Welcome to Foodstar – Page 6 – We Are Closed. Australia has become corrupted by a corrosive mix of nihilism and embraced a radical liberal ideology that celebrates the rejection of anything from the past that could stabilise society including any inheritance of previous forms of culture. You just have to look at the abuse thrown towards our staff in the past few years to realise this, what is old is no longer deemed necessary & indeed something that must be replaced. We had no choice but to close.

⚔️ The First Australia–PNG Defence Treaty led to Devastating Death Toll of 15,000 Lives Lost in Bougainville. Will the Pukpuk Pact Repeat History?

When Canberra bound itself to defend PNG’s “territorial integrity” in the 1980s, Bougainville’s independence bid was crushed under blockades, gunships, and starvation. With the Pukpuk Treaty now inked, leaders face a choice: repeat the mistakes of the 1990s, or finally respect Bougainville’s 97% vote for independence.

🛑 Then: Australia’s Hand in Bougainville’s War

Back in the early 1990s, Bougainville’s volcanic valleys echoed with gunfire and rotor blades. Papua New Guinea (PNG) was determined to choke off the island’s push for independence, and Australia was right there in the shadows.

The 1987 Australia–Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Treaty obligated Canberra to support PNG in defending its territorial integrity. In practice, that meant one thing: stopping Bougainville’s secession.

So Australia shipped in UH-1 Iroquois helicopters, Pacific-class patrol boats, and a steady flow of intelligence. PNG’s military tightened the noose. From 1990 to 1998, a blockade sealed off food, fuel, and medicine.

The result? 10,000–15,000 lives lost. Not mainly from bullets, but from malaria, malnutrition, and treatable infections. Elders still tell stories of children starving because antibiotics and rice couldn’t get through. The blockade wasn’t just a military tactic it was a humanitarian disaster.

And while PNG pulled the trigger, Canberra supplied the gun. That’s the legacy of Australia’s first defence treaty with PNG: invisible fingerprints on a slow-motion catastrophe.

🗳️ The Referendum and the Road to Independence

Fast forward to 2019. Bougainville finally got its say.

Turnout: 87%.
Result: 97.7% voted “yes” for independence.

It was overwhelming — not a murmur, but a roar. Under the 2001 Peace Agreement, the referendum wasn’t binding, but it carried moral weight too heavy to ignore.

Now, Bougainville’s leaders are aiming for full independence by 2027. President Ishmael Toroama has made it the cornerstone of his mandate, while PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape drags his feet with promises of “consultation.” Parliament’s ratification is still missing in action.

And in the middle of this fragile countdown, on October 2, 2025, PNG’s cabinet just approved the Pukpuk Treaty with Australia a shiny new mutual defence pact.

⚠️ Why the Pukpuk Treaty Raises Old Ghosts

The parallels are too sharp to ignore.

Then (1987 Treaty): Canberra pledges to back PNG’s unity → Bougainville blockade → 15,000 dead.
Now (2025 Treaty): Canberra pledges mutual defence with PNG → Bougainville deadline looms → risk of history repeating.

But this isn’t the 1990s anymore. The Pacific has changed:

🌊 Regional solidarity: Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) nations are vocal about self-determination. Another blockade would set the Pacific alight in fury.

📱 Information age: Back then, the world barely noticed the starvation. Today, one viral TikTok clip of crowded hospitals in Buka could trigger outrage.

🇦🇺 Soft power collapse: Australia can’t preach democracy and self-determination abroad if it crushes Bougainville at home. The hypocrisy would be glaring across the Pacific.

Game, Set, Match: Beijing Takes Control of Iron Ore, Aussie Trade Surplus on the Line

For twenty years, China’s property boom made iron ore king. Skyscrapers, subways and highways turned BHP, Rio Tinto and Vale into the world’s most powerful miners. Beijing had no choice but to pay in US dollars, follow London based annual Platts benchmark prices, and swallow whatever contract terms the Pilbara pushed their way.

That era’s over. Three big shifts have flipped the script:

1️⃣ The steel binge is finished

China’s property machine has cooled from the peak. Beijing has put a hard cap on steel output through to 2026. Renewables and electric cars still need steel, but nowhere near the volumes that went into tower blocks and high-speed rail.

2️⃣ New supply is on the way

The giant Simandou mine in Guinea Chinese-funded and pegged to ship in yuan kicks off this year. At full tilt it could add about 10% to global trade. On top of that, China is blending its own lower-grade ore with imports and stockpiling ahead of holidays. The message? The mills can ride out a short boycott without breaking a sweat.

3️⃣ Electric arcs change the game ⚡

And here’s the real back-breaker for BHP: China’s steel industry is rewiring itself.

EAFs (Electric-Arc Furnaces) now make up more than 15% of China’s steel capacity, up from 9% in 2020, with Beijing targeting 30% by 2030.
EAFs don’t need the high-grade Pilbara lumps; they can run on lower-grade fines upgraded into DRI (Direct Reduced Iron) pellets.
Plants in Tangshan and Hebei are already producing millions of tonnes of DRI from domestic ore and gas at costs competitive with imported scrap.

💰 Why that kills the Pilbara premium

Blast furnaces consume 1.65 t of 62% ore to make 1 t hot metal.
EAF + DRI needs only 1.35 t of 67% pellets, which can be made from lower-grade concentrate plus binder and gas.
Every 10 Mt/year shift to EAF-DRI cuts ~3 Mt of seaborne 62% demand. Scale up to China’s 200 Mt/year growth plan and you’ve effectively removed a whole Pilbara hub (Area C or Yandi) from the market.

🔑 The GG Shot

China no longer needs high-grade, dollar-priced Australian ore the way it once did. It can:

Substitute with Simandou 65% Fe (yuan-priced),
Dilute with domestic 55% Fe concentrate, and
Upgrade the rest via DRI-EAF into “green steel.”

The Pilbara premium is being engineered out and electric-arc furnaces are the crucible where BHP’s former leverage is melted down.

The West is Silencing the Bacon and Prophet Jokes Because It’s Losing

China holds the Rare Earths and renewables chokepoint, Russia dominates Uranium and HALEU, and Muslim nations control Oil. The West is losing its grip on the 21st century. They’ve stopped joking about Hijabs and Slanted eyed Asians, not because they’ve become more civil, but because they are losing.

No wonder the clowns at Sky News are dialing down their Sinophobia and Islamophobia.

The irony? Decolonization jokes will only get louder. Mark Leach (father of Freya Leach, who hosted the segment) and ASPI’s Peter Jennings both grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) before settling to Australia. And wherever these two white-supremacist ideologues pitch their tents, decolonization seems to follow.

Memoirs from Australia’s 1937 Response to Japan’s Rape of Nanjing

In December 1937, as Japanese troops slaughtered civilians in Nanjing, Australia’s leaders regarded the violence as strategically favorable. George Pearce, Minister for External Affairs, told the U.S. Consul-General that “Australia could only rejoice each time Japan moves further into North China, since this carries the Japanese away from Australia’s own vicinity.”*

Two months later, Acting Prime Minister Earle Page echoed the same logic to the British Foreign Secretary 📜 “If Japan must expand, it is clearly to our advantage that she should do so to the northward rather than southward …”**

Canberra’s message was clear ⚖️ atrocities were tolerable if they stayed on the far side of the equator.

By late 1938, however, ordinary Australians began to push back. At Port Kembla, south of Sydney, wharf labourers refused to load pig iron onto the SS Dalfram, bound for Japan. Their ten-week strike, led by the Waterside Workers’ Federation, drew national attention. Attorney-General Robert Menzies moved to enforce government policy, threatening to invoke the Transport Workers Act the infamous “dog collar act” to break the strike.

Decades later, Prime Minister Tony Abbott would praise the “skill and sense of honour” of Japanese submariners who attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942 a remark that, like Canberra’s stance in 1937, revealed how easily the Anglo Saxon elites that govern the country can blur moral judgment.

*U.S. State Dept. file 894.00/1405, Despatch 168, Consul-General J. K. Davis → Secretary of State, 20 Aug 1937.
**Sir Earle Page → Lord Halifax, 3 Nov 1937, British National Archives, FO 371/21032, fol. 345.

The Real Pacific Family Reunion🌏 🐺Wolf Packs of the South Pacific🛶➡️🚢 How the same 🐺Wolf Scouts that left Fujian & Taiwan in a Waka landing in Fiji, now return aboard China-Aid ships.

🛶 5,000 Years Ago: The Wolf Scouts Depart

5000 years ago, on the coast of Fujian, someone built a canoe. Archaeologists call it the “Out of Taiwan” model. I call it the wolf-pack theory
🏝️ Origin: Villagers in Fujian and Taiwan built the first outrigger canoes.
🌊 Mission: A handful of proto-Austronesians pushed off as scouts.
🐺 The Wolf-Pack Theory: Every island became a new den
- Luzon
- Sulawesi
- Fiji
- Tonga and Samoa
- Hawai‘i and Aotearoa
  (1,000 years before Columbus).
🧬 Legacy: Their descendants became Polynesians, Micronesians, Māori, Hawaiians, Tahitians.
🧩 Genetic fingerprint: Haplogroup B4a1a+146 the “Polynesian motif” still links them to Fujian.

🚢 21st Century: The Mother Wolf Pack Returns

🐉 The PRC: The mother wolf pack is now the People’s Republic of China.
🏗️ New Canoe: Belt-and-Road instead of outriggers.
📡 Cargo shift:
- Then: pigs, taro shoots, stone tools.
- Now: concrete, cranes, fiber-optic cable, Huawei 5G towers.

🧭 The Reunion Tour (2019–2024)

🇸🇧 Solomon Islands: Wharf (2023)
🇼🇸 Samoa: Police academy (2021)
🇹🇴 Tonga: Courthouse (2019) + loans
🇰🇮 Kiribati: Fisheries pier
🇫🇯 Fiji: Hydropower, roads, “Great Wall” cricket stadium (2023)

📑 Every ribbon-cutting doubles as a genetic homecoming

From OnlyFans to the Beauty Pageants : The Risky Pipeline Discovering New Talent in Poorer Nations

Last week, Thailand’s Miss Grand Prachuap Khiri Khan 2026 Suphannee “Baby” Noinonthong was dethroned just 24 hours after her coronation when OnlyFans clips resurfaced.

Across Southeast Asia and increasingly in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa, a new career ladder is quietly emerging: OnlyFans first, tiara second. It only seems contradictory if you still believe beauty contests are about beauty & virtue rather than market value.

💰 The Economics of Fame

OnlyFans offers cash with no gatekeepers while beauty pageants promise fast fame that multiplies income. In Bangkok, a mid-tier OnlyFans creator with 300 subscribers at $18/month earns roughly 150,000 baht, triple the average factory wage, while still living at home.

Here, a beauty crown isn’t the ultimate prize. It’s an exit liquidity event, converting online notoriety into mainstream opportunities.

🚀 The Pipeline

The path from paywall to pageant is increasingly well-trodden:

Recruitment – Modeling agencies run TikTok casting calls via OnlyFans management companies, who take around 30%.
Content Phase – Build 200k social followers
Respectability Wash – Enter a provincial pageant. Delete paywall content, post temple-visit photos, and issue a “past mistakes” statement.
Media Ignition – Win or get exposed: both outcomes generate headlines that convert into hosting gigs, cosmetics lines, or skincare MLM contracts.

🎯 Why Pageant Organisers Play Along

Ratings – Contestants with 200k followers guarantee free media coverage.
Sponsors – Herbal slimming pills, skincare brands, and other sponsors prefer girls who are sexually recognizable yet nominally repentant, mirroring their product’s “before and after” narrative.
Low Risk – Most Asian pageants are privately run franchises. Reputational risk is manageable, and no parliamentary approval is required.

🌍 The Bigger Picture

The OnlyFans → pageant pipeline reframes beauty contests. They are strategic career accelerators, part of a globalized attention economy where social media metrics, brand alignment, and economic incentives shape fame.

🇵🇱 Poles When the “Rules-Based Order” Dies, So Does NATO’s Guarantee. Poland Might soon become the Indians of Eastern Europe

src: https://cepa.org/article/poland-to-china-so-you-want-to-play-hybrid-war/

There comes a moment in every alliance’s twilight when the fine print on a defense pact turns into confetti. For Poland, that moment is approaching faster than a Russian missile over the Vistula. Article 5 could be worth less than the paper it’s printed on. Why? Because if Germans won’t bleed for Poles, why should America?

Great powers don’t die for client states, they issue carefully worded statements and schedule summits.

Soon, Poles may discover they’re not at the top of anyone’s “must-defend” list. When the real threat arrives, the U.S. or EU forces won’t sacrifice one American or German soldier for 1,000 Poles.

🇺🇸 USA — Top 10 Allies

• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
• 🇮🇱 Israel
• 🇯🇵 Japan
• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇫🇷 France
• 🇨🇦 Canada
• 🇰🇷 South Korea
• 🇦🇺 Australia
• 🇮🇹 Italy
• 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia

🇨🇳 China — Top 10 Allies

• 🇷🇺 Russia
• 🇵🇰 Pakistan
• 🇮🇷 Iran
• 🇰🇵 North Korea
• 🇰🇭 Cambodia
• 🇷🇸 Serbia
• 🇻🇪 Venezuela
• 🇨🇺 Cuba
• 🇱🇦 Laos
• 🇿🇦 South Africa

🇷🇺 Russia — Top 10 Allies

• 🇧🇾 Belarus
• 🇨🇳 China
• 🇦🇲 Armenia
• 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
• 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan
• 🇮🇷 Iran
• 🇹🇷 Turkey
• 🇻🇳 Vietnam
• 🇰🇵 North Korea
• 🇿🇦 South Africa

As the World turns Multipolar, Huntington Moves to the Marquee. Realpolitics in the Age of Civilizational conflict, which Civilizations Can Actually Afford to Bleed?

The unipolar after-glow is over. Great-power politics is no longer “US vs. everyone else”; it is “everyone else vs. everyone else, plus chips and martyrs.” Samuel Huntington’s 1996 warning future conflicts would map onto civilizational fault-lines used to feel musty. After Ukraine, Gaza, Red Sea drone duels and Himalayas tank-parks, Huntington now feels prescient.

Below is the casualty ledger of that coming show: who can still fight a high-casualty, multi-year, civilisation-level war and politically survive. Trump’s meeting with the Heads of many Muslim States suggests that the US is pivoting from containing China to containing Muslim anger.

🔴 Meat Grinder Civs (can lose millions and keep marching)

1. The Muslim World

Demographic edge: 30 % of global under-25 males by 2030.
Cultural capital: Martyrdom idioms from Marjaʿiyya to Maghreb; 40 years of insurgency know-how.
Hardware gap: 1960s-era armour, 2020s-era loitering munitions—but lots of both because Iran, Turkey & Pakistan build them.
Pain threshold: Iraq-Iran lost ~1 million in the 1980s and both regimes lasted; today’s publics are more not less desensitised.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa

Median age: 19.
State-on-state or “state-versus-everyone” wars (Ethiopia, Sudan, Sahel) already absorb 100k+ dead per year with zero macro-impact on GDP growth.
Logistical ceiling: Low. Cannot project past the Sahara without outside trucks, but inside the continent it can feed bodies indefinitely.

3. India

2.2 million active + reserve; 12 million more reach service age annually largest manpower funnel on Earth.
Democracy penalty: Satellite TV will broadcast body-bags; Delhi must win fast or slow-roll attrition (Kargil 1999: 527 dead almost toppled Vajpayee).
Still: 4–6 million dead is arithmetically absorbable; only the Muslim world and China have bigger cohorts.

⚖️ HYBRIDS (lose people and machines, but prefer the second)

4. China

One-child after-shock: 4-2-1 family pyramid means every PLA KIA leaves two pensioners and four grandparents.
Work-around: Missile first, infantry second doctrine.

5. Russia

Ukraine already proves: society will tolerate 200k+ dead in a limited war.
Demographic floor: Ethnic-minority regions (Buryat, Dagestan) supply 3× their share of recruits classic imperial bleed-out pattern.

❌ Machine Grinder Civs (lose a thousand troops = government crisis)

6. The West (US + NATO)

Vietnam syndrome: 18 Americans dead in Somalia convinced Washington that the mission was untenable; 4,500 nearly broke the U.S. treasury in Iraq.
Work-around: $800 billion defence budget buys 160,000 precision weapons/year more than every other continent combined.
Force design: 1 operator, 50 drones; casualty tolerance shifted to financial pain.

7. Japan & South Korea

Median age 45+; universal conscription exists on paper, zero political space to use it.
Expect: robot submarines, semiconductor embargoes, cyber banks and a parliamentary collapse if body count >5 k.

📊 CIVILISATIONAL CASUALTY MATH (5-year high-intensity, non-nuclear)

Civilisation	Max Dead (mil)	% of Global War Loss	Domestic Stability After	Machine-Loss Equivalent*
☪️ Muslim World	8–12	35–40 %	Regimes survive	N/A — manpower primary
🌍 Sub-Saharan Africa	6–9	25–30 %	Regimes survive	N/A — manpower primary
🇮🇳 India	4–6	15–20 %	Coalition fall, new polls	N/A — manpower primary
🇨🇳 China	1.5–2.5	5–7 %	Crisis possible	🚀 1 J-35 lost ≈ 5k KIAs
🇷🇺 Russia	1–1.5	3–4 %	Palace coup	✈️ 1 Su-57 lost ≈ 2k KIAs
🌐 Western bloc	0.15–0.25	<1 %	Governments fall	🛩️ 1 F-35 lost ≈ 1k KIAs
🇯🇵🇰🇷 Japan/S. Korea	0.05–0.1	<0.3 %	Governments fall	🚢 1 Aegis destroyer ≈ 5k KIAs

🔍 TAKEAWAYS

High-casualty wars are not obsolete; they are simply outsourced to civilisations that can demographically absorb them.
Technology still wins battles, but demography and culture determine which civilisation can afford the war in the first place.
Investors, voters and strategists should stop asking “Who has the best tank?” and start asking “Who can still stand after a million graves?”

Huntington’s curtain is going up. Choose your civilisation and your casualty tolerance accordingly.

Google’s Search Live now Live in the US: Search will pivot from Static Answers to Real-Time Feeds & What It Means for Australia’s Legacy Mainstream Media ecosystem

Australia has long prided itself on a vigorous, independently minded press. Yet the financial scaffolding that sustains it is being dismantled not by government censors, but by Google’s algorithms. The company’s new Search Live replaces the familiar list of links with a conversational feed that updates in real time. Google calls it “convenient.” In reality, it is structural a shift that locks attention and advertising revenue inside Google’s own walls, leaving Australia’s media industry exposed.

💰 1. The economics of conversation

Old model: one query → one ad auction → publisher click-through.
New model: ongoing chat = multiple auctions:
- Short video after Q2
- Shopping card after Q3
- Local-services plug after Q4
Internal AdExchanger leak: revenue per 1,000 sessions rises ~33% if a user triggers AI Mode once per week.
Google’s engineers already label traditional results “legacy_surface” corporate shorthand for “sunset in progress.”

📰 2. Collateral damage to News Publishers

Traffic loss: Parse.ly’s data across 700+ outlets shows a 29% YoY fall in search referrals. Some Australian mastheads quietly report 50% declines.
Visibility loss: Search Live answers directly, shoving URLs into a collapsible “sources” tab. Usability tests: <3% of people ever open it.
Revenue loss: Each missed click = lost impressions = shrinking newsroom budgets. Expect another wave of layoffs in 2025–26, particularly in regional titles already weakened by Facebook’s news exit.

🔒 3. Real-time indexing as a moat

Google’s Spanner-MapReduce stack updates 10%+ of its global index every minute.
This lets Search Live:
- Pull real-time petrol prices
- Check stock availability
- Drop in discount codes seamlessly.
Competitors (OpenAI, Perplexity, Bing) can’t match Google’s speed, scale, or data fusion across voice, camera and shopping.
This isn’t just engineering muscle it’s gatekeeping power, deciding what facts, brands and outlets surface in real time.

📊 4. Implications for different players

Legacy publishers 📰: Face a further 20–25% traffic contraction, forcing pivots into subscriptions, events, podcasts and newsletters. The shift accelerates media concentration: the strong survive, the rest fold.
Independent creators 🎙️: Expect ad revenue from Google’s AdWords to shrink alongside mainstream publishers. Subscriptions, direct support, and community funding will become the primary lifeline.
Advertisers 📈: Redirect spend toward YouTube Shorts and Shopping Graph cards embedded inside conversations.

🛑 Conclusion

Google’s pivot from search engine to closed conversational feed is more than a UI tweak it is a systemic reshaping of information flows, revenue streams and influence.

For Australia’s legacy mainstream media this will mean nothing less than the accelerated erosion of their market share.

🪙 Two Fees, One Boardwalk: Victoria Risks Driving Chinese Tourists Away. Parks Vic insists new 12 Apostles tourist fee is “site-specific cost recovery,” while operators call it “the world’s most expensive footpath.”

🚗 The Fee Nobody Put on the Brochure

Chinese independent traveller numbers were finally crawling back toward 2019 levels when Victoria decided to get creative with charges. From 1 December 2025, anyone wanting to step onto the new Apostles Cliff-Top Boardwalk must pay $15 per person. That comes on top of the $20 per-car Great Ocean Road levy introduced in July 2024.

Do the maths: a Mandarin-speaking coach with 48 passengers now pays $780 in fees before a single selfie. Even if only 10% of Chinese visitors defect elsewhere, Victoria risks losing over $400 million a year in tourism spend 💸 a bill far bigger than the boardwalk itself.

🏞️ The Competition

Uluru (NT): $38 per pass for 3 days 🏜️ allows overnight stays inside the park to fully explore the environment🌏

Blue Mountains (NSW): Free entry; pay only if you ride Scenic World ✅

Brisbane–Gold Coast (QLD): Free national parks; theme-park add-ons optional ✅

Tasmania & Kangaroo Island: No levies, just ferries ⛴️

The response has been swift.

On WeChat Moments: “十二门徒收两道钱？不如去蓝山，免费！” (“Two fees for Apostles? May as well go to Blue Mountains — free!”) 📱
On C-trip searches (Oct 21 week): Great Ocean Road down 24%, Blue Mountains up 19% 📉📈
One major Shanghai wholesaler has already pulled the Apostles from its Chinese New Year 2026 itinerary, replacing it with a Sydney–Blue Mountains–Brisbane–Gold Coast circuit 🧳

🏆 Top 10 Australian Tourist Destinations – 2025 Visits

Rank	Destination (key sites)	State	Visits 2025*	10-yr change vs 2015	Notes & source
1	🏙️ Sydney – Harbour, Opera House, Bridge, Bondi	NSW	≈ 16.0 m	+14 %	Still national #1; Vivid 2025 > 2 m attendees; China seat capacity at SYD airport at record high.
2	🌆 Melbourne – CBD, laneways, sports precincts	VIC	≈ 14.5 m	+16 %	Fastest-growing capital-city precinct; quarterly survey only 3 % below pre-COVID peak.
3	🏞️ Blue Mountains NP – Three Sisters, Scenic World	NSW	≈ 6.4 m	+16 %	Almost all Sydney day-trippers; Scenic World monthly visits in 2025 tracking at or above 2022 levels.
4	🏖️ Great Ocean Road – 12 Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge	VIC	≈ 6.0 m	+43 %	Biggest mover inside old Top-10; domestic road-trip boom + Chinese coach circuits after borders reopened.
5	🏄 Gold Coast – Surfers, theme parks	QLD	≈ 5.3 m	+6 %	Domestic tourism at record; Asian short-break seat capacity back to 97 % of 2019 level.
6	🌉 Brisbane – South Bank, river strip	QLD	≈ 5.1 m	+11 %	New cruise terminal, strong convention calendar, and interstate drive traffic.
7	🐧 Phillip Island – penguins, GP circuit	VIC	≈ 2.9 m	–17 %	Lost overseas coach groups during COVID; overnight stays still 20 % below 2015 but remains VIC’s #2 regional draw.
8	🍷 Hunter Valley wine region	NSW	≈ 2.0 m	–26 %	Day-trips steady at 2 m, but overnight stays flat; competition from Orange/Mudgee and fewer large conventions post-COVID.
9	🐠 Great Barrier Reef (Cairns + Whitsundays)	QLD	≈ 2.0 m	–5 %	Two bleaching events + cruise suspensions cut dive/snorkel numbers; marketing pivot to “reef & islands” only stabilized the fall.
10	🏔️ Tasmania (whole state) – Cradle Mt, Freycinet, MONA	TAS	≈ 1.4 m	+27 %	MONA effect, Wilderness Railway re-opening, and extra Spirit-of-Tasmania sailings; 2025 airport arrivals already 11 % above Sep-2024.

☀️ Solar Potential vs Reality. Top 20 Countries by Land-based Solar Potential & Current 2025 Installed Solar GW

#	Country	Potential GW 1% land	Installed Solar GW	% potential built	Notes
1	Algeria	2 700	2	0.07 %	Sahara mega-plans (10 GW) stalled by lack of export lines to EU; new 2025 MoU with Italy may unlock first 3 GW
2	Australia	2 100	38	1.8 %	100 GW rooftop fleet + big desert projects; grid congestion now main bottleneck—curtailment already >1 GW at midday
3	Saudi Arabia	1 900	9	0.5 %	NEOM & Sakaka online; 130 GW 2030 target needs 250 bn USD and storage—currently finance-limited, not land-limited
4	Libya	1 700	<1	0.04 %	Civil-war risk keeps investors away; 2024 GNU issued first 500 MW tender but no financial close yet
5	China	1 600	890	55 %	Hitting land ceiling in East; shifting to 3 %-land use in Gobi + 200 GW desert bases; module-overcapacity keeps domestic LCOE at 2 ¢/kWh
6	Mali	1 500	<1	0.03 %	Off-grid mines (gold) driving 50 MW/y; World Bank “Desert-to-Power” 330 MW pipeline but security issues delay construction
7	Sudan	1 400	<1	0.04 %	500 MW Red Sea tender 2023 cancelled after coup; no grid export lines to Egypt or Saudi yet
8	Niger	1 350	<1	0.02 %	30 MW Gorou Banda plant online 2022; 200 MW Kandadji planned; uranium mines eye 100 MW self-build solar-diesel hybrid
9	Chad	1 300	<1	0.03 %	60 MW Djermaya PV + 25 MW battery (Chinese EPC) operational; interconnection to Cameroon 225 kV line would unlock 1 GW
10	Kazakhstan	1 250	3	0.2 %	1 GW auction round 2024 severely under-subscribed (only 300 MW awarded) due to grid-code curtailment fears
11	Argentina	1 200	2	0.2 %	Jujuy 300 MW Cauchari operational; macro & FX controls block new foreign investment; Patagonia 600 MW awarded 2023 but on hold
12	India	1 100	119	10.8 %	14 GW utility-scale added 2024; transmission congestion in Rajasthan; new 50 GW ultra-mega solar park planned in Ladakh
13	Egypt	1 050	2	0.2 %	1.8 GW Benban complex finished; 10 GW West of Nile tender launched 2024—needs 3 bn USD HVDC link to Saudi or Europe
14	South Africa	1 000	8	0.8 %	4 GW procured under REIPPPP; daily load-shedding ended 2024 thanks to 5 GW rooftop boom—new risk is over-supply at midday
15	Pakistan	950	5	0.5 %	17 GW module imports 2024 but only 1 GW utility-scale added; rest is rooftop <1 kW systems—no batteries yet, grid still needed at night
16	Iran	900	<1	0.05 %	600 MW allocated 2023 but sanctions block foreign debt; domestic panel fab (MEHR) only 500 MW/y capacity
17	Somalia	850	<1	0.04 %	120 MW off-grid/diesel-replacement pipeline (World Bank Scaling Solar); security & port logistics raise CAPEX 20 %
18	Mexico	800	9	1.1 %	2021 energy-reform roll-back halted new utility tenders; private PPAs still active (400 MW/year) but CFE wants 30 % local content
19	Turkmenistan	750	<1	0.03 %	300 MW tender 2024 (ACWA-Saudi) under sovereign guarantee; no public data on financial close
20	USA	720	236	32.8 %	Inflation Reduction Act 45X/PTC keeps build-out at record 35 GW/y; interconnection queue still 2 000 GW—bottleneck is grid, not land or sun

🔑 Key Take-aways

China has already exploited >50 % of its 1 %-land potential, explaining its pivot into desert 2–3 %-land footprints and floating solar.
North-African & Arabian giants (Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt) are >99 % untapped their ceilings are set not by sun or land, but by wires, finance, and offtake contracts.