Anti-vaxxers are winning local elections across Western Australia
“The appeal of local governments, Harris argued, is that they allow insurgent groups like Stand Up Now Australia to subvert the party-entrenched higher levels of government. He said that he believed his group was tapping into an anti-institutional sentiment that is widely felt, even bragging about having recently received words of support during a phone call with former Liberal Party federal president and campaign director Brian Loughnane. "
Anti-vaxxers are winning local elections across Western Australia - Crikey
CSIRO accused of not disclosing BP input into scientific reports
According to internal documents, the CSIRO reports were eventually published in scientific journals and were used in BP’s legal defence, but first vetted by BP’s lawyers.
“Within at least one of these documents, we have identified nine studies with CSIRO employees listed as either the primary or co-authors – wherein BP’s involvement was either undisclosed or insufficiently disclosed"
CSIRO accused of allowing BP to vet research on catastrophic oil spill
A long overdue movement: Web Revival
“The goal is to find what was best about the early web and what is best about new technologies and merge the two into a model for tomorrow; while kicking all the Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s to the curb so we can get on with our lives. The citizens of the web deserve more respect than to be boxed into cubicles, limited to 280 characters, studied and rebranded.
The Web Revival is about building a sense of mystery, humour, humility and optimism in technology. The Web Revival above all else values action; we avoid perfectionism because it limits action - the Web Revival encourages creating and sharing things, even if they are small, broken, incomplete and Warning Under Construction.”
Intro to the Web Revival #1: What is the Web Revival? - Melon’s Thoughts
Kagi’s Small Web is an interesting effort to fight back against the enshittification of search by bringing back the blogroll.
And the likelihood and impact of the release of shallow methane clathrates remains largely unknown.
Fifty Years on, the Whitlam government's Community Health Program is more relevant than ever
On Friday I had the privilege of attending a forum Celebrating the Whitlam Community Health Program: Lessons for the Future and participating on a panel at the Whitlam Institute.
The forum was the culmination of an ARC-funded Project looking at Contemporary lessons from a history of Aboriginal, women’s and generalist community health services in Australia 1970-2020, which involved more than a dozen investigators from nine universities and partner organisations.
The Community Health Program
The Community Health Program was established in 1973 and within three years it had funded over 700 projects, including community health centres, Aboriginal medical services, and women’s health centres.
Gough Whitlam, in a 1993 keynote address to the Australian Community Health Association’s National Conference in Adelaide in 1993Communities must look beyond the person who is sick in bed or who needs medical attention. The (Hospitals and Health Services) Commission will be concerned with more than just hospital services. The concept and financial support will extend to the development of community-based health services and the sponsoring of preventive health programs.
Even though the program was gouged by later governments many of the services funded still exist. For example I’ve worked with the Liverpool Women’s Health Centre this year, which was founded by a collective in 1975 and funded through the CHP.
The vision of the CHP remains relevant today: ensuring that people can have access to relevant,meaningful multidisciplinary care in the community. When the CHP was conceived in the early ’70s it sought to meet the preventive care needs, to address inequalities, to reduce demands on hospital emergency departments, and tackle rising rates of chronic disease – issues which we have gone backwards on since.
The presentations and panel discussions highlighted that while the community health sector remains dynamic, Commonwealth engagement with the sector has been erratic. There’s a need to return governance to communities, reduce the variability in services offered by community health between states and regions, and to return to block funding rather than project funding. Primary Health Networks are well placed to tackle these issues, and to foster the kind of resilient local service systems that we’ll need to address environmental, social and economic shocks in the near future.
Thanks to all involved for a very thought-provoking afternoon.
Project team
Researcher and Project Manager
Dr. Connie Musolino, University of Adelaide.
Chief Investigators
- Professor Fran Baum AO, Stretton Health Equity, University of Adelaide.
- Associate Professor Tamara Mackean, Flinders University.
- Professor Warwick Anderson, The University of Sydney.
- Emeritus Professor Colin MacDougall, Flinders University.
- Professor Virginia Lewis, La Trobe University.
- Associate Professor David Legge, La Trobe University.
- Dr. Toby Freeman, University of Adelaide.
Partner Investigators
- Patricia Turner AM, CEO of the National Aboriginal Community ControlledHealth Organisation (NACCHO).
- Denise Fry, Sydney Local Health District.
- Paul Laris, Paul Laris and Associates.
- Tony McBride, Tony McBride & Associates.
- Jennifer Macmillan, La Trobe University.
Researchers and Students
- Dr. Helen van Eyk, University of Adelaide.
- Dr. James Dunk, The University of Sydney.
- Abdullah Sheriffdeen, Flinders University.
- Jacob Wilson, Flinders University.
New York rideshare conpanies agree to pay USD $328 million owed to drivers
“For years, Uber and Lyft systemically cheated their drivers out of hundreds of millions of dollars in pay and benefits while they worked long hours in challenging conditions,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “These drivers overwhelmingly come from immigrant communities and rely on these jobs to provide for their families. This settlement will ensure they finally get what they have rightfully earned and are owed under the law.”
Uber, Lyft agree to pay combined $328 million for withholding money from drivers - ABC News US
"We spent a whole week extracting from the UN officials we met information that's relevant": A.I. Bros muscling in on Israel's occupation of Palestine
Shults and Lane are aware that claiming that AI could “solve the crisis” between Israelis and Palestinians is likely to result in a lot of eye-rolling if not outright hostility, especially given the horrific scenes coming out of Gaza daily. So they are quick to dispel that this is what they are trying to do.
“Quite frankly, if I were to phrase it that way, I’d roll my eyes too,” Shults says. “The key is that the model is not designed to resolve the situation; it’s to understand, analyze, and get insights into implementing policies and communication strategies.”
The notion that greater insights can come from chucking flawed training data into a model than asking experts or people affected is a central, flawed conceit of all current A.I.
The UN Hired an AI Company to Untangle the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis - Wired
Medicare’s forty-year update
Interesting Inside Story piece from Mike Steketee about the Australian Government’s efforts to update Medicare - and the pressures involved:
Creating multidisciplinary teams of health professionals and more alternatives to expensive hospital care harks all the way back to the community health centres established by the Whitlam government in the early 1970s, for which funding was cut by subsequent governments…
Medicare’s forty-year update - Inside Story
Timely given tomorrow’s Whitlam Institute Policy Forum on Celebrating the Whitlam Community Health Program: Lessons for the Future
When climate adaptation exacerbates the problems
Maladaptation is usually understood as referring to the unintended consequences of well-meant measures to reduce climate vulnerability. But it also includes the fallout from decisions that favour technical fixes over more holistic approaches.
Climate adaptation is not a neutral or apolitical process. It can perpetuate problematic approaches, including colonial land practices and the exclusion of Indigenous voices. This can create tenuous resource distribution, erode democratic governance and compromise Indigenous sovereignty, exacerbating vulnerabilities. It can also subvert community-driven bottom-up adaptation, instead focusing on national agendas caught up in international politics.
Useful points in this Conversation article by Ritodhi Chakraborty and Claire Burgess:
