balance. A successful Protected Action Ballot Order would give more than 100 pilots the right to take industrial action,” The AFAP spokesperson said, “Qantas has based its offer on outdated aircraft that no longer fly,”
and in the last round of negotiations, threatened to remove back pay.
Meanwhile Qantas has admitted that Jetstar Asia would lose $35 million this year as it signalled the closure of the Singapore-based airline, the second of four planned Jetstar spinoffs to get off the ground and fail since Jetstar Pacific in 2012.
Jetstar Hong Kong failed to even gain a licence despite the backing of mainland airline China Eastern and being chaired by Pansy Ho, daughter of Macau gambling mogul Stanley Ho, and four years of lobbying at a reported price tag of $300 million.
All that’s left is a 30% stake in Jetstar Japan, which is controlled by rival Japan Airlines, and of course Jetstar Australia.
Jetstar Asia should have been closed years ago, but wasn’t, perhaps because it was seen as Alan Joyce’s vanity project.
The timing was triggered by a string of commercial imperatives including Qantas’s aircraft shortage, due to Joyce’s trade off between starting Jetstar Asia and ordering more planes for Qantas, and a looming capacity battle with soon-to-be-cashed up Virgin, as well as angry, highly profitable mining customers in Western Australia who want better, on-time planes from Qantas.
Wrong-headed and poorly executed, the Asia misadventure has been a bit of a schemozzle, highlighting the company’s misreading of the difficulties and nuances of doing business in Asian nations.
Jetstar Asia was always a much better experience than its domestic parent. But the Asian strategy, which allowed Joyce to swan around Asia capitals and rub shoulders with the likes of the Ho family, was prioritised over ordering new aircraft for its domestic and mainline international business, and it was always going to be outmatched by local low-cost carriers like Air Asia, Scoot and Vietjet.
Qantas said it would redirect the closed airline’s 13 A320 planes, and their destination is telling: nine to Jetstar and four to Perth-headquartered subsidiary Network Aviation.
As Qantas’ mainline domestic fleet has remained static at 75 for almost two decades, it has steadily increased capacity at its lower-cost, jet-flying subsidiaries Jetstar, National Jet Systems (NJS) and Network Aviation. Jetstar’s fleet now stands at 77, with another 29 on order for delivery by 2029.
Unhappy mining customers
The crisis amongst Qantas mining customers is very real, Perth-based Qantas sources told MWM. Vanessa Hudson and QantasLink chief Rachel Yangoyan flew to Perth last month to meet with mining bosses demanding better aircraft and on-time service, or they would walk away.
Network’s ancient Fokker 100s, Australia’s oldest commercial aeroplanes, are falling apart, and spare parts ceased to be manufactured long ago.
As part of its recent announcement, Qantas said it will retire four of the aircraft, and insiders say new replacements, in the form of second-hand Embraer E190S, are only weeks away. Network Aviation now has 14 A320S, second-hand and sourced from Jetstar and Jetstar Asia and 6 A319S, 20-year-old planes from US carrier Spirit, designed to service shorter runways found in WA mining airports.
WA miner, MinRes, has already started up its own airline, and others are understood to be eyeing the model. Rio Tinto recently secured service guarantees akin to the EU airline customer guarantees.
In an internal staff email obtained by MWM, Hudson said that the extra planes for Network would “…allow us to accelerate the retirement of a small number of F100s, increase our operational resilience and provide more capacity for our critical customers [miners] during peak periods.”
Virgin is also threatening Qantas’ FIFO business with an order of new E190 jets starting to arrive next year. As part of its upcoming IPO, Virgin said it would spend $1 billion on new aircraft and also has access to leased aircraft from 23% owner Qatar.
Pilots said the move has been planned for a while, with subsidiary Network Aviation recruiting pilots and cabin crews in recent months.
What’s next?
One Perth-based pilot told MWM, “It was clear something was happening, we just didn’t know what. Qantas has been investing in Perth with a new training centre, and in a meeting with staff on Wednesday, Hudson said that the company would be filling 100 new crew positions.”
Both NJS and Network Aviation have slowly been taking over Qantas’ mainline routes. Last month, it was revealed that Network would begin flying from Perth to Hobart, an existing Qantas route, resume flying Perth to Darwin and fly a new route: Perth-Newcastle. According to the pilot,
The problem is that we are flying old Qantas routes but they are paying us much less and in older planes.
NJS is the home to the smaller A220s that are now flying capital city routes such as Melbourne-Brisbane and Melbourne-Canberra, as well as more popular regional routes. NJs previously operated 20 B717s that were retired last year. In their place, the company has ordered 29 A220s, seven of which have now arrived.
The 717s had a capacity of 110 or 125 seats while the A220s had a capacity of 137 seats, a total capacity increase of 65%.
While Qantas is getting new aircraft to renew its 737 fleet, it has only ordered 28 out of 75 so far, a possible sign that the mainline service will shrink over time. Pilots predict that the mainline domestic airline would be used mainly for capital city trunk routes from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, whose fleet may possibly shrink even as Australia’s population continues to expand, and a further expansion of low-cost Jetstar both domestically and internationally.
Packing them in
Meanwhile, the Federal government seems happy to sit back and let the duopoly dictate terms and prices in the Australian aviation market, with no consumer guarantees or price caps.
The evidence is clear in the rising yields in Australia. Data released recently by the International Air Transport Association showed seat capacity in Australia has shrunk by 2.2% compared to a year earlier, yet revenue per kilometre increased by 2.4%.
Any real competition in the sector now appears to be a pipe dream after the collapse of Bonza last year and the shrinking of Rex to a regional player after it was tipped into administration a year ago.
Canberra has remained silent on what is happening with Rex, having tipped in $130 million of taxpayers’ money already and only three weeks out from the end of its administration. Neither Qantas nor Virgin has any interest in getting into a price war. Qantas shares are at record highs, and Virgin’s float is oversubscribed.
So it’s the usual SNAFU: shareholders and executives continue to win as airline frontline staff and passengers lose.
Wong says statement behind sanctions just as important as sanctions themselves
Wong also appeared on ABC News this morning, adding:
The most important thing to note … is that we are acting with others. You’ve heard me speak about the fact that Australia can’t shift the dial on the Middle East by ourselves …
It means that they won’t be able to travel to Australia, and if there are any assets held in Australia, they will be frozen, and people won’t be able to provide them with financial support.
But obviously it is the statement that is being made, that is as important as the effect of the sanctions. And I think the fact that the countries who have imposed these sanctions are countries who have historical relationships with the state of Israel, does demonstrate the level of concern that we have about what is occurring.
It is important together to send a very clear message that these activities and the impingement on the rights and human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank are not acceptable.
Ponsonby’s post office is shutting shop next month despite push back from the local community.
A sign on the storefront, which is at the College Hill end of Ponsonby Road, said the closure would take place on 4 July but the post boxes would be “staying put”.
Ponsonby local and author John Harris said New Zealand Post’s decision to close the store was “ill-considered” and it should “try harder” to cater for the people who use the shop’s services.
“They’ve got to be mindful of the vital role that post shops like this one play in glueing the community together,” Harris said.
“If you go down to the post shop you’ll see it’s buzzing with activity; people popping in to post parcels or to get forms filled out and so forth . . . they’ve got to think about the effect on small communities and this is like gutting the Ponsonby community.”
Viv Rosenberg, a spokesperson for the Ponsonby Business Association, said the group is saddened by the decision to close the shop.
”Our local post office has been part of the fabric of our community in Three Lamps for several years and we regard the team there as part of our Ponsonby family. We are working alongside others to try and keep it open.”
NZ Post general manager consumer Sarah Sandoval said customer data and service patterns were analysed to determine where NZ Post services were best placed.
“The Ponsonby area is well serviced by existing postal outlets, and to remove duplications of services, we’ve decided to make this change.”
The Asia Pacific Report story about the impending Ponsonby post office shop closure published earlier this month. Image: Asia Pacific Report
She also said that there were nearby options available, including on Hardinge Street 1.4km away, and NZ Post Herne Bay, 1km away.
The NZ Post website said “store closures are given very careful consideration”.
“[Reasons for closure] can include a decline in customer numbers or services which significantly affect the economic viability of the store,” NZ Post said.
Harris emailed NZ Post CEO David Walsh expressing his disapproval of the decision to close the shop and requesting it be reconsidered.
He said a response by the NZ Post general manager consumer stated the closure followed a close look at customer data and that there were other stores serving the Ponsonby community, which was an unsustainable way for the business to operate.
“Herne Bay, Hardinge Street and Wellesley Street are either a challenging walk or you hop in the car and add to the grid,” Harris said.
“They’re only thinking about the sustainability of the New Zealand Post itself not the community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Wood pellets, by design, are highly flammable. The small pieces of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are used in everything from home heating to grilling. But their flammable nature has made for dangerous work conditions: Since 2010, at least 52 fires have broken out at the facilities that make wood pellets across the U.S., according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Of the 15 largest wood pellet facilities, at least eight have had fires or explosions since 2014, according to the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by a former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
At the same time, the world’s largest biomass company, Drax, is cutting down trees across North America with a promise to sell them as a replacement to fossil fuels. But even its track record is checkered with accidents.
In South Shields, UK, wood pellets destined for a Drax plant spontaneously combusted while in storage at the Port of Tyne, starting a fire that took 40 firefighters 12 hours to extinguish. In Port Allen, Louisiana, a Drax wood pellet facility burst into flames in November 2021.
Now, despite finding itself in the midst of a lawsuit over accidental fire damages, Drax is pressing on with a new business proposal; it involves not just cutting down trees to make wood pellets, but, the company argues, also to help stop wildfires.
In October 2023, after purchasing two parcels of land in California to build two pellet mills, one in Tuolumne County and another in Lassen County, Drax’s partner organization, Golden State Natural Resources, or GSNR, “a nonprofit public benefit corporation,” met with residents of Tuolumne County to address concerns about its vision for how the process of manufacturing wood pellets can mitigate wildfire risk.
GSNR has since touted its close work with community members. However, according to Megan Fiske, who instructs rural workers at a local community college, residents living close to the proposed pellet mill sites were not always aware of the plans. “People who were a hundred feet away from the [proposed] pellet plant had no idea about it,” said Fiske.
Both of the proposed mills are in forested areas that have been threatened by wildfires. When asked about the risks that manufacturing wood pellets poses, Patrick Blacklock, executive director of GSNR, told Grist, “We sought to learn from those incidents. The design features can go a long way to mitigating the risk of fire.”
If county representatives approve the plan, loggers will be allowed to take “dead or dying trees” and “woody biomass” from within a 100-mile radius of the pellet mills within the two counties, which overlap with the Stanislaus National Forest and the Yosemite National Park.
Fiske said she’s seen instances, unrelated to Drax, where loggers weren’t trained properly and ended up taking more wood than should have been allowed under a wildfire resilience scheme. “The difference between what [the loggers] are told and what happens on the ground is very different,” said Fiske. “[You have] inexperienced or young people who are underpaid, maybe English isn’t their first language, so there are a lot of barriers.”
Residents of Lassen and Tuolumne counties are fighting against Drax’s plans to build the pellet mills, telling Grist that making wood pellets in forested areas and thinning the forests at the same time would only compound the risk of fires in their communities. “They are downplaying the scale of this over and over again,” said Renee Orth, a Tuolumne County resident pushing back against development plans.
In January 2024, Drax formalized its partnership with GSNR with a memorandum of understanding. Several months later, the company announced that it was creating a new subsidiary, called Elimini, to take over the work in California and focus on “carbon removal” in the United States. But before Elimini and GSNR can build their mills, they are hoping to secure a viable plan for transporting the wood pellets. GSNR intends to build a facility in Stockton, about 100 miles west of the pellet mills, to transport the wood pellets overseas. That plan has been met with strong opposition.
Little Manilla Rising — a community-led group of mostly south-Stockton residents — has decided to take a stand against Drax, which needs approval from the city before it can begin building its transport facility.
“Right now, our community has the opportunity to determine if we even want an industry at our port that has a proven recent track record of fires, explosions, and fugitive wood dust emissions,” said Gloria Alonso Cruz, environmental justice coordinator with Little Manila Rising.
Cruz believes that GSNR is “counting on a marginalized community’s voice to go unheard.” “We are not going to let that happen.”
A Drax spokesperson told Grist that “no decision has been made on any potential end market or on any future arrangement with GSNR,” but GSNR said that it has not signed any other MoU with another company. The draft environmental impact report states that Europe and Asia are the intended end markets for the wood pellets.
The EU, along with Japan and South Korea, subsidise wood pellets as a renewable fuel, based on carbon accounting which assumes that the trees will grow back and replace the CO2 that was burned after the trees were removed. But over the past few years, evidence has emerged that the burning of U.S.-sourced wood is currently releasing annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to between 6 and 7 million passenger vehicles. One study suggested it can take between 44 and 104 years for new trees to reabsorb the carbon that was emitted during clearcutting for wood pellets, and in a 2018 letter sent to members of the European Parliament, a group of 772 scientists concluded that: “Overall, replacing fossil fuels with wood [for biomass] will likely result in 2-3x more carbon in the atmosphere in 2050 per gigajoule of final energy.”
To move forward, GSNR has to first wait for approval from the Port of Stockton. The port’s director Kirk DeJesus says they are waiting for the environmental impact report to be completed before signing any agreement. GSNR released the Draft Environmental Impact Report on October 22, 2024 with a 90-day review period, where comments are submitted and incorporated into an amended version, which will be sent back to Golden State Finance Authority — the non-profit that owns GSNR — later this year for approval. After that, GSNR will also have to get local permits for Tuolumne and Lassen counties and demonstrate compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act.
Climate activists block the entrance to Drax’s May 2025 annual general meeting in London.
Photo by Lab Ky Mo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
In its Draft Environmental Impact Report, GSNR says it anticipates the “Biomass Only Thinning Projects will treat approximately 85,779 acres of forested land annually on average once the proposed project is fully operational.” If the project is greenlit, then approximately 2,640 square miles would be logged over a 20-year period, the equivalent of a mile-wide strip of forest stretching from Sacramento to Boston. Blacklock told Grist the organization based its wildfire project off research known as the Tamm Review, which found that thinning combined with prescribed burns can reduce wildfire severity by 62 to 72 percent.
But climate scientist Dominick DellaSala said the authors of the Tamm Review miscited their own work and ignored 37 papers contradicting their findings. “The forest is no longer a forest,” DellaSala added. “The fire-thinning question has been very narrowly scoped to get a preconceived outcome … None of them look at the collateral damages to ecosystems and the climate — only if fuels are reduced enough to lower intensity.”
Kim Davis, research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service and lead author of the 2014 Tamm Review study, said she stands by the findings that mechanical treatments can reduce future fire severity when combined with prescribed fires, adding that the 37 studies DellaSala cited were not included because they did not meet sufficiently strict scientific standards. “This research underwent rigorous statistical, technical, and peer review,” said Davis. “We respectfully disagree with the statement that our work improperly cited or misrepresented studies and data.”
In any case, the U.S. Forest Service already cuts down dense areas of forest it believes are particularly at risk from wildfires and burns them in controlled areas, known as slash piles. Blacklock said that the partnership between Drax and GSNR shares this same objective. From GSNR’s perspective, and that of many local politicians, using wood which would otherwise be needlessly burned in wood-pellet facilities is a win-win.
But campaigners say that, in other markets, Drax and its subsidiaries have extended their operations beyond slash piles, cutting down healthy trees to make wood pellets. In 2022, the BBC uncovered that wood used in Drax facilities had come from clear-cut primary forests in Canada, which can take thousands of years to grow back. A year later, after residents of a town in British Columbia, Canada, asked Drax to help clear nearby slash piles, Environment Ministry employees told The Tyee that tens of thousands of trees from healthy forests were being turned into wood pellets.
Large trees of the kind chopped down in Canada act as wind buffers, according to DellaSala. When these trees are removed in logging operations, like opening the air vent on a wood stove, the increased ventilation can cause a fire to spread quickly. “If a fire occurs it can spread rapidly through the forest due to higher wind speeds and drying out of the understory by tree canopy removals,” said DellaSala. “Hence the forest is over-ventilated and more prone to fast moving, wind spread fires.”
The pellet mills, which have a history of setting on fire and producing piles of combustible dust, have to be built in clearings within forests so that woody fuel can be delivered. Although GSNR assured residents it follows strict fire protocols, the proximity to the forest made some residents nervous, and has compounded worries that the wildfire treatment plan will make fires more likely, not less.
Drax’s involvement has also not reassured them. The company has recently come under scrutiny from regulators. The UK energy regulator Ofgem slapped the company with a $25 million fine in August 2024 for misreporting sustainability data. Three months later, Land and Climate Review reported that Drax has broken U.S. environmental rules more than 11,000 times according to public records. The breaches have spurred action from communities across the Golden State, with 185 organizations asking California to reject the wood-pellet proposal.
Orth, one of the Tuolumne County residents Grist spoke with, captured the argument against Drax and GSNR very succinctly: “It’s greenwashing through and through,” she said.
In a recycling facility in Covington, Georgia, workers grind up dead batteries into a fine, dark powder. In the past, the factory shipped that powder, known in the battery recycling industry as black mass, overseas to refineries that extracted valuable metals like cobalt and nickel. But now it keeps the black mass on site and processes it to produce lithium carbonate, a critical ingredient for making new batteries to power electric vehicles and store energy on the grid.
From Nevada to Arkansas, companies are racing to dig more lithium out of the ground to meet the clean energy sector’s surging appetite. But this battery recycling facility, owned by Massachusetts-based Ascend Elements, is the first new lithium carbonate producer in the nation in years — and the only source of recycled lithium carbonate in North America. The company is finalizing upgrades to its Covington facility that will allow it to produce up to 3,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year beginning later this month. Right now, the only other domestic source of lithium carbonate is a small mine in Silver Peak, Nevada.
Nevertheless, U.S. battery recyclers face uncertainty due to fast-changing tariff policies, the prospect that Biden-era tax credits could be repealed by Congress as it seeks to slash federal spending, and signs that the clean energy manufacturing boom is fading.
Battery recyclers are in “a limbo moment,” said Beatrice Browning, a recycling expert at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which conducts market research for companies in the lithium-ion battery supply chain. They’re “waiting to see what the next steps are.”
To transition off fossil fuels, the world needs a lot more big batteries that can power EVs and store renewable energy for use when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. That need is already causing demand for the metals inside batteries to surge. Recycling end-of-life batteries — from electric cars, e-bikes, cell phones, and more — can provide metals to help meet this demand while reducing the need for destructive mining. It’s already happening on a large scale in China, where most of the world’s lithium-ion battery manufacturing takes place and where recyclers benefit from supportive government policies and a steady stream of manufacturing scrap.
Waste batteries are pooled for recycling at a technology park in Jieshou, China.
Liu Junxi / Xinhua via Getty Images
When the Biden administration attempted to onshore clean energy manufacturing, U.S. battery recyclers announced major expansion plans, propelled by government financing and other incentives. Under former president Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, launched research and development initiatives to support battery recycling and awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to firms seeking to expand operations. The DOE’s Loan Program’s Office also offeredto lend nearly $2.5 billion to two battery recycling companies.
The industry also benefited from tax credits established or enhanced by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the centerpiece of Biden’s climate agenda. In particular, the 45X advanced manufacturing production credit subsidizes domestic production of critical minerals, including those produced from recycled materials. For battery recyclers, the incentive “has a direct bottom-line impact,” according to Roger Lin, VP of government affairs at Ascend Elements.
The DOE didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment on the status of Biden-era grants and loans for battery recycling. But recyclers report that at least some federal support is continuing under Trump.
In 2022, Ascend Elements was awarded a $316 million DOE grant to help it construct a second battery recycling plant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. That grant, which will go toward building capacity to make battery cathode precursor materials from recycled metals, “is still active and still being executed on,” Lin told Grist, with minimal impact from the change in administration. Ascend Elements expects the plant to come online in late 2026.
American Battery Technology Company, a Reno, Nevada-based battery materials firm, told a similar story. In December, the company finalized a $144 million DOE contract to support the construction of its second battery recycling facility, which will extract and refine battery-grade metals from manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. That grant remains active with “no changes” since Trump’s inauguration, CEO Ryan Melsert told Grist.
Yet another battery recycler, Cirba Solutions, recently learned that a $200 million DOE grant to help it construct a new battery recycling plant in Columbia, South Carolina, is moving forward. At full capacity, this facility is expected to produce enough battery-grade metals to supply half a million EVs a year. Cirba Solutions is also still spending funds from two earlier DOE grants, including a $75 million grant to expand a battery processing plant in Lancaster, Ohio.
Barrels containing used batteries are stored in a Li-Cycle facility in Germany.
Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert / picture alliance via Getty Images
“I think that we aligned very much to the priorities of the administration,” Danielle Spalding, VP of communications and public affairs at Cirba Solutions, told Grist.
Those priorities include establishing the U.S. as “the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals,” and taking steps to “facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,” according to executiveorders signed by Trump in January and March. Because critical minerals are used in many high-tech devices, including military weapons, the Trump administration appears to believe America’s national security depends on controlling their supply chains. As battery recyclers were quick to note following Trump’s inauguration, their industry can help.
“Critical minerals are central to creating a resilient energy economy in the U.S., and resource recovery and recycling companies will continue to play an important role in providing another domestic source of these materials,” Ajay Kochhar, CEO of the battery recycling firm Li-Cycle, wrote in a blog post reacting to one of Trump’s executive orders on energy.
Li-Cycle, which closed a $475 million loan with the DOE’s Loan Programs Office in November but is now facing possible bankruptcy, didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.
While Biden’s approach to onshoring critical mineral production was rooted in various financial incentives, Trump has pursued the same goal using tariffs — and by attempting to fast-track new mines. Although economists have criticized Trump’s indiscriminate and unpredictable application of tariffs, some battery recyclers are cautiously optimistic they will benefit from increased trade restrictions. In particular, recyclers see the escalating trade war with China — including recentlimits on exports of various critical minerals to the U.S. — as further evidence that new domestic sources of these resources are needed. (China is the world’s leading producer of most key battery metals.)
“There is a chance that limiting the amount that is being imported from China … could really strengthen” mineral production in other regions, including the U.S., Browning said.
Trade restrictions between the U.S. and key partners outside of China could be more harmful. Today, Browning says, U.S. recyclers often sell the black mass they produce to refiners in South Korea, which don’t produce enough domestically to meet their processing capacity and are paying a premium to secure material from abroad. Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on Korean imports in April, before placing them on a 90-day pause. If South Korea were to implement retaliatory tariffs in response, it could cut off a key revenue stream for the U.S. industry. However, recycling companies Grist spoke noted that there are currently no export bans or tariffs affecting their black mass, and emphasized their plans to build up local refining capacity.
A scientific employee holds a glass dish that contains black mass from dead batteries.
Robert Michael / picture alliance via Getty Images
“The short answer is that we see the tariffs as an opportunity to focus on domestic manufacturing,” Spalding of Cirba Solutions said.
While battery recyclers seem to align with Trump on critical minerals policy, and to some extent on trade, their interests diverge when it comes to energy policy. Without a clean energy manufacturing boom in the U.S., there would be far less need for battery recycling.
Today, nearly 40 percent of the material available to battery recyclers in the U.S. is production scrap from battery gigafactories, according to data from Benchmark. Another 15 percent consists of used EV batteries that have reached the end of their lives or been recalled, while grid storage and micromobility batteries (such as e-bike batteries) account for 14 percent. The remaining third of the material available for processing is portable batteries, like those in consumer electronics.
In the future, as more EVs reach the end of their lives, an even greater fraction of battery scrap will come from the clean energy sector. If a large number of planned battery and EV manufacturing facilities are canceled in the coming years — due to a repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives, a loss of federal funding, rising project costs, or perhaps all three — the recycling industry may have to scale back its ambitions, too.
The budget bill that passed the House in May would undo a number of key Inflation Reduction Act provisions. Some clean energy tax credits, like the consumer EV tax credit, would be eliminated at the end of this year. The legislation was kinder to the 45X manufacturing credit, scheduling it to end in 2031 rather than the current phase-out date of 2032. But the bill could face significant changes in the Senate before heading to Trump’s desk, possibly by July 4.
Despite uncertainty over the fate of IRA tax credits, Trump’s actions have already put a damper on U.S. manufacturing: Since January, firms have abandoned or delayed plans for $14 billion worth of U.S. clean energy projects, according to the clean tech advocacy group E2.
While the battery recyclers Grist spoke with are putting on a brave face under Trump’s second term, some are also looking to hedge their bets. As Ascend Elements ramps up lithium production in Georgia, it has lined up at least one buyer outside the battery supply chain. The battery industry accounts for nearly 90 percent of lithium demand globally, but the metal is also used in various industrial applications, including ceramics and glass making.
Integrating into the EV battery supply chain remains “the ultimate goal,” Lin told Grist. “But we are looking at other plans to ensure … the economic viability of the operation continues.”
The community is up in arms over another local post office in Aotearoa New Zealand about to be closed down, this time in the iconic and historic Auckland inner city suburb of Ponsonby.
A local author and founder of Greenstone Pictures, John Harris, has led a pushback against plans to close the Ponsonby post office branch in Three Lamps next month with an undated open letter to the chief executive David Walsh.
Saying he was “surprised and dismayed” to see the “closing soon but staying put” sign in the Ponsonby NZ Post shop, Harris pointed out that the small office gave “great service to dozens of businesses” in the area, and hundreds of residents.
“It is misleading on your poster to claim that people will be able to obtain the same services at nearby post shops like that in Jervois Road,” Harris said.
“Will they be able to pay their bills and car registration there? Collect mail and parcels? Buy courier bags and send mail and parcels?
“And do you expect them to walk there? It is not helpful to say this closure ‘might mean a few minutes extra drive’.
This assumed that all clients were using a car, not elderly or young who were on foot.
Parking in busy streets
“And people are expected to try and find parking on other busy streets — Jervois Road, Karangahape Road, Wellesley Street.”
Harris said: “The Ponsonby post shop is a vital part of the network that binds the community together.
“To close it is like removing part of the community’s nervous system: an ill-considered stab at the heart of a community which has always been vibrant, socially aware and productive.”
The NZ Post website proclaims that “we provide customers with the solutions and products to help them communicate and do business.”
However, said Harris, this planned closure for July 4 did not match those promises.
Harris also pointed out that NZ Post made a $16 million operating profit for the last six months of 2024.
The Ponsonby protest letter from a local community advocate to the NZ Post. Image: APR
“Congratulations. I’m pleased you are keeping NZ Post viable. But it shows there is a bit of ‘wriggle room’ to keep the Ponsonby store open.”
Digital services use
In response to the call to reconsider the decision, a customer services officer replied on June 6 on behalf of chief executive Walsh, saying that the NZ Post Office needed to “ensure our physical locations are in the right places and operating efficiently” in an age where more people used digital services.
“In some areas, including Ponsonby, we’ve had more than one store serving the same neighbourhood. That’s not a sustainable way for us to operate, so we’ve had to make some changes.”
However, critics of the decision to close the Ponsonby store say the reasoning was “not credible”, stressing that all claimed alternative postal stores are several kilometres away.
Harris, a children’s author with a strong association with the local community stretching back to the 1970s and a former editor of West End News in Freemans Bay, acknowledged that the Ponsonby PO boxes lobby was being kept open, “but what about the ordinary rank-and-file residents and small business owners who value the other everyday services offered at the store?”
He said he had written to local MP, Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and the Ponsonby Business Association seeking their support.
The problem with plant-based alternatives, for the moment, is that most consumers just don’t seem interestedin buying them instead of conventional meat. This year alone, U.S. retail sales for refrigerated plant-based burgers fell by more than a quarter.
But there are signs that consumers might be perfectly happy to reduce their meat consumption in other ways. New research shows that meat eaters already prefer the taste of some “balanced proteins” — items like hamburgers and sausages that replace at least 30 percent of their meat content with vegetables — over conventional meat. While that may sound like a small change, the climate impact could be surprisingly large at scale: Initial research suggests that, if Americans replaced 30 percent of the meat in every burger they consume in a year, the carbon emission reductions would be equivalent to taking every car off the road in San Diego County.
Taste and price are often listed as reasons for sluggish consumer interest in plant-based proteins. That’s where Nectar, the group that conducted the new research, comes in: Part of the philanthropic organization Food System Innovations, Nectar conducts large-scale blind taste tests with omnivores to determine exactly how much consumers prefer meat over veggie options, or vice versa.
To be clear, balanced proteins — sometimes called “blended meats” — are a far cry from the vegetarian or vegan options that are most climate-friendly. Balanced proteins are still meat products, just with less meat. These novel foods incorporate plant-based protein or whole-cut vegetables into the mix. Companies experimenting with balanced proteins — which include boutique brands as well as meat titans like Purdue — frame these additions not as filler, but as a way to boost flavor and sneak more nutrients into one’s diet. It may not be a hard sell; after all, Americans are among the most ravenous meat consumers in the world, and they are estimated to eat 1.5 times more meat than dietary guidelines recommend.
What Nectar found in its latest research is that the balanced protein category is already relatively popular with meat eaters: Participants reported they were more likely to buy balanced protein product than a vegan one. That means that balanced proteins could serve as one way to get consumers to eat less meat overall, lowering the carbon footprints of omnivores reluctant to give up burgers entirely.
In other words, while profit-minded companies like Purdue might sell blended meats as a win-win for consumers looking for better taste and higher nutritional content, the fact that substituting these products for conventional meat could cut down on greenhouse gas emissions is an unspoken perk for the planet.
“Taste has to be at the forefront” if animal protein substitution is going to take off, said Tim Dale, the Category Innovation Director at Food System Innovations.
Mixing vegetables and whole grains directly into meat products is nothing new. Onion, garlic, and parsley often appear in lamb kofta; breadcrumbs help give meatballs their shape and improve their texture. Dale noted that chefs sometimes mix mushrooms into burgers to keep their patties from drying out. Replacing one third of a sausage with, say, potatoes and bell peppers, is “just doubling down on that logic and doing so because of this new motivation of sustainability,” he added.
A blended burger made partially with mushrooms.
Ben Hasty / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images
To gauge how consumers perceive balanced proteins, Dale and his team designed a series of blind taste tests in which participants sampled both traditional meat products — burgers, meatballs, chicken nuggets, and a half-dozen other popular meats — as well as balanced protein options of the same type. The consumers then responded to survey questions asking them to evaluate flavor, texture, and appearance. (Like previous studies done by Nectar, the taste tests were done in a restaurant setting, rather than a laboratory.)
Nearly 1,200 people — all of whom reported eating their product category (say, meatballs) at least once every month or two — participated in these taste tests. The results revealed that participants preferred the taste of three balanced protein brands — the Shiitake Infusion Burgers from Fable Food Co., the Purdue PLUS Chicken Nuggets from Purdue, and the Duo burger from Fusion Food Co. — over that of the “normal” all-meat alternatives. A fourth item, the BOTH Burger from 50/50 Foods, was ranked evenly with an all-meat burger, reaching what Nectar calls “taste parity”.
Dale called balanced proteins “a re-emerging category,” one that has been around but might be well-positioned to pick up steam in a climate-changing world as both consumers and producers of meat struggle to make more sustainable choices. Nectar likens balanced proteins to hybrid cars, because they represent a midpoint on the path to going meatless. Cara Nicoletta, a fourth-generation butcher who founded Seemore Meat & Veggies, experimented with sneaking vegetables like bell peppers, mushrooms, and carrots into her sausages for a decade before launching her business around 2020. She has said that, while working as a butcher, the amount of meat she saw her customers purchase day in and day out did not “seem like a sustainable way to eat.”
While brands may not spell it out in their marketing, the reason why cutting the amount of beef or pork or chicken in your sausage is better for the environment is because raising meat for human consumption is a massive source of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024, the United Nations found that the agrifood system is responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions; in that same report, the U.N. stated that livestock was the single largest source of these emissions within the food system, followed by the deforestation required for the farmland and pasture that support omnivorous diets. This is difficult to talk about, and brands rarely do. (Purdue’s line of blended chicken nuggets instead highlights its hidden cauliflower and chickpea content as a nutritious plus for kids.)
For the climate-minded, of course, there’s no better way to reduce meat consumption than by cutting it out entirely. “Ideally, I’d love to see a future where we moved away from animals in the food system completely,” said Brittany Sartor, who co-founded Plant Futures, a curriculum at the University of California, Berkeley, geared towards preparing students for careers in the plant-based alternatives industry. (Sartor was not involved in the Nectar study.)
But she added that Nectar’s findings on balanced proteins are promising, and she believes these items “have potential to reduce animal consumption and its related health and environmental impacts — especially among certain consumer demographics.”
Dale put it this way: Whether people give up meat entirely or not, framing the veggie-forward option as superior can start with centering taste: “We are trying to promote and say that the sustainable choice is the more delicious way to cook.”
At the Trader Joe’s on Hyperion Avenue in Los Angeles, there’s a ritual that locals know well. Shoppers brave the parking lot—voted one of the worst in the city—sometimes before the sun rises, for first dibs on seasonal items: everything from tiny tote bags to that cultish green goddess salad dressing that never seems to stay on shelves long.
The store’s narrow aisles, humming with classic ’80s tunes and filled with Hawaiian-shirt-clad crew members, are cramped in the charming way Angelenos have come to love and expect. There are no self-checkouts, no coupons, no loyalty apps—just a cashier who asks what you’re making for dinner.
Trader Joe’s secret to success
Trader Joe’s has become one of the most paradoxical success stories in American grocery retail: a billion-dollar business built not on abundance but restraint.
While the typical supermarket carries upward of 30,000 items, Trader Joe’s keeps its shelves stocked with only around 4,000. That includes everything from basics like peanut butter and bread to offbeat house-label hits like pickle-flavored popcorn and soy chorizo.
Trader Joe’s
The constraint is deliberate. By drastically limiting choice, the company eliminates the decision fatigue that often paralyzes shoppers in conventional chains.
And the formula works. According to industry research firm Placer.ai, Trader Joe’s stores see some of the highest foot traffic per square foot in the grocery category, routinely outperforming bigger-format competitors. The average Trader Joe’s is about 15,000 square feet—less than a third the size of many mainstream grocers—yet its revenue per square foot hovers near the top of the industry, at an estimated $2,000 to $2,300 depending on location. This puts it ahead of its nearest competitor, Whole Foods, whose per-square-foot revenue lags closer to $900.
That density is by design. Instead of expanding through larger stores or new tech integrations, Trader Joe’s has doubled down on physical intimacy. Its layouts are less about merchandising and more about movement: a choreography of bottlenecked carts, obstructive end caps, and rotating product selection. Where a typical supermarket might offer fifteen brands of peanut butter, Trader Joe’s will sell three. Where other chains have entire aisles of cereal, Trader Joe’s limits its selection to a few small, manageable rows.
The point isn’t to be everything to everyone. It’s to offer what its customers need, and only that. The store may feel loud, but its secret is delivered like a whisper: you don’t need as much as you think.
House brands
This scarcity is psychological as much as it is logistical. Researchers have long documented the paradox of choice: that more options often lead to less satisfaction. Trader Joe’s seems to have internalized this principle with near-religious commitment. A 2016 Harvard Business Review case study of the company emphasized that its limited SKU count contributes to a faster, more pleasurable shopping experience. The result is less browsing, more buying, and a higher conversion rate per shopper.
Trader Joe’s
Another driver of Trader Joe’s minimalism is the dominance of private label products. More than 80 percent of Trader Joe’s inventory carries its own branding. This not only boosts margins but also sidesteps national brand slotting fees and advertising costs. In exchange, customers get prices that consistently beat higher-end markets, with quality that often rivals them.
It’s also allowed Trader Joe’s to spin seasonal scarcity into a kind of cultural event. Shoppers know that the beloved Candy Cane Joe-Joe’s or Everything but the Bagel seasoning won’t be on shelves forever—so they stock up.
“There’s this kind of stigma that private label is something that you settle for so that you can pay a lower price than you would for the name brand option,” expert Julie Averbach told CNBC. “At Trader Joe’s, the private label products are affordable luxuries.”
The loyalty loop
Even the aesthetic choices reflect the retailer’s stripped-down philosophy. Trader Joe’s famously eschews conventional advertising, preferring its Fearless Flyer newsletter and hand-drawn signage to digital campaigns or television spots. It doesn’t have a rewards program or partner with delivery apps like Instacart or Uber Eats. This simplicity extends to staffing, where the brand prefers generalists over specialists. Crew members stock shelves, ring up customers, and hand out samples in a way that feels more cooperative than transactional.
Trader Joe’s
Still, the stores are as varied as the monthly roster of new items. “Each Trader Joe’s is very much unique,” Averbach said. “The artwork is very personalized to reflect the local community. They all tap into a sense of local pride and identity, which is something that I think is really unique for a grocery retailer.”
All of this contributes to an uncanny sense of trust—not just in the store, but in the brand’s intentions. It is not trying to upsell or dazzle with abundance. It wants to get you in and out, well-fed and delighted. And despite its deliberately analog model, Trader Joe’s continues to grow. As of 2024, it operates more than 560 stores across the US, adding around 10 to 12 locations annually, always keeping the same small footprint and tightly edited inventory.
As retail competitors invest heavily in personalization algorithms and shelf management powered by artificial intelligence, Trader Joe’s has staked its future on something more tactile and human. The line might be long. The shelves might be low-tech. But for many shoppers, that’s exactly the point.
“Trader Joe’s is encouraging us to slow down and actually enjoy the shopping experience,” Averbach says.
“And once you slow down and enjoy, you’re also more likely to discover and buy things that weren’t on your original shopping list.”
The delicate balance of consistency and surprise may be Trader Joe’s greatest strength. The stores feel timeless, and yet what’s inside is always shifting just enough to keep customers curious. It’s not the endless scroll of e-commerce or the cavernous aisles of a big-box store. It’s something slower, more analog, more human.
In a retail landscape obsessed with personalization and choice, Trader Joe’s dares to be prescriptive. It’s telling you, with each item, this is what we think you’ll love. And most of the time, it’s right.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. the Environmental Protection Agency significantly limited the agency’s ability to use the 1972 Clean Water Act to safeguard the nation’s wetlands from pollution and destruction. The decision determined that wetlands — waterlogged habitats that help filter water and sequester carbon — must be indistinguishable from larger bodies of water to be eligible for protection under the law.
The move effectively eliminated federal protection for most freshwater wetlands in the United States.
The Sackett decision shifted responsibility onto states to protect their wetlands from being demolished in the name of development. Although about half of all states already had their own wetland protection laws on the books, the other half had no state-level wetland protections, according to the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.
A report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that wetlands in Illinois, Iowa, and other states in the Upper Midwest are particularly vulnerable to overdevelopment due to weak statewide regulations.
Illinois appears to be well positioned to protect its wetlands. It’s a blue state with Democratic supermajorites in both state legislative chambers and a governor friendly to climate policy. But last year, a wetlands protection bill never made it to the General Assembly for a vote. And Illinois State Senator Laura Ellman, the primary sponsor of the bill, is pessimistic about pushing the same bill through the legislature this year.
One major opponent stands in the way: the Illinois Farm Bureau. “If the Farm Bureau is against it, a lot of legislators from downstate will be against it,” Ellman told Grist. “I think a lot of planets would have to align before we could get this bill passed this session.”
The Illinois Farm Bureau belongs to the American Farm Bureau Federation, a national organization that bills itself as the “unified national voice of agriculture.” The federation, which boasts nearly 6 million members, is a conservative-leaning group that lobbies for policies that typically limit the government’s ability to restrict farmers’ activities.
As such, the group often views wetland rules as overstepping — and its state chapters wield their influence to cut such measures short, according to lawmakers in Illinois and Iowa, two of the nation’s largest agricultural producers. Since the Sackett decision, a handful of states have tried to fill in the gap in federal protections with mixed results. Only one state — Colorado — so far has succeeded in passing legislation restoring its wetlands protections to a pre-Sackett level. Illinois presents an interesting test case: Can agricultural states push wetlands protections through when conservative-leaning lobbying groups oppose regulation?
Ellman’s bill is “definitely in a precarious situation this year,” said Jennifer Walling, who runs the Illinois Environmental Council, an organization that advances environmental policy statewide. “This is something that makes so much sense. It should be bipartisan support, and yet it’s getting a lot of challenges.”
Corn growing on a farm in Illinois.
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Wetlands are soggy, muddy interstitial ecosystems like swamps, marshes, and bogs that often bridge the gap between dry land and larger bodies of water. The unifying feature across these landscapes is that they’re all some degree of waterlogged: The ground can be fully flooded or just saturated, and these conditions can vary seasonally.
As a result of that water content, wetlands have specialized soils that store plenty of carbon, says Siobhan Fennessy, a professor at Kenyon College and wetland ecologist. Globally, inland wetlands occupy only about 6 percent of the Earth’s land surface but are estimated to hold about 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon. That’s significant, since “there’s more carbon in soils globally than there is in the atmosphere,” Fennessy said.
In the United States, wetlands account for less than 6 percent of the surface area of the lower 48 states, approximately half of what existed at the time of the American Revolution. In addition to storing carbon, these sparse habitats provide critical ecological functions like soaking up excessive rains to mitigate flood risks and recharging groundwater.
But wetlands have been under attack by corporate interests and those who want fewer bureaucratic hurdles when developing land. The Sacketts, the Idaho couple who gave the 2023 Supreme Court decision its name, engaged in a 16-year legal battle against the EPA to build a lake home despite objections from the agency that doing so violated the Clean Water Act.
The case concerned home building, but agricultural groups joined in the chorus of opposition. The Illinois Farm Bureau, alongside 19 other state Farm Bureaus, signed onto the American Farm Bureau Federation’s amicus brief backing the plaintiffs’ argument that the federal government was overstepping the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act by regulating wetlands not obviously connected to larger bodies of water.
The Trump administration has stepped up efforts to reduce federal protections for waterways. As part of the EPA’s so-called “greatest day of deregulation” earlier this year, agency administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to further limit the scope of the Clean Water Act by more narrowly defining “waters of the United States.”
The law firm that represented the Sacketts — Pacific Legal Foundation—is now suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a program known as Swampbuster, which gives farmers public funds in exchange for conserving wetlands on their land.
Together, these developments have empowered agribusiness groups to “take actions that are profoundly contrary to the public interest,” said Dani Replogle, a staff attorney of the Food and Water Watch, one of the defendants in the Swampbuster case.
In Illinois, despite solid Democratic majorities in the state legislature, plans to enshrine wetland protections after the Sackett decision haven’t gotten far.
In February of this year, Illinois State Senator Laura Ellman introduced SB 2401, or the Wetlands Protection Act, to the state senate. It was her second time bringing the bill to the state legislature, following its failure to reach a vote last year.
Ellman envisioned the measure as a response to the 2023 Supreme Court decision. It would create a process by which landowners would have to apply for and receive a permit before developing on wetlands.
“It was originally a wetlands and streams act,” Ellman told Grist. But in early conversations with the Illinois Farm Bureau, she received feedback that the way she defined streams in the bill was too vague. The group voiced concern that the bill was too far-reaching and placed an unfair burden on landowners. At that point, she decided, “Okay, we’re just going to focus on wetlands.”
Farmland in Illinois by the Ohio River.
Jim Wark / Design Pics Editorial / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Even after the change, Ellman remembered the Illinois Farm Bureau “turning on their jets”: She and other lawmakers were flooded with calls urging them to oppose the wetland bill. She thinks the unified show of opposition reflects the organizing power of Illinois’ nearly 100 county-level farm bureaus.
The Illinois Farm Bureau has also wooed city and suburban legislators via its Adopt-A-Legislator program. “People go down and spend the day touring farms and learning about agriculture,” said Illinois State Representative Anna Moeller. “I know a lot of my colleagues really enjoy that.”
As an example, the Menard County Farm Bureau posted photos on Facebook post last summer from a cookout in central Illinois hosted by Senate President Don Harmon and State Representative Camille Y. Lilly, both Chicago-area Democrats. According to Lilly’s official Facebook account, she’s hosting the cookout again later this summer.
Chris Davis, director of state legislation for Illinois Farm Bureau, told Grist that Ellman’s bill remains “extraordinarily broad and vague in terms of what scope of wetlands it would regulate.” If the bill were to pass, he said it would be “extremely difficult” to assess its impact on farmers — despite the bill exempting agriculture from the permitting process. Under the legislation, farmers would be able to perform activities like ranching, plowing, seeding, and harvesting and drain wetlands and other waterways in the process without a permit.
Ellman said that other factors besides agricultural lobbying could also kneecap her measure. A November 2024 memo from Governor JB Pritzker’s office directed all state agencies to oppose legislation that would add to Illinois’ multibillion dollar budget shortfall. The state’s department of natural resources estimated it will cost approximately $3 million to stand up the wetlands permitting program. The state of Illinois’ budget for 2025 is more than $50 billion.
Alex Gough, a press secretary for Pritzker, told Grist that the governor “will carefully review this legislation, should it reach his desk.”
But environmental advocates say preserving these ecosystems is paramount.
“We should be able to respond to rollbacks of the Clean Water Act that threaten our water quality here,” said Robert Hirschfeld, with the Illinois-based Prairie Rivers Network.
Across the Mississippi River in Iowa, attempting to pass wetland protections hasn’t been any easier.
Today, only about 5 percent of Iowa’s original wetlands still remain, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. New research from the Natural Resources Defense Council found that today, Iowa has about 630,000 acres of wetlands that likely fall under the Clean Water Act’s current regulatory definitions. Still, the environmental organization determined that 18 to 97 percent of Iowan wetlands could be at risk of destruction in the aftermath of Sackett.
In Iowa, the state Farm Bureau influenced the outcome of another bill that would have helped conserve certain wetlands, according to lawmakers. HSB 83, a measure introduced in January, would have made it easier for counties to finance projects reconnecting wetlands and floodplains and restoring winding bodies of water known as oxbow lakes as a means of mitigating flood risk.
Flooding in Iowa due to melted snowpack in 2023.
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Typically, when counties borrow money by issuing bonds to do these kinds of major projects, voters must approve the debt. HSB 83 would have added wetland conservation to the list of essential county purposes for which leaders do not need to seek voter approval.
The measure was introduced by State Representative Megan Jones, a Republican, whose district experienced severe flooding last summer. The bill never made it out of committee, and the legislative session ended earlier this month without it getting to a vote.
Several organizations registered in support of the measure, according to the state legislature website, including the Nature Conservancy and the Iowa Farmers Union, an agricultural group that supports conservation efforts. But only one group registered in opposition to the bill, and that was the Iowa Farm Bureau.
The organization “had concerns that by allowing these projects, property taxes would increase on farmers,” said State Representative Adam Zabner, a Democrat who supported the bill. After the Iowa Farm Bureau voiced its opposition at a committee hearing, according to Zabner, it became clear the bill would not have the votes to pass. “They were the group that sunk it.”
The Iowa Farm Bureau did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“It’s just their policy,” said Pam Mackey-Taylor, a lobbyist who represents the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, which supported the bill. The Iowa Farm Bureau doesn’t “like any farmland being taken out of production. They don’t like those kinds of heavy-handed regulations, so to speak, affecting private property.” She also pointed out that many state legislators in Iowa are farmers themselves, and may not have wanted to “go that far” with the measure this year.
Zabner added that the flood mitigation measure could come back in the next legislative session. But, he said, “I am very skeptical, if the Farm Bureau continues to oppose it, that it could get done, unfortunately.”
The Illinois and Iowa Farm Bureaus are especially influential, according to Austin Frerick, a fellow at the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University who wrote the book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. The Iowa Farm Bureau reported $1.71 billion in assets in 2023 and spends hundreds of thousands on lobbying efforts every year, according to public disclosures. “Illinois and Iowa are in a league of their own,” said Frerick.
Hirschfeld, from the Prairie Rivers Network, argued that agribusiness interests like the Farm Bureau have the effect of blocking progressive environmental policy. He compared Iowa and Illinois, specifically — two states with incredibly different politics, but equally active Farm Bureaus. “Iowa can be all red, top to bottom,” he said. Illinois, on the other hand, has a “democratic supermajority.”
But “when it comes to ag policy, what is the difference?” If Illinois’ wetland bill fails again, it might confirm his fears: “There’s just not a difference.”
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) seeks a creative, strategic and inspiring leader ready to drive the next generation of progress in strengthening human rights in business. For more than two decades the Resource Centre has sought to amplify the voices of rightsholders and work collaboratively with allies and partners to strengthen corporate practices and support smart regulation to deliver a just economy, address the climate crisis and counter abuse. The ideal candidate will bring energy and insights to the Resource Centre’s vision of transformational change, which is built on community-led action and enhanced by global partnership. The Executive Director will have a strong understanding of international human rights, labour, environmental and climate frameworks as they relate to business–and how to make change happen through those frameworks. They will be able to work effectively with people and organisations at many levels, including grassroots leaders, government representatives, funders, corporate executives and investors.
The Executive Director will lead our global team of 80 across 30 locations, operating with a budget of US$6 million and working in diverse alliances and partnerships worldwide.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategic Leadership
Management and Organisational Culture
Thought and Field Leadership
Resource Mobilization, Budget Oversight and Finance:
LOCATION AND COMPENSATION
The successful candidate can work in our offices in London, New York, Berlin, or Bogota, or remotely (home-based) anywhere there is strong and continuous internet access. Our team members are based all over the world, and most of our meetings take place during GMT hours to cover Asia and Latin America. The candidate must be committed to working across time zones, be flexible with respect to participating in early and late calls as needed, and able to work at least four hours that overlap with 09:00 – 17:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
The role requires frequent travel to all regions of the world (~35%) in order to connect in-person with Global Team members, partners, local communities, board members and funders, and to represent the Resource Centre at global events.
HOW TO APPLY
This search is being led by consultant Jenna Capeci, in partnership with the board and staff of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.
Timeline
Applications are due by Friday, June 13th, 2025. Selected applicants will begin to be contacted for interviews by July 2025. Interviews will be conducted from July through early September. Tentative timing for rounds of interviews are: July 14 – 18, August 13 – 22 and September 3 – 16. Finalists will be asked to create and make a brief presentation. Anticipated start date is October/November 2025. Applications may be reviewed over time, so please be patient if you do not hear from us immediately. Applicants not invited for interviews will be notified by the end of August.
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When Mason Taylor was getting ready to graduate from high school in 2022, he thought he would have to take an entry-level technician job with a company in Tennessee.
Taylor grew up in the town of Dryden in rural Lee County, in the westernmost sliver of Virginia between Kentucky and Tennessee. He had come to love the electrical courses he took in high school because there was always something new to learn, always a new way to challenge himself.
Driving to Tennessee for work would likely mean two hours commuting each day.
Taylor, now 21, just wanted to work close to home.
A summer apprenticeship learning how to install solar arrays helped him get on-the-job training and opened up connections to local work.
A regional partnership working to add solar panels to commercial buildings in the region aims to train young people as they go, developing workforce skills in anticipation of increasing demand for renewable energy-focused jobs in the heart of coal country, where skill sets and energy options are both changing.
Virginia ranks eighth in the nation for installed solar capacity, according to the Solar Energies Industry Association, but so far, major renewable energy projects have been clustered in the eastern and southern regions of the state. Increasing the popularity of solar power in the far southwestern corner of the state depends in part on the availability of trained workers like Taylor.
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Andy Hershberger, director of Virginia operations for Got Electric, said the electrical contractor firm has had an apprenticeship program nearly since the company’s founding.
The company, which has about 100 employees total, with 40 in Virginia and an office in Maryland, has worked with Staunton-based Secure Solar Futures, a commercial and public-sector solar developer, as far back as 2012.
More recently, the two companies began working to set up a training program that was more focused on solar. The catalyst was the former superintendent of Wise County schools, a school division that had signed up to put solar panels on its facilities. The superintendent saw the installation as an opportunity to get his students hands-on work on a renewable energy project.
Approximately three dozen apprentices have signed up for the program since 2022, including about 13 who are currently involved, Hershberger said. They work on a variety of solar projects, including on rooftops, carports, and ground-mounted installations.
“We have been utilizing this program to train students coming out of high school and basically growing the workforce side of this thing, so we have the necessary personnel to build these solar projects long term,” Hershberger said.
On top of hourly pay, apprentices get free equipment and a transportation subsidy, along with nine community college credits at Mountain Empire Community College, which provides classroom training before students step onto the job site.
“I mean, pretty much everything you need to know to go out and do any electrical job, you pretty much learned in that apprenticeship program,” Taylor said.
He was in the first cohort of 10 students who installed solar panels on public schools in Lee and Wise counties in 2022. A grant from a regional economic development authority paid the students’ wages while they earned credit at Mountain Empire Community College, which serves residents of Dickenson, Lee, Scott, and Wise counties, plus the city of Norton.
He got a job offer from Got Electric at the end of that summer.
This summer, Secure Solar Futures and Got Electric will join forces again to install more than 1,600 solar panels on the community college’s classroom buildings. The project was originally slated for 2024 but was delayed due in part to a separate project upgrading fire safety equipment in one of the buildings.
The 777-kilowatt solar power system will be connected to the electric grid, and Mountain Empire will receive credit for the power it generates.
Hershberger said he sees interest in solar growing.
“I think there’s always been folks that have adopted renewable projects, different types of energy sources. There’s always the standard interest in trying to save money for facilities and campuses and things like that,” he said.
Mountain Empire Community College offers solar training as a standalone career studies certificate or as part of its larger energy technology associate degree program.
In southwestern Virginia, a solar installation project is more likely to consist of adding panels to homes and businesses rather than building the large, utility-scale ground-based facilities more commonly seen in the Southside region of Virginia, said Matt Rose, the college’s dean of industrial technology.
Tony Smith, founder and CEO of Staunton-based Secure Solar Futures, speaks with media at an April event to celebrate Roanoke City Public Schools’ first phase of solar-array installation on six facilities. Lisa Rowan / Cardinal News
On a larger project, a single worker might have a specialized role, performing the same task across a large number of panels. On a smaller project, a worker is more likely to be involved in more aspects of the job.
“Our students need to have that comprehensive understanding and ability to be able to do it all,” he said.
Last year, 10 students graduated Mountain Empire with the solar installer certification. Many students who earn the certification perform solar installation work as one part of a more comprehensive job, such as being an electrician.
Rose said the college’s students typically start out making $17 or $18 an hour but can earn more as they become journeymen and master electricians.
Nationwide, the median salary for electricians is about $61,000.
In Lee County, population 22,000, the median household income is about $42,000.
The number of solar installers in southwest Virginia is unclear. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t collect data on employment by technology, so residential solar installation companies are labeled as electrical contractors, along with all other electrical businesses, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Tony Smith, founder and CEO of Secure Solar Futures, measures the success of the company’s apprenticeship program person by person. At an April event to celebrate the completion of the first phase of solar panel installation for Roanoke schools, Smith asked about several of the students from the 2022 cohort from Lee and Wise counties by name.
Smith said it’s tough to replicate the apprenticeship program at various school divisions. Doing so requires the work of individual school systems and the regional community colleges, instead of being able to pick up the curriculum from one area and apply it at the next project site.
And all the partners — Smith’s company, participating schools, and installation firms — face some uncertainty for each project. It’s challenging to pinpoint the timing of projects so that students have the time to participate during the summer months, he said.
Solar training can give students a ‘head start on everybody’
“The things I learned in the apprenticeship program I’m still doing day-to-day,” Anthony Hamilton, 21, said. He completed the eight-week apprenticeship in Lee and Wise counties in 2022 alongside Taylor. He didn’t think it would turn into a ful-time job. He doubted anyone really wanted to hire a kid just starting college.
He’s been with Got Electric ever since, working as an electrician primarily on commercial jobs. Hamilton’s solar experience has come in handy on recent installation projects at a poultry farm and at a YMCA facility.
Hamilton continued going to school at Mountain Empire and graduates this month with two associate degrees in energy technology and electrical. He’s also earned a handful of certificates in solar installation, air-conditioning and refrigeration, and electrical fabrication, among others. With the nine credits he earned in the summer apprenticeship, he “already had a head start on everybody in the program.”
It wasn’t an easy journey, though.
He said he usually started his day around 6 a.m. and went to night classes after work that stretched until 9:30 p.m. Hamilton lives in Coeburn in Wise County, a 45-minute drive to the college campus. He’d get home late, then get up early and do it all over again. But his college was free through a local scholarship program that pays for up to three years of classes at Mountain Empire.
He’d like to stay with Got Electric and start preparing to take his journeyman’s license, which requires at least four years of practical experience on top of vocational training, plus an exam. From there, he’s got designs on moving up in the company and eventually becoming a master electrician.
On April 14, he was in the town of Abingdon, a few weeks into a three-month project installing a solar array at a large poultry farm that says it produces more than 650,000 eggs a day. The work so far entailed digging trenches and laying PVC pipe for the ground-mount solar system that will span one section of the farm’s expansive fields.
Taylor uses similar skills at work each day. But his work site looks a lot different from Hamilton’s.
It has taken Taylor some time to figure out how to stick close to home while working in his trade. He spent a year working with Got Electric immediately after finishing his summer apprenticeship, then left the company to work as an electrician in a local school system. He eventually returned to Got Electric for a few months, working at Virginia Tech putting solar on three buildings on campus in Blacksburg, three hours from home.
He discovered he didn’t like traveling for installation jobs that meant night after night in a motel room.
“That was the only complaint I had with it, about being away from home,” he said.
Now he’s an electrician at a state prison in Big Stone Gap. He has the same shift every day, in the same place, and drives 10 minutes home from work at the end of the day.
Taylor has also taken additional classes at Mountain Empire and wants to go back this fall to finish his associate degrees in HVAC and electrical. He eventually wants to open his own business as an electrician working locally. He’d like to be able to do small solar installation jobs. Solar hasn’t really caught on in far southwest Virginia, he said — at least, not yet.
Rose, the dean at Mountain Empire, noted that once major solar projects are done, maintenance doesn’t require ongoing jobs, and most students who receive training in solar installation typically make it part of another job, such as being an electrician.
“We’re starting to see a lot more homeowners interested in [solar] locally as a way to offset increasing energy costs, but overall most of it is just a component of the job because there’s not enough demand,” Rose said.
Rose predicts interest in solar will grow as more homeowners and business owners look for ways to offset rising electric bills.
“As we all look at increasing energy costs, it’s going to make a lot more economic sense,” he said.
Energy independence, he added, fits with the character of southwest Virginia.
“We’ve always been resilient people,” Rose said. “We’ve always been adapt-and-overcome people, and what better way than to basically control a little bit of your own power?”
AI is screaming down the streaming pipe for local musicians, but industry titans such as Spotify are not fixing it. Michael Sainsbury reports.
When Grammy-nominated Australian musician Paul Bender was innocently checking Spotify for his side project, The Sweet Enoughs – whose most popular track has had more than 6 million streams – he noticed something strange: a track he didn’t recognise had appeared on his artist page.
Bender is a member of Australian jazz funk band Hiatus Kaiyote which has been nominated for three Grammy awards, in three different categories, over three different years. As well as being sampled by Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce.
“It was something I had never seen, recorded, or certainly uploaded to Spotify,” Bender said. “After listening, it was clear the track was generative AI.”
Alarmed, Bender and his manager, Si Gould, began knocking down doors at their record label and Spotify itself to find out what was happening. Then, last week, two more tracks appeared; again, neither the work of Bender nor anyone associated with him. Both were clearly the product of AI.
Even more concerning, Bender’s Spotify for Artists app notified him that The Sweet Enoughs had more singles scheduled for release, despite the fact that he was still in the process of recording material for his next album.
“It’s perplexing. It’s really perplexing to me. And because I had these fake songs appear one after the other, I was like, what the f*ck is going on? And then I did a little bit of digging, trying to find where else this has happened, and finding heaps of stories of it occurring. Then I found a YouTube video where a guy walked through how he did it.”
The Youtuber video in question – and we ask that you do not try this at home – boasts he made more than $3,000 on Spotify by using generative AI to create tracks that were uploaded to Spotify.
Spotify refuses to admit problem
After raising the issue on social media, Spotify finally responded, but only admitted to a “mapping” problem – a relatively common issue where songs by artists with the same or similar names are mistakenly posted to the wrong account. However, this explanation did little to address the larger issue at play and is, as Bender says, a ‘’laughable” explanation.
Bender is not the first artist to fall victim to what Troy Barrott, co-founder of creative industries law firm CornerSoul, describes as the old-fashioned crime of “passing off”. The fraudulent tracks posted to his account have different Spotify codes, meaning any revenue generated flows to the fraudster, not to Bender.
While Bender may not be directly deprived of revenue, the negative reaction to the AI-generated tracks could impact his algorithmic standing on Spotify, “potentially depriving him of significant income in an industry where even hundreds of dollars in streaming fees are considered a win”, Gould says.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Spotify lacks a process of checks and balances on who can post what where on its platform; despite claiming that every track is listened to by human ears, they clearly are not.
Bender’s video about the problem, uploaded last Friday on Instagram, quickly received global attention, particularly in the US, where the issue received some media coverage late last year.
“Yet another annoying issue in the music industry that will not end despite the fact that it could so easily be fixed, and it should very much be fixed,” respected music industry YouTuber Anthony Fantano said in a video on the back of Bender’s post.
Bender and Fantano are right, the problem of any lack of authentication or robust checking by both the digital service providers (DSPs) – the platforms that artists use to upload music to Spotify – or Spotify itself, has an easy technology fix, but one the industry behemoth appears too cheap to install.
This also exposes the alarming disregard Spotify and other digital streaming platforms have for the artists and creators whose work has made these companies billions.
“If you are just a mid-ranking performer who is making their living, Spotify simply does not care. Bear in mind if you need a million monthly listeners to make a living from Spotify, right!?
“Right. I know people who do that, and they get their royalties just about pay for the groceries and allow them to do other things,” Barrott says. “The big performers, but only the biggest, get specialised treatment.”
Yet this fraudulent practice , is just the latest warning sign of the disruption AI is already causing for artists and creators across music, film, photography, and visual arts. As Bender noted, “ the music didn’t sound anything like my stuff but I am sure that is coming soon with AI”.
Barrott says that Spotify completely protects itself because “when you click the little button that says, yes, I’ve read and agreed to those user guidelines, they wipe their hands of responsibility- in many ways. You are generally agreeing that the material that you’re uploading, if you’re uploading it directly, is not infringing another artist’s copyright, and the load of warranties around your use of the platform.
“It gets even stickier where you’ve then got these independent players like Believe that artists need to upload their material onto Spotify, then do the shame thing and absolve themselves. So you would have to find who has loaded up the offending material – and frankly, that could be a bot farm offshore, good luck with that”.
Tip of the AI iceberg for the music industry
This problem is just the tip of the massive AI iceberg for the music and other creative industries, and a clear signal that Australian governments and regulators need to move much more quickly to establish stronger guardrails to protect creators in the digital age.
The Australian Performing and Recording Association ( APRA). and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS) sounded the alarm last year in a landmark report, the largest of its kind in the region, that found that by 2028, 23% of music creators’ revenues – over AUD$519 million – will be at risk due to generative AI.
It also found that 82% of creators are worried that AI could make it impossible to earn a living from music.
The government’s 2023 cultural policy Revive report into the music sector found that 67% of music in Australia was consumed through online streaming services in 2021, a number that has surely increased.
With senior Cabinet Minister and avowed music fan Tony Burke retaining the Arts portfolio, Barrott believes the sector is as well placed as it can be to have the Albanese government’s ear.
Music Australia “no comment”
But is Spotify too big to poke? The government’s newish umbrella music organisation said, “This isn’t something Music Australia can comment on”, referring MWM back to APRA. The Australian Recording Industry Association chief Annabelle Herd did not reply to a request for comment.
“From the industry’s point of view, it was good that Labor was re-elected. Unfortunately, legislation and regulators move slowly, and the horse has already bolted,” he said, adding that critically, the Copyright Act needed to “catch up with AI.”
Spoify has taken the fake songs off The Sweet Enoughs feed but they remain on the site under new artist name still called The Sweet Enoughs. Bender says its more trouble that its worth to get them taken down from less popular streaming sites like iTunes, Tidal and Prime.
For the “passing off” problem that Bender – and doubtless countless others have encountered, the fix is far less complicated. “Shut the door, Spotify,” Bender says. “If you have a million mosquitoes coming into your house, you don’t leave the door open and try and kill them one by one. Just shut the door.”
For the bigger AI problem that is coming screaming down the streaming pipe for the music – and other creative sectors – the fix is far less easy.
Funding for New Zealand’s Ministry for Pacific Peoples (MPP) is set to be reduced by almost $36 million in Budget 2025.
This follows a cut of nearly $26 million in the 2024 budget.
As part of these budgetary savings, the Tauola Business Fund will be closed. But, $6.3 million a year will remain to support Pacific economic and business development through the Pacific Business Trust and Pacific Business Village.
The Budget cuts also affect the Tupu Aotearoa programme, which supports Pacific people in finding employment and training, alongside the Ministry of Social Development’s employment initiatives.
While $5.25 million a year will still fund the programme, a total of $22 million a year has been cut over the last four years.
The ministry will save almost $1 million by returning funding allocated for the Dawn Raids reconciliation programme from 2027/28 onwards.
There are two years of limited funding left to complete the ministry Dawn Raids programmes, which support the Crown’s reconciliation efforts.
Funding for Pasifika Wardens
Despite these reductions, a new initiative providing funding for Pasifika Wardens will introduce $1 million of new spending over the next four years.
The initiative will improve services to Pacific communities through capacity building, volunteer training, transportation, and enhanced administrative support.
Funding for the National Fale Malae has ceased, as only $2.7 million of the allocated $10 million has been spent since funding was granted in Budget 2020.
The remaining $6.6 million will be reprioritised over the next two years to address other priorities within the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio, including the National Music Centre.
Foreign Affairs funding for the International Development Cooperation (IDC) projects, particularly focussed on the Pacific, is also affected. The IDC received an $800 million commitment in 2021 from the Labour government.
The funding was time-limited, leading to a $200 million annual fiscal cliff starting in January 2026.
Budget 2025 aims to mitigate this impact by providing ongoing, baselined funding of $100 million a year to cover half of the shortfall. An additional $5 million will address a $10 million annual shortfall in departmental funding.
Support for IDC projects
The new funding will support IDC projects, emphasising the Pacific region without being exclusively aimed at climate finance objectives. Overall, $367.5 million will be allocated to the IDC over four years.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the Budget addressed a prominent fiscal cliff, especially concerning climate finance.
“The Budget addresses this, at least in part, through ongoing, baselined funding of $100 million a year, focused on the Pacific,” she said in her Budget speech.
“Members will not be surprised to know that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has made a case for more funding, and this will be looked at in future Budgets.”
More funding has been allocated for new homework and tutoring services for learners in Years nine and 10 at schools with at least 50 percent Pacific students to meet the requirements for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).
About 50 schools across New Zealand are expected to benefit from the initiative, which will receive nearly $7 million over the next four years, having been reprioritised from funding for the Pacific Education Programme.
As a result, funding will be stopped for three programmes aimed at supporting Tu’u Mālohi, Pacific Reading Together and Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities.
Republished from Pacific Media Network News with permission.
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