AI the elephant in room as Canva announces large staff layoffs

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AI the elephant in room as Canva announces large staff layoffs

5 November 2026

The Australian founded graphic design platform says it plans to retrench almost a quarter of its global workforce. Canva CEO Melanie Perkins refrained however from attributing the job losses to AI, instead citing “new technology” as the cause:

New technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use.

Terrible news for about twelve-hundred Canva employees, as the company looks to consolidate operations to its Sydney base, and compel those who remain to spend more time in the office. The terms for departing staff seem as reasonable as can be expected under the circumstances, and include an incentive to start their own companies:

Departing staff will receive at least six months’ salary, 12 months of healthcare where Canva provides it, and they can keep their work MacBooks. They can also apply for $US10,000 grants to start their own ventures.

Starting a new venture isn’t a half bad idea in this environment, as I fear what happened at Canva yesterday may become commonplace. It seems a stretch, but there may be more job security doing your own thing rather than working somewhere that will repeatedly restructure and downsize.

South Africa blitz Australia in the cricket. But who is Simon Harmer?

2 November 2026

Things did not go well for the Australian men’s cricket team over the weekend, in South Africa. They lost the third test, played in Cape Town, by one-hundred-and-seventy-six runs, handing South Africa the three match series, two games to one.

I sat down to watch one session, and looked on in disbelief as Simon Harmer, a South African spin bowler, tore through the Australian batting line up.

Spin bowling is a method of delivery that is slower than pace or fast bowling, but can be far more unpredictable, depending how the bowler manipulates the ball with their wrist and fingers. The condition of the playing pitch can also aid spin bowlers, as it deteriorates throughout the game.

Harmer ended up taking ten wickets, out of a possible twenty, across both Australian innings. Until now though, I’d never heard of him. This was surprising given he seems to be of the same pedigree as late Australian spin bowler, Shane Warne.

The picture was all the more puzzling as Harmer first played for South Africa in 2015, but since then has been in fewer than twenty test matches. I’d have thought if someone with the ability of Warne was available, you’d pull out all the stops to keep them in the team.

But a number of factors have kept Harmer out the South African team, including contractual obligations to an English county team.

As I looked on though, it seemed as if Australia had no idea what had struck them. Experienced batters can often “read the spin”, by watching the bowler’s hand movements, and react accordingly. But that knowledge appeared to be in short supply at Cape Town.

At age thirty-seven, Harmer may not be playing too much longer, but I think Australia needs to better prepare their batters to deal with spin bowling.

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Australia, cricket, sport

Sales of cappuccino sachets soar as cost of living bites in Australia

22 October 2026

Martin Brown, who is the general manager of Nestlé’s coffee and dairy business in Australia, said cappuccino sachets have been the “fastest-growing part of the market” since 2021.

We keep a few boxes of cappuccino sachets in the kitchen cupboard for days when we don’t want to walk all of five to ten minutes to a nearby cafe for whatever reason. Too hot, too wet, whatever.

Driving isn’t feasible either, unless we decide to go to a neighbouring suburb. Parking is a lottery where we are, and the only spot I’d find would probably be outside our building anyway.

Despite the rampant popularity of sachet and instant coffee though, none of the cafes I go seem to be adversely effected. They’re trading, and appear to have the same number of staff working there.

We are talking about a busy retail and residential precinct though. But it’s the same story on the NSW Central Coast. None of the places we go to there have closed or reduced staff. Not so far anyway.

And may it stay that way.

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Australia, caffeine, coffee, trends

The Last Best Place On The Internet, a book about Wikipedia, by Richard Cooke

21 October 2026

Sydney, Australia, based author and journalist Richard Cooke explores the inner workings of online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is his recently published book, The Last Best Place On The Internet:

In this entertaining book, journalist Richard Cooke delves into Wikipedia’s fabled creation, its extraordinary success and its profound effects on politics, business, literature and society. He explores the site’s shifting role in establishing fact in a time of deep uncertainty about truth and authority; the often hilariously fierce debates between ‘Inclusionists’ and ‘Deletionists’ about what is worth knowing and preserving, and who gets to decide; and the great peril Wikipedia faces today from bots, political division and artificial intelligence.

The challenges confronting Wikipedia are certainly pronounced. Let’s hope Cooke’s work does not become a commemoration for the venerable online repository of knowledge and information.

The German Ward, a new novel by Australian author Pip Williams

1 October 2026

Adelaide Hills, South Australia, based author Pip Williams‘ third novel, The German Ward, was published recently. Her debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words, and second, The Bookbinder of Jericho, were set in Oxford, England, prior to, and during World War I, and share a few characters.

While The German Ward is a separate work, some events also occur during World War I:

France, 1915. An English nurse and German doctor fall in love. He is a prisoner of war; she has never cared for rules. Their love is visceral and urgent, forbidden and doomed, and it would have gone unrecorded if not for a series of drawings found more than a century later.

At first the drawings seem insignificant, but the woman who finds them glimpses moments of intimacy and can’t look away. The images become part of a puzzle she wants to solve: who were the lovers, what became of them, and what story of war was the artist trying to tell?

Williams is presently travelling across Australia until late November 2026, should you be interested in hearing her talk about her work.

com.au, net.au domain name rule changes costly for Australian small businesses

30 September 2026

.au Domain Administration (auDA), the organisation that administers top-level domains in Australia, is proposing changes to the rules governing the registration of .com.au and .net.au domain names.

If the changes are adopted, people wishing to hold a .com.au or .net.au domain name will need to have a registered business matching the .com.au or .net.au domain they wish to use.

For example, so I can continue to hold disassociated.com.au (which redirects to disassociated.com), I may need to register a company in the name of disassociated. At the moment, all I need is an Australian Business Number (ABN), which is in my name, not disassociated’s.

ABN’s are free, while, at the moment, a registered business name costs forty-seven dollars (AUD) for a year, or one-hundred-and-eight for three years. Forty-seven bucks a year doesn’t seem excessive, that’s about the same cost as eight cups of coffee.

However, many small Australian businesses are using numerous .com.au or .net.au domain names. The requirement to potentially hold numerous registered business names, in order to license the associated domain names, stands to send expenses sky-rocketing for local small businesses.

Many small businesses in Australia, usually operated by sole-traders — people working alone — sometimes supply any number of goods and services, and each might have its own domain name.

Someone operating, say, twenty businesses, will find themselves paying over seven-hundred dollars a year, if they pay the fee for three years at a time to register their business names.

Even that may not seem much, particularly if revenues are reasonable, but overseeing numerous registered business names stands to increase the administrative workload for small businesses.

And that’s before we get to trademarks, which might also be needed to qualify for a .com.au or .net.au domain name. The cost of an Australian trademark starts at two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. Running numerous small businesses online now begins to look incredibly expensive.

The proposals are intended “to support trust and confidence in com.au and net.au for the benefit of the Australian community.” In other words, curb fraudulent and other undesirable conduct. This is something I think all Australian small businesses would understand.

But what of people who have been legitimately using Australian domains for, in some cases decades, as I have? It doesn’t seem right that small businesses operating online, who have been doing no wrong all this time, should suddenly have harsh, and burdensome requirements, imposed on them.

To date nothing has changed, and auDA says there will be consultation once they finalise draft licensing rules. But if you are a .com.au and .net.au domain name holder, and concerned by the changes, you might want to consider signing the petition opposing the proposed policy changes.

Vale Terry Denton, illustrator of Treehouse children’s book series

23 September 2026

Australian illustrator and author Terry Denton died on Monday this week, aged seventy-six.

Denton collaborated with Melbourne based author Andy Griffiths for over twenty-five years, and are perhaps best known for the Treehouse series of children’s books. Together they produced eleven titles in the series over twelve years, between 2011 and 2023.

Well, the Australian government could pay writers for work scraped by AI bots

21 September 2026

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, appears to have watered down a commitment to compensate Australian creatives whose work is being copied by AI companies. In a speech given at the University of Sydney, in July this year, Albanese undertook to enshrine, in law, copyright protection for all Australian artists and writers:

Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day. An artist’s creative endeavour is their work and their property. No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control.

Online content, which includes the work of bloggers among others — and surely low-hanging fruit in the eyes of the AI companies — now seems to sit in a separate category. Under new proposals, when it comes to accessing work published online, AI companies only need to negotiate with enough copyright holders, not all:

AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic would be allowed to train their models on online content without paying its creators as long as they struck deals with enough rights holders, under one copyright reform plan put forward in government documents seen by the ABC.

How to interpret that? If enough copyright holders agree content they published online can be used to train agents, it sounds like AI companies can use any content they can find. But what is the precise definition of enough copyright holders in the first place? Only the big players, the large media outlets? Will independent, smaller, publishers be pushed aside?

The policy revisions come as a result of concerns AI companies have that they will be breaking copyright laws. This might mean they will withhold investment in Australian AI infrastructure, something the Australian government does not want.

I’m not sure how many Australian creatives, particularly independents publishing content online, are surprised by the apparent change in the government’s position.

Like others, I wondered how the AI companies, who have considerable political clout, would react to being dictated to in such a fashion. Particularly as they’ve been able to help themselves to whatever material they can get their hands on for several years anyway.

Of course the Australian government still has the option to compensate local creatives themselves, and be seen, to some degree, to be keeping their word to uphold copyright protection. Skim off some of the tax take from the AI companies, and give a little to Australian writers and artists, whose work has been gratuitously plundered.

But, in case you thought I was serious, no, you can be sure that’s not going to happen.

A Piece of Red Cloth wins 2026 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction

18 September 2026

A Piece of Red Cloth, written by Leonie Norrington, Djawundil Maymuru, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, and Djawa Burarrwanga, has been named winner of the fiction category in the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for 2026.

Australian works of literature are recognised annually across six categories: Australian history, children’s, young adult, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. A full list of recipients in all categories is here.

About The Souffle, a film about homelessness by Jacob Hazeldine

17 September 2026

Here’s something I only discovered recently: someone can still be homeless, even if they are not sleeping rough, or on the street. Couch surfing, living in temporary or emergency accommodation, and boarding houses or caravan parks, are also considered forms of homelessness in Australia.

This even though a person has a roof over their head for the night.

Connor van Helsing (Instagram link), a resident of Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), has experienced all forms of homelessness, including sleeping rough.

van Helsing has collaborated with Australian filmmaker Jacob Hazeldine (Instagram link), to bring his lived experience of homelessness to the big screen in About The Soufflé (trailer).

In terms of rental accommodation, the NT comes second only to Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), in terms of cost.

This means a single person in the NT, earning only the minimum wage, is presently priced out of the rental market. And if people here don’t have friends or family they can call on when something goes wrong, they may all to quickly find themselves homeless.

About The Soufflé, which was filmed on a shoe-string budget of just fifteen-hundred Australian dollars, premiered at the Darwin International Film Festival, last week, on Friday 11 September 2026.

I’m not sure if the film will screen outside the film-festival circuit, meaning it may be hard to see in cinemas, but perhaps it be available through streaming instead.

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