Hipkins said Ardern would be New Zealand’s senior representative on Christchurch Call-related matters and would work closely with France.
“This allows me to remain focused on the cyclone recovery and addressing the cost of living pressures affecting New Zealanders,” Hipkins said.
Ardern will report directly to Hipkins and has declined to be paid for the job.
“Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to stopping violent extremist content like we saw that day is key to why she should carry on this work,” Hipkins said.
“Her relationships with leaders and technology companies and her drive for change will help increase the pace and ambition of the work we are doing through the Christchurch Call.”
Ardern’s role will be reviewed at the end of the year.
She is due to deliver her final speech at Parliament tomorrow and will formally leave politics next week.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.
In this podcast Michelle and Amanda Dunn, politics + society editor, discuss the Reserve Bank’s pause (but for how long?) on interest rate hikes, the Aston byelection, the Liberals grappling with the Voice, the loss of a great Indigenous leader in Yunupingu, and the ban on TikTok on government devices.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama today condemned a visiting Papua New Guinean member of Parliament for “mocking” the autonomous region’s independence aspirations during a drunken exchange in Buka last week, saying that he must “atone for his blunder”.
A video of Ijivitari MP David Arore allegedly abusing security guards and airport staff while getting ready to board a plane out of Buka last Friday has stirred wide condemnation by national and Bougainville leaders.
“Let us take this criticism in our stride and use this as motivation to continue to develop and progress,” President Toroama said in a statement, adding that sovereignty was “rightfully ours to claim”.
“We are a people who have withstood tougher challenges than the words of a drunken man,” he said.
Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama … “Sovereignty is rightfully ours to claim, we have paid for it with the unfair exploitation of our resources, our lives and the blood of the people who sacrificed their lives fighting for their freedom in an unjust war. Image: APR
Arore’s visit to Bougainville was part of a delegation led by the Minister for Bougainville Affairs, Mannaseh Makiba. The visit was to help national MPs better understand the autonomous arrangements on Bougainville and meet local leaders and the people.
Toroama said the trip was a success but strongly criticised the behaviour of MP Arore, saying he did not have the “right to use it to insult our leaders and our people”.
“Sovereignty is rightfully ours to claim, we have paid for it with the unfair exploitation of our resources, our lives and the blood of the people who sacrificed their lives fighting for their freedom in an unjust war,” President Toroama said, referring to the now-closed rich Panguna copper mine and the decade-long civil war over the exploitation and environmental degradation.
Unfair comparison It was unfair for Arore to even compare infrastructure development on Bougainville to that of the rest of the country because Bougainville was a post-conflict region that was only now “steadily gaining traction on development and peace”.
“Bougainville bankrolled PNG’s independence and set the very foundation for every form of development in this country,” President Toroama said.
“Subsequently, we had a war waged on our people by the very same government we built.
“You [Arore] can mock our shortcomings in development but do not mock the sanctity of our aspirations to be an independent nation.”
President Toroama thanked Bougainvilleans who witnessed Arore’s “tirade of insults” directed at the Air Niugini and National Airports Corporation (NAC) staff for “maintaining civility”.
“In this respect we proved that despite his inebriated state and the discourteous behaviour our people still showed respect for the office that he occupies as a national leader.”
But President Toroama called for an investigation, saying Arore “understands our Melanesian traditions” and he was “stlll subservient to the law”.
“We left in good note. However, such behaviour by an MP is wrong and unacceptable,” Makiba said.
“We will not allow the unfortunate incident to deter the progress we have made and good working relationship we have with Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) leadership and people.
“We were not aware of this incident until now. Generally, our visit was well appreciated by ABG.
“I apologise for Mr Arore’s behaviour.”
According to reports, Arore insinuated that Bougainville’s independence was “not negotiable”, among other derogative comments he made at that time.
Arore told the Post-Courier he would not apologise as what he had said was not intended to upset Bougainville, its people and the leadership.
“I will not apologise. I have nothing to apologise for because I did not say something wrong, I did not abuse anyone and there was no commotion,” Arore claimed.
“All I said was, ‘Yumi laik kisim independence (if we want independence), yumi stretim balus na stretim hausik (we must fix our airport and our hospital)’.
“I said these same sentiments in Manus, where I said to the leaders there, ‘Manus has a big and very good airport but the town is in shambles’.
“I think we have made this very minor issue a very big one.”
‘We’ll have him arrested’ Police Commissioner David Manning said the incident of a MP allegedly drunk and disorderly on a flight would be investigated with him waiting on NAC and Air Niugini for a report and complaint.
“We will have him arrested. We are awaiting the NAC and Air Niugini,” he said.
Civil Aviation Minister Walter Schnaubelt said: “He (Arore) was also allowed to board the plane drunk, which is a security breach.
“So (we are) getting a report from our team on the ground so further preventative action can be taken. This sort of behaviour must not be tolerated, and we leaders must lead by example at all times.”
MP Arore is a member of PNG’s parliamentary law and order committee. The Ijivitari Open electorate is in Oro province.
In 2019, a non-binding independence referendum was held in Bougainville with 98.31 percent of voters supporting independence from Papua New Guinea.
Report compiled from Bougainville News and the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
Australia’s Reserve Bank has hit pause on interest rates after ten successive hikes, but for many Australians, the pain it has inflicted is about to begin.
The Bank says more than one million households will come off ultra-low fixed-rate mortgages this year and the next, some of those rates fixed for as low as 1.95%. They will be pushed onto loans as high as 5%, meaning that if they borrowed $600,000, instead of paying $2,500 per month they’ll be paying $3,500.
That’s an extra $1,000 those borrowers will need to find each and every month – an extraordinary $250 they will need to find each week. The Bank says 880,000 fixed-rate mortgages will expire this year and another 450,000 next year.
How much harm will that do to the economy? Quite a lot. The Bank said the full effect of its interest rate increases to date was “yet to be felt”.
Fixed-rate borrowers face trouble
The Bank’s research finds fixed-rate borrowers are more likely to have larger loans relative to their incomes than other borrowers, and more likely to have high loan-to-valuation ratios, in part because they tend to be more recent borrowers.
Its rule of thumb is that borrowers who spend more than 30% of their income on scheduled payments run the risk of having problems paying. At the moment only one in ten fixed-rate borrowers is in such a situation. When those fixed loans expire and they switch to the higher variable rates, it will be one in four of them.
Which is a good reason for taking stock. The Bank may well increase interest rates again. It said it expected to on Tuesday. But it knows a lot of the damage from what it has already done is yet to come.
After its last meeting in March, the board produced a checklist of the things it said it would consider in April in deciding whether to hit pause. On this list were inflation, jobs, retail spending, business conditions and developments overseas.
Inflation easing
On inflation, the board says a range of information suggests the rate has peaked.
The official figures only come out four times a year, and the next ones aren’t due for some weeks. But since the last lot we have had two new readings of the quasi-experimental monthly index, and they have both been down.
On that monthly measure (which excludes 30% of the items in the quarterly measure, among them gas and electricity) inflation fell from 8.4% in the year to December to 7.4% in the year to January, to 6.8% in the year to February.
A further indication that price pressures are moderating is what trade unions asked for in the minimum wage case before the Fair Work Commission. They didn’t ask for the official inflation rate of 7.8%, but for 7%, which suggests they accept the monthly figures and believe inflation is coming down.
On employment (the second item on the Bank’s checklist), the official figures showed a jump in February after declines in December and January, but the Bank says this is more likely to reflect changing seasonal hiring patterns than a genuine surge. Job vacancies have been falling for six months.
Economy weakening
Retail spending (the third item on the checklist) grew just 0.2% in February, much less than price growth of 0.6%, at a time when Australia’s population grew quickly, suggesting what was bought per person went backwards. ANZ card data for the first two weeks of March shows a further weakening.
The Bank says the combination of higher interest rates, cost-of-living pressures and a decline in housing prices is leading to a “substantial slowing in spending”. While some households have savings buffers, others are experiencing a “painful squeeze on their finances”.
Business conditions (the fourth item of the checklist) remained healthy in February according to the National Australia Bank survey, although confidence slipped into negative territory (meaning pessimists outweighed optimists).
So weak was Australia’s overall economy on the last reading that gross domestic product (spending and income) grew just 0.5% in the three months to December, by about as much as population, meaning GDP per person didn’t grow.
The Bank says it expects “below trend” growth for the next couple of years.
Overseas headwinds
Overseas developments (the last item on the checklist) have been grim since the last board meeting.
The Bank says the international outlook is “subdued” with below-average growth likely in the years ahead, weighed down by bank crises in the US and Switzerland.
It’s likely to be his last chance to explain what he is doing before Treasurer Jim Chalmers releases the report of the independent review of the Bank he received in March.
That report is likely to suggest big changes to the organisation of the bank (such as more experts and fewer business figures on the board) and a more open culture.
But in something of a vindication for Lowe, it is set to find little reason to change either the Bank’s targets (2–3% inflation and full employment) or the single tool it uses to achieve them, which is adjusting the so-called cash rate.
After Chalmers makes changes as a result of the review, The Bank is likely to continue attempting to do what it is attempting to do now, which is using monthly (or perhaps less frequent) reviews of the cash rate to try to get inflation and employment somewhere near where it wants them. It won’t be easy.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Over four years, we examined a regional town’s attitudes before and after hundreds of refugees settled in the area. Our surveys found residents of Armidale, in northeastern New South Wales, started out reasonably positive about the settlement program, and became even more so.
Over time, they had fewer concerns about the impact of refugees on the town, more contact with the refugees, and more positive attitudes towards refugees and the settlement program.
After a lengthy process, Armidale was chosen as a regional settlement location for Australia’s refugee program under the Turnbull government in 2017. Since 2018, the town has welcomed some 650 Ezidi refugees, boosting the town’s population by almost 3%.
Ezidis are a religious minority mostly from northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and are also known as Yazidis or Yezidis. They’ve faced persecution for centuries, including recently by Islamic State (or ISIS), who perpetrated genocide on the group in the mid-2010s.
There are several elements in the equation for successful refugee settlement. Receptive, welcoming communities is one important part.
We documented shifts in the Armidale community’s attitudes towards refugee settlement through six successive surveys. Each surveyed about 200 residents, drawing a new sample each time.
Initially, the main concerns were whether there would be enough jobs, and whether local services were adequate.
Residents’ views changed significantly about how many refugees were OK to accept. The number of residents who believed the number was “too high” declined, and the number of people who thought it was “too low” increased.
But, of course, sentiment was not uniformly positive (or negative).
Residents’ views on the number of refugees coming to Armidale over time
We segmented the community to identify clusters of attitudes among like-minded people toward refugee settlement. Initially, there were four clusters, which we named “enthusiastic”, “positive”, “concerned” and “resistant”. Enthusiastic and positive formed the majority.
Over time, the positive clusters expanded, and the negative clusters reduced. By the final survey, our most negative cluster was, in fact, positive towards the refugees. We renamed it “cautious”.
Residents’ contact with Ezidis increased as time went on, and was overwhelmingly rated positively, with residents saying Ezidis were “friendly”, “grateful” and “polite”.
The final three surveys also re-interviewed participants from earlier surveys to examine changes in attitudes at the individual level. As with the community surveys, participants had more positive attitudes over time.
On average, the greatest change was among people who initially had reservations: those who started out negative became more positive. People who started out positive remained positive.
A model for regional settlement
It’s tempting to think of Armidale as an outlier in regional Australia. Local talk was that Armidale was “special” – highly educated, multicultural, welcoming.
But when we compared Armidale with other similar areas in regional Australia, there were few differences.
Armidale was reasonably representative in socio-demographics and attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism. Contrary to expectations, Armidale actually rated slightly lower on social cohesion, and on having multicultural neighbourhoods. However, we found Armidale improved on all multiculturalism indicators during the settlement period.
Our research showed Armidale progressively adapting and embracing the refugee settlement program, challenging stereotypes of regional Australia.
The study occurred during a time of disruption to the Armidale community through the impact of a severe drought followed by the COVID pandemic. Nonetheless, the community became increasingly positive, a result that speaks to the hard work of many people and organisations, and the efforts and strengths of Ezidis to settle as they build a new chapter of their lives in Australia.
Indeed, if Armidale is representative of inner regional Australia, which it appears to be, our results are promising for refugee settlement in other regional towns.
SSI, University of Newcastle and the University of New England provided funding for the research reported in this article.
Stefania Paolini receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Tadgh McMahon works for SSI which receives funding from the Australian Government to provide settlement services to refugees. He is affiliated with Flinders University.
Australia’s Reserve Bank hit pause on interest rates after ten successive hikes on Tuesday, but for many Australians, the pain it has inflicted is about to begin.
The Bank says more than one million households will come off ultra-low fixed-rate mortgages this year and the next, some of those rates fixed for as low as 1.95%. They will be pushed onto loans as high as 5%, meaning that if they borrowed $600,000, instead of paying $2,500 per month they’ll be paying $3,500.
That’s an extra $1,000 those borrowers will need to find each and every month – an extraordinary $250 they will need to find each week. The Bank says 880,000 fixed-rate mortgages will expire this year and another 450,000 next year.
How much harm will that do to the economy? Quite a lot. The Bank said on Tuesday the full effect of its interest rate increases to date was “yet to be felt”.
Fixed-rate borrowers face trouble
The Bank’s research finds fixed-rate borrowers are more likely to have larger loans relative to their incomes than other borrowers, and more likely to have high loan-to-valuation ratios, in part because they tend to be more recent borrowers.
Its rule of thumb is that borrowers who spend more than 30% of their income on scheduled payments run the risk of having problems paying. At the moment only one in ten fixed-rate borrowers is in such a situation. When those fixed loans expire and they switch to the higher variable rates, it will be one in four of them.
Which is a good reason for taking stock. The Bank may well increase interest rates again. It said it expected to on Tuesday. But it knows a lot of the damage from what it has already done is yet to come.
After its last meeting in March, the board produced a checklist of the things it said it would consider in April in deciding whether to hit pause. On this list were inflation, jobs, retail spending, business conditions and developments overseas.
Inflation easing
On inflation, the board says a range of information suggests the rate has peaked.
The official figures only come out four times a year, and the next ones aren’t due for some weeks. But since the last lot we have had two new readings of the quasi-experimental monthly index, and they have both been down.
On that monthly measure (which excludes 30% of the items in the quarterly measure, among them gas and electricity) inflation fell from 8.4% in the year to December to 7.4% in the year to January, to 6.8% in the year to February.
A further indication that price pressures are moderating is what trade unions asked for in the minimum wage case before the Fair Work Commission. They didn’t ask for the official inflation rate of 7.8%, but for 7%, which suggests they accept the monthly figures and believe inflation is coming down.
On employment (the second item on the Bank’s checklist), the official figures showed a jump in February after declines in December and January, but the Bank says this is more likely to reflect changing seasonal hiring patterns than a genuine surge. Job vacancies have been falling for six months.
Economy weakening
Retail spending (the third item on the checklist) grew just 0.2% in February, much less than price growth of 0.6%, at a time when Australia’s population grew quickly, suggesting what was bought per person went backwards. ANZ card data for the first two weeks of March shows a further weakening.
The Bank says the combination of higher interest rates, cost-of-living pressures and a decline in housing prices is leading to a “substantial slowing in spending”. While some households have savings buffers, others are experiencing a “painful squeeze on their finances”.
Business conditions (the fourth item of the checklist) remained healthy in February according to the National Australia Bank survey, although confidence slipped into negative territory (meaning pessimists outweighed optimists).
So weak was Australia’s overall economy on the last reading that gross domestic product (spending and income) grew just 0.5% in the three months to December, by about as much as population, meaning GDP per person didn’t grow.
The Bank says it expects “below trend” growth for the next couple of years.
Overseas headwinds
Overseas developments (the last item on the checklist) have been grim since the last board meeting.
The Bank says the international outlook is “subdued” with below-average growth likely in the years ahead, weighed down by bank crises in the US and Switzerland.
It’s likely to be his last chance to explain what he is doing before Treasurer Jim Chalmers releases the report of the independent review of the Bank he received in March.
That report is likely to suggest big changes to the organisation of the bank (such as more experts and fewer business figures on the board) and a more open culture.
But in something of a vindication for Lowe, it is set to find little reason to change either the Bank’s targets (2–3% inflation and full employment) or the single tool it uses to achieve them, which is adjusting the so-called cash rate.
After Chalmers makes changes as a result of the review, The Bank is likely to continue attempting to do what it is attempting to do now, which is using monthly (or perhaps less frequent) reviews of the cash rate to try to get inflation and employment somewhere near where it wants them. It won’t be easy.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Exposed by Restless Dance Theatre.Roy Vandervegt/Arts House
Staying true to its objectives of representing dance artists from across practices and lineages, the inaugural FRAME Dance Festival offered a diversity of performance styles and forms in locations around Melbourne and beyond.
The program included shows, films and workshops in venues ranging from courtyards to galleries to dance studios.
Some offerings were political and academic, some were celebratory. Some told us personal or cultural stories; some had 100 dancers, some had one.
FRAME felt like a community coming together after three very difficult pandemic years for dance and dancers in Melbourne. Here are my highlights of the festival.
In a mesmerising queer retelling of Lord Vishnu’s transformation into the enchantress Mohini, Raina Peterson – a Fiji-Indian and English dancer/choreographer – draws us into their sensual, visceral world where they shift from transgender storyteller to demon to Hindu goddess.
True to the classical Indian idiom, their wide-open unblinking eyes, bouncing brows and long articulate fingers lead the narrative, which begins on a dimly lit stage covered in low billowing clouds.
This is a mesmerising queer retelling of Lord Vishnu’s transformation into the enchantress Mohini. Anne Moffat/Arts House
Peterson is joined by Marco Cher-Gibard, who hits long, loud notes on electric guitar to a background of tinkling chimes.
As the story climaxes with Mohini’s recovery of the elixir of life, there is a visual metamorphosis on stage from quiet monochrome intimacy to explosive psychedelic rainbow celebration with the projection of a spinning vortex around Peterson’s ecstatic silhouetted form.
It is an intense and captivating experience.
Slip
In Slip, dancer Rebecca Jensen, dressed as the enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring, exposes the illusions created by technology in our everyday lives.
The bare stage appears like a workspace with only a sound desk and a scattering of quotidian objects. The performance begins with a demonstration of the sound-effect technique Foley from Jensen’s collaborator Aviva Endean.
Upon entering, Jensen sits centre stage and eats, drinks and reads a newspaper while Endean creates sounds to match her actions. When Jensen eats chips, live and synchronised Endean amusingly crunches on a celery stalk.
Slip is an energetic and intellectual work. Sarah Walker/Darebin Arts Speakeasy
This measured synchronicity creates a comforting rhythm – until it gradually begins to slip.
The sound and action become out of sync. The crunching accompanies walking. The walking sounds like water being poured. The artificiality of the sound’s relationship to the action is disturbingly laid bare.
The pace picks up as Jensen and Endean interact with the objects, each other and as animated dancers projected on the back screen.
An energetic and intellectual work, Slip keeps the audience holding on by a thread, never letting up or settling in.
In our era of social dysfunction, environmental disasters, pandemics and war, Us and All of This is choreographer Liesel Zink’s meditation on human connectivity.
The sound of loud humming white noise accompanies the 100 very slow-moving quiet bodies as one by one they fill the Arts Centre Melbourne forecourt.
They stand separate, motionless, facing different directions and gazing to the distance. They represent the breadth of our society: all ages, races, genders and abilities.
These dancers represent the breadth of our society: all ages, races, genders and abilities. Mark Gambino/Arts Centre Melbourne
A few begin to breathe their arms gently and slowly up and down like wings. They are joined by a few more until everyone is breathing together. Changes to the movement starts with a few and gradually ripples through the whole 100 dancers.
As momentum builds, the synchronicity breaks down.
Different intense movements are now distributed randomly through the crowd: a highly energetic arm winding, a desperate curling in, a spinning with arms fully stretched and a pushing down hard towards the ground. The dancers are engrossed.
Sometimes they move closer to each other, sometimes further apart. And while they do not acknowledge each other until the very end, in this immersive experience we as the audience are drawn in from the start with a sense we are all in this together.
Exposed
Directed by Michelle Ryan, Restless Dance Theatre’s diverse dancers take us on an exploration of the physical, mental and emotional vulnerability exposed in the face of global upheaval.
A huge screen becomes translucent and we make out the seven dancers beyond it scattered across the stage slowly getting dressed.
They begin to look up as if there is something there they cannot see but are afraid of; something invisible but menacing. They start slowly turning. The screen transforms into a lung breathing over their heads. Only now do they start seeing each other.
We see the vulnerability exposed in the face of global upheaval. Roy Vandervegt/Arts House
They are jumpy, afraid of each other and of other things we cannot see. This fear develops into an emotional desperation in some. Others become violent. Still others show signs of physical suffering.
They begin to attempt to help each other.
The screen moves once more to become a backdrop. The dancers now move with each other, connecting, smiling, learning to give and accept care. The motifs of the breath and physical turning and rolling throughout the work, together with a serene and repetitive score, create a sense of continuation and inevitability, of a human condition that insists on struggling on, that has no choice.
This tender work closes as it began, the dancers separate and turn inward once more as they slowly and quietly undress.
Known as the mother of modern African dance, Senegalese French dancer Germaine Acogny moves us through the continual returns of inescapable pasts in a haunting post-colonial epic.
With direction by Mikael Serre, this multimedia bricolage shifts from the intimate corporeality of the weight of a stone on a foot to the museum-like objective formality of 20th century film footage and documentary voice over.
A beaded curtain which divides the stage into back and front is traversed throughout, representing the movement between different worlds, past and present, African and European.
Germaine Acogny is the mother of modern African dance. Thomas Dorn/Arts House
In a long, grey dress, Acogny moves deliberately and heavily with only a book, a stone, a pillow and a chair to accompany her. We are confronted with a variety of stories: some deeply personal, some culturally shared and some highly academic.
Themes around identity relentlessly recur throughout the work imitating the insistence of the colonial legacy they illustrate. The same story of powder used to whiten faces manifests at different times in projection, voice and in its sprinkling around the stage.
Without lightness or relief, Somewhere at the Beginning demands we bear witness to its account of the tragedy and persistence of cultural and colonial trauma.
NEWRETRO
Lucy Guerin’s three-hour marathon 21st-birthday celebration is a director’s cut of 21 works reenacted by 21 dancers who, along with their audience, move in and out of all four galleries of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
In this shift from blacked-out theatre to white cube, Guerin shows us a version of her works we have not seen before. We encounter the dancers on and off stage: close-up, sweaty and raw. As the audience we not only see, but are also seen.
The larger main gallery exhibits a built-up remix of vocabularies with different groups of dancers simultaneously performing excerpts clearly drawn from different Guerin works. The movement is at times hyper-energetic, pounding with unexpected grunts and screams, and at other times minimal, quiet and pedestrian.
Close-up, sweaty and raw where we encounter the dancers on and off stage and as audience. Gregory Lorenzutti/ACCA
The more intimate and darker corner gallery has a schedule of five duets, while the other two galleries show original footage of all 21 works and a demonstration of the process undertaken by the dancers working with footage to learn the choreography.
With a cast of some of Melbourne’s most beloved dancers including Lilian Steiner, Deanne Butterworth and Melanie Lane, NEWRETRO is a landmark event in its memorialisation of a local woman choreographer who has not only produced 21 works in 21 years but has also supported and mentored many others as both dancers and choreographers.
It felt like a very satisfying way to end my FRAME journey.
Yvette Grant works as a lecturer in Dance at The Victorian College of the Arts and as a graduate researcher and receives some funding from The University of Melbourne and a Commonwealth government scholarship.
Is it time to put the brakes on the development of artificial intelligence (AI)? If you’ve quietly asked yourself that question, you’re not alone.
In the past week, a host of AI luminaries signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of more powerful models than GPT-4; European researchers called for tighter AI regulations; and long-time AI researcher and critic Eliezer Yudkowsky demanded a complete shutdown of AI development in the pages of TIME magazine.
Meanwhile, the industry shows no sign of slowing down. In March, a senior AI executive at Microsoft reportedly spoke of “very, very high” pressure from chief executive Satya Nadella to get GPT-4 and other new models to the public “at a very high speed”.
I worked at Google until 2020, when I left to study responsible AI development, and now I research human-AI creative collaboration. I am excited about the potential of artificial intelligence, and I believe it is already ushering in a new era of creativity. However, I believe a temporary pause in the development of more powerful AI systems is a good idea. Let me explain why.
What is GPT-4 and what is the letter asking for?
The open letter published by the US non-profit Future of Life Institute makes a straightforward request of AI developers:
We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
So what is GPT-4? Like its predecessor GPT-3.5 (which powers the popular ChatGPT chatbot), GPT-4 is a kind of generative AI software called a “large language model”, developed by OpenAI.
GPT-4 is much larger and has been trained on significantly more data. Like other large language models, GPT-4 works by guessing the next word in response to prompts – but it is nonetheless incredibly capable.
In tests, it passed legal and medical exams, and can write software better than professionals in many cases. And its full range of abilities is yet to be discovered.
Good, bad, and plain disruptive
GPT-4 and models like it are likely to have huge effects across many layers of society.
On the upside, they could enhance human creativity and scientific discovery, lower barriers to learning, and be used in personalised educational tools. On the downside, they could facilitate personalised phishing attacks, produce disinformation at scale, and be used to hack through the network security around computer systems that control vital infrastructure.
OpenAI’s own research suggests models like GPT-4 are “general-purpose technologies” which will impact some 80% of the US workforce.
Layers of civilisation and the pace of change
The US writer Stewart Brand has argued that a “healthy civilisation” requires different systems or layers to move at different speeds:
The fast layers innovate; the slow layers stabilise. The whole combines learning with continuity.
According to the ‘pace layers’ model, different layers of a healthy civilisation move at different speeds, from the slow movement of nature to the rapid shifts of fashion. Stewart Brand / Journal of Design and Science
In Brand’s “pace layers” model, the bottom layers change more slowly than the top layers.
Technology is usually placed near the top, somewhere between fashion and commerce. Things like regulation, economic systems, security guardrails, ethical frameworks, and other aspects exist in the slower governance, infrastructure and culture layers.
Right now, technology is accelerating much faster than our capacity to understand and regulate it – and if we’re not careful it will also drive changes in those lower layers that are too fast for safety.
The US sociobiologist E.O. Wilson described the dangers of a mismatch in the different paces of change like so:
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Are there good reasons to maintain the current rapid pace?
Some argue that if top AI labs slow down, other unaligned players or countries like China will outpace them.
However, training complex AI systems is not easy. OpenAI is ahead of its US competitors (including Google and Meta), and developers in China and other countries also lag behind.
It’s unlikely that “rogue groups” or governments will surpass GPT-4’s capabilities in the foreseeable future. Most AI talent, knowledge, and computing infrastructure is concentrated in a handful of top labs.
Other critics of the Future of Life Institute letter say it relies on an overblown perception of current and future AI capabilities.
However, whether or not you believe AI will reach a state of general superintelligence, it is undeniable that this technology will impact many facets of human society. Taking the time to let our systems adjust to the pace of change seems wise.
Slowing down is wise
While there is plenty of room for disagreement over specific details, I believe the Future of Life Institute letter points in a wise direction: to take ownership of the pace of technological change.
Despite what we have seen of the disruption caused by social media, Silicon Valley still tends to follow Facebook’s infamous motto of “move fast and break things”.
I believe a wise course of action is to slow down and think about where we want to take these technologies, allowing our systems and ourselves to adjust and engage in diverse, thoughtful conversations. It is not about stopping, but rather moving at a sustainable pace of progress. We can choose to steer this technology, rather than assume it has a life of its own that we can’t control.
After some thought, I have added my name to the list of signatories of the open letter, which the Future of Life Institute says now includes some 50,000 people. Although a six-month moratorium won’t solve everything, it would be useful: it sets the right intention, to prioritise reflection on benefits and risks over uncritical, accelerated, profit-motivated progress.
Rodolfo Ocampo worked at Google from 2018 to 2020.
Superannuation is never far from the headlines lately, with the government recently calling for views from the public on what the objective of super should be.
The basic idea behind super is you set aside a portion of your pay over your working life, so you can build up a nest egg to see you through your retirement years.
But what if you’re worried you might not have enough super by the time you retire? Yes, you could top up your super now and watch the nest egg grow through the magic of compound returns – but what are the downsides?
If you’re considering putting more money into your super, and want to know more about how the whole system works, here are the basics.
What are the rules about putting more money into my super?
First, make sure you know where your superannuation actually is and how much you’ve got so far. This page from the Australian Tax Office explains how to search for any lost super.
The next thing to know is there are limits to how much you can contribute into superannuation.
There are two types of super contributions you can make.
The first category is called “concessional contributions”. These are taxed at 15%, which may be lower than the tax you’d otherwise have to pay on that money. So making these super top-ups can not only grow your nest egg, but save you tax.
The amount of concessional contributions you can make is A$27,500 per annum. That figure includes all the super your employer puts in your super account and any extra contributions you make under a salary sacrifice scheme or where you are claiming an income tax deduction.
The second category, known as “non-concessional contributions”, means money you pay into your super without claiming a tax deduction. This could be, for example, money from savings, an inheritance or a lottery win.
There is a limit of $330,000 over three years (or $110,000 per year), for these contributions.
Compound returns are where you earn returns not only on the original investment you put in, but also on any returns on that investment. As the government’s Moneysmart website puts it, “you get interest on your interest”.
Over the years, this means you could earn a lot more than you would if you didn’t top up your super.
How much more? Well, it depends on the investment return and fees of your fund.
But as an example: thanks to compound returns, putting an extra $100 per month into your super from age 30 could mean you retire with an extra $65,000 in your account (here, I’ve assumed investment returns of 7.5%, accumulation inflation of 4% and salary inflation of 4%).
And the longer it is there, the more it will grow – so starting top-ups early might pay off.
This is particularly important for women, whose super balances may look a bit feeble if they take parental leave or cut their hours while raising a family.
Then there’s the tax benefits of super top-ups. If you would normally pay a net tax rate higher than 15% on investments such as shares, your money will grow more quickly inside superannuation than shares.
You may also be eligible for government co-contributions that add to your balance if you make a non-concessional contribution during the year and your income is less than $57,016.
So what’s the downside? Can I access my superannuation before retirement?
Basically, no. You must meet a “condition of release” before being able to access your superannuation.
The most common is retirement, defined as reaching the age of 65 or leaving work after reaching “preservation age” (which is 60 for anyone born after July, 1964).
There are some special circumstances where you may be able to access your superannuation early.
These are very narrow, and include serious financial hardship or necessary medical treatment that cannot be funded any other way.
Death or terminal illness also qualify for release.
If you make voluntary contributions, you may be able to withdraw these contributions for a home deposit.
However, this scheme is very tightly regulated. You can read more about the rules for this scheme here.
So… should I put more money into my super?
It depends. If you do, make sure you understand you will not be able to access that money until retirement.
If you own your home (or intend to rent until retirement) you may want to put more into superannuation while you can afford it, knowing it is contributing to a secure retirement.
But if home ownership is your goal, you should think carefully about choosing between superannuation and saving for a home deposit.
Note: the contribution caps and rates used in this article are for the year ending June 30, 2023.
Helen Hodgson has received funding from the ARC, AHURI and CPA Australia. Helen is the Chair of the Social Policy Committee and a Director of the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) and on the Gender and Career Progression Committee of CPA Australia (WA Division). Helen was a Member of the WA Legislative Council in WA from 1997 to 2001, elected as an Australian Democrat. She is not a current member of any political party. She is a Registered Tax Agent and a member of the SMSF Association, CPA Australia and The Tax Institute.
Most offensive actions are not gross and crippling. They are subtle and stunning. The enormity of the complications they cause can be appreciated only when one considers that these subtle blows are delivered incessantly. Even though any single negotiation of offence can in justice be considered of itself to be relatively innocuous, the cumulative effect to the victim and to the victimiser is of an unimaginable magnitude.
While originally conceived in the context of race relations, microaggressions may also relate to gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, weight, or a combination of these.
Consider these situations. All are real-life stories from people of colour I know (used with their consent):
a woman walks into a hairdresser’s shop. The shop is empty and the hairdresser is cleaning hair from the floor. The woman asks if she could get a haircut – if not right now, perhaps another day. The hairdresser says she can’t help as she is not taking on any new customers.
a man is waiting to pick up his partner in his car, parked on a side street near his partner’s apartment, which is located in a predominantly white suburb. He is minding his own business sitting in his own car. Each time a person walks by, they stare at the man, and keep staring as they walk past.
a couple is waiting to order coffee in a busy city cafe. The server is chatty with the white couple ahead of them. When they progress to the front of the line, the server is curt, avoids eye contact, and is eager to move on to the next customer. After placing their order, the couple stands where other patrons had previously waited for their orders. A staff member comes over and asks the couple to wait outside instead.
Examples of microaggressions towards other identity minorities may include moving away from a trans person on public transport, or not considering wheelchair accessibility needs when booking venues for meetings or events.
Each of these incidents in isolation may not seem particularly harmful, and some may even chalk them up to coincidences or “reading too much into a situation”.
However, when experienced repeatedly, daily, or even multiple times a day, they can harm people’s psychological and physical health.
Microaggressions are like death by a thousand mosquito bites/Fusion Comedy.
Microaggressions are subtle
Microaggressions are often so subtle that even the victim may not realise that they have just experienced one until later – likely because microaggressions are often accompanied with dissociation (i.e. disconnection from thoughts, feelings or personal sense of identity).
As psychologist Ron Taffel explains, dissociation is a “psychically handy” tool that helps ease the pain,
making sure that the moment does not fully register or does its damage until a less vulnerable time later – perhaps during a quiet time alone…
Microaggressions affect our physical and mental health
Microaggressions can occur in all environments, from the workplace, to shops, medical clinics, schools, universities, even while walking or parked on the street. So victims often become increasingly self-conscious and hypervigilant.
The impacts of microaggressions may extend beyond psychological burden and also impact the body’s physiological state.
When humans perceive a sense of imminent danger, the body’s “fight, flight, freeze response” is activated. While this is a useful evolutionary mechanism to protect us from physical danger, when triggered frequently – as may be the case with microaggressions – it can take a toll on the body and contribute to issues such as high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and addiction.
Racial microaggressions have also been associated with suicide risk. One study found experiencing race-related microaggressions leads to more symptoms of depression, which in turn increases thoughts of suicide.
Microaggressions may deter people from seeking help
Health issues among victims may be further compounded when microaggressions are experienced in the health-care sector. A study from 2011 found that sexual orientation-related microaggressions (for example, derogatory comments or assumptions about a person’s sexual orientation) reduced the likelihood of LGBTIQ+ people seeking psychotherapy and impacted their attitudes towards therapy and therapists.
Research involving Indigenous people also suggests microaggressions impact help-seeking behaviours in this group (such as not scheduling or attending regular health-care appointments), which subsequently increases the risk of hospitalisation.
Indirect effects of microaggressions
Microaggressions may also impact people’s health status indirectly. Research suggests repeated microaggressions can cause marginalised groups to internalise feelings of inadequacy.
Over time, this internalised oppression may impact their academic and professional success, and consequently socioeconomic status.
Sceptics often attribute microaggressions to victims’ “negative emotionality” – a tendency to show negative affect and always feel like a victim.
However, proponents argue that this is a form of victim-blaming that further compounds the harm caused by microaggressions.
Clinical psychologist Monnica Williams suggests that the years of unchecked microaggressions themselves could be the very thing to cause negativity in marginalised people.
Victims’ responses to microaggressors
Victims’ responses to microaggressions can vary among people, and among events experienced by the same person. Victims have to regularly decide whether to let it slide or confront the aggressor.
The discourse on microaggressions in social media seems to be on the rise. One study found that there was a drastic increase in the usage of the term “microaggression” on Twitter between 2010 and 2018. Social media discussions and other online spaces may help victims (particularly younger people) to respond more critically to microaggressors.
Other technological innovations, such as the virtual reality-based intervention Equal Reality, are also helping people walk in another’s shoes, recognise unconscious bias, mitigate risk of microaggressions, and promote more inclusive workplaces.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Mahima Kalla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
More than 200 years ago, the English scientist Thomas Young carried out a famous test known as the “double-slit experiment”. He shone a beam of light at a screen with two slits in it, and observed the light that passed through the apertures formed a pattern of dark and bright bands.
At the time, the experiment was understood to demonstrate that light was a wave. The “interference pattern” is caused by light waves passing through both slits and interfering with each other on the other side, producing bright bands where the peaks of the two waves line up and dark bands where a peak meets a trough and the two cancel out.
In the 20th century, physicists realised the experiment could be adapted to demonstrate that light not only behaves like a wave, but also like a particle (called a photon). In quantum mechanical theory, this particle still has wave properties – so the wave associated with even a single photon passes through both slits, and creates interference.
In a new twist on the classic experiment, we replaced the slits in the screen with “slits” in time – and discovered a new kind of interference pattern. Our results are published today in Nature Physics.
Slits in time
Our team, led by Riccardo Sapienza at Imperial College London, fired light through a material that changes its properties in femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), only allowing light to pass through at specific times in quick succession.
We still saw interference patterns – but instead of showing up as bands of bright and dark, they showed up as changes in the frequency or colour of the beams of light.
To carry out our experiment, we devised a way to switch on and off the reflectivity of a screen incredibly quickly. We had a transparent screen that became a mirror for two brief instants, creating the equivalent of two slits in time.
Colour interference
So what do these slits in time do to light? If we think of light as a particle, a photon sent at this screen might be reflected by the first increase of reflectivity or by the second, and reach a detector.
However, the wave nature of the process means the photon is in a sense reflected by both temporal slits. This creates interference, and a varying pattern of colour in the light that reaches the detector.
The amount of change in colour is related to how fast the mirror changes its reflectivity. These changes must be on timescales comparable with the length of a single cycle of a light-wave, which is measured in femtoseconds.
Electronic devices cannot function quickly enough for this. So we had to use light to switch on and off the reflectivity of our screen.
We took a screen of indium tin oxide, a transparent material used in mobile phone screens, and made it reflective with a brief pulse of laser light.
From space to time
Our experiment is a beautiful demonstration of wave physics, and also shows how we can transfer concepts such as interference from the domain of space to the domain of time.
The experiment has also helped us in understanding materials that can minutely control the behaviour of light in space and time. This will have applications in signal processing and perhaps even light-powered computers.
Stefan Maier ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Lukas Coch/AAP
A federal Newspoll, conducted March 29 to April 2 from a sample of 1,500, gave Labor a 55-45 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since the early March Newspoll. Primary votes were 38% Labor (up one), 33% Coalition (down two), 10% Greens (steady), 8% One Nation (up one) and 11% for all Others (steady).
56% were satisfied with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s performance (up one), and 35% were dissatisfied (down three), for a net approval of +21, up four points. Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s net approval dropped two points to -13. Albanese’s lead as better PM widened from 54-28 to 58-26. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.
Analyst Kevin Bonham said this is One Nation’s highest vote in a Newspoll since November 2018, and the worst net approval for Dutton. This poll was nearly all conducted before Saturday’s Aston byelection.
With almost all votes counted in the Aston byelection, Labor won by a 53.6-46.4 margin, a 6.4% swing to Labor since the 2022 election. Primary votes were 40.9% Labor (up 8.3%), 39.1% Liberals (down 3.9%), 10.1% Greens (down 2.0%) and 7.0% for an independent (new). The UAP (6.1% in 2022) and One Nation (3.1%) did not contest. Turnout is currently 83.9% and will increase a little further.
This article in The Age has a map showing that the Liberals held seven Melbourne metro seats in 2019 – Goldstein, Higgins, Chisholm, Deakin, Menzies, Kooyong and Aston. At the 2022 election, Labor gained Higgins and Chisholm and teal independents gained Kooyong and Goldstein, and now Labor has gained Aston, leaving the Liberals with just Menzies and Deakin in metro Melbourne.
I wrote before the 2022 election that growing education polarisation, in which those without a university education, particularly in regional areas, are increasingly likely to vote for right-wing parties, while those with a university education vote left, would eventually favour Labor in Australia due to our big cities. The 2022 election and now Aston validate this argument.
Labor’s victory in Aston will give them 78 of the 151 House of Representatives seats, up from 77. It will increase their majority over all other parties from three to five.
Labor also gains in Essential poll
A federal Essential poll, conducted March 29 to April 2 from a sample of 1,133, gave Labor a 53-42 lead in Essential’s two party measure that includes undecided, up from 52-43 last fortnight. Primary votes were 33% Labor (down one), 30% Coalition (down one), 14% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (up one), 2% UAP (steady), 10% for all Others (up one) and 5% undecided (steady).
Albanese has a 52-35 approval rating, down from 53-34 in February. By 71-23, voters thought the federal government can make a lot or a fair amount of difference to the cost of living. By 54-46, they said they were financially struggling over comfortable, a reversal of a 51-49 lead for comfortable last fortnight.
On addressing climate change, 39% (down four since October 2022) said Australia is not doing enough, 33% (up one) said we are doing enough and 16% (up three) said we are doing too much. Since Labor won the May 2022 election, not doing enough has dropped eight points and doing too much has increased five points.
By 35-34, voters were opposed to the Greens’ policy of ending all future coal mining and gas extraction projects. By 90-10, they thought the PM should be required to get parliamentary approval before going to war.
Morgan poll: 57-43 to Labor
In last week’s federal Morgan poll, Labor led by 57-43, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 35.5% Labor, 32% Coalition, 13% Greens and 19.5% for all Others. This poll was taken March 20-26, in the lead-up to the NSW election.
WA Voice poll: Yes leads by 60-40
The Poll Bludger reported on March 30 that a Painted Dog poll for The West Australian had Yes to the Indigenous Voice to parliament leading by 60-40 in WA. This poll was conducted over the weekend of March 25-26 from a sample of 1,052. It used the question wording proposed by Albanese.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia has joined a raft of other countries in banning the popular video sharing app TikTok from government devices, as severaloutlets have today reported.
The move comes after a seven month-long review instigated by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil into security risks posed by social media platforms.
Last week, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by US politicians in a more than five hour-long Congress hearing. Questions mainly focused on TikTok’s handling of user data and whether it could be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party, as well as how harmful content (such as content on self-harm and eating disorders) spreads on the app.
TikTok has maintained user data are stored securely and held privately, with CEO Shou Zi Chew telling Congress:
Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country.
But the evidence seems to suggest a ban was a long time coming.
Since it was acquired by Chinese company ByteDance in 2017, TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) has faced persistent rumours regarding its handling of user data and privacy.
Despite its assurances, TikTok’s privacy policy allows for user data, including browsing history, location and biometric identifiers to be collected and shared with
business partners, other companies in the same group as TikTok, content moderation services, measurement providers, advertisers, and analytics providers.
More worrying is this provision:
Where and when required by law, we will share your information with law enforcement agencies or regulators, and with third parties pursuant to a legally binding court order.
“Where and when required by law” would include the provisions of China’s National Intelligence Law, which came into effect in 2017. It obliges organisations to cooperate with state intelligence agencies, and would oblige Bytedance to share TikTok data from Australia that may be deemed relevant to national security.
ByteDance has tried to distance itself from the perception that it is a Chinese company. According to TikTok’s vice president of policy in Europe, Theo Bertram, 60% of ByteDance is owned by global investors, 20% by employees and 20% by the founders.
But it hasn’t been enough to dispel fears. In 2020, India was among the first countries to impose a lasting nationwide ban on TikTok (and dozens of other Chinese apps), citing privacy and security concerns.
In December 2022, Taiwan imposed a public sector ban after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation warned the app posed a national security risk. That same month, the US House of Representatives issued a ban on devices used by members and staffers.
More recently, lawmakers of the European Union were banned from having TikTok on their devices.
Australia and its allies are engaged in a so-called grey zone conflict with China; this is where TikTok becomes a major concern.
Grey zone conflict can be understood as competition between states and non-state actors that resides in a blurred reality between peace and war. It involves the strategic use of disinformation, propaganda, economic coercion, cyberattacks, and other forms of non-kinetic (subtle and non-coercive) action.
The danger TikTok poses to Australia is that the means would exist for foreign intelligence agencies to track the location of government officials, build dossiers of personal information, and conduct espionage.
An in-depth analysis of TikTok’s software code by Australian cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 makes for interesting, if not alarming, reading.
The firm determined TikTok requests almost complete access to a user’s smart device while the app is active. These data include their calendar, contact lists and photos. If the user denies access, the app keeps asking every few hours until access is granted.
When we did that [pulled apart the code], we saw the permission layer that the phone was requesting was significantly more than what they said they were doing publicly. When the app is in use, it has the ability to scan the entire hard drive, access the contact lists, as well as see all other apps that have been installed on the device.
Potter points out these permissions are “significantly more” than what a social media site actually needs to access.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Last year, Buzzfeed released leaked audio from more than 80 internal US TikTok meetings that raised the alarm. According to the Buzzfeed report, China-based employees of ByteDance had repeatedly accessed non-public data about US TikTok users.
In one September 2021 meeting, a senior US-based TikTok manager referred to a Beijing-based engineer as a “master admin” who “has access to everything”. A US-based staffer in the Trust and Safety Department was also heard saying “everything is seen in China”.
The tapes overwhelmingly contradict TikTok’s repeated insistence about the privacy of user data.
Australia’s ban on TikTok on government phones is hardly surprising. A partial ban has existed for some time.
The decision speaks to the larger issue of balancing national security interests against the trade relationship with our largest trading partner. The TikTok ban is just the latest manifestation of this struggle.
In 2018, Australia’s decision to exclude Huawei from installing its 5G network was based on advice from the Australian Signals Directorate that this would give the Chinese government the means, in time of war, to paralyse the nation’s 5G-enabled critical infrastructure. A number of other countries came to a similar conclusion.
China is a nation that takes the long view when it comes to geopolitical strategy. Its planning horizon extends to many decades, and even centuries.
Against a backdrop of escalating grey zone conflict, TikTok is an example of a potentially weaponised tool in China’s cyber arsenal that could harvest massive amounts of data for nefarious means. And it’s likely not the last of such tools we’ll face.
The wisest course of action for Australia would be to also develop a long-term orientation, making plans that reach forward many decades – and not as far as the next election cycle.
David Tuffley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In 2022, 120,000 children in New Zealand were being raised in households experiencing material hardship. This means their family is unable to afford essential items such as food, clothing, accommodation, heating and transport.
Alongside the obvious and pernicious direct effects of poverty on a person’s health and life prospects, there is a broader issue of what rising economic inequality may mean for all of us in the long run.
As we look at the consequences of poverty, we also need to ask what children themselves – the “kids who have” and the “kids who have not” – understand about the unequal world around them.
Stages of understanding
Statistics about childhood poverty tell part of the story of the widening gap in income and wealth. But children’s perceptions and understanding of economic inequality, and their experiences of it, will shape how future generations deal with the social upheaval it may bring.
So how do our children learn about, or perhaps learn to tolerate, inequality? Just for a moment, let’s set aside political or moral positions. For children growing up in poverty there are undeniable negative consequences on their physical and mental health, and their education.
Over the course of a person’s life, this disadvantage restricts opportunity. Rising levels of poverty risk creating a cycle of inequality that continues into the future as those raised in poverty become adults.
Before five years of age, children grasp only very basic distinctions between rich and poor. Older children can link wealth to work, albeit in a linear way: that is, they believe working hard leads to wealth.
And at around ten years, children start to consider effort, education, inheritance and occupation as factors affecting wealth.
Children understand fairness
Through most of childhood, wealth and poverty is framed in terms of basic stereotypes attributed to individuals. While these explanations can persist into adulthood, adolescents increasingly consider inequality more in terms of its structural, political and economic causes.
Children may not grasp the social and structural features that relate to economic inequality. But as any parent can tell you, you’ll find out pretty quickly if a child thinks something isn’t fair.
Of course, questions of inequality are intimately bound up with questions of morality. So while there is arguably limited reward in a conversation with your three-year-old about the finer points of macroeconomic theory, instilling a straightforward ethic of fairness and the principle of equality (or equity) from a young age is worthwhile.
The broader social and political context matters too. Public discussions on individualistic versus structural explanations for inequality, and the prevailing political milieu, provide important backdrops for how children will frame and discuss inequality at home, school and among their peer group.
For instance, children and adolescents in Finland – one of the world’s most economically equal nations – use more structural explanations in discussing poverty compared with those from more unequal nations.
In nations with relatively high levels of economic inequality (such as New Zealand and the United States), people frequently believe wealth is based on individual merit.
Subverting meritocracy
Yet at the same time, poverty is associated with stigma. Stereotyping means poor people are more likely to be viewed as lazy or unintelligent. These stereotypes entail social influences that can diminish poorer children’s self esteem, increase their anxiety and lead them to under-perform in academic assessments.
Conversely, children from more affluent families may be more confident of their ability. Compounded with the different opportunities for support afforded to rich and poor children, this may lead those from less affluent families to lack the confidence to seek and reach their potential.
Human psychology subverts the supposed meritocracy in other ways. Adolescents tune in to social networks, status and hierarchies. Research from Wales found that moving to a high school with more affluent classmates negatively affected less affluent children’s mental wellbeing.
Unequal societies have lower levels of social cohesion. Economic inequality is associated with less subjective wellbeing, even among the more affluent members of a society.
In other words, everyone is less happy. And rising economic inequality intersects with societal “faultlines” such as race and gender which are ripe for political exploitation.
In the future, economic inequality may be as much a consequence as a cause of the challenges future generations will face – climate change, for example. But it doesn’t have to be all bad news.
Historically, levels of income inequality have tended to fluctuate (albeit often as a consequence of financial crises or wars). So future economic inequality is not inevitable. And even if we adults cannot generate the political will or moral consensus to change things, maybe we can do our bit by nurturing and empowering a generation that can.
Patrick Leman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Two weeks ago Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was pooh-poohing questions about the need for reform lobbying rules, claiming lobbyists have the same access to MPs as any other member of the public. But yesterday he announced a crackdown on lobbyists, claiming he wanted to end the special access lobbyists have to decision-makers.
Hipkins announced three immediate minor reforms, and one big longer-term review of lobbying rules. The immediate tweaks won’t change much, but the review to be carried out by the Ministry of Justice could result in exactly the sort of reforms that are necessary to clean up the industry. Transparency campaigners therefore have reason to tentatively celebrate. It’s worth considering what the merits of the four reforms are.
Reform #1: A big review of lobbying
The Prime Minister has ordered the Ministry of Justice to embark on a review of lobbying in New Zealand, and come up with options for reform. At the top of the list will inevitably be a register of lobbyists and legal stand-down periods for insiders going backward and forwards through the “revolving door” of politics and lobbying.
Hipkins called this a “major piece of work” that will “draw on international best practice”. Quite sensibly the investigation will not be rushed, and so will not report back until next year. This is because many of the issues of regulating lobbying are, as Hipkins said yesterday, “complex to work through”.
He pointed to the need for the review to learn from former Green MP Holly Walker’s 2012 lobbying disclosure bill. This failed because it didn’t grasp the complexities of what is required to regulate political activity. And that’s one of the biggest lessons for those studying lobbying regulations – there’s a need for careful consideration of the regulations, especially to avoid unintended consequences such as regulations having a chilling impact on ordinary citizens who want to lobby politicians.
Hipkins appears to be setting up the review in a way that is likely to obtain multi-partisan support, saying “I want, as much as possible, for this to be a bi-partisan issue and I call on other political parties to support this measure”. National has immediately come out in support. And the party that has been pushing hardest on these issues lately – TOP – gave its endorsement of the review yesterday. Outside interest groups seemed to be in favour too – such as the Taxpayers Union.
Of course, the devil could yet be in the detail. New Zealand Herald political reporter Thomas Coughlan rightly says: “With no detail on what this might look like, it’s impossible to make a fair assessment of whether it’s worthwhile or not.” And journalist Max Rashbrooke told the Spinoff yesterday the review was an “insufficient response”, and “kicking it out for at least a year raises the possibility that nothing substantive will change.”
Reform #2: Abolition of swipe cards
At the moment, Parliament provides swipe cards to lobbyists so that they have the ability to get access to the buildings without having to go through security or book appointments with politicians. As Guyon Espiner explained in his series on lobbying for RNZ, to receive the special accreditation at Parliament lobbyists don’t even have to disclose who they are working for. All they need is the sponsorship of an MP or a party’s chief of staff. Espiner points out this means, for example, the new Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, “Andrew Kirton, fresh from his lobbying firm, can now grant access to other lobbyists if he wishes.”
It’s therefore a no-brainer for Hipkins to get rid of this very symbolic part of the lobbying industry. He has written to the Speaker of Parliament to request that the access cards be revoked.
There is a consensus that this won’t change anything substantially. Rashbrooke says he’s “underwhelmed” by the change. And Coughlan says: The real work of lobbying happens over the phone, at dinner, and in meetings with ministers – or in the dully transparent grunt work of preparing complicated select committee submissions.”
Reform #3: A voluntary code of conduct for lobbyists
It is common overseas for lobbyists to have a code of conduct for how they operate. Hipkins says he wants one established here, and suggests it could be voluntary for lobbyists. He has asked the Ministry of Justice to help the industry establish one. According to Hipkins, the code of conduct “would enhance transparency by, for example, including the names of the clients they represent on their websites”.
The fact that the code will be voluntary makes this a particularly questionable reform, and commentary has therefore been derisive. For instance, Thomas Coughlan questions how it can possibly be effective: “If the lobbying industry is scary and influential enough to warrant additional regulation, it probably isn’t appropriate to ask them how they want to be regulated.”
The Taxpayers Union has also protested that the government is funding an initiative that might not be taken up by all lobbyists: “Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for an unenforceable attempt to get lobbyists to behave. Any rules for lobbying should be determined following consultation and should apply equally across the sector.”
Coughlan is even more scathing on this: “The fact that lobbying firms will be given free government support for their code of conduct is laughable. If scarce public resources are to be expended on creating the code, it should be mandatory – if firms have no obligation to sign up to this code of conduct, then why should the public be on the hook for resourcing it?”
Reform #4: Changes to the Cabinet Manual about the revolving door
Hipkins has announced that the “Bible of Government”, the Cabinet Manual, will be refreshed to give greater guidance to Ministers about not allowing future employment as lobbyists to impact on their ministerial decisions. The Prime Minister says the Cabinet Manual will “make it clear that, while in office, ministers’ conduct and decisions should not be influenced by the prospect or expectation of future employment with a particular organisation or sector”.
This is the weakest of the four reforms and is being derided by commentators as almost meaningless. Policing the rules will be up to the Prime Minister, but enormously difficult to enforce. There will still be nothing to stop Ministers from taking up lobbying roles soon after leaving office – like Kris Faafoi did last year.
The Government yielded to pressure
There is no doubt that the Labour Government has yielded to growing public pressure to tighten up on the access lobbyists and vested interests have to decision-makers.
It was only last year that Faafoi left the Beehive, moving almost straight into lobbying. The Government denied this was a problem, or that lobbying needed further regulation. And then two weeks ago the Prime Minister said he didn’t believe that “lobbyists necessarily get preferred access” compared to members of the public.
So what changed? The Faafoi scandal got the ball rolling, and then more recently Guyon Espiner’s RNZ series on the role of lobbyists close to Government started to change the public’s perception of the problem.
But it was the Stuart Nash scandal that really moved the dial. A Minister was seemingly lobbied on an issue going through Cabinet by his political donors, and he gave them privileged information about what was going on, as well as an indication that he was fighting in Cabinet for a policy change that would benefit their industry.
Despite the fact that the Nash scandal wasn’t about traditional consultant lobbyists, it fed into growing public concerns about wealthy vested interests having special access to Cabinet. Hence, according to Thomas Coughlan, Espiner’s lobbying revelations in combination with Nash scandal, “created an inescapable momentum around the issue” leading to a “belated crackdown”.
Similarly, Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch says, “The Stuart Nash story compounded the concerns that were raised a couple of weeks back around lobbying and those two things combined were painting a murky picture about the movings and shakings in Wellington.” Therefore, according to Lynch, the Nash scandal meant Labour “needed to reclaim the transparency narrative.”
She says that the move yesterday was about rescuing Hipkins’ brand: “So much of Hipkins’ likeability is linked to trust. Nash and lobbyist access were threatening to chip away at Chippy’s honest Kiwi brand. They had to move quickly.”
There will be questions about the Labour Government’s sincerity in reforming lobbying. After all, it’s a very rapid change of heart on the matter after years of ignoring it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t lead to big progressive changes – especially because the Ministry of Justice will carry out a proper review. It seems inevitable that the Justice Ministry will identify some serious democratic deficits in the current system, and be forced to recommend some major remedies.
But for the moment, the immediate reforms proposed by the Government are largely inconsequential. In order to appreciate the degree to which this is true, we need only look at Hipkins’ own relationship to lobbying and how little this will change.
Hipkins recently hired lobbyist Andrew Kirton to be his Chief of Staff. Kirton reportedly left his lobbying job the day before starting his new job running the Beehive. There are some major issues with such lobbyists being invited to the highest jobs in politics.
It’s become part of the culture of a revolving door at the top of the Beehive – four out of five of Labour’s Chiefs of Staff since they came to power in 2017 have been lobbyists. And if Labour loses power on 14 October, there will be nothing to stop Hipkins’ righthand man from shifting straight back into lobbying, taking all his connections and privileged information to help private sector clients have an advantage in politics. Sadly, there was nothing in yesterday’s announcement to suggest that this reliance on lobbyists at the top of the Beehive might be about to stop.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Conrad Jackson, Postdoctoral fellow, Kellogg School of Management, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Religion is a human universal. For thousands of years, humans have held religious beliefs and participated in religious rituals. Throughout history, every human society has featured some kind of supernatural or religious belief.
Why is religion so prevalent? One reason is that it’s a powerful tool for explanation.
The world is a mysterious place, and was even more mysterious before the rise of modern science. Religion can be a way of making sense of this mystery. This idea dates back to theologians and philosophers such as Henry Drummond and Friedrich Nietzsche, who both supported the “God of the gaps” hypothesis, wherein divine intervention by God is used to explain gaps in scientific knowledge.
For example, ancient Chinese and Korean societies looked to divine intervention to justify changing their rulers, whereas Egyptians, Aztecs, Celtic, and Tiv people used the will of gods to explain celestial cycles.
In the contemporary world, many US Christians viewed the COVID pandemic as a form of divine punishment.
Yet despite these specific examples, we know little about which kinds of phenomena people try to explain using religion. If religion helps us fill gaps in knowledge, what kind of gaps is it most likely to fill?
Our international research team has pursued this question over the past five years, by surveying ethnographies from societies around the world and throughout history.
We found societies are overwhelmingly more likely to have supernatural beliefs that concern “natural” phenomena, rather than “social” phenomena.
In total, our research sample included historical records from 114 diverse societies.
These ranged from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups in Africa (such as the ǃKung people), to fishing and horticultural societies from the Pacific Islands (such as people from the Trobriand Islands), to large “complex” societies with modern technology and written records (such as the Javanese, Malay and Turkish societies).
For each society, we read through ethnographic texts and identified supernatural explanations that were commonly held across its people. We then identified the source of the explanation.
We were particularly interested in whether supernatural explanations focused on “natural” phenomena – events that had no clear human cause such as disease, natural disasters and drought – or whether they focused on human-caused “social” phenomena such as wars, murder and theft.
We found explanations for all these various phenomena in our survey. For example, the Cayapa people of the Ecuadorian rainforest attributed lightning, a natural phenomenon, to the Thunder spirit, who carried a large sword that glinted when he used it in combat.
And the Comanche people of the great American plains explained the timing of war, a social phenomenon, using dreams from medicine men.
However, our results also revealed a striking gap: supernatural explanations for natural phenomena were much more prevalent than for social phenomena.
In fact, nearly all the societies we surveyed had supernatural explanations for natural phenomena such as disease (96%), natural disasters (92%) and drought (90%). Fewer had supernatural explanations for warfare (67%), murder (82%) and theft (26%).
Supernatural beliefs evolve as societies expand
The global prevalence of naturally focused supernatural explanations is one of the most striking findings from our research. It’s partly surprising because current major religions such as Christianity and Islam are very social institutions.
Contemporary Christians rely on their religious beliefs as more of a social and moral compass, rather than a way to understand the weather. Similarly, the Bible seeks to explain a variety of social phenomena. The story of Cain and Abel explains the origin of murder, while the Book of Joshua explains the supernatural causes of the war that destroyed Jericho.
The story of Cain slaying Abel purports to explain the origin of murder. Wikimedia
So how might we explain the contrast between supernatural explanations in modern-day Christianity, and supernatural explanations among traditional societies, as told through historical records? One of our findings could provide a clue.
We found societies develop more supernatural explanations for social phenomena as they get bigger and more complex. More populous societies with currency and land transport were more likely to explain events such as theft and warfare using supernatural principles than small hunter-gatherer and horticultural groups.
We can’t say with certainty why this is. It may be because people know and trust each other less in bigger societies, and this translates to beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery. Or perhaps people in larger complex societies are more concerned about issues such as warfare and theft, and therefore more likely to develop supernatural explanations for them.
Intellectuals such as Edward Tylor and David Hume thought religious beliefs may have originated as a means of explaining natural phenomena.
Although our study can’t shed light on the origins of religion, it does corroborate this idea. But beyond that, it also shows that societies are more likely to turn to religion to make sense of the social world as they get larger and more complex.
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Recent revelations about the close partnership between the Kremlin and NTC Vulkan, a Russian cybersecurity consultancy with links to the military, provide some rare insights into how the Putin regime weaponises cyberspace.
More than 5,000 documents have been leaked by an anonymous whistleblower, angry at Russia’s conduct in the war in Ukraine. They purport to reveal details about hacking tools to seize control of vulnerable servers; domestic and international disinformation campaigns; and ways to digitally monitor potential threats to the regime.
Although caution is always necessary before accepting claims about cyber capabilities, it’s noteworthy several Western intelligence agencies have confirmed the documents appear genuine.
The leak also corroborates the view of many strategists: that the Russian government regards offensive cyber capabilities as part of a holistic effort to degrade its enemies. This includes the sowing of mistrust via social media, the gathering of kompromat (compromising material), and the ability to target crucial infrastructure.
That list of enemies is a long one, and has grown since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Naturally, the Kremlin’s just-released 2023 Foreign Policy Concept identifies the United States as the “main source of threats” to Russian security.
But Ukraine, every NATO and European Union member, and several other states are identified as “unfriendly countries”, including Australia, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand.
War in the shadows
Russia utilises a range of methods to wage war in cyberspace.
On one end of the spectrum, it uses groups attached to official agencies, such as the GRU (military intelligence) and the FSB (ostensibly domestic intelligence, but also carries out missions overseas).
and a 2022 attempt to cause a power blackout in Ukraine.
At the other end of the spectrum, Russian information operations regularly use armies of bots and trolls, as well as unsuspecting “citizen curators”, to spread false narratives.
Doing so is cheap and increases the distance between the attacker and its agents, allowing for plausible deniability.
Like biological warfare, it also weaponises the targets to do the job of spreading the narrative disease for it.
Russian information campaigns operate globally, among nations it considers its friends as well as its adversaries. Russian-weaponised media can be found in Africa, where the Russian Wagner paramilitary organisation has been especially active, as well as in South Asia and Australia.
In many respects, Russian information operations mimic Soviet geopolitical doctrine during the Cold War. This focused on courting areas of the world where the West was weakest.
But in the grey space between official agencies, useful idiots and unwitting proxies is an area of increasing emphasis of Russian cyberwar: outsourcing. Some of these, such as Vulkan, retain an aura of respectability as consultancies that do government work as well as contracting to other firms.
They also include the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, which was used to coordinate social media attacks on the US Democratic Party during the 2018 mid-term elections, leading to an indictment by the Department of Justice.
Others are [organised criminal gangs] like the aptly named “EvilCorp” (https://www.state.gov/transnational-organized-crime-rewards-program-2/maksim-viktorovich-yakubets/) that use malware to harvest people’s banking details or personal information.
The November 2022 breach of Australia’s private health insurer Medibank was one example, which exposed patients’ sensitive health details such as treatments for drug addiction or HIV.
The Vulkan revelations
The Vulkan leak adds more detail to what we know about Russian methods, tactics and targets in cyberspace. The GRU group Sandworm is identified as having authorised Vulkan to help build “Skan-V”, a piece of software that can monitor the internet to detect vulnerable servers to hack.
Another Vulkan project, known as “Fraction”, was designed to monitor social media sites for key words to identify regime opponents, both at home and abroad.
An even larger project in which Vulkan seems to have been engaged was “Amezit”. This is a tool that would enable operators to seize control of the internet both inside Russia and in other nations, and hijack information flows.
To function, its users need to be able to control physical infrastructure such as mobile phone towers and wireless internet nodes. Amezit can then be used to mimic legitimate sites and social media profiles, scrub content that might be deemed hostile, and replace it with disinformation.
Given the requirement to possess physical infrastructure, it’s clear Azemit was designed not solely as a piece of software, but to operate in tandem with the coercive instruments of a state.
This has internal uses as well as external ones. Domestically, it could be used to silence dissent in restive Russian regions. In a war zone, such as Ukraine, it could be used alongside Russia’s armed forces to intercept government communications and swap genuine information sources for false ones.
The Vulkan leak also included information on physical objects. Although not a concise target list, its software allowed users to map physical infrastructure. This included airports worldwide, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Muhlberg nuclear power plant near Bern.
What’s more, the document drop featured mapped clusters of internet servers in the United States. And the Skan-V project identified a site in the US labelled “Fairfield” as a potentially vulnerable point of entry.
If the documents are accurate, Vulkan’s work for the Russian government shows how extensive the Kremlin’s attempts have been to monitor digital infrastructure, collect information about vulnerabilities, and develop the capacity to hijack it.
Combating Russian cyber attacks
Cyber threats are insidious because they can be used in multiple combinations and aimed at different targets. Hack-and-leak campaigns against influential figures can be mixed with attempts to sabotage vital infrastructure, perform corporate espionage, undermine social cohesion and trust, and push fringe narratives to the political centre.
They can be drip-fed into the digital ecosystem. Or, much like the campaign that accompanied Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014, they can be employed all at once in a cyber-blizzard.
This makes cyber attacks very hard to build resilience against, and even harder to deter. They are a weapon of potentially mass disruption that can result in real casualties. Turning off the power grid in a city, for example, can lead to deaths among people on life support in hospitals, traffic accidents, and exposure to extreme cold in certain regions.
But beyond infrastructure and industry, such attacks also target social pressure points: a states’ institutions, ideas and people. This makes them especially useful in attacking democracies, making the open and free exchange of views a potential vulnerability.
As the Vulkan leaks demonstrate, hostile governments have greater ambitions in cyberspace than being able to switch off the lights. They seek to be able to encourage us to question what we believe to be true, and pit us against one another.
Recognising that will be a crucial step in preventing the poisonous seeds of disinformation from taking root.
Matthew Sussex has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute, and various Australian government agencies.
The marketing of legal but harmful products – like alcohol and tobacco – has always targeted our emotional desires. But it has now moved to digital and social media, and this creates a heightened threat to public health because both the products and the platform target our neurological response.
Promoting psychoactive products for profit by stimulating the neurotransmitters in the brain’s reward centres, or its limbic structures, is called “limbic capitalism”.
But as limbic capitalism has gone digital over the past decade, marketers can now reach us on our smartphones as we use digital and social media platforms.
The algorithms that keep us swiping and tapping on images and videos stimulate the dopamine drive in our brains that induces feelings of pleasure.
When used to promote potentially addictive products, this presents a serious threat to public health and the wellbeing of individuals, communities and populations. We know alcohol and tobacco products are linked to a wide range of harms and injuries, but existing regulatory frameworks have nothing to say about these new forms of marketing.
We surveyed people aged 14 to 20 in Aotearoa New Zealand about their experience of alcohol and tobacco marketing on social media. While they valued the way social media enabled them to keep in touch with family and friends, they also frequently told us they felt these platforms were addictive.
As one 20-year-old Māori/Pākehā male told us:
Content algorithms are addictive and predatory. The only value is in being able to communicate with friends and whānau.
An 18-year-old Pākehā female said:
I dislike the addiction it fuels, dislike the competitive and comparative posting and dislike the mental health issues it feeds to young people.
Participants’ responses highlight the addictive power of social media platforms and, despite their benefits, the price users pay in continuing to use them. These insights lead us to argue limbic capitalism is becoming “limbic platform capitalism”.
New challenges to public health
This highlights the importance of understanding how much capacity we have to choose and control our compulsions on mobile social media. Users of digital platforms have valuable insights about how marketers use social media to target their vulnerabilities as they pursue their own interests and social lives online.
The public health challenges of limbic platform capitalism present a serious escalation. This is because marketing has been naturalised into these digital environments and has become difficult to identify and avoid. It has become more powerful in its capacity to target our limbic system.
Digital marketing has become difficult to avoid. Getty Images
An example comes from Perth in Australia, where the alcohol industry used the global COVID pandemic as a marketing opportunity. The number of alcohol ads increased significantly on commonly used digital platforms. Users saw alcohol ads at least every 35 seconds, offering easy access to alcohol without leaving the home and promoting the use of alcohol to “feel better”.
Our participants reported noticing increases in vape and alcohol ads on social media, including delivery offers, during lockdowns. When asked what changes they had seen in marketing since lockdowns, they also showed awareness of the synergies between platforms and products, for example:
The way they promote their products. The sounds they use. A lot of songs have become famous off [platform name]. So a lot of companies use the really famous music to help promote.
Need for regulation of social media marketing
Mobile social media are now central to young people’s professional and social identity, leisure and civic engagements. While they actively use social media for their own ends, they are simultaneously recruited as limbic platform and product consumers.
Platform algorithms are designed to generate, analyse and apply vast amounts of personalised data to target and tune flows of content to users, influencing their desires, behaviours and consumption, in order to increase profits.
These developments and their public health implications require immediate attention.
Algorithmic models intensify targeting of users at times, places and contexts when they are most susceptible. Home delivery of alcohol in the evening is an example.
This can influence purchase decisions, potentially harming vulnerable consumers and exacerbating health inequities. Such commercialised algorithm-driven systems raise serious questions for health policymakers about public oversight of the algorithms. Should we ban the promotion and marketing of unhealthy but legal products on limbic platforms?
Scholarship exploring mobile social media landscapes is essential to inform public health and health promotion research agendas, initiatives and policies. We urgently need regulatory responses for this new era of marketing, where both commodities and the popular platforms they are marketed on are dynamic, participatory, data-driven and limbic.
Tim McCreanor receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Angela Moewaka Barnes receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Antonia Lyons receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Ian Goodwin receives funding from Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Nicholas Carah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cristyn Davies, Research Fellow in Child and Adolescent Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney
In her address to the National Press Club of Australia today, actress, writer and advocate Georgie Stone OAM is sharing her experience as a young trans person growing up in Australia.
Georgie’s story highlights her courage and determination to overcome barriers that prevent young trans people from accessing gender affirming health care and support. At just 22, Georgie has been recognised for her tireless work to reduce discrimination and remove systemic barriers for young trans people, who were subjected to attacks at recent protests in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.
In the face of this negativity, Georgie’s story emphasises how we can better support the trans community and calls particular attention to the pivotal role families play in supporting trans children and adolescents to thrive and reach their full potential.
The positive impact of family support for young trans people
Although many young trans people experience anxiety and depression as a result of stigma and discrimination, family support acts as a protective buffer for their health and wellbeing.
Research with trans adults shows family support is most strongly linked with mental health and resilience compared to support from friends or connectedness to the trans community.
In a recent study, young trans people in the United States were asked about family support and identified numerous ways parents can help. Some – such as expressions of love and affection, open communication, and the provision of advice, encouragement and financial support – were not directly related to the young person’s gender diversity. Others were directly related, including emotional support at the time of coming out, willingness to listen to the young person’s experience of gender, use of chosen names and pronouns, and support for social, legal and/or medical gender affirmation.
Notably, some young trans people said their parents weren’t comfortable, or didn’t have knowledge and understanding about gender diversity. So, how can we help parents better support their trans children?
3 things that help build family support for young trans people
Surveys of families of young trans people have identified ways parental support can be facilitated.
While many parents can obtain this information online, family-based peer support groups and health professionals with expertise in this area (including general practitioners and community-based and schoolpsychologists) are often critical sources of additional and reliable knowledge.
Secondly, as Georgie’s story illustrates, families of young trans people can play a powerful role through the provision of peer support. Support groups for parents of trans young people provide a space to share stories and obtain support from people in similar situations. This helps parents feel less alone and to navigate the challenges facing their children, including in schools and health institutions.
Family-based support groups can provide connections to the broader trans community. This can help foster a sense of pride in gender diversity but also give young trans people role models that show trans people enjoying positive, fulfilled lives. Family-based peer support groups are essential and should be funded to meet the growing demand of parents requiring assistance.
Many parents seek access to gender-affirming healthcare for their trans children. Multidisciplinary gender clinics (that could involve mental health, endocrinology, adolescent medicine and nursing specialists) and other health care professionals have an important role in providing parents with the support they need. This needs to be done in an inclusive, respectful manner and incorporate best practices, such as addressing parental concerns from a risk/benefit perspective, understanding the parent journey, and adopting a shared decision-making approach to a young person’s care.
More broadly, research identifies the need for integrated service provision that is comprehensive, efficient, and provides continuity of care across all the health professionals involved, whether they be general practitioners, mental health clinicians or paediatricians. This applies not only to the health system but also welfare, education and legal sectors too. For example, a social worker may assist a trans young person and their family with referral pathways to available support services in their local area. They can also work with the young person’s school to ensure an inclusive school environment.
Families serve a critical protective role for young trans people, helping to minimise poor mental health and to promote wellbeing.
Listening to trans young people and their parents and carers, is vital to help families provide effective support and nurturing. Engaging families in partnerships to reconfigure health and support services that are culturally safe and meet their needs is essential.
Cristyn Davies reports voluntarily being co-chair of the Human Rights Council of Australia; co-chair of the Child and Youth Special Interest Group for the Public Health Association of Australia; a board director of the Australian Association of Adolescent Health; an ambassador to Twenty10 Incorporating the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service of New South Wales; and co-chair of the research committee for the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health.
Cris Townley is a member of the advocacy network Parents for Trans Youth Equity (P-TYE).
Ken Pang is a paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. He receives research funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, and the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation. He is a member of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (and its research committee), as well as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health
Rachel Skinner is an paediatrician in Adolescent Medicine at Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network and Senior Clinical Advisor in Youth and Wellbeing at the NSW Ministry of Health. She holds research funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund and Cooperative Research Centre project scheme. She is a member of Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Australian Association for Adolescent Health; Australian Professional Association for Trans Health, Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and World Professional Association for Transgender Health
Kerry H. Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Making steel was responsible for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. That’s because steelmakers in countries like China, Japan and South Korea have long relied on fossil fuels like coal to make steel in blast furnaces.
But change is coming, as the world works to decarbonise. Researchers and steelmakers are exploring new ways of making steel without using coal.
If the move to green steel gathers speed, Australia could be left behind. That’s because even though we’re the world’s largest exporter of iron ore, some of the new techniques rely on ore with a higher purity than we currently export. Coal exporters could also lose income, as we’re the largest exporter of the coking coal burnt in furnaces using current technology.
To avoid this, we should plan for a green steel future. Our recent report on opportunities for Australian industry to decarbonise suggests this is possible. Australia can make the transition to green steel and remain a major global player.
Steelmaking is an energy-intensive process – but it’s becoming possible to do it without fossil fuels. Shutterstock
Why would Australia be affected by a shift to green steel?
Emerging steelmaking technologies are well along the path to development. Sweden produced the first batch of steel made without coal in 2021.
This steel was made using a direct reduced iron-electric arc furnace process, which can be powered with renewable energy and green hydrogen. While the pilot schemes are promising, this technology could take until the late 2030s to be available at scale.
This figure shows what’s involved in making green steel using the direct reduced iron-electric arc furnace process. Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, Author provided
The problem for Australia is this approach needs high purity ore. At present, the bulk of our iron ore exports would simply not be compatible, as there are too many impurities.
Australia exports two main types of iron ore: hematite and magnetite.
Hematite is mined in Western Australia’s Pilbara. It’s a naturally higher-grade ore (56–62% iron) and makes up almost all (96%) of our exports.
Magnetite is a lower grade ore (25-40% iron) which needs extra processing. This processing, however, produces ore with more iron content, fewer impurities and less waste rock (known as gangue) than hematite.
It’s also, as the name suggests, magnetic. That makes it possible to efficiently separate iron from waste rock using magnets.
Why does this matter? Because this processing converts lower grade iron ore into a product compatible with direct reduced iron-electric arc furnace technology.
You might wonder why it’s important to get rid of waste rock. Doesn’t it slough off in the furnace? In a traditional blast furnace, this is true. But in the direct reduction process, the iron ore doesn’t actually melt. And the next step – the electric arc furnace – can’t handle too many contaminants.
This chart shows a comparison between hematite and magnetite processing. Magnetite processing requires more steps but produces a product more compatible with current green steel methods. Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, Author provided
Hematite or magnetite?
This leaves us with a predicament.
Our major iron ore export, hematite, won’t be able to supply green steelmakers using one of the leading technologies. But our much smaller ore type, magnetite, could.
If we develop new methods of processing hematite to allow it to be used in green steelmaking, we could keep current mines open and preserve existing markets. But it would mean significant research and development to make possible commercially viable methods.
The other option is to accelerate mining of magnetite, because processing this kind of ore is well understood.
Some Australian miners are already heading down this path. Fortescue’s Iron Bridge magnetite project in the Pilbara is scheduled to begin production this quarter.
Magnetite is also recognised as an opportunity in South Australia, given it makes up 90% of the state’s ore body. The state government has set a target of 50 million tonnes per year by 2030.
To ensure expanded mining of magnetite is sustainable, we need strong benchmarks to limit emissions and broader environmental impacts from new mine facilities.
That’s because the actual mining of iron ore is an emissions-intensive industry, given it relies on heavy machinery. But our modelling shows there are pathways to progress here too, with electrification and fuel switching.
The Pilbara’s iron ore exports are almost all hematite, which has impurities incompatible with current green steel approaches. Flickr, CC BY
Are other green steel techniques better suited to Pilbara ore?
The direct reduction method being pioneered in Sweden isn’t the only way to clean up steelmaking.
We looked at a range of potential low-emissions steelmaking techniques, some of which could make use of Australia’s existing hematite exports.
Australian steelmaker Bluescope and multinational miner Rio Tinto are exploring another method, using direct reduction to get rid of oxygen, melting the ore to remove impurities, and then using a basic oxygen furnace to make steel. This, they hope, will let them keep using Pilbara hematite ore.
Other emerging steelmaking techniques, such as electrolytic steelmaking, should also be developed to ensure there are plenty of options for the use of hematite in zero emissions steelmaking in the future.
Fortescue Future Industries recently announced they have succeeded in producing zero carbon iron using an electrolyser and a membrane, but so far have not provided details of the process.
It’s hard to give concrete timelines for these changes, as a transformation at this scale will require coordinated effort. Each of these technologies requires significant investment and a massive build-up of reliable, cost-competitive renewable energy and green hydrogen production.
Planning and action is needed now
As you would imagine, steelmaking companies plan for their plants to last decades. This timeframe means decisions being made now will affect emissions in the future.
It’s vital Australia is prepared for the shift to green steel. We’ll need a national strategy to futureproof iron ore production, and iron and steel supply chain roadmaps to get suppliers, finance, consumers and decision-makers on the same page in working to take the fossil fuels out of industries.
Dr Tessa Leach works for Climateworks Centre. She is a member of the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, which received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Dr Tyra Horngren works for Climateworks Centre. She is a member of the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, which received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
The United Nations has just backed a landmark resolution on climate justice.
Last week, the UN General Assembly supported a Pacific-led resolution asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide an advisory opinion on a country’s climate obligations.
But what does this UN decision actually mean? Does an advisory opinion from the ICJ have any teeth? And what might be the legal consequences for rich countries, like Australia, that have contributed the most to the climate problem?
The theme song asking the ICJ to deliver an advisory opinion on the legal obligations of states to prevent significant harm to human rights and the environment. www.VanuatuICJ.com.
The ICJ is the world court and the leading global authority on international law. It generally hears disputes between countries known as “contentious cases” such as the 2010 case brought by Australia against Japan over whaling in the Southern Ocean. In that case, the court ruled in Australia’s favour.
However, the ICJ can also issue advisory opinions. This is a kind of general advice on the status of international law on a particular topic. Opinions must be requested by one of the organs or specialised agencies of the UN, such as the General Assembly.
On March 29 2023, the UN General Assembly resolved to seek an ICJ advisory opinion on the obligations of states with respect to climate change. That was based on draft text put forward by the tiny Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
Significantly, this resolution was co-sponsored by 105 states, including Australia. It’s the first time the General Assembly has requested an advisory opinion from the ICJ with unanimous state support.
The question put to the ICJ asks whether countries have an obligation to protect the global climate system. It also seeks advice on the “legal consequences” when countries’ actions or omissions cause significant climate harm to small island states and future generations in particular.
The UN will communicate the resolution to the ICJ in coming weeks and the court will then organise hearings over the next few months. It’s expected an advisory opinion will be issued six to 12 months later.
A win for the Pacific
The adoption of the advisory opinion resolution represents an important milestone in a long-running fight by Pacific small island nations and youth activists to secure climate justice.
For these communities, climate change is already causing or exacerbating harm to natural and human systems. Indeed, only a few weeks before the UN General Assembly decision, a rare double cyclone event ripped through Vanuatu.
Faced with these threats, Pacific nations like Tuvalu and Palau have previously publicly discussed options for seeking a ruling from the ICJ. These efforts met with stiff resistance from major emitting countries, which eventually saw the proposals shelved.
The students worked with the Vanuatu government to launch a new campaign for a General Assembly resolution on climate change and human rights. Introducing the resolution, Vanuatu’s prime minister Ishmael Kalsakau stated:
This is not a silver bullet, but it can make an important contribution to climate action, including by catalysing much higher ambition under the Paris Agreement.
For student campaigners like Cynthia Houniuhi, it means
an opportunity to do something bigger than ourselves, bigger than our fears.
The Power of the People is an explainer from the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change.
What might the ICJ advisory opinion deliver?
Advisory opinions issued by the ICJ are – as the name suggests – advisory. They are not legally binding on any country or on the General Assembly. So this climate advisory opinion will not establish the accountability of particular countries for climate harms, nor deliver compensation to vulnerable nations like Vanuatu.
Nonetheless, the authority of the world court means its advisory opinions do matter in shaping how countries understand their international obligations.
There is an opportunity with this opinion to cement emerging links between climate harms and human rights, which could open up new avenues for litigation either domestically or internationally. Already there are several new climate rights cases underway, with the European Court of Human Rights hearing its first two climate cases (against Switzerland and France) on the same day the advisory opinion resolution was adopted.
The ICJ opinion could also provide an extra incentive for countries to reexamine and strengthen their national emissions reduction targets, to make sure they are compliant with the Paris Agreement. As the new fund for climate-related loss and damage takes shape at this year’s international climate meeting (COP28 in Dubai), negotiators may be thinking about how the rules they are crafting could complement the ICJ opinion.
Australia’s support signals our government understands the need to strengthen cooperation and solidarity in the region. Such efforts – including increasing the ambition of Australia’s emissions reduction target and contributing funds to the emerging loss and damage fund – would be tangible indications Australia is striving to meet its international obligations. It’s about being a good neighbour while also avoiding future lawsuits.
For many advocates the success of the ICJ advisory opinion campaign heralds the beginning of a new era in the quest for climate justice. By asking the world court to bring its authoritative voice to this issue, campaigners like the Pacific students’ group seek to make a difference. They hope to ease the path to holding polluting countries accountable for climate harms and help ensure vulnerable communities receive the resources they need to realise a better climate future.
Other voices urge a more cautious approach. The ICJ, for example, does not have much expertise in human rights – with the notable exception of recently appointed Australian judge Hilary Charlesworth. With judges drawn from several major emitting states, the court may be reluctant to intervene decisively on such a highly charged political question. Courts are generally followers, not leaders, of social movements.
Decades of research have shown when relationships and sexuality education is delivered well, it can improve the sexual, social, and emotional health of young people. It can also lead to improved academic outcomes.
But research also shows schools worry parents and families will revolt if they provide too much detail in their sex education programs.
So it is important schools know what Australian parents actually think and want when it comes to relationships and sexuality education.
Our recent study surveyed Australian parents about what schools should teach and when they should teach it.
The history of sex education in Australia
Sex education in Australian schools has a long and complex history. Propelled by the HIV and AIDS pandemic of the early 1980s, programs often focused on the prevention of sexually transmissible infections, and led to many of us suffering through awkward lessons, such as how to put condoms on bananas.
Lessons about our changing bodies, menstruation and pregnancy prevention were also common. For many, perhaps the only time we saw our school nurse was that one time they came into the classroom to put a tampon in a glass of water – much to the horror of anyone who might need to use one.
More recently, a broader variety of topics has been covered by schools, to reflect the modern issues faced by young people. This includes a focus on consent. Age-appropriate consent education is mandatory as of 2023, from the first year of schooling to year 10.
However, the actual delivery of relationships and sexuality education in Australian schools is still highly varied. And students often tell us that the content they are given is not relevant. This is in stark contrast to the United Kingdom, where relationships and sex education became mandatory in 2020.
Sexuality education has moved on from the days when it was just a condom demonstration with a banana. Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexels, CC BY-NC
What should good quality sexuality education include?
According to international research, schools should teach a broad range of sexuality-related topics from the earliest years. Previous approaches, that relied heavily on fear or risk should be avoided. Instead, there should be an emphasis on wellbeing.
To give children and young people the information they need to be safe and healthy, a good quality relationship and sexuality education should include:
naming all body parts without shame
learning about the social, emotional and physical changes that come with puberty
developing a healthy body image (this includes learning that our genitals all look different – and that’s okay)
skills for decision-making about around sex and relationships, how to communicate effectively with friends or partners
how to safely navigate online spaces, including an understanding of the impact pornography can have on how we see sex
gender stereotypes and how they are problematic for everyone
skills to maintain healthy relationships and how to engage in sexual practices as safely as possible
affirmation of LGBTIQA+ diversity and
reliable places where you can seek support or get more information.
Our new research project set out to establish exactly what Australian parents think about school relationships and sexuality education via an online survey.
More than 2,400 Australian parents were surveyed in late 2021. They represented all states and territories, and their children were enrolled in both primary and secondary schools.
All school sectors – government, independent and Catholic – were represented.
What should students be taught?
Overall, 90% of parents in the survey either agreed or strongly agreed schools should deliver relationships and sexuality education.
Parents also reviewed a list of 40 sex education topics, from correctly naming body parts, to sexting and masturbation. They were then asked if such a lesson was appropriate for the school classroom.
Surveyed parents overwhelmingly wanted schools to teach relationships and sexuality. Savannah Dematteo/Pexels, CC BY-NC
Across all 40 topics, there was emphatic support for schools to address each of these issues. In most cases the level of support was more than 95%. Some of the most supported topics were peer pressure, communication skills and changes associated with puberty.
Support was lowest for topics such as pleasure, masturbation, pornography, gender stereotypes, gender identity and sexual orientation. However, the level of support for these topics still ranged from 83% to 92%. This confirms other recent research, which found Australian parents are highly supportive of schools teaching about diversity of gender and sexuality.
When should students be taught?
Parents in our survey were also asked to indicate at what grade level each topic should first be introduced.
Most parents thought a small number of topics could easily begin in primary school, with remaining topics being held over until secondary school. The primary school topics included bodily autonomy and personal boundaries, personal safety (or child abuse prevention) and correct names for body parts, including genitals and changes associated with puberty.
Interestingly, their preference was for more sensitive lessons, such as reasons to engage/not engage in sex, safer sex practices, sexting, contraception, and pornography to start in years 7 and 8. This is an important finding, as we know many schools hold off on delivering a lot of their sexuality education until years 9 and 10, as guided by the Australian curriculum.
Whilst most parents rated the current quality of relationships and sexuality education at their child’s school to be somewhere between good and very good (58%), 21% felt it hadn’t been taught at all by their school, and 12% were unsure what their school actually delivered.
Our study clearly demonstrates the vast majority of Australian parents surveyed want schools to delivery a truly comprehensive relationships and sexuality program. Yes, there is public support for consent to be covered – as it should be. But parents also want many issues, beyond consent, to be taught at school.
Despite a vocal minority who might criticise particular lessons, schools should feel confident most families have their back. In many instances, they actually want these topics to be introduced in earlier grade levels.
Parents want schools to teach a wide variety of topics about relationships and sexuality. Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels, CC BY-NC
Schools may benefit from consulting with their parent bodies, and developing a specific school policy about relationships and sexuality education. Any policy should be heavily grounded in evidence, but it will also benefit from the input of staff, students and parents.
Our curriculum writers should also feel confident to include terms like “sex”, “contraception”, “pornography”, “gender diversity”, and “sexual orientation” in their guidance to educators. For too long there has been a reticence to provide clear directions to schools about exactly what to topics teach. This lack of clarity, along with inadequate teacher training, has had a big impact on our ability to implement relationships and sexuality education across the country in an effective and uniform manner.
Young people have a right to be educated about their bodies. And Australian parents want schools to play their part in doing this.
Talk Soon. Talk Often is a resource to help families have discussions about relationships and sex with their children. Yarning Quiet Ways is a similar resource for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.
The author wishes to acknowledge her co-researchers: Katrina Marson, Jennifer Walsh, Tasha Lawton, Hanna Saltis and Sharyn Burns.
Jacqueline Hendriks (she/her/they) is based at Curtin University, is Project Lead of the Curtin University RSE Project and is part of the Management Team for SiREN. She receives funding from the WA Department of Health (Sexual Health and Blood-borne Virus Program) and various other Australian government and non-government organisations. They are a founding member of Bloom-ED, a collective action group to promote improved relationships and sexuality education throughout Australia, and is a Board Director of the Australian Association for Adolescent Health.
Australian business figure Clive Palmer is suing the Australian government for almost A$300 billion in an international tribunal, having lost a case against the Western Australian government he took all the way to the High Court.
The High Court is meant to be the ultimate arbiter of Australian legal disputes. But in 2019 while in conflict with the WA government Palmer moved ownership of his two main Australian firms offshore, ultimately to a company he set up in Singapore, Zeph Investments Pte Ltd.
As a Singapore-based company, Zeph believes it is able to take action against the Australian government that Australian-based companies cannot, using an obscure provision of the ASEAN-Australia New Zealand Free Trade Agreement.
What makes him think it would work?
Palmer lost in the High Court
First, a quick look at what’s at stake.
In 2002, Palmer’s two companies entered into an agreement with the WA government to explore, mine and process iron ore in the Pilbara region, known as the Balmoral South Iron Ore Project.
The two sides fell out, and in 2020 Palmer sued the state for $27.8 billion. In 2022 the WA government hurriedly passed legislation that indemnified the state against any money it might be found to owe Palmer, meaning he would get nothing.
Palmer appealed to the High Court, and lost in a unanimous judgement.
In his new guise as director of a Singapore-based company, Palmer has upped the ante to US$200 billion (about A$300 billion) – an amount WA Premier Mark McGowan says is “A$11,500 for every person in Australia”. The demand includes US$10 billion for “moral damages”.
By way of comparison, A$300 billion is in the ballpark of the A$268 billion to $368 billion Australia is set to pay for nuclear submarines over three decades.
Palmer has hired former Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter as part of his legal team. The clause Porter and the rest of the team will attempt to use is known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause.
Christian Porter, part of Clive Palmer’s legal team. Lukas Coch/AAP
Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses allow foreign (but not local) investors to claim damages from governments if they can argue that a change in law or a government decision has reduced their future profits.
Trying again, as a Singaporean
ISDS clauses were originally designed in the postcolonial period to compensate foreign investors from countries which claimed to have the rule of law against having their assets appropriated by developing countries countries which were viewed as having less developed legal systems.
But its use has expanded to include concepts such as “indirect expropriation,” “minimum standard of treatment” and “legitimate expectations” which enable foreign investors to sue on the grounds that government action reduced the value of their investments or did not meet their expectations at the time they invested.
US tobacco company Philip Morris tried a similar ploy when it sued the Australian government over Australia’s plain packaging law.
Although Philip Morris couldn’t sue using the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (which lacks an ISDS provision), it moved ownership of its Australian arm to Hong Kong and sued using a Hong Kong treaty, ultimately failing. However, Australia was left with a A$24 million legal bill, only half of which it recovered.
The tool used by big tobacco
Overseas, ISDS clauses have been used to enable corporations to take action against measures to reduce carbon emissions, as well as against public health measures. Denmark and New Zealand appear to have designed their fossil fuel phaseout plans specifically to minimise their exposure to ISDS clauses.
Unlike normal legal proceedings, ISDS adjudications lack safeguards including an independent judiciary (ISDS arbitrators can continue to act for clients in other ISDS cases) or the need to consider precedents or allow appeals. This means decisions lack consistency and the outcome of Palmer’s case is unpredictable.
Labor recently reaffirmed its policy to exclude ISDS clauses from all new trade agreements and to review their inclusion in existing agreements.
Palmer’s case, and the millions of dollars and years of effort it could cost Australia even if he ultimately fails, makes removing these clauses more urgent.
Dr Patricia Ranald is an honorary research associate at the University of Sydney and the honorary convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, a network of community organisations which advocates for fair trade based on human rights, labour rights and environmental sustainability.
Deportation of students, painting by Jacek Malczewski, 1884. Wikimedia Commons
On March 17, the International Criminal Court cited Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children as a war crime for which President Vladimir Putin is being held responsible.
By some reports, since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than 6,000 children have been removed from Ukraine into Russia. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine published evidence of the “illegal transfer of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia”.
A recent Yale School of Public Health report provides evidence of a organised attempt to reeducate abducted Ukrainian children now held in locations stretching from Russian-occupied Crimea to Siberia.
Putin is the first Russian leader to have an arrest warrant issued against him for the deportation of citizens of another country, but the origins of using deportation as a weapon are deeply rooted in Russia’s history.
Centuries before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the expulsion of individuals or even entire nations was used as a targeted instrument of war.
Deportation as a tool of policy was first seen in Russia’s rapid expansion in the second half of the 16th century.
In 1547, the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible, declared himself tsar of all the Russias. He claimed the leadership not only of Moscow and its territories but of all lands of the ancient Kyivan Rus. The name “Russia” replaced “Muscovy” as the name of the new tsardom.
Muscovy’s expansion strategy was directed towards the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the west, coupled with the conquest of Siberia, then a vast separate region to the east. Between 1550 and 1700, the tsardom expanded by 35,000 square kilometres per year.
In 1569, Lithuania had joined Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth, in which power was shared between the king and the parliament, became one of the largest countries in Europe, covering almost a million square kilometres in the early 1600s.
Muscovy’s expansion to the west at the expense of Lithuania from the early 1500s encountered opposition. Earlier, Lithuania’s rulers united “all the Russias” (including the territory of modern Ukraine) within its multi-ethnic and multi-confessional monarchy.
Influenced by the Orthodox religion and language of the Kyivan Rus – an amalgam of principalities in eastern and northern Europe – the Lithuanian dynasty did not want to relinquish its control of the sprawling territories bordering Muscovy. The union with Poland was perhaps one of the strategies to defend itself against Russia’s encroachment.
In the early 17th century, the wars between Russia and Poland-Lithuania resulted in the deportations of soldiers, including Adam Kamieński (c.1635-c.1676). Kamieński was detained in 1666 and deported to Yakutsk, a settlement built on continuous permafrost about 450km south of the Arctic Circle.
Russian soldiers capturing Polish children in Warsaw, 1831. Wikimedia Commons
In 1767, Russian Ambassador Nicholas Repin ordered kidnapping and deportation to Kaluga of a group of Polish-Lithuanian parliamentarians who opposed Russian-sponsored legislation.
Between 1771 and 1795, more than 50,000 citizens of Poland-Lithuania were deported to various locations in the Russian Empire. Among that number were about 20,000 who supported or served in the Polish-Lithuanian army under Tadeusz Kościuszko.
Kościuszko’s revolt from March to November 1794 aimed to prevent division of Poland-Lithuania’s territory between Russia, Prussia and Austria. The Russians deported Kościuszko to Saint Petersburg in October 1794.
In January 1795, the Russian military removed King Stanisław August, the last monarch of Poland-Lithuania, from Warsaw. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1798.
The former citizens of Poland-Lithuania rebelled against Russia again in 1830 and 1863. After the suppression of the uprising of 1830, about 30,000 of its participants were deported to Russia. Another 27,000 soldiers were forced into compulsory military service in the Russian army.
On March 23 1831, Emperor Nicholas ordered children of Polish-Lithuanian military personnel to be deported to Russia to join special imperial army units.
After 1863, Russia deported at least 25,000 of those who fought for the independence of Poland-Lithuania. The majority were deported to Tobolsk, Irkutsk, Akatuy and Tunka, deep in the Siberian hinterland. Most never returned home.
In the 20th century, Soviet Russia perpetrated deportation against its own people. Affluent farmers known as kulaks were branded as “class enemies”, and ethnic Koreans, Germans and Tatars were also targeted. These deportations were described by the state as “population transfers”, with the authorities deporting “anti-Soviet” “enemies of the people” to cleanse specific territories.
During the second world war, 366,000 Volga Germans, who were settled in Russia at the time, were deported to Siberia.
The entire Tatar population of Crimea, numbering around 200,000, were deported and resettled mainly in Uzbekistan, where a significant percentage died.
Corpses of victims of the winter 1918 Red Terror. Wikimedia Commons
In 2015, Ukraine recognised this deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide, and marked May 18 as a day of remembrance.
Between 1940 and 1953, more than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – 10% of the entire adult population.
In 2023, the world is witnessing deportation again being used as a weapon by Russia. Will the children taken away from Ukraine ever find their way home?
Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Drone photograph of ‘fairy circles’ in spinifex on Nyiyaparli people’s country, east Pilbara, Western Australia.Photo by Dave Wells, Author provided
What are “fairy circles”? They are polka dots of bare earth, regularly scattered across arid grasslands. Scientists first described fairy circles in Namibia in the 1970s and sparked a global debate in the scientific community about the causes of the phenomenon.
In 2016, a group of international scientists concluded that, in the Australian Pilbara, “fairy circles” arose from spinifex plants competing for water and nutrients – a similar explanation to the one they proposed for fairy circles in Namibia. These stories were amplified by the media, but the voices of Aboriginal desert people were not reported.
In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution today, we show what our Aboriginal coauthors have always known – that fairy circles in the Western Deserts of Australia are flat, hard “pavements” inhabited by spinifex termites (Drepanotermes species).
Colleague Peter Kendrick by a termite pavement on Nyiyaparli country, in Western Australia. The bare flat pavement is surrounded by unburnt spinifex grassland, and its hard surface caps the underground termitaria. Photo by Fiona Walsh
Knowing the Country
Aboriginal people have lived in Australia’s Western Desert, including the Pilbara, for at least 50,000 years and know their Country deeply. We are grateful to be part of a cross-cultural team of researchers that include Western Desert people and scientists.
Our starting points included open-minded curiosity. Some of us knew little about spinifex grassland ecosystems. None of us knew about “fairy circles” or the international science debate. However, we all wanted to learn, and were interested in learning together. As our research unfolded, the more we learned, the more we realised we didn’t know. We learned things that were new even to those who’ve lived in and studied deserts for a lifetime.
We saw similarities between patterns in specific Aboriginal artworks and aerial views of the pavements. We found paintings that tell deep and complex stories about termites and the activities of termite Jukurrpa (Dreaming) ancestors.
Western Desert Martu people call the fairy circle pavements linyji and the fat-rich flying termites Warturnuma. We learned that the hard surfaces of linyji are used to thresh seed and flying termites are prized foods. Martu colleague Gladys Karimarra Bidu stated:
Linyji are the homes of termites who live underground. We gathered and ate the Warturnuma that flew from linyji. Warturnuma is wama, delicious. Old people also put their seeds on the hard linyji. They hit seed to make damper; our good food. I learnt this from my old people and have seen this myself many times.
Linyji (pavements) were essential surfaces to clean and prepare seed foods for eating. Martu used to clean food seeds on a linyji (pavement) nowadays they use a tarpaulin. A colleague, Thelma Milangka Rowlands, is on the left. Photo by Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa with permission.
Termites as kin
This knowledge about pavements and termites is shared and passed down through generations by Martu and other Indigenous groups. Our Australian Wildlife Conservancy colleagues Alice Nampijinpa Michaels and Lee Nangala Wayne describe their feelings for flying spinifex termites in this video. Alice said:
Pamapardu, big mob. Waturnuma and pamapardu we call them. I been crying for that pamapardu. I was crying for my brother. My brother’s Dreaming.
Why such strong feelings? Spinifex termites are kin to them. Those that live in the pavements are like the krill of desert ecosystems – they are super-abundant. Most people think of above-ground termite mounds, but here is a whole community that lives mostly below the soil surface, only emerging to eat dead spinifex or to fly to reproduce.
Most Australians consider spinifex grasslands to be “rubbish country”. A pastoralist even said so while we were excavating into termite pavements. He was about to set fire to the spinifex (and potentially us). Termites, including those that live in the spinifex, are often maligned and poisoned by Australians. However, these vast tracts of land and their termites are deeply important to Aboriginal people in ways that were invisible to some of our team.
New science findings from Aboriginal knowledge
Our cross-cultural research has led to unexpected findings. Termite pavements hold water after big rains, which was unknown to scientists until we recognised clues in the stories and art of Aboriginal country folk. Purungu Desmond Taylor, Martu interpreter and co-author, remembered the Mulyamiji, great desert skink, and describes breeding behaviour not previously reported by scientists:
After good rains in linyji country, Mulyamiji would be born in water lying on the linyji. My mother, my two fathers, my uncle told me this long ago.
Aboriginal people have refined their encyclopaedic knowledge while living continuously on this continent for thousands of generations. Listening to Aboriginal desert voices improved our understanding of how ubiquitous, but often overlooked, desert Country works.
We learnt that the flat, hard linyji are used to prepare foods, they can become ephemeral sources of water and support the breeding of Mulyamiji, they provide abundant and rich sources of food, and have deep spiritual significance.
This year, Australians will be asked to recognise Australia’s First Nations People in our constitution. In our experience, we strengthen our connections with Country and each other when we nurture relationships, listen well and share together, work equitably and two-ways.
Fiona Walsh received a 2020 Australian Academy of Science Thomas Davies Research Grant. The majority of her research was undertaken voluntarily without salary.
Carolyn Oldham, Purungu Desmond Taylor, and Theo Evans do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Papua New Guinea’s fourth prime minister, Sir Rabbie Namaliu, has died — four days shy of his 76th birthday which would have been celebrated today.
The late Sir Rabbie was born Rabbie Langanai Namaliu on April 3, 1947, to early local missionaries Darius and Utul Ioan Namaliu, at a mission station at Watnabara, Duke of York, in East New Britain Province. He was the eldest of eight.
In the wake of his death, Andrew Ilam, a first cousin to Sir Rabbie, recollects the blessing Sir Rabbie received at birth by the early white missionaries.
“When he was born, because he had a big head, the sisters would carry him every morning. And they told his parents: ‘You know what, when this man grows up, he’s going to be a big man.
“He’s going to be a clever, educated man’,” Ilam said.
“So they actually blessed him for what he was doing when he grew up. This is what happened to him.”
When Sir Rabbie was old enough, his father enrolled him at Raluana Primary. He went on to Vunamami Vocational, a feeder school to Kerevat during the 1960s. In 1966, Sir Rabbie finished from Kerevat National High School. He was ready for university.
Told to ‘stay back’ Sir Rabbie’s younger brother, Jack, recalls that at that time most of the students would have gone to New South Wales to attend university. However, his brother’s group was told to stay back.
They were the first students to attend the University of Papua New Guinea at a time when there were still no buildings.
“He studied political science and history while living in temporary accommodation, a tent hitched at the Admin College,” Jack said.
Upon his father’s urging, Sir Rabbie was forced to turn down a job offer with the United Nations.
“He had already signed his contract and written to our father. But because we were getting ready for Independence, my father wrote back, telling my brother that he could not stay abroad, he needed to be here to help Sir Michael Somare prepare for Independence,” Jack said.
Jack, shaking his head, said: “The late Sir Michael even had to send the late Sir Pita Lus and late Sir Maori Kiki to Canada to press him to return.
“We knew Sir Michael well. Our fathers were very close.”
From lecturer to government Sir Rabbie later left UPNG where he worked as a lecturer and in 1974 he became Sir Michael’s Principal Private Secretary.
“Sir Michael sent him back here … before Independence as the first local District Commissioner for ENB [East New Britain]. That time there was so many associations and movements in the province. He brought everyone together. That’s where everyone agreed to having provincial governments,” Jack said.
Sir Rabbie first became an MP in 1982. He was Member for Kokopo for five consecutive terms until 2007.
Jack remembers: “That was the year the voting system was changed to LPV (limited preferential voting). Not too many people knew about this and a lot of people were confused.
“And that’s probably why he lost. Otherwise he would have remained an MP.
“He accepted defeat and he congratulated his successor, the late Patrick Tamur. Consecutive elections after, people and leaders asked him to stand again but he refused. He had a principle that if he was defeated, the trust was no longer there so he stayed away.”
Vocal man for the people In the years after politics and up until his passing, Sir Rabbie sat on a number of national and international boards. He remained a vocal man, with his heart for the people.
“He gives advice to anybody, even to the MP’s after him. He would say if you have any problems, come and see me — none of them have ever come to him. But he is a humble person, he does not want to hurt anybody,” Jack said.
Late last year, the late Sir Rabbie had decided he wanted to write a book.
Jack said: “We started on it and Dr Ilave Vele from UPNG agreed he would write Sir Rabbie’s biography. We’ll probably still have to pursue it and complete it.
“He pre-sold the whole book. He hadn’t even written it yet. He did have a title but I’ve forgotten … maybe we can still push it.”
Jean Nuiais a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
The Australia West Papua Association has condemned an Indonesian crackdown on a peaceful Papua self-determination rally in Bali at the weekend after a militant nationalist group targeted the Papuan students.
The Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) in Bali City held the rally on Saturday calling on the Indonesian government to hold a referendum for self-determination for the Papuan people.
The theme of the rally was “Democracy and human rights die, Papuan people suffocate” but security forces broke up protest when militants clashed with the students.
“Yet again a simple peaceful rally by West Papuans was forced to be disbanded by police because of the attack on the demonstrators by an Indonesian nationalist group,” said Joe Collins of the AWPA.
“And Jakarta wonders why West Papuans want their freedom.”
A spokesperson for the student group AMP said there was a lack of freedom of expression in West Papua and the human rights situation was getting worse.
As the rally started, it was blocked by members of the Indonesian nationalist group Patriot Garuda Nusantara (PGN).
Intelligence officers The AMP action coordinator, Herry Meaga, said in a statement that a number of intelligence officers had also been monitoring the clashes.
Meaga said the students had tried to negotiate with a number of the PGN coordinators but the situation deteriorated.
Clashes broke out between the two groups when the PGN crowd started to push the AMP group, and tried to seize their banners.
The PGN threw stones and bottles. There were injuries on both sides as the groups clashed.
According to an article in the Bali Express, about six people from the nationalist PGN were injured and more than a dozen from the student AMP.
Police on standby near the location broke up the demonstration.
As part of its aspiration to be “Tiriti-led”, the University of Otago has embarked on a consultation process to re-brand. The proposed change involves a new logo and a new, deeply symbolic Māori name: Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
Universities occasionally change logos, names and marketing strategies. All New Zealand institutions have added te reo Māori to their original titles, often opting for a literal translation — “Te Whare Wānanga” — to describe their status as a university. But Otago is taking it a step further.
Metaphorically, “whakaihu” refers to the university’s place as the country’s oldest university, as well as its Māori students often being the first to graduate from their whanau and communities. And it symbolically includes everyone on the “waka”.
That is exactly what a university is supposed to be, of course — a place for everyone. A place where people are free to think and develop ideas, even contested or unpopular ones.
But being “Tiriti-led” is not as straightforward. It throws into sharp relief where universities sit in relation to the Crown under te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. This, in turn, raises quite fundamental questions about what a university is in the first place.
The University has collaborated with mana whenua to create a proposed new visual identity including a new Māori name and tohu (symbol), to sit along the official University of Otago name, which we believe represent where we have come from and where we’re going. pic.twitter.com/mZ86NPOzE2
What is te Tiriti, what is a university? Essentially, te Tiriti o Waitangi was the Māori language agreement in 1840 between Māori hapu and the British Crown which set out the terms of British settlement. Britain could establish government over its own people, hapu would retain authority over their own affairs.
Māori would enjoy the “rights and privileges” of British subjects, a legal status which continues to evolve as New Zealand citizenship. The Treaty of Waitangi is an English language version of the agreement with different and less favourable emphases for Māori.
By wanting to become “Tiriti-led”, Otago has decided it is part of the Crown party to this agreement. This makes Kai Tahu, as mana whenua (people of the land), the university’s “principal Tiriti partner”.
By contrast, when Massey University says it’s Tiriti-led, it doesn’t explicitly say it’s part of the Crown. Auckland University of Technology’s vice-chancellor has said his university is Tiriti-led, but there’s no definition to be easily found on the public record.
Styling a relationship in this way is significant — but not necessarily in ways that keep faith with te Tiriti o Waitangi, or with the essential purposes of a university.
Universities are owned and principally funded by the Crown. But their obligation to independent scholarship means they cannot be part of the Crown in the same way as a government department.
Universities don not take direction from ministers in the same way, and their staff are not public servants. They are not part of the executive branch of government.
Together with their students and graduates, academics are the university — a community of scholars obliged to contribute to the discovery and sharing of knowledge, but not obliged to serve the government of the day.
In the same waka but on different sides of the partnership: Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Waitangi this year. Image: Getty Images
Us and them Parliament and the executive (government ministers) together decide what te Tiriti means to the Crown side of the relationship. Public servants offer advice, but ultimately take ministers’ instructions on giving effect to whatever is the Crown’s Tiriti policy.
Academics, however, can take a different view. They are not bound by what the Crown side of the agreement thinks. And, as developments in te Tiriti policy show, academic independence makes a difference.
In 1877, New Zealand’s Supreme Court found the Treaty was legally a “simple nullity” because it had not been incorporated into domestic law. It wasn’t the public servant’s role to object, at least not in public. That kind of intellectual freedom belongs elsewhere. Explicitly, it’s one of the reasons universities exist.
Academics — Māori and others — have contributed significantly to developments in te Tiriti policy since 1877, especially in more recent years. Their contributions have often contested prevailing political thought. Universities have given Māori academics — and through them, Māori communities — the kind of voice unavailable to public servants working for the Crown partner.
Partnership is one of the “Treaty principles”, developed legally and politically as an interpretive guide to the agreement. But partnership creates a “them” and “us” binary.
In my book, Sharing the Sovereign: recognition, treaties and the state, I show how this binary encourages people to think of the Crown as exclusively Pākehā. Any institution that is not solely Māori is an institution that belongs to “them”.
This reinforces Māori separation from the university as an institution that should belong to all of us — and to each of us in our own ways.
Academics are not public servants If an institution represents one side of a partnership, that institution cannot be a “place for everyone”. A Māori student or staff member should be able to say, “I belong here as much as anybody else, with the same rights, opportunities and obligations to contribute to the institution’s culture, values and purpose.”
That includes the right to study and teach te Tiriti with an independence that is not available to public servants.
In 2020, I helped develop “Critical Tiriti Analysis”, a policy evaluation method that could be used to assess public policy consistency with te Tiriti. While anecdotally it seems now to be widely used across the public service, it’s not something likely to have been written by a public servant.
The Crown is a cautious Tiriti partner.
Thoroughness and objectivity — but not political caution — guide academic contributions to policy debate. Such contributions are different in style and purpose from the kind of policy making that it is the duty of the public service to undertake.
Universities are not the Crown in the same sense, and this is why they are not Tiriti partners.
Malka Leifer, former principal of the Orthodox Jewish Adass Israel school in Melbourne, has been found guilty of sexually abusing two former students.
A jury in the County Court of Victoria found Leifer guilty of 18 rape and sexual assault charges relating to sisters Elly Sapper and Dassi Erlich. The jury cleared Leifer of nine charges, including all relating to a third sister, Nicole Meyer, and some relating to Erlich.
Leifer’s trial was a long-term goal for Victorian and Australian authorities. Allegations of sexual assault were initially made against Leifer in late 2007 or early 2008. She fled to Israel in March 2008 and was finally extradited to Australia in January 2021.
What were the charges?
Leifer was charged with 29 offences. During the trial, she was acquitted on two charges of indecent act with a 16- or 17-year-old because the alleged offending occurred before the relevant law came into effect.
The jury was then tasked to consider 27 offences, including ten charges of rape, ten of indecent assault, three of penetration of a 16- or 17-year-old child, and one charge each of compelled rape and indecent act with a 16- or 17-year-old.
Meyer, Erlich and Sapper alleged that Leifer sexually abused them between 2003 and 2007. The abuse was said to have been perpetrated at school, on school camps and at Leifer’s home. The sisters were vulnerable to abuse by an authority figure, as their ultra-orthodox upbringing had left them ignorant of sexual matters.
The ABC’s Australian Story program profiled the sisters in 2018. It revealed the insular nature of the Adass Israel community and the extreme social and behavioural constraints placed on the sisters as children. Their home life was said to be controlled and terrifying.
Manny Waks, an advocate for the sisters and chief executive of Voice against Child Sexual Abuse, said today:
We thank the sisters for sharing their very personal and difficult story so publicly, which has contributed to educating the public regarding the complexities of pursuing justice in the context of child sexual abuse, in particular within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
It is striking that Leifer was convicted by a jury that had not been fully informed of her efforts to evade justice.
When the allegations emerged against Leifer in 2008, she fled to Israel with her family. The Adass Israel school funded her travel. Leifer lived in the community for several years.
Sisters Elly Sapper, Nicole Meyer and Dassi Erlich have fought a years-long battle for justice. Joel Carrett/AAP
Australia lodged an extradition request with Israel in 2013. She was arrested by Israeli police in 2014, but was later bailed. Over several years, Leifer claimed to be too unwell to attend court hearings and she was assessed by more than 30 psychiatrists.
In 2018, she was again taken into custody when it became known she had been living normally in an orthodox Israeli settlement. In October 2019, she was bailed into house arrest in her sister’s home. It was September 2020 before Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Leifer was fit to stand trial on charges in Victoria.
Leifer successfully stalled the justice process for an inordinate period of time. Between early 2008 and late 2020, more than 60 court hearings were taken up by efforts to avoid extradition and prosecution.
The first ruling on the merits of the extradition request was held in September 2020, when the Jerusalem District Court ruled Leifer should be extradited to Australia to face the charges against her.
It is not uncommon for extradition matters to be highly politicised. This case strained relations between Australia and Israel. The federal and Victorian governments will undoubtedly welcome today’s verdict following their years of combined action to bring Leifer to trial.
One particularly controversial aspect of the saga culminated in the conviction in 2022 of former Israeli health minister Yaakov Litzman, for obstructing justice in Leifer’s case. Litzman had pressured public officials to alter Leifer’s psychiatric evaluations to support her claim that she was unfit to stand trial. He was subsequently sentenced for the lesser charge of breach of trust as part of a plea deal to avoid a custodial sentence.
What comes next?
Leifer maintained her innocence throughout the trial. She is due back in court on April 26 to fix a date for the plea. She will then be sentenced. It is possible the time Leifer spent in custody in Israel may be considered when setting a custodial sentence.
Once Leifer is sentenced by the judge, it is expected that sentencing remarks will be published by the court. It is possible Leifer may choose to appeal the jury’s verdict. No such intention has been announced at this time.
Regardless, today’s outcome is a hugely significant milestone. As Victorian Liberal MP David Southwick, who has advocated for Leifer’s accusers, said:
These verdicts represent the culmination of over two decades of suffering and unstoppable activism by so many caring people who simply wanted to see justice done. Today’s verdict finally brings closure for three brave women, after astonishing delays and setbacks that no victim of sexual abuse should ever have to endure.
Nicole Meyer, Elly Sapper and Dassi Erlich have consented to being identified in the media.
For support, please call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
Amy Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Opposition spokesman for Indigenous Australians Julian Leeser has delivered a detailed critique of the government’s Voice proposal, ahead of Wednesday’s special Liberal Party meeting to determine its stand.
Leeser, a long-time supporter of the Voice, also flagged he would like to see shadow ministers given the right to support either side at the referendum.
Asked about the republic referendum where senior Liberals were free to support the yes or no case, Leeser praised that approach. “I think the proposal during the republic referendum was good.” But he said he did not want to pre-empt the party room discussion.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has hardened his rhetoric on the Voice proposal in recent weeks, and Liberal sources say there is a majority against it in the party room. The Nationals have already come out in opposition.
Leeser, addressing the National Press Club, argued that if there was a danger of the referendum failing, it should be withdrawn – something Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has emphatically ruled out.
“I wish the referendum was in a better place than it is,” Leeser said. But the government was “mucking it up” by not trying to find common ground and not trusting Australians with all the facts.
Leeser attacked the government’s approach for being “top down”, urged a “ground up” model, and called for an extensive change to the wording of the proposed insertion into the constitution.
He said the opposition supported “local and regional voices”, saying that funding for these should be in the May budget.
“Any national voice must be deeply connected to the local and regional voices across Australia and it would have been better if the national voice was settled by reaching a bipartisan legislated consensus before we went to a referendum,” he said.
But the local and regional had “been forgotten by the government, ignored even in the Voice design principles released last week”.
Leeser also said one clause of the proposed constitutional change should be deleted.
The government’s proposed new section reads:
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia
There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Leeser said the second clause, covering representations, raised three questions: Who could the Voice talk to? What could it talk about? What did it mean to make representations? The answer to these questions were currently unclear, Leeser said.
It wasn’t enough to say these questions would be dealt with later by legislation. “You can’t out-legislate the constitution,” he said.
“I raise these issues not only at a technical level, but a political one as well. Because this clause will be the rallying point for the no campaign.
“For those that want the referendum to succeed, it puts the broader constitutional question at risk.”
He also warned about the proposed reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples “as the First Peoples of Australia”.
This was “a symbolic statement that sets out an incontrovertible fact”. But it raised the question of what the term implied at law. “The Constitution is not a good place for historic or symbolic statements, however well-meaning, as those statements have a legal effect and will be subject to judicial interpretation in ways that we cannot imagine”.
Anthony Albanese accused the opposition of “an attempt to undermine the prospect of a successful referendum”.
Albanese, in his tribute following the death of highly-respected Indigenous leader Yunupingu, a former Australian of the Year, said that at the Garma festival last year, after he announced the details of the referendum, Yunupingu had asked him, “‘Are you serious this time?’ I replied: ‘Yes, we’re going to go for it.’
“When I spoke with him just over a week ago, I told him I was confident we would get there. This brought him some comfort, as did his totems of fire and baru, the saltwater crocodile, which watched over him in his final days,” Albanese said.
“We mourn with his people today. And we pay tribute to a lifetime of advocating for the rights of Aboriginal people in this country.
“He was a key focal point of the development of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. […] And when that happened in 2017, he spoke about lighting a fire. I think that today is a day that I certainly recommit myself to do everything we can to make sure that that referendum is carried at the end of this year.”
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Professor Marcia Langton, Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies, The University of Melbourne
Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. Yunupiŋu’s family have given permission for his name and images to be used.
Dr Yunupiŋu was a magnificent person and a magnificent leader. Most people in Australia who are aware of him know him as a ceremonial leader because of his towering presence leading ceremonies at the Garma Festival for so many years and, most importantly, at events that he himself curated in order to make representations to prime ministers and ministers of Australian governments.
Throughout his life, he has spoken and made representations to every prime minister of his adulthood.
He was a great clan leader, a great family man and very much loved by so many Australians who came into contact with him through his Garma Festival and so many other good works.
Yunupiŋu was invested with an Honorary Doctor of Law by the University of Melbourne. Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation
He was a musician, one of the most important traditional singers from Northeast Arnhem Land. Indeed, one could hear his beautiful voice on the Tribal Voice album, which his late younger brother’s band Yothu Yindi made famous.
So many people will be in mourning for him. He touched so many people with his gracious leadership and kindness.
It’s such a shame, really, that he didn’t live to see better outcomes.
Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians was his idea. I was with him in Arnhem Land and he said to me, “I want to see Noel Pearson”. They’d never met, and he told me to find Noel and get him to come and speak to him.
So, in those days, I had to drive around and find a Telstra hotspot.
I found Noel. Noel jumped on a plane immediately and they met, and Yunupiŋu put to him constitutional recognition as a matter of highest importance. Because, as Yunupiŋu explains in his writings, he felt the existential threat towards his clan and other Indigenous people.
He was the interpreter for the clan leaders in the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission, appointed by Gough Whitlam to determine how land rights were to be recognised. He had been appointed by his father to become a clan leader and to go through the many years of learning that involved.
By interpreting for all the clan leaders and their evidence, he became extremely knowledgeable. He also interpreted in the court in Canberra in the Milirrpum case. Later, of course, when the Land Rights Act had passed and the land councils were established, he became Chair of the Northern Land Council and served in that position twice.
He is, in many ways, one of the critical figures in the land rights movement. Northern Land Council
So, he is, in many ways, one of the crucial figures in the land rights movement. He was able to translate philosophical beliefs and the inherited ancient property systems of Yolŋu people to a very wonderful judge, Justice Woodward, to enable a land rights system to be legislated.
He also contributed to culture, the survival of Aboriginal culture, and to education. The Yothu Yindi Foundation press release on his passing explains how he initiated the Dhupuma Barker School in his community in Arnhem Land, which has been producing wonderful results with high attendance rates for the children.
He also led many other initiatives; too many to mention. People turned to him for advice because of his highly honed political and strategic skills.
A kind man
The great quality he had was kindness. He chose not to make people his enemy, unless they’d committed some egregious crime. He always attempted to find humanity in people. He was able to speak to every prime minister, as I’ve said, and encourage Indigenous leaders to set goals – such as constitutional recognition – and find a way to achieve it.
He pulled together the clans of Arnhem Land and presented three petitions on constitutional recognition to prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. He was very determined about this. He also gave some wonderful lectures on this topic.
People turned to Yunupiŋu for advice because of his highly honed political and strategic skills. Peter Eve/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Many people have been inspired by him because he always found a way through the terrible burden of colonialism. Nobody suffered it more than people like himself.
There is a terrible view, sometimes, that traditional people were not affected by colonialism. That’s far from the truth. In fact, I think if any Indigenous culture survives today, and of course so much does, it is precisely because people like this great man valued culture above all else.
He took his ceremonial responsibilities as the highest priority and he regarded the survival of his own culture, and by extension other Indigenous cultures, as matters of the highest importance.
Because it is in our cultures that we find the values that make life worthwhile, make life worth living, and enable us to enjoy life.
And he did enjoy life. He had a wonderful life. It’s such a tragic loss for everyone.
I met him in the late 1970s and we became very good friends and remained so throughout our lives. He was very curious, a great intellectual, and I believe he had a huge concern, not only for his family, but also the friends he made far and wide.
Yunupiŋu with Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton at Garma in 2019. Image by. Melanie Faith Dove/Yothu Yindi Foundation
Hence, the popularity of the Garma Festival with so many people from Australia and around the world. He truly believed that we are all one people; we all have red blood running through our veins.
I wish Australian political leaders could have learned more from him, because Australia would be so much a better country if they had adopted some of his values. He certainly showed the way forward.
Professor Marcia Langton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia’s homicide rate has continued its overall downward trajectory in the latest crime data released last week.
In fact, in 2020-21, Australia recorded the second-lowest number of homicides since the Australian Institute of Criminology began compiling national statistics in 1989.
How does Australia compare with other nations? And do our perceptions of crime match the reality of Australia becoming a generally safer place to live?
According to the most recent report, there were 210 homicide incidents reported in Australia between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, with 263 identified offenders. There were 221 homicide victims, nearly 70% of whom were men. Only nine incidents involved multiple victims.
This was the second-lowest annual homicide rate (0.82 per 100,000 people) since 1989-90. This period (2020-21) was at the height of the COVID pandemic, when lockdowns and other restrictions were in place in various localities.
Homicides had ticked upwards the previous year (2019-20), which included the start of the pandemic when lockdowns were similarly in place. There were 261 homicides reported that year, about 1.02 per 100,000 people.
While it’s difficult to firmly establish a direct causal relationship between coronavirus restrictions and crime rates, the 2019-20 homicide data does appear to be an aberration in the longer-term trend in Australia.
Overall, the national homicide rate has dropped steadily from a rate of 1.88 per 100,000 people in 1992-93 to 0.82 in 2020-21 – a decrease of 55% over nearly 30 years.
When it comes to the type of homicides occurring in Australia, domestic killings were the most common in 2020-21, accounting for about 36% of incidents. The rate of women killed in intimate partner homicides was 0.25 per 100,000 people, which is a decrease of 74% since 1989-90.
Men were overwhelmingly responsible for all homicides in 2020-21, accounting for 84% of perpetrators.
The 2019 United Nations Global Study on Homicide indicated that the world average homicide rate was 6.1 per 100,000 people in 2017, a rate inflated by the Americas with 17.2 per 100,000 people.
Data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States shows the homicide rate in that country was 7.8 per 100,000 in 2021. This rate has been increasing over the last few years.
In 2022, the homicide rate in England and Wales was 1.2 per 100,000 people. There was a 23% increase in the number of homicide victims compared to March 2020-21, returning to pre-COVID levels.
Some 81% of homicides in the US involved the use of firearms, while in England and Wales, sharp instruments (including knives) were the most common methods of killing at 41%.
The latest Australian data shows knives were used in 38% of incidents and firearms in 11%.
Is the homicide rate reflective of general crime trends?
Overall, crime in Australia is also on the decline. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Victimisation survey, physical assaults are down 39% from 2008-09, face-to-face threatened assaults are down 44% and robberies are down 50%.
However, sexual assaults have increased by 66% over the same period. And experts say the vast majority of people who experience sexual assault don’t report it to police, meaning the true figure is much higher.
Do our perceptions match reality?
Criminologists Don Weatherburn and Sara Rahman examined the decline of crime in Australia in their recent book. They note that crime statistics overall began to decline in 2001, and by 2018,
rates of the most common forms of crime had fallen between 40 and 80% and were lower than they’d been in twenty or in some cases thirty years.
However, perceptions of personal safety may not be aligning with these lower crime statistics.
The fear of crime is an emotional reaction to the expectation of being victimised by criminals. A person’s fear level can be influenced by a number of things, including their own life experiences, their media exposure, and their social and cultural environments.
The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services measures perceptions of safety from the National Survey of Community Satisfaction with policing. In 2021-22, a vast majority of people (89%) declared feeling “safe” or “very safe” in their homes.
However, when asked about public places, the rates decreased significantly. Just over half of respondents (53.8%) said they felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhoods and a third (32.7%) felt safe when travelling on public transport.
The data, however, shows that crime in general, and homicide specifically, is declining. Australia is becoming a safer place to live.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
A pandemic can end in three ways. Either the death rates attributed to the pandemic disease cease, or at least drop back to pre-pandemic levels. Or normality is re-established, with the pandemic disease still present, but displacing other causes of death. Or a ‘new normal’ is established, with higher ongoing rates of death normalised.
So, to some extent, a pandemic’s duration is a state-of-mind; meaning that the post-pandemic period is when that ’emergency’ mindset has departed. To a large extent, that happens when the most burdensome public health restrictions become untenable; in New Zealand’s case, that was when the substantive closure of the international border finished. Deaths, covid or otherwise, may still be a problem, but they cease to be newsworthy!
For most of the world, the post-pandemic period started around February 2022. East Asia was the principal exception. Table 1 below shows mortality in the first year of the new normal.
Table 1: Back to Normal?
total deaths:
2018/19*
2022/23**
increase
Macau
2199
3596
63.53%
Hong Kong
47056
62056
31.88%
Singapore
21323
26829
25.82%
Taiwan
170483
212665
24.74%
Thailand
484272
603662
24.65%
Iceland
2180
2702
23.94%
South Korea
291529
357298
22.56%
Chile
107408
130970
21.94%
Colombia
236488
285944
20.91%
Ireland
30051
35650
18.63%
Brazil
1325677
1569617
18.40%
Japan
1360950
1607011
18.08%
Northern Ireland
14998
17504
16.71%
Australia
161466
188155
16.53%
Scotland
55633
64807
16.49%
Malaysia
171015
199069
16.40%
Finland
53458
62112
16.19%
New Zealand
33310
38682
16.13%
Netherlands
148356
171826
15.82%
Germany
925309
1069924
15.63%
England & Wales
515610
592677
14.95%
Norway
39819
45650
14.64%
Austria
80544
92325
14.63%
Canada
279510
319140
14.18%
Uruguay
34655
39512
14.02%
United States
2812658
3193088
13.53%
Greece
122940
139406
13.39%
Mexico
726738
819268
12.73%
Portugal
111815
124757
11.57%
Spain
415025
458846
10.56%
Switzerland
66396
73311
10.41%
Italy
641280
705564
10.02%
Israel
45488
49996
9.91%
Denmark
53578
58826
9.80%
Peru
157650
172825
9.63%
France
591364
647762
9.54%
Czechia
110671
120448
8.83%
Slovenia
20603
22307
8.27%
Belgium
107810
116284
7.86%
Slovakia
54017
58196
7.74%
Poland
405241
435401
7.44%
Sweden
88633
94436
6.55%
South Africa
527630
561992
6.51%
Egypt
570015
605500
6.23%
Croatia
52144
55093
5.66%
Albania
21717
22900
5.45%
Hungary
131229
135090
2.94%
Kazakhstan
131089
134709
2.76%
Bulgaria
109175
112080
2.66%
Serbia
101699
104390
2.65%
Romania
263338
270222
2.61%
Moldova
37314
36554
-2.04%
*
year ended April 2019
**
latest available 12-month period
Table 1 shows a number of countries’ most recent annual death tallies compared with the year ended April 2019, the best baseline period available. May 2018 to April 2019 was chosen because it represents the first full year after the silent influenza pandemic of November 2016 to April 2018. While not a media event, that largely invisible 2017 pandemic was a substantial mortality event, at least in the ‘global north’. A pandemic does not require an authentication from WHO to be an actual pandemic. A pandemic is simply a globally widespread experience of a disruptive contagious disease.
Broadly, Table 1 shows the countries which followed ‘elimination strategies’ near the top for post-pandemic mortality. Not only did countries in the east of the eastern hemisphere (including Aotearoa New Zealand) pursue the most stringent anti-covid policies (and practiced them for the longest time periods), some prematurely claimed to have eliminated (though not eradicated) the disease. For some in East Asia, the 2003 experience of SARS was uppermost in health officials’ minds.
Table 1 also shows that some of the countries worst-hit by the pandemic (especially those in the Southeast European ‘Balkans’) have returned to death tallies comparable with base-year numbers. If South Africa and Egypt are a suitable guide, that return to health normality applies to Africa as well.
The only West European countries with post-pandemic deaths under nine percent more than pre-pandemic deaths are Sweden and Belgium, both countries with high covid death tallies in the first wave of the pandemic, but well below European mortality averages in the second year of the pandemic. Sweden’s 6.55% increase actually overstates its situation by about two percentage points, because, more than in most other countries, deaths there were particularly and unusually low from May 2018 until the start of the pandemic. Also, Australia’s 16.53% is an overstatement, probably by at least two percentage points; this is because tardy Australia’s most recent annual deaths’ data includes the months of December 2021 and January 2022, both high mortality months compared to the following December and January.
New Zealand’s most recent death data uses December 2022 and January 2023, not December 2021 and January 2022. In contrast to Australia, New Zealand’s Table 1 increased mortality experience is understated by a percentage point, because March and April 2019 (included in the pre-pandemic baseline year) had somewhat higher deaths than those same months in 2018. If we had used a baseline year from March 2018 to February 2019, then New Zealand would have had a mortality increase of 17.40%, not 16.13%.
Re East Asia, the numbers for Macau and Hong Kong give a hint of the recent reality in China. For that region we should note also that the South Korea increase in Table 1 (22.56%) is a substantial understatement of reality, because South Korea has not reported ‘total deaths’ after July 2022, and we know that Korea has had many covid cases since then.
We also note that post-pandemic death tallies are high for Japan, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and Finland. These are all countries which, for their regions, were known for their more restrictive public health policies. Finland was widely acclaimed for being the most restrictive of the Nordic countries during the pandemic years. (We also note that Finland had many more deaths than Norway both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, despite having about the same population as Norway; it suggests that many more young Finns are working abroad than young Norwegians. Likewise, we see that New Zealand has more deaths than Ireland, despite both countries having essentially the same population.)
Germany, which has had a particularly worrying recent run of deaths, in Table 1 is not out of step with its western neighbours; although we should note that southern Western Europe has generally had a post-pandemic more normal than northern Western Europe (Sweden excepted).
The critical question, looking to 2023 and 2024, is whether, for the countries towards the top of Table 1, the pandemic has triggered a new normal with persistently higher mortality than in the 2010s’ decade. Or have these countries simply experienced a delayed pandemic mortality experience which will soon subside? If the latter, then we should expect a substantial mortality drop in East Asia and West Europe in the year to April 2024.
Demography and the challenges of predicting the pandemic’s influence on 2020s’ mortality
Demography is a complex subject. Pandemic death rates per capita were high in Eastern Europe because those countries have lost many of their young people to emigration. Increases in death tallies, however, were never so high in those countries. The demography of Europe is particularly complex because many of their older people were born either side of, or during, World War Two; a war with substantial demographic consequences which have not yet fully played out.
The Scandinavian countries in particular had diverse experiences in that war. Sweden was neutral, Norway and Denmark were occupied, while Finland was successively friend and foe to the allied powers. So the change in the number of older people may differ in Sweden compared to the others. Nevertheless, Sweden still compares well with the other neutral countries: Switzerland, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. (Though noting that Spain had its own especially large demographic trauma in 1936 to 1939.)
Another problem in unravelling the demographics of Europe is the substantial international migration between present and former European Union countries, and immigration from former (or present) empire countries. So many people these days die in different countries from which they were born. We know little about the different pandemic and post-pandemic death experiences of immigrants compared to people born in the country of their death.
In most countries deaths in 2022/23 would have been higher compared to 2018/19. The main determinant of death rates is the numbers of people in the oldest age cohorts. About half of all deaths in most countries are of people in their eighties. So the biggest increases, for reasons other than the pandemic, would be due to the rate of increase or decrease of a country’s population of octogenarians. Some countries will have significantly fewer octogenarians after the pandemic, because the pandemic itself took so many.
The second most important reason for changing death tallies is the underlying health of the people. Pandemics take more people in countries which already have substantial populations – especially populations in the 65 to 74 age group – with compromised pre-pandemic health or compromised general immunity. In pandemic years, the main reason for more death is worse underlying health. In other years changes in health status may either accentuate or offset changes in the numbers of people over eighty. While there are health-compromised people of all ages, compromised health – high morbidity or low general immunity – is more likely to have prematurely fatal consequences for people aged 65 to 74.
To summarise the two previous paragraphs, I would argue that the two main predictors of a country’s normal death tally are the numbers of octogenarians in the population, and the numbers of people in the population aged 65 to 74 with compromised health or general immunity. (In addition, some developing countries still have unacceptably high levels of infant mortality.)
The two key aspects of the health status of living populations are morbidity and immunity. The countries which fare best in a novel virus pandemic (or from wave pandemics of pathogens which induce only-short-lived specific immunity) are those with low morbidity and high general immunity. With respect to the present post-pandemic period, the covid coronavirus increased both the morbidity and the immunity of populations. Where these two increases balance out, then a new normal appears which looks substantially like the old normal.
Before the twentieth century, people living rurally were more likely to experience longevity. That changed in the twentieth century, when people living in metropolises gained super-high-immunity levels from living in close proximity to each other (improving immunity); and urbanised populations experienced reduced morbidity as a result of access to a wider range of foods, from more timely access to healthcare services, less exposure to conditions such as malaria, and safer supplies of drinking water.
Big cities still reduce life outcomes for people immigrating from rural areas; for people not yet adapted to city levels of exposure to pathogens, and often having to settle for inferior housing and employment experiences. When governments tamper with the finely-tuned immunity equilibria in our big cities, the potential for deadly unintended consequences has always been there. Such tampering may include the required overuse of facemasks, and the creation of fear around the use of public transport.
The post-pandemic experience of East Asia is not a particularly good advertisement for disruptive public health practices. Sweden was conspicuous by taking the opposite policy tack from that taken in East Asia, minimising disruptions from normal social interaction. Sweden’s different approach was not a result of its greater wisdom or greater laisse-faire liberality; rather it was a result of a mistaken assumption that, by mid-March 2020, many more people had already been infected by the new coronavirus (making it too late for restrictive policies) than actually had been infected.
The interregnum between the two recent respiratory pandemics
Finally, it is worthwhile to suggest reasons why deaths in much of the developed world were especially low from May 2018 to February 2020; a phenomenon particularly marked in Sweden. This was most likely because of the 2017 influenza pandemic – the invisible pandemic (invisible even to demographers, then more attentive to issues other than heightened seasonal mortality). This world disease event left populations more immune, and (because that pandemic took so many) it meant that the post-influenza 2018 population was more healthy and had more immunity than the pre-pandemic 2016 population.
It is normal for post-pandemic death rates to be low for a couple of years. Indeed, it was true around 1919 and 1920, after the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Will it prove to be so this time, from 2023 to say 2025? We should be watching aggregate mortality – in our own countries and other countries – with as great interest as we watch the inflation, unemployment and economic growth data.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Although Labor has returned to power in NSW, it will be in a minority government, with probably 45 seats, two short of a majority, to the Coalition’s 36 (assuming the Liberal Party wins the seat of Ryde, where it is currently ahead as counting continues).
Labor’s position could be further diminished as the government has to provide a speaker. The obvious strategy will be to offer the position to a crossbencher to maintain its numbers on the floor of the lower house. Independent MP for Lake Macquarie, Greg Piper, is a likely candidate, as he was appointed assistant speaker by the previous government.
It’s always been the case, at least for the last 15 years, that the NSW upper house has been controlled by the crossbench and that will be the situation in the lower house, as well. So legislation will have to be navigated through those two parliaments but it’s not necessarily difficult or different from what’s been in place for the last two years.
In fact, no government has had a majority in the Legislative Council since 1988, a situation that looks set to continue in the new parliament.
It is true that towards the end of its term, the Coalition government slipped into a minority position in the lower house, but it could count on the support of a former Liberal on the crossbench. Despite his optimistic prediction, Minns may find the situation he faces in the lower house more complex and difficult, particularly as he has a large legislative agenda to implement.
There are 12 crossbenchers, ranging across the spectrum: Greens and progressives, disenchanted or disendorsed Liberals, ex-Shooters, other regional MPs.
The government will need crossbench votes to win divisions. Three sitting independents – Alex Greenwich, Joe McGirr and Piper – have already offered to support Minns on confidence and supply motions, which will give the government stability in office.
This accords with the principle that independents having the balance of power should support the party with the majority of seats. However, like the other crossbenchers, they will vote on other measures according to their assessment of merit.
It is tempting to divide the crossbenchers according to assumed left or right sympathies. Their voting pattern, in reality, will be more fluid, complex and harder to predict.
Of the three MPs combining to guarantee the government in office, for example, one is a progressive (Greenwich), the others are moderates. The crossbenchers may also band together on issues of common concern, such as procedural reforms to give them more influence in the House.
The government’s lack of control of the lower house means it will potentially operate in an entirely different way.
The government will have no assurance its legislative proposals will be passed unamended – or passed at all. It will not routinely be able to gag debate or silence opposition or crossbench MPs. After years of being dominated by the executive government, power has returned to the parliament.
History shows it can work
The most relevant precedent is the Legislative Assembly from 1991-95. After that election, the Coalition had 49 seats (48 after appointing a speaker) and Labor 46. Four independents held the balance of power in the 99-seat house.
In return for implementation of a charter of reform, three of them – John Hatton, Peter Macdonald and Clover Moore – agreed to support the government on appropriation and supply bills and confidence motions, except where “matters of corruption or gross maladministration” were involved.
Otherwise, the unaligned independents were free to vote as they saw fit, which they certainly did.
The government was forced to negotiate regularly with the independents. It was a slow and sometimes tortuous process. The independents needed time to make their own assessment of proposals and consider the views of interest groups and the opposition.
Under this regime, committees were often established on legislation and other matters, whether the government liked it or not. Debate was unfettered.
In previous parliaments, governments were rarely, if ever, defeated in the lower house; that was not the case between 1991 and 1995.
Government bills were carefully scrutinised and, in some cases, heavily amended; in many instances, better legislation emerged.
The process may at times have been chaotic but the government usually got what it wanted, although it had to accept negotiation and compromise as the price.
Another NSW precedent for coping with a large crossbench is the upper house after the 1999 election.
The balance of power was held by 13 independent and minor party members of the Legislative Council, ranging across the ideological spectrum.
It seemed a recipe for legislative chaos; in fact, it proved to be a relatively stable, even productive, period.
Much of the credit is due to treasurer and leader of the government in the Legislative Council, Michael Egan. He was a skilful parliamentarian and accomplished negotiator who had the ability to accommodate most of the various interests in the house.
His deputy, John Della Bosca, commented perceptively:
I think the idea of having a lot of different crossbenchers actually made it easier, even though in theory they were a block on the government’s program. Generally speaking, because there were so many of them, it was easier to negotiate proposals about amendments or not amending the legislation as proposed. You would think that the more crossbenchers there were, the more difficult it would be, but I think the more crossbenchers there are, in some ways it makes it easier.
Della Bosca believes better legislation resulted from negotiation with the crossbenchers:
There were days when we were pretty frustrated with the crossbench, of course, and probably there were many days that they were very frustrated with us, but I think on the whole it achieved exactly that outcome. I do not think there was any legislation you just could not get through because of the crossbench. I do not think we ever brought anything in that did not eventually get passed, though sometimes in a highly modified form.
To govern effectively, the Minns government needs to accept the crossbenchers have legitimate concerns that should be listened to.
Communication and compromise should be the new order. It may be a wild ride, but democracy is the potential beneficiary.
David Clune does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia’s federal parliament has approved a A$15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, intended to reverse the nation’s dwindling manufacturing sector. It is the “first step” in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election promise “to revive our ability to make world-class products”.
The fund will focus on investing in high-tech manufacturing. There are seven priority areas:
clean energy
medical science
transport
value-added manufacturing in agriculture, forestry and fisheries
value-added manufacturing in mining
military equipment, and
“enabling capabilities”.
The fund is expected to operate commercially and deliver a return on its investments. Its approach will be similar to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which over the past decade has provided more than $10 billion in grants and loans to low-emission energy projects.
Investments will be in the form of loans, equity and guarantees. It will be a co-investment model, meaning private investors will have to match funds provided.
It will start with $5 billion. The other $10 billion will provided in instalments over the rest of the decade. After 2030, investments are expected generate enough revenue to support new projects. These decisions will be made by a board that will be independent of the federal government.
More broadly, some economists argue government-supported investment schemes misallocate resources, give certain businesses an unfair advantage, and slow down innovation over time by investing too much in one area and starving other innovative ideas of resources. As The Economist has put it, trying to “pick winners” can also mean investing in losers.
But government-backed investments do play a crucial role in providing financial support to commercialise new technology, for which attracting private investment is typically tough.
The federal opposition has complained the Albanese government should focus on more immediate challenges facing manufacturers, such as high energy prices and labour shortages.
Opposition frontbencher Paul Fletcher has expressed concern the fund will finance projects that “would not succeed in getting private sector finance – but which for political reasons the government wants to fund”. A factory in a marginal seat, for example.
There are precedents for such concerns. The Morrison government, of which Fletcher was a senior member, did such things with funding for car parks and sporting facilities.
But it is also the case that such pork barrelling didn’t happen with the Morrison government’s $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative, which provided grants in roughly the same priority areas as the new fund.
Despite political and financial incentives to find fault with it, the Albanese government has endorsed the Modern Manufacturing Initiative’s expenditure. It has criticised only the way the Morrison government manipulated the timing of funding announcements.
Nor has the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, established by the Gillard government in 2012, faced such criticisms. It is regarded as a success story across the political spectrum, from groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation to mining magnate Clive Palmer.
The establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission should further give confidence that Albanese, a longtime champion of making things in Australia, is sincere about “complete transparency” for the National Reconstruction Fund.
To but to improve the fund’s chance of success, there are three things that can be done.
First, to achieve the transparency Albanese has promised, the fund should publicly share the reasoning behind its investment decisions, similar to how the Reserve Bank of Australia’s board publishes minutes of its monthly policy meetings. Being open about decision-making will build public trust in the fund’s transparency and fairness.
Second, the National Reconstruction Fund’s investment board will need to clearly outline investment priorities while staying flexible, so projects that span multiple sectors or applications don’t fall between the cracks. Breakthrough ideas may not fit neatly into a single category. For instance, synthetic biology technology can be used in food manufacturing and plastic recycling. It doesn’t belong to just one priority area.
Third, supporting individual projects isn’t enough. Here’s where those “enabling capabilities” are crucial. Changing the trajectory of manufacturing in Australia requires a supportive ecosystem that aligns things like funding and policy priorities in education and training, research being done in universities, immigration settings, and natural advantages.
Projects won’t succeed without skilled workers, strong research backing, and easy access to suppliers and customers.
Australia’s renewable energy sector is an example of a supportive environment that can lead to success. Australia has plenty of sun and wind, a growing number of skilled workers in the renewable energy field, top research institutions, a knowledgeable investor base thanks to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and a growing number of people who care about eco-friendly energy solutions.
By setting clear goals, encouraging innovation, and making decisions transparent, the fund stands the best chance to achieve what it has been created to do.
Jarryd Daymond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New Zealand is a small country that suddenly has big ideas about public transportation projects for its largest city. In February, the physical work began for a partially tunnelled light rail line under the Auckland CBD that will eventually connect to the airport. The project could ultimately have a price tag nearing NZ$30 billion.
Things went big again last week with the release of five options for a second harbour crossing. Four of the five will cost at least $20 billion and involve building another bridge and one or more tunnels for light rail and cars.
While the project is said to be on the fast track, with construction to begin in six years, Aucklanders would be forgiven if they didn’t buy into this timeline. The new options are just the latest in a long line of proposals that date back at least 35 years.
It’s worth reviewing the long and tumultuous history of second Auckland harbour crossing proposals. In the process, we might ask whether a sixth option might, in fact, be the best: apply congestion charging to the Auckland CBD, and give public transport, walking and cycling better access to the existing bridge.
The bridge is the main connection between Auckland’s CBD and its growing North Shore. Getty Images
Bridges and tunnels
The Auckland Harbour Bridge officially opened on May 30 1959. Construction took four years and cost nearly $250 million (in today’s money), but the structure was already too narrow for traffic volumes. Within a decade, extra lanes built in Japan were bolted to the bridge – the so called “Nippon clip-ons”.
From 1988 until 2010, various second crossing options were studied and presented, including:
1988: a plan was developed for either tunnelled public transport or a second bridge
1997: 11 options for a second crossing were studied and sent out for public consultation, including different tunnel or bridge alignments, with the most expensive option being a tunnel at roughly $2.6 billion in today’s dollars
2003: a followup to the 1997 study suggested a combination of a second bridge and a tunnel, costed at around $4.5 billion in today’s dollars
2008: a study of 159 crossing options was narrowed to three options, included either a new bridge or two possibilities for tunnels
2010: a business case was developed for three crossing options, including a second bridge, tunnelled heavy rail, and a tunnelled road, with the highest cost estimate just under $6 billion.
Walking and cycling
The original plans for the bridge had also included tolled cycle lanes, but these were eventually rejected for cost. In 2011, the idea was revived, with the New Zealand Transport Agency (now Waka Kotahi) announcing a “SkyPath” plan to add walking and cycling lanes to the clip-ons. This was added to Auckland Transport’s strategic priority list the same year.
Resource consent for the SkyPath was lodged in 2015 and approved in 2016. The new Labour-led government in 2017 said it would fund the project, with a revised design for the path to sit on its own piers revealed in 2019.
In 2021 Waka Kotahi pulled the plug on the SkyPath plan, citing engineering complexity. The same year, a $685 million standalone cycling and walking bridge was announced. The cost estimate quickly rose to $785 million before it was cancelled just four months later – but not before the government spent $51 million on designs, consultants and engineering plan fees.
Since then, it has been a tale of stop-start (but mostly stop) initiatives, including:
November 2021:Waka Kotahi decided against a cycling and walking “trial” across the bridge but endorsed a series of events for cyclists and walkers in December.
August 2022: Waka Kotahi announced a planned $700,000 one-day trial for walking and cycling would be scrapped, primarily citing concerns about the 6% bridge gradient allowing cyclists to reach speeds of 60km per hour and the potential for pedestrian collisions. (Ironically, one of the new cycling bridge options “would be of a similar gradient” to the current bridge.)
December 2022: Waka Kotahi announced a series of “Walk it, Wheel it” events for three Sundays in March for up to 60,000 Aucklanders to cross the bridge on foot or bike. But this was postponed in early 2023, with no future date announced.
The five new harbour crossing options are now out for public consultation, with a decision due by mid-year and construction to begin in 2029. But given the long history of studying, gathering feedback and then doing nothing about a second crossing (or improving public and active transport options on the existing bridge), some scepticism is warranted.
With projected finish dates ranging from 2039 to 2044, and costs up to $25 billion (assuming no delays or budget blowouts), the options also create more vehicle lanes just a few years before the Emission Reduction Plan’s 2050 target for net zero emissions.
Surely a more sustainable solution would be to institute the long-discussed Auckland CBD congestion charge and reallocate a few lanes on the existing bridge for public transport, cycling and walking.
This would reduce the number of CBD car trips and contribute to meeting those climate goals. If a second crossing is still needed, taking this more immediate action would at least offer additional – and more climate-friendly – travel options in the meantime.
Future-proofing part of Auckland’s transportation network may not require billions of dollars and decades of planning and construction. It could simply mean finally embracing a version of what was planned for the Auckland Harbour Bridge almost 65 years ago.
Timothy Welch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Lobbyists have never been under such intense pressure and scrutiny. There is currently a real momentum building to rein in New Zealand’s wild west lobbying environment.
Politicians challenged to clampdown on lobbying
Political parties are now being challenged to say how they would gain control of New Zealand’s runaway lobbying train. Yesterday, TVNZ’s Q+A published the results of their survey of political parties. The seven main parties were asked whether, in principle, they supported the establishment of 1) an anti-corruption commission, 2) a register of lobbyists, and 3) a lobbying stand-down period.
In response, the Greens, TOP, and Te Pāti Māori said they agreed with all three. Act opposed all three. National opposed an anti-corruption commission but agreed with the other two. And there was no comment from both Labour and NZ First.
Jack Tame also interviewed Australian Professor of political ethics Charles Sampford, who warned New Zealand faced complacency about corruption. As well as recommending an anti-corruption agency for New Zealand, he suggests the establishment of an Ethics Commissioner who could guide Cabinet and the Prime Minister on potential conflicts of interest.
Further support for reform of lobbying
Some lobbyists can clearly see which way the wind is blowing, and are now joining the calls for reform. In his RNZ series on lobbying, Guyon Espiner details how lobbyist Holly Bennett, who used to work for National in the Beehive and now runs the lobbying firm Awhi, has written a letter to other lobbyists calling for them to support things like a code of conduct, an industry oversight body, a stand-down period for senior officials and politicians before they move into lobbying, and a public register of lobbyists.
Others are joining the call for reform. On Friday former Cabinet minister Peter Dunne came out in favour of greater lobbying laws, saying that the current lobbying environment too often has an “unsavoury air of mates helping mates”. He says that reforms such as a register of lobbying and a stand-down period “are matters the next Parliament should address with priority.”
But ultimately Dunne thinks the businesses that employ lobbyists need to realise they just don’t need them. He paints a picture of lobbyists as confidence tricksters who claim special powers due to “their imagined intimate knowledge of the way government works”. His own experience as a minister being lobbied was that they are “little more than professional whingers”.
A similar point was put last week by former press gallery journalist Henry Cooke who says, “a key part of the profession is mystification, reselling what is essentially public information as incredible insider knowledge”. He says he has lobbying acquaintances, and that he thinks that New Zealand isn’t particularly corrupt.
Nonetheless, Cooke says that a judge-led inquiry is now required, to give certainty to the integrity of New Zealand’s political system. After all, there is now a public sense “that some Kiwis seem to be able to get answers out of Government far easier than others – whether it be because they donated big money to a party, paid big money for a lobbyist, or just move in the right circles.”
In contrast, public law specialist Graeme Edgeler believes that a different reform route could be used by government to fix lobbying – he has tweeted that “Lobbying regulation seems like a matter that could be usefully considered by the Law Commission, instead of an Inquiries Act type public inquiry.”
Case study on lobbying
The very nature of the lobbying industry’s subterfuge means that the public knows very little about how much influence any of the lobbying firms have on government decision-making. Fortunately, Guyon Espiner’s RNZ five-part series of articles on lobbying has helped illuminate how the process works.
For example, in his final article last week, Espiner documented how in 2021 lobbyist Neale Jones lobbied Stuart Nash, then the Minister of Forestry, to allow pine trees to be included in the carbon credits of the Emission Trading Scheme. Nash made the change, affording Jones’ client, New Zealand Carbon Farming – one of the biggest landowners in the country – millions of dollars in carbon credits from the Government.
Espiner uncovered communications showing Jones and Nash were on “familiar terms”. Similarly, Espiner found other communications from Jones that showed how close he is to Cabinet ministers: “ministers are addressed on a first name basis and are only a text message away.” According to Espiner, Jones even invited Andrew Little to his birthday party, and the two are “close friends”. He texts other ministerial staff addressing them as “comrade”.
Commenting on his difficulty finding out any details of what lobbyists like Jones do and how they operate, Espiner complains “There are no rules to follow, no laws to break and no watchdog to bark.” He says, in this regard, “New Zealand, is far less transparent than in the US.”
The Lobbyists strike back
Although Neale Jones is refusing to engage any of Espiner’s allegations, back in late 2021 he wrote a defence of lobbying in reply to a column I had written. Writing in an op-ed for the Herald, he said analyses about his work are just “conspiratorial” and “as with any conspiracy theory, the reality is far less exciting.”
Jones sought to paint his lobbying firm’s work as being about the common good, preferring the terms “advocacy” and “campaigning” instead of “lobbying”, and emphased the type of work that they do being for progressive causes: “The reasons clients come to us vary: It could be the global green energy company that wants to operate in New Zealand but needs help on the ground to give them some local context and make sure they’re talking to the right people. It could be the Māori health provider urgently seeking funding to get its community vaccinated but coming up against the brick wall of bureaucracy. It could be the Kiwi business facing unintended consequences from poorly drafted legislation. Or the trade union that wants some help sharpening its messaging and telling its members’ stories.”
Rather than serving corporate clients, Jones said his work is simply “a vital part of our democracy”. Replying to my analysis of lobbying, Jones protests: “The world that Bryce describes, of quiet winks and nods and corrupt backroom deals to undermine the democratic will, simply doesn’t reflect the New Zealand reality.” Instead, “When we achieve results, it’s not because someone has done their old mate Neale a favour. It is because we have engaged constructively, presented effective arguments and understood how a client’s ask aligns with the Government’s priorities.”
Jones also argued that those with worries about the influence of lobbyists should be assuaged by the existence in New Zealand of “a strong, independent public service”, an effective Official Information Act, “regular proactive release of all Ministerial diaries” and parliamentary Press Gallery that is focused on exposing “improper behaviour”.
Last week, another lobbyist defended of his profession and his quick exit through the revolving door. Former Cabinet Minister Kris Faafoi penned a justification for his shift into lobbying, arguing that his work in corporate lobbying is simply an extension of his lifelong attempts to progress social justice, especially for those at the bottom of society.
In a column about his achievements, the world leaders he has met, and the people he has helped, Faafoi points out that he’s just “humble Tokelauan” who likes to “stick it to the man” and “swim against the flow”.
As to those that have questioned the ethics of shifting straight from Cabinet to a lucrative career in lobbying, Faafoi says: “People residing in supposedly mighty places telling me what I can or cannot do, and being generally judgy. I’d like to thank them for living their faultless lives and trying to lecture me about what I can and can’t do.”
Faafoi explains that he simply wants to help people with his talents, as “by virtue of living and working in the capital I have learned to speak fluent Wellington and happily translate it for others.”
Will the pleas of lobbyists convince the public? Do their claims that there’s “nothing to see here” really stand up?
Unfortunately for the lobbyists, calls for reform are growing. And increasingly the public can see that there’s a blatant distortion in the political process where the wealthy can influence government policies to protect and increase their wealth – this grates against New Zealanders’ egalitarian impulses.
It’s now going to take the very best spin efforts of the lobbyists to convince their politician friends not to step in and do the right thing. For the sake of democracy and fairness, let’s hope the politicians can withstand that lobbying.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
The following story deals with reports of childhood maltreatment, including neglect and physical and sexual abuse.
This week, we released results from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study. It is the first national survey of the population aged 16 years and older about their experiences of child maltreatment. It’s also the first study globally to examine combined exposure to all five specific domains of child maltreatment and associated family risk factors for multiple types of child maltreatment.
We surveyed 8,500 randomly selected Australians aged 16 and over. We found 8.9% had experienced neglect; 28.5% sexual abuse; 30.9% emotional abuse; 32.0% physical abuse; and 39.6% exposure to domestic violence.
While it is shocking to learn more than three in five Australians have experienced child abuse or neglect, there’s more to consider. Many Australians have experienced more than one type. This is critical to understanding the burden of maltreatment and its impacts across life.
physical abuse: the use of force likely to cause injury, harm, pain, or breach of dignity
sexual abuse: contact and non-contact non-consensual sexual acts inflicted on a child by another person (adult or child)
emotional abuse: acts by parents or carers that convey to a child they are worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted
neglect: when parents or carers repeatedly fail to provide the basic developmentally appropriate necessities of life such as food, shelter or health care
exposure to domestic violence: hearing or seeing acts of violence towards parents or carers in the home.
For Australians who experience any childhood maltreatment, experiencing more than one type is the “typical” experience (almost two out of three who report any maltreatment). Our data show Australian children are more likely to experience multi-type maltreatment (reported by 39.4% of our participants) than single-type maltreatment (22.8%).
Four types of family adversity each more than doubles the risk of multi-type maltreatment:
parental separation/divorce
living with someone who is mentally ill, suicidal, or severely depressed
living with someone who had a problem with alcohol or drugs
family economic hardship.
Girls are more likely to experience multi-type maltreatment (43.2%) than boys (34.9%). The highest prevalence was for those with diverse gender identitites: two-thirds experienced multi-type maltreatment (66.1%).
Although harrowing, our data also reported rates of physical and sexual abuse (in some contexts) are showing some recent declines. One way we determined this was that the younger participants in our study (aged 16–24) had a lower prevalence of sexual abuse (25.7%) than the full sample (28.6%). Similarly, fewer participants aged 16–24 reported physical abuse (28.2%) than all those surveyed (32.0%).
This suggests current policies might be helping. But the continued high rates of most forms of maltreatment, and of experiencing multiple types, shows the need for greater investment in prevention to stop harm from occurring in the first place.
Our view of child maltreatment has typically focused on the experience of individual types, without considering the possibility of their overlap. We now know multi-type maltreatment is common.
We also found girls were at greater risk of most forms of child maltreatment, but particularly multiple types of maltreatment and their associated health consequences. So, as well as population-wide strategies, we need to put extra effort into ensuring the safety of girls, and those who are gender diverse.
We can approach childhood maltreatment on three fronts:
1. Prevention
Child protection services are overwhelmed, so simply asking them to do more is destined to fail. Instead, we need to shift our focus to primary prevention strategies across the community. Global evidence shows violence against children is preventable.
Our attitudes towards children must change, to value them, uphold their rights, and prioritise their safety.
Parents and caregivers need access to evidence-based supports to improve parenting skills, provide safe environments for children and young people, to stop maltreatment from happening in the first place.
Australia’s strategies for creating child-safe organisations to prevent institutional child sexual abuse needs to be adapted for creating safety for children in the home too. Parents could “assess” the suitability of adults to care safely, to understand and address situational risks (depending on the places, the people, and the activities involved), to equip their children with knowledge about sexuality and skills regarding consent and respect, and be prepared to listen and respond to all safety concerns – including harmful sexual behaviour from other children.
National strategies for addressing sexual abuse, child maltreatment and domestic and family violence need to recognise the high likelihood of exposure to multiple harm types. Child maltreatment prevention efforts need to link with points of vulnerability, including when parents separate, suffer mental illness, substance misuse, economic hardship, or family violence.
Families need evidence-based parenting support. Shutterstock
2. Responding to adversity
When we see families struggling, we need to keep the focus on children as well as their parents. When working with families who are going through adversities – including mental illness, addiction, poverty, family violence, or separation – we need to ask child-centred questions about parents’ care responsibilities.
If we pay closer attention to what’s going on in young people’s lives, we can identify vulnerability early. We can gently convey information about the increased risk of multiple types of maltreatment. And we can provide families with support that works, tailored to their circumstances and challenges.
When working with clients struggling with mental health issues or substance misuse, practitioners should recognise this group is likely to be primarily victim-survivors of multiple forms of child maltreatment.
Teachers, doctors, therapists, parents and carers should learn about how child maltreatment impacts on health throughout life.
Prevention, protection, and treatment services must coordinate to create safety and recovery from all forms of child maltreatment, particularly when they occur in combination. Our results make it clear we need urgent action.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or contact Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
Daryl Higgins receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and a range of government departments, agencies, and service providers. He is a Chief Investigator on the Australian Child Maltreatment Study, which is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Project Grant (APP1158750). The ACMS receives additional funding and contributions from the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; the Department of Social Services; and the Australian Institute of Criminology The lead Chief Investigator on the ACMS is Ben Mathews, from QUT. Other Chief Investigators are: Rosana Pacella, James G. Scott, David Finkelhor, Franziska Meinck, Holly E. Erskine, Hannah J. Thomas, David Lawrence & Michael P. Dunne. Thanks to Divna M. Haslam & Eva Malacova for assistance with project management and data analysis.
