Nau mai haere mai – welcome to this week’s newsletter.

Many New Zealanders have friends, family and colleagues in Melbourne and Victoria, and here at The Conversation we’re no different. In fact, many of our Australian colleagues live and work right in the epicentre of the new lockdown, so we know how challenging and unsettling it is. In many ways, Victoria is now trying to do what New Zealand did during level four in March and April. Auckland University’s infectious diseases expert Siouxsie Wiles compares the two regimes and asks whether Melbourne’s fuller lockdown should be extended to the whole of Victoria as well.

Back in unlocked-down Aotearoa, of course, the election campaign is about to really ramp up once parliament rises this week. Opposition parties have already tried to make an issue out of Iranian-born Behrouz Boochani being granted refugee status, implying that he might have “jumped the queue” in the process. But, as Canterbury University’s international relations expert Jeremy Moses argues, campaigning politicians should be very careful when using the lives of real people for electoral advantage, particularly refugees and vulnerable minorities.

There’s a lot more in the newsletter and on our New Zealand homepage, including an important study showing that climate change has made the melting of our glaciers ten times more likely, a fascinating look at why we need a tax on inherited wealth and a call for more research on sharks in the seas around us.

Noho ora mai – till next time.