Digital-only local newspapers will struggle to serve the communities that need them most

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Chrisanthi Giotis, University of Technology Sydney

This week News Corp Australia announced the end of the print editions of 112 suburban and regional mastheads – about one-fifth of all of Australia’s local newspapers. Of those, 36 will close and 76 become purely online publications.

Getting the chop entirely are small regional newspapers such as the Herbert Valley Express in far north Queensland (with a circulation of less than 3,000). Those going digital include free suburban papers such as Sydney’s Manly Daily, established in 1906. (Until as recently as 2017 it came out five times a week. Since 2018 is has been published twice a week.)

Whether the online-only papers can survive remains to be seen. But our research at the Centre for Media Transition suggests it will be hard for them to match what local print editions offered communities.

Losing readers and advertisers

Like print media in general, local newspapers have been squeezed by readers and advertisers moving online. Most of the revenue, even for those with a cover price, has come from advertising. This has been eroded by the likes of Google and Facebook as well as localised classified sites such as Gumtree.

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While this has has happened at slower pace than the loss of the “rivers of gold” for metropolitan newspapers, the “desertification” of local news has progressed steadily. In the decade to 2018, 106 local and regional newspapers closed in Australia, leaving 21 local government areas – 16 in regional areas – without a local newspaper.

Those that have survived have seen their staff slashed, with reporters expected to produce more “content” at the cost of doing the serious reporting that made local newspapers so valuable to their communities.

Local media ‘keystones’

As Danish researcher Rasmus Kleis Nielsen notes in Local Journalism: The decline of newspapers and the rise of digital media (IB Taurus, 2016), local newspapers have been the “keystone” of “local news ecosystems”.

No other local media comes close to the local coverage they provide. “Most of the many stories about local politics produced by the local paper never appear anywhere else,” says Nielsen. Local radio and television have tended to piggyback on their work.

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Without this reporting, local democracy suffers. Research in the United States shows local papers are essential to keep local government accountable.

Local news doesn’t scale

Given declining revenue for traditional print, and the cost of printing, moving to digital-only platforms was perhaps inevitable.

But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the move by killing off advertising from local businesses such as restaurants and pubs. In April News Corp suspended the print runs of 60 local papers. Just three – the Wentworth Courier, Mosman Daily and North Shore Times, serving Sydney’s most affluent suburbs – will resume, thanks to their lucrative property advertising.

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Making the rest viable as digital-only local news services is going to be tricky for two reasons.

The first is to do with how online advertising works. The second is how readers in these areas relate to the news, and their willingness to pay for online news.

A key characteristic of the historical readership and advertising markets for local newspaper is their “bounded” nature. But the defining characteristics of online news and advertising is “scaleability”.

Once all newspapers could largely dictate prices to advertisers. This was particularly the case with local papers, often the only game in town. But the game has changed. What they can charge for online advertising is a fraction of what they once could for print.

Most metro newspapers responded with plans to grow their readership by providing their content free online. The idea was that more readers would help maintain them as an attractive advertising platform.

This has generally not proved the winning strategy they had hoped. So papers from The Age to The Daily Telegraph have been moving to paywalls, enticing their print buyers to online subscriptions.

Unwillingness to pay

Our research suggests doing the same with non-metropolitan newspapers is likely to be harder. Readers in rural and regional areas are less willing than those in cities to pay for online news services.

As part of our report Regional News Media: State of Play published in 2019, we surveyed 266 people living in regional and rural areas, demographically representative of the population of country Australia.

Just 14% indicated willingness to pay for news online, with 49% saying they would not (and 37% unsure).

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The News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra has found similar reluctance to pay. The results of its Digital News Report Australia 2019 show just 12% of regional news consumers had paid for online news, compared with 16% of urban news consumers. More detailed research produced for our report shows the difference is starkest for subscriptions.

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Poorest communities hurt the most

That unwillingness to pay for online content may change if it’s the only way to get local news. Attitudes to online subscriptions are shifting, and people do value local news. Research commissioned for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry found 71% of the population rated it as important as national news for social participation.

But the portents aren’t great for quality local news coverage – particularly in regional areas. The likelihood is further desertification of the local news landscape, with poorer communities most affected.

This is confirmed by US research that shows the people with the least access to local news are often “the poorest, least educated and most isolated”.

As Matthew Hindman of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has noted: “Even the clearest local digital success stories employ only a few reporters – far less than the number laid off from the papers in their own cities.

“Worrisome, too, is the fact they have found the most traction in the affluent, social-capital rich communities that need them least.”

Chrisanthi Giotis, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How do we detect if coronavirus is spreading in the community?

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Joanne Macdonald, University of the Sunshine Coast

The daily number of new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) cases is now nine times higher outside China than in the country where the disease was first detected.

In Australia, reports this week of local transmission of the coronavirus, which causes the disease now called COVID-19, are a turning point in our disease management.

Our disease surveillance systems are well placed to keep abreast of COVID-19 and provide some reassurance that transmission is unlikely to go undetected in the community. But there’s still more we could do.

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Why is the coronavirus hard to detect?

Detecting all people with COVID-19 is a global problem. There are too many existing respiratory infections, such as colds and flus, in any country to be able to test everyone with coronavirus symptoms.

Each of us gets around two to three upper respiratory tract infections a year. Globally, that amounts to around around 18.75 billion infections a year.

There are not enough testing kits readily available to test people at this scale.

So who is tested?

In Australia, people are currently tested for the coronavirus if they’ve travelled from or through a country considered to pose a risk of transmission in the 14 days before getting sick, or if they have a link to a known case.

This testing criteria has changed as the outbreak progressed, and will continue to do so.

Currently, only those with a relevant travel history or contact with a known case are tested.
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How else do we track possible cases?

Apart from directly testing people suspected of having COVID-19, Australia has a surveillance plan to detect coronavirus in people or populations who don’t know they’re infected.

Australia’s emergency response plan for mitigating COVID-19 says we will use surveillance networks set up for the influenza pandemic emergency reponse plan and some of this is already occurring.

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The Australian Sentinel Practices Research Network (ASPREN) is a network of GPs who log the number of patients they see in total, compared to the number of patients they see with influenza-like illness. These GPs collect samples from a small subset of those patients to see if COVID-19 is circulating. Samples are then sent to SA Pathology for testing.

Another surveillance network that may be activated is FluCAN. This reports on the number of hospitalisations due to a disease, usually influenza, as well as clinical data from the cases. The information helps public health experts get a better picture of how severe the disease is, and the symptoms.

But while these systems can monitor disease levels in those sick enough to seek medical care, they don’t give us an indication of the amount of milder disease that might be circulating in our communities.

It’s unclear how long surveillance systems take to detect community transmission.
James Gourley/AAP

This is where an online surveillance system called FluTracking can help. Anyone in the community can join and answer two simple questions each week about whether they have a fever and/or a cough.

The system provides information on how much influenza-like illness is circulating in the community. If we’re seeing more than usual, it might signify a community outbreak.

FluTracking was activated for COVID-19 surveillance last month.

What else could we be doing?

There are questions, however, about how early in an outbreak the surveillance systems will detect cases.

Will they detect community transmission when an outbreak reaches ten cases? Or will it take hundreds or even thousands of cases to trigger a warning through the network?

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Innovations from other countries suggest there are additional measures Australia could adopt to improve our surveillance networks.

Testing at home or on the road

London adopted a system at the end of January to test mild cases of disease in the patients’ homes. This helps with self-isolation and reducing disease spread.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh has opened a drive-through testing clinic to reduce the chances of viral spreading.

Australia’s emergency response plans include provisions to mobilise flu clinics to help keep patients from overwhelming emergency services. Drive-through services could be an excellent addition to these existing plans.

Rapid testing

One of the biggest concerns with current testing is the time it takes to ship a sample to a laboratory for testing. This can result in a delay of one to two days before getting the results. During peak epidemic times, testing can’t cope with demand.

Researchers in China, however, have reportedly developed a rapid coronavirus test that can detect the virus using a fingerprick of blood in 15 minutes. The test detects if the body has mounted an immune response (Ig M antibodies) to the virus.

While the data is not yet published, the researchers reported success from the 600 samples they tested.

Rapid diagnostic tests are typically cheap to manufacture, can be mass produced, and can be easily used by health workers outside a laboratory.

Reporting on negative test results and surveillance systems

Positive COVID-19 cases from all the surveillance sources are reported as they occur. But while influenza surveillance reports include the number of negative tests results, it’s unclear whether COVID-19 surveillance reports will do the same.

Reporting on negative tests results could help ease community concern that coughs and sneezes people see on the train or in their office are unlikely to be due to the undetected spread of COVID-19.

Local health services should also provide regular updates on the types of COVID-19 surveillance actively being performed, and in which communities. This information can help reduce anxiety levels and assure communities that spread of coronavirus can be effectively monitored.

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Joanne Macdonald, Associate Professor, Molecular Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is herd immunity and how many people need to be vaccinated to protect a community?

The vaccine coverage needed for herd immunity varies from disease to disease.
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Hassan Vally, La Trobe University

The term herd immunity comes from the observation of how a herd of buffalo forms a circle, with the strong on the outside protecting the weaker and more vulnerable on the inside.

This is similar to how herd immunity works in preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Those who are strong enough to get vaccinated directly protect themselves from infection. They also indirectly shield vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated.

There are various reasons a person may not be able to be successfully vaccinated. People undergoing cancer treatment, and whose immune systems are compromised, for instance, are impaired in their ability to develop protective immunity from all vaccines. Often, people who can’t be vaccinated are susceptible to the most serious consequences from being infected.

Another vulnerable group are babies. Infants under six months of age are susceptible to serious complications from influenza. Yet they can’t be given the flu vaccine as their immune systems are not strong enough.

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How does herd immunity work?

For a contagious disease to spread, an infectious agent needs to find susceptible (non-immune) people to infect. If it can’t, the chain of infection is interrupted and the amount of disease in the population reduces.

Another way of thinking about it is that the disease needs susceptible victims to survive in the population. Without these, it effectively starves and dies out.

If most of the population is immunised, the disease dies out.
NIAID, CC BY

What level of coverage provides herd immunity?

How many people need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity varies from disease to disease.

Measles can be transmitted through coughing and sneezing and the virus causing measles can survive outside the body for up to two hours. So it’s possible to catch measles just by being in the same room as someone who is ill if you touch a surface they’ve coughed or sneezed on.

In contrast, Ebola can only be spread by direct contact with infected secretions (blood, faeces or vomit) and therefore requires close contact with an ill person. This makes it much less spreadable.

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We can determine how contagious a disease is by tracking its spread throughout a population. In doing so, we can attribute each disease a reproductive number denoted by the symbol Ro. The bigger the Ro the more easily the disease is spread throughout the population.

If everyone who has a disease on average infects two people, the Ro for that disease is 2. This means the disease, relatively speaking, is not particularly contagious. However, if everyone who has a disease infects ten people on average, it would have an Ro of 10, which means it’s a much more contagious disease.

We can use the Ro for a disease to calculate the herd immunity threshold, which is the minimum percentage of people in the population that would need to be vaccinated to ensure a disease does not persist in the population. The more contagious a disease, the higher the threshold.

Measles is one of the most infectious diseases to affect humans with an Ro of 12-18. To achieve herd immunity to measles in a population we need 92-95% of the population to be vaccinated.

Current data indicates full vaccine coverage for five year olds in Australia is sitting at around the 95% level. However, vaccination rates in some communities have fallen below ideal levels, making them susceptible to measles outbreaks.

The overwhelming success of measles vaccinations means many people have no memory of what this disease looks like, and this has resulted in its effects being underestimated. Measles can cause blindness and acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), which can result in permanent brain damage.

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Herd immunity, or community immunity, as it’s sometimes called, is a powerful public health tool. By ensuring those who can be vaccinated do get vaccinated we can achieve herd immunity and prevent the illness and suffering that comes from the spread of infectious diseases.

Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is bottom-pinching still ‘indecent’ by today’s community standards?

It wasn’t okay to touch people inappropriately in the 1970s and 80s, and it still isn’t now.
Elen Tkacheva/Shutterstock

Hadeel Al-Alosi, Western Sydney University

In a recent court case in Western Australia, Magistrate Michelle Ridley ruled that “in an era of twerking” and easy access to pornography, it was not an indecent assault when a police officer pinched a woman’s backside.

Here’s what happened. In December 2017, 48-year-old police officer of 17 years, Andrew Ramsden, participated in a yearly wheelchair basketball charity event. After the game, the anonymous complainant asked if she could have a “serious photo” with other members of the police team.

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But when posing for the photo, Ramsden thought it would be funny to startle her by pinching her buttocks, and she jumped forward in surprise when he did so. Ramsden reportedly then said to her either “I hope you take this the right way” or “don’t take this the wrong way”.

He was charged with “unlawfully and indecently assaulting another person” under section 323 of the Criminal Code (WA). And he was eventually found not guilty.

But twerking, grinding, and the easy availability of pornography should never be an excuse for sexual harassment. This argument effectively shifts the blame on victims and implies that the sexualisation of society means women consent to being sexually harassed, which is far from the truth.

And in the era of the #MeToo movement, where women are holding men to account for sexual harassment, it seems the court in the Ramsden case hasn’t caught up to this wider cultural shift.

What is considered ‘indecent’?

Determining if an act is “indecent” requires considering the intention of the accused.

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The courts have stated for an assault to be indecent there

must be a sexual connotation to the activity. It must be an activity which offends community standards of propriety prevailing at the relevant time.

In Ramsden’s case, the magistrate held that the act was not indecent because it was not done for a sexual purpose. And the WA Supreme Court recently upheld the magistrate’s decision, and acquitted him.

The magistrate and the Supreme Court rejected the prosecution’s argument:

the prevailing standards of the community today are that any touching by a man of the buttocks of a woman is inherently indecent.

It has never been okay

Determining community standards is best left to a jury rather than a single judge or magistrate to help ensure “the application of the law is fair and consistent with community standards”. However, no jury was used in Ramsden’s case, so it was up to the magistrate alone to decide whether today’s community would regard pinching a person’s bottom as indecent.

Magistrate Ridley said in the 1970s and 1980s, “a pinch on the bottom was naughty and seen as overtly sexual and inappropriate for that time”. But added nowadays “the thought of a pinch on the bottom is almost a reference to a more genteel time”.

Magistrate Ridley believed pinching a person’s backside lost its overtly sexual connotation “in an era of twerking and grinding, simulated sex and easy access to pornography”.

But it wasn’t okay to touch people inappropriately then, and it still isn’t now.

The worldwide #MeToo movement, which the prosecution referred to in the trial, is just one example showing the significant cultural shift in societal views of sexual harassment.

On appeal, the Supreme Court accepted the movement had led to an

increase in the number of complaints by women and to increase awareness of the unacceptability of such acts and conduct.

However, it held that no evidence was put forward to the magistrate

upon which a finding could be made that the effect of the movement itself had resulted in a change in community standards as to the ‘acts’ and ‘conduct’ that should, at law, be deemed ‘indecent’.

Cultural change takes time. The #MeToo movement is a positive step in changing how we respond to sexual assault. Implying pornography and dancing excuses sexual harassment is a step backwards.

University of Technology Sydney criminal law lecturer Dr Katherine Fallah criticised the Ramsden decision. In an interview on Triple J, Fallah made an excellent point, arguing:

The statement about twerking and about porn are offered in a fairly derisory way of talking about things that are very remote from the facts of the case – here we have a woman having a photo taken after … a wheelchair basketball charity event.

The bottom line

A person’s backside is an intimate part of one’s body and no one should have to tolerate unwanted contact of their private parts for someone else’s amusement.

The Ramsden case fails to reinforce this message because of the definition of “indecency”, which requires a sexual motive for the act.

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Australian legislators need to step in and make it clear that deliberately pinching a person’s backside is a form of sexual harassment. Without consent, such conduct is unacceptable, regardless of whether it is done for a sexual purpose or in a poor attempt at humour.

The bottom line is that “bum pinching isn’t — and has never been OK”.

Hadeel Al-Alosi, Lecturer, School of Law, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Accountability is key to building trust in Australia’s intelligence community

The Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent “war on terror” had a transformative impact on the handling of secrecy and surveillance activities in government programs.
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Daniel Baldino, University of Notre Dame Australia

Intelligence doesn’t have to be, and rarely is, James Bond-esque. Indeed, 007 is the world’s worst spy: everyone knows who he is, meaning he is compromised, exposed and susceptible to blackmail before he even arrives to save the day.

But the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, and the all-encompassing “war on terror” that followed, did have a major transformative impact on the handling of secrecy and surveillance activities in government programs.

One impact has been the growth of executive authority in national security. This has exacerbated demonstrable tensions between civil liberties, trust and secrecy. As noted by former ASIO chief David Irvine, the public will always have some degree of suspicion regarding the secret function of intelligence agencies.

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There is much to be gained by having an electorate better educated in the work of the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC). An informed public is better placed to question or accept the need for Australia’s intelligence agencies. This extends to the merits of expanding budgets, powers, oversight and responsibilities.

A war of choice

In the botched hunt for Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles in 2003, the “slam dunk” assessments used to build a preemptive war rationale corroded public confidence in political leadership and the intelligence industry.

The WMD fiasco was accompanied by an inexhaustible antagonism around the world about the role of spies and intelligence agencies.

It is now widely accepted that Iraq has been a strategic disaster. Yet many core public debate points remain conflicted and uncertain. To what extent should an intelligence “failure” be traced back to failings in domestic leadership, a selective approach to intelligence estimates and a culture of political spin that seeks external scapegoats?

Cynicism about the credibility of the intelligence sector has not abated. US President Donald Trump, a conspiracy theorist who famously questioned former President Barack Obama’s citizenship, has maintained his theories into the Oval Office. Trump has both embraced and distorted the term “Deep State”. This emotive term is based on the idea that security elites and institutions are deliberately attempting to undermine (or potentially overthrow) the government. Trump has even claimed that America’s spies are acting like Nazis.

His imagery of a corrupt, rogue and monolithic intelligence bogeyman out to topple him is downright bogus. But its rhetorical simplicity plays into the public’s pre-existing fears about a shadowy political world.

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At the same time, push-back against Trump’s political tactics and self-serving showmanship doesn’t mean the intelligence community should be immune from criticism and accountability.

The CIA, for instance, has a lengthy history of pushing or breaking moral and legal boundaries in locations such as Latin America. Ditto the Iran-Contra affair.

US intelligence has also been accused of monitoring human rights workers and harassing civil society groups and social dissenters engaged in legitimate political activities.

Likewise, in Australia in 1977, the Hope Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security unearthed deep-seated problems with principles of propriety, including legality, within ASIO.

The end result of inquiries into the actions of the intelligence community often raises more questions than answers, which feeds public mistrust and anxiety about intelligence and the function of government.

As we have matured, successive Australian governments have extended and deepened the responsibilities of the intelligence community. It is imperative that future boundaries set for our intelligence agencies are not crossed. For example, we should ensure that the AIC collects information as needed, not just because it can.

Unnecessary snooping is just one area that speaks to the broader importance of oversight, accountability, and an educated and understanding electorate.

Sunlight as disinfectant

The overall mandate of the AIC is to provide the government with “information” to better enable it to understand the issues confronting it. This, in turn, is meant to facilitate coherent policymaking.

However, good intelligence will not automatically guarantee good policy. Intelligence, after all, is an imperfect science and just one of the tools available to policymakers.

The task of intelligence agencies is not an easy one. Indeed, large budgets, hardworking staff and all the expertise in the world cannot ensure that a threat, or opportunity, will be recognised or acted upon in a timely fashion. Connecting the dots will rarely result in an end-product of absolute certainty.

At the same time, the demands of policymakers should not distort or corrupt intelligence – intelligence must inform policy (not visa versa). Intelligence agencies must “speak truth to power”. Integrity and candour, rather than ideological or personal loyalty, remain core prerequisites in dealing with political leaders.

Yet, the appearance of accountability does not necessarily de-politicise national security. Nor does it prevent overt political pressure, or the manipulation of intelligence operations to justify preordained political conclusions.

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In June 2017, Malcolm Turnbull’s government rolled out the largest and most significant changes to the AIC since its creation.

Checks and balances on government error and excess should remain a vital trademark of a healthy democracy. In this sense, a number of the proposed reforms should be applauded. This includes boosting the role and resources of both the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, as well as Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

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These changes also attempt to resolve questions about whether the boundaries and operational principles between agencies can be more clearly drawn. There are hopes the establishment of a new Office of National Intelligence (in place of the Office of National Assessments) will assist in greater co-ordination and complementary cross-agency efforts.

Of course, much of the devil remains in the detail. And a number of oversight gaps remain, including how to best protect whistle-blowers who expose unethical or illegal behaviour. We are also yet to see the implementation, execution and performance outcomes stemming from this major reform exercise. Further, the simultaneous announcement of new Home Affairs arrangements will demand equal critical scrutiny.

It’s been mooted that intelligence successes are often overlooked, while intelligence failures are widely broadcast. Popular misconceptions, polarisation and arguably excessive secrecy arrangements mean that the AIC will continue to operate in, and need to be responsive to, a backdrop of public misgivings, political point-scoring and conspiracy theories.

Daniel Baldino, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Explainer: how the Australian intelligence community works

Malcolm Turnbull has put Peter Dutton at the head of the Home Affairs super portfolio.
AAP/Glenn Hunt

John Blaxland, Australian National University

This article is the first in a five-part series exploring Australian national security in the digital age.

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National security, intelligence and espionage have been in the headlines due to events abroad and significant developments at home. News of diplomatic expulsions, cyber-attacks, leaked documents about sweeping new surveillance powers and the creation of a new Home Affairs Department make it hard to follow.

What’s more, everyone has heard of the CIA, for instance, but Australia’s own national security organisations are comparatively unknown. So how is intelligence gathered? What are Australia’s peak national security bodies and how do they interact?

Australia’s national security architecture consists of a number of federal government departments and agencies, with links to state government counterparts. These include the state police forces and counter-terrorism authorities. Those arrangements are in transition, the full details of which are still to unfold.

The major players

The peak national security body in the Commonwealth is the National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC). It includes the ministers of the principal departments concerned with national security, including the Departments of Defence, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Treasury.

Several of the ministers on the NSC oversee a range of national security bodies. These have emerged as a result of trial and error, royal commissions and various reforms over several decades.

For starters, the defence portfolio includes a range of military intelligence units. There are hundreds of uniformed intelligence practitioners across the nation in the navy, air force and army, as well as in the Headquarters Joint Operations Command in Canberra. It also includes three of the nation’s principal intelligence agencies (with a mix of civilian and military intelligence practitioners):

• the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO), defence’s principal intelligence assessment agency

• the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation (AGO), responsible for satellite and aerial imagery intelligence, maps, nautical charts and related geo-spatial products

• the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), responsible for the collection and processing of signals intelligence (essentially, eavesdropping on radio and electronic transmissions).

ASD’s motto, “to reveal their secrets and protect our own”, captures the essence of its functions, which have been the subject of recent controversy after leaked documents proposed giving the ASD domestic surveillance powers.

The antecedents of these defence agencies date back to the intelligence organisations established, alongside their American and British counterparts, during the second world war. The ties to that era have endured in the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence arrangement.

Initially focused on signals intelligence (the principal remit of ASD), Five Eyes is a trusted network between the US, Britain, Australia and the two other predominantly English-speaking allies from that era, Canada and New Zealand.

The title was a derivative of the stamp used to restrict the dissemination of sensitive intelligence to a particular classification: “SECRET – AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” – hence Five Eyes.

Nowadays, the network extends beyond signals intelligence and defence circles to include a broader range of departments, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

DFAT is Australia’s principal agency tasked with “promoting and protecting our interests internationally and contributing to global stability and economic growth”. As part of that role, it is responsible for diplomatic reporting. Much of the information Australia gathers from counterpart governments abroad is collected openly, but discreetly, by Australia’s diplomats.

In addition, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is in the foreign minister’s portfolio. Established in 1952 and tasked with the collection overseas of secret intelligence, the ASIS mission is listed as being “to protect and promote Australia’s vital interests through the provision of unique foreign intelligence services as directed by the Australian Government”. This is otherwise known as human intelligence collection or, in traditional terms, foreign espionage.

Countering foreign espionage (particularly from Soviet, later Russian and other countries operating in Australia) is the remit of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Established in 1949, ASIO has been part of the attorney-general’s portfolio until now.

Today, ASIO’s purpose is described as being to “counter terrorism and the promotion of communal violence”, “counter serious threats to Australia’s border integrity”, “provide protective security advice to government and business” and “counter espionage, foreign interference and malicious insiders”.

The Office of National Assessments (ONA) is Australia’s peak intelligence assessment agency. It was established in 1977, after the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security commissioned by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and chaired by Justice Robert Marsden Hope.

ONA was established to help coordinate priorities across related intelligence agencies. Today, it is charged with assessing and analysing international political, strategic and economic developments for the prime minister and senior ministers. ONA draws on the intelligence collected by the other intelligence agencies, as well as unclassified, or “open source”, intelligence and material provided by international partners.

The agencies mentioned so far – ONA, ASIO, ASIS, AGO, ASD and DIO – form what has come to be known as the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC). The AIC emerged from the reforms initiated by Justice Hope in the 1970s and 1980s, notably following the 1977 commission and the 1985 Royal Commission on Australia’s Security and Intelligence Agencies. The combined effect of these commissions was that ONA was tasked with coordinating intelligence priorities along with the other agencies.

The tangled web of the Australian Intelligence Community.
Office of National Assessments

A greater level of scrutiny

Another mechanism that emerged during this period was the office of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), currently held by former Federal Court judge Margaret Stone. Established in 1987 with the enduring power of a royal commissioner, the IGIS has extraordinary powers to inspect and review the operations of AIC agencies.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) exists to provide a level of parliamentary oversight, complementing the work of the IGIS. It conducts inquiries into matters referred by the Senate, the House of Representatives or a minister of the Commonwealth government.

The Intelligence Services Act 2001 saw legislation more closely account for the functions that AIC members were expected to perform and the Inspector General monitors. In addition, an Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) was established.

The 2017 Independent Intelligence Review was the third such review since 2001. As part of the review, ONA is to become the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), exercising oversight of the expanded National Intelligence Community (NIC). This covers the initial six AIC members and four additional ones described below.

In addition, ASD is being established as a statutory body (still under the defence minister, but administered separately from the rest of the Defence Department) alongside other principal agencies ASIO and ASIS.

An expanded community with ambiguous oversight

The ONI is now tasked with overseeing implementation of recommendations arising from the 2017 review. This includes managing the four-body expansion to the ten-agency NIC.

These four bodies have played an increasingly prominent national security role since 2001. They are:

• the Australian Federal Police (AFP), with a remit for criminal intelligence and counter-terrorism

• the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), Australia’s specialist financial intelligence unit

• the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), responsible for “investigative, research and information delivery services work with law enforcement partners”.

• the Australian Border Force (ABF), described as Australia’s customs service and an “operationally independent” agency in the Home Affairs portfolio.

These agencies work in conjunction with other AIC agencies as well as state police and security counterparts.

The 2017 independent review was announced at the same time the new Home Affairs Department was made public. These four bodies are among the agencies transitioning to the Home Affairs portfolio. This has complicated arrangements for implementing the review recommendations and left considerable ambiguity concerning overlap of changed arrangements.

The INSLM certainly has a significant task as well and the PJCIS will be growing in staff to meet the expanded set of responsibilities outlined by the 2017 review as our intelligence community grows from six to ten agencies.

Implementing the 2017 review recommendations alone presents a significant challenge. The creation of Home Affairs on top of this adds to the complexity at a time of growing security challenges.

John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How the aid community responds in Syria will dictate its role in future crises

The conflict in Syria has left more than 6 million people internally displaced.
EPA/Mohammed Badra

Denis Dragovic, University of Melbourne

The latest military strikes by the US, France and Britain in Syria highlight the Trump administration’s uncertainty on its role in the conflict. With a near triumphant Syrian President Bashar al-Assad firmly under the control of Moscow and Tehran, the strikes against military bases suspected of facilitating the chemical weapons attacks will be nothing more than a footnote in the wider battle for influence in the region.

Trump must look towards the future and focus on influencing the reconstruction of Syria.

Without an active United States, Turkey, Iran and Russia will push international aid agencies and influential Western donor governments onto the sidelines. Instead, they will take the lead in rebuilding Syria in their images, an outcome that will hurt the Syrian people and further destabilise the region.

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Read more:
Further strikes on Syria unlikely – but Trump is always the wild card

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The size of the challenge

It is hard to find parallels in history with the extent of destruction in Syria.

Not since Dresden has devastation been so extensive. The four-year siege of Sarajevo, where regular bombardment from the surrounding mountains ravaged the city and reduced many areas to rubble, is a comparable yardstick repeated across Syria in Damascus, Aleppo, Idlib, Homs and Hama.

And then there is the human cost. More than 6 million people are internally displaced. Another 5 million are living as refugees.

Each person fled a home, a job and a community that will have to be re-established. This won’t be easy, given those who have migrated to Europe are estimated to represent between one-third and one-half of all Syrians with university-level education.

Even if it is theoretically possible to overcome these challenges, the most basic level of reconstruction has been estimated at US$100 billion, and possibly as high as US$350 billion. This far exceeds the estimated US$60 billion reconstruction cost of rebuilding Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

What to expect

Some reconstruction experts have advocated sidelining Assad’s Syria, and only providing support to rump areas under the control of US allies. NGOs are advocating conditioning international support on a political solution being agreed, respect for human rights, and protection of an independent civil society.

The Western-led international aid community faces a conundrum as it sits on the sidelines watching others prepare for the post-conflict reconstruction. Should the international aid community adapt and compromise or stand firm with their demands and principles?

Without the West driving the development agenda, Syrian authorities will eschew aid focused on human rights, gender equality, market liberalisation, and democracy. They will have little patience for the Western allegory of aid as salvation, in which the original sin of colonialism drives an effort to save people from poverty by recreating their societies in our image.

Instead, akin to Chinese aid to African countries, major infrastructure projects that serve government interests will top the agenda at the expense of assistance to the other pillars of successful modern countries.

These projects will be funded, managed and implemented on a quid-pro-quo basis. Syrian elites and foreign governments will secure most of the benefits.

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Read more:
How and why China became Africa’s biggest aid donor

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For an aid industry weaned on Western donors and their gender mainstreaming, community consultation, and pro-poor development, adjusting to taking direction from a Syrian government dismissive of the Western conscience and liberal democratic values will pose a substantial challenge. It will lead to serious ethical questions being asked.

Such questions will revolve around whether:

• aid agencies participate in donor co-ordination led by an illiberal Russia, an ostracised Iran, or an Islamist Turkey;

• collaboration with the Assad government irrevocably compromises NGOs’ work; and

• aid agencies can contribute to sustainable development if they are prevented from strengthening civil society.

There is no right answer to these questions. Some will take the pragmatic path; others, the high road.

For many aid workers – particularly those associated with advocacy NGOs – staying true to their worldview will mean being sidelined. They will be forced to operate in neighbouring countries, as Syrian authorities refuse to tolerate what they will perceive as social engineering disguised as humanitarian assistance.

This will leave UN agencies flying the flag of the development consensus in word only; they will be bereft of many of their implementing partners. Without these partners, they too will have to reconsider their modus operandi: partner with local sectarian NGOs with questionable affiliations, or undertake more direct implementation.

The benefits of a new approach

Under these circumstances, new approaches to implementing humanitarian and development programs will be need to be sought.

One opportunity is to harness Syria’s rich tradition of religious institutions playing a leading role in society. But even such a pivot will pose a conundrum: engaging with these groups will require the international aid community to reconsider its secular agenda.

How the international aid community responds to these challenges will shape outcomes not only in Syria but for future humanitarian crises.

Trying to force the Western development agenda onto Syrians will be counterproductive, leading to the strengthening of non-Western aid organisations that operate outside the decades-old development consensus.

With new-found experience and cashed-up from the largest reconstruction effort since the second world war, these agencies will begin to set the agenda not only for Syria, but in other countries whose leadership will prefer respectful collaboration over what’s seen as Western condescension.

Alternatively, Western aid organisations can acknowledge this emerging dynamic and find ways to work with the regime, its sponsors in Russia and Turkey, and the young, emerging aid organisations.

This will require compromising some of the ideals that have been at the heart of the sector and adopting new ways of working. But doing so will lead in the long run to a wider buy-in to the development consensus by the next generation of global aid actors.

Denis Dragovic, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Building for the community is a win for the Gold Coast Games

Karine Dupré, Griffith University

Major events such as the Olympic and Commonwealth Games have emerged in recent years as significant elements of public policy. In addition to the opportunities new venues provide, these events are viewed as a way to stimulate tourism and investment, increase civic engagement and promote urban revitalisation more generally.

For the next two weeks, the Gold Coast is hosting the Commonwealth Games, a record fifth time for Australia. But it’s the first time an Australian non-capital city will host the event.

Another great distinction from past hosts is that the Gold Coast is mostly relying on its existing assets, and the community aspect has generally prevailed: most of the refurbishments and extensions took place one to three years before the start of the Games, meaning the community has already been able to use these facilities.

Not building just for the Games

Only two of the 13 Gold Coast venues are bright new buildings, the Carrara Sports and Leisure Centre and the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre. All the others are either already built or are great natural assets such as the Coolangatta and Currumbin beachfronts.

Even the new venues were completed some time ago. At the Coomera Sports Centre, early site works began in February 2015. Construction was completed in early August 2016, 20 months ahead of the Games.

Similarly, the Carrara Sports Centre was completed in early 2017. The nearly 20,000m² venue was available to Gold Coast residents to enjoy more than a year before the Games.

Refurbishment is costly, but looking at the bigger picture it might still be less expensive. A new building usually involves other costs such as building new road access, water and electrical connections, and so on.

The same strategy was implemented for all the refurbishment projects without exception. For example, the aquatic centre is a recycling and expansion of the original 1960s Southport pool. Finished in 2014, it hosted the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships the same year. Although at that time debate about the lack of a roof was raging, being able to test the facility in advance is a luxury that few host cities have had.

Few Games hosts have had the luxury of trialling venues like the aquatic centre, where refurbishment was finished in 2014.
Karine Dupre, Author provided

What about the architectural legacy?

In designing venues, architecture plays a a critical role in delivering a premium experience for athletes and spectators, and thus ensuring the success of the Games.

It’s doubtful any of these buildings will enter into the history of architecture as references or models for future Games. They are not comparable to what has been done, for example, in Beijing in terms of structural innovation (such as the swimming pool or the stadium) or iconic status.

I am convinced, however, that all these buildings display a very good critical approach by their architects.

For example, for the Coomera centre, the choices made by Gold Coast-based BDA architects were fundamental to achieve the flexibility to accommodate up to 7,500 spectators when starting from 350 permanent seats. The truss structure, in allowing a very long span (82m by 168m for the roof), frees the indoor space from columns and increases flexibility of uses. In the same way, the 23m roof clearance frees the volume.

In terms of aesthetic, the choice not to enclose fully the centre at the entrance gives both a lighter perception of the building – despite the use of 600 tonnes of structural steel and 6,000 cubic metres of concrete – and a different look from the traditional box often found for gymnasiums.

Commonwealth Games gymnastics competition is under way at the Coomera Indoor Sports Centre.
Karine Dupre, Author provided

The key new facility at Carrara presents some similar characteristics. Because of its central location on the Gold Coast, the idea was that the new centre would contribute to the creation of a sport precinct and to economic development and sport advocacy programs. Knowing that Glasgow had a 17% increase in people doing sport after the Games, it was a reasonable vision to bet on long-term use by locals and not only on the visitors for the brief period of the Games.

Designed by BVN architects, the Carrara centre consists of a street space between two major halls. As the nominated venue for the badminton, wrestling and table tennis programs, it is quite an unexpected arrangement; it does not feel like the traditional sport hall, but more like a place to meet others. The colours and material palette have been used to symbolise the young and vibrant image of the Gold Coast. Again, all these architectural choices come together to provide a memorable experience for visitors and athletes alike.

Within the given budget, the balance between an appealing aesthetic and a long-term legacy has been achieved. Maybe none of these buildings will become international landmarks, but present uses have shown their functionality and benefits for the Gold Coast.

Even if we don’t all agree with the current politics, there is one thing we cannot deny about the Games preparation: architecture has been a tool for enhancing public facilities thanks to a very long-term vision. The social, cultural and economic legacy is already there, since facilities are being used.

Finally, since the Games preparations began, major debates on the Gold Coast concerned new casinos, the Spit redevelopment and the light rail extension. None of these debates caused any real problems for the Games. It is quite an achievement, or the result of a very good communication strategy, but that might be another discussion…

Karine Dupré, Associate Professor in Architecture, Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Security gets $1.2b, community programs to counter violent extremism $40m – that’s a foolish imbalance

Police raided several Sydney properties over the weekend in relation to possible terror plots.
AAP/Dean Lewins

Clarke Jones, Australian National University

The arrests and raids in Sydney over the weekend, as well as the 12 so-called “terrorist plots” disrupted by police since September 2014, ought to raise questions over whether Australia’s efforts to counter violent extremism are actually working.

A spending and policy imbalance

Australia has spent more than A$1.2 billion since 2015 on strengthening sharp-end counter-terrorism arrangements such as increasing intelligence and security capabilities. Millions more will be spent when the government’s proposed Department of Home Affairs opens.

Over roughly the same period, only about $40 million has been spent on countering violent extremism and community cohesion programs.

Of this $40 million, only around $2 million was given out in 2015 to 42 of the 97 applicants. This money was to support grassroots organisations to develop new, innovative services to move people away from violent extremism. This funding round was developed to improve Australia’s capability to deliver localised and tailored intervention services.

So, there is a significant imbalance between sharp-end funding and piecemeal, short-term, community-level grants. The money is clearly not being invested wisely or even reaching the right places, such as those at-risk communities willing to engage and desperately seeking funding. Many more terror-related arrests will follow in the foreseeable future as a result.

All the while, it’s been full steam ahead in relation to security, legislation, corrections, police and intelligence. This has come at the expense of community resilience and building up protective mechanisms within vulnerable youth and communities.

From my research with Muslim communities over the past two years, the government’s approach is verging on being counter-productive. It now risks trampling on the basic rights and freedoms of young Muslims, their families and their communities more broadly.

This approach will actually worsen the many underlying issues – such as discrimination, alienation, marginalisation and rejection – that seem to contribute to offending in the first place.

The safety of all Australians should remain a key government priority. And getting the balance right between security and youth and community welfare is difficult. But the government seems hell-bent on pre-crime arrest, prosecution and punishment, while falling short on providing the necessary long-term support for the young vulnerable people it really needs to protect and prevent from engaging in serious anti-social behaviour.

For those from minority communities in particular, the criminal justice system is a very slippery slope. Once in it, the prospects of positive and meaningful futures are slim.

Where Australia’s approach is lacking

As with the UK’s Prevent program, Australia’s approach suffers from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural flaws. Its foreseeable consequence is a serious risk to the wellbeing of young Muslims and Australian multiculturalism more broadly.

Much of the centrepiece of the government’s countering violent extremism strategy rests on the theory of radicalisation and the social engineering of radical views and cultures to become more conservative and “Australian”.

However, for the concept of radicalisation alone, there seems to be very little clarity about the term and the tools that measure it. If such tools are used to help determine the destiny of a young Muslim person, whether it be in a school or criminal justice situation, then these must be made more available for wider peer review – rather than held in secrecy within the government.

For those deemed “radicalised” or on the pathway to radicalisation, there are very few community-based secondary-level intervention programs designed to support them. Nor are there programs they are willing to participate in voluntarily. This is largely because most current programs are led by government and police, which seem to lack a crucial understanding about the many cultural, religious and ethnic nuances required for effective intervention.

Without close community partnerships and community-led approaches, programs will never be able to fully understand the highly complex nature of families and communities.

Getting access to vulnerable youth and their families, and then encouraging them to participate in interventions, requires close and trusted community partnerships. To date, partnerships between government and the more conservative community groups have not been fully developed. This is particularly the case with the more hard-to-reach groups, which have many of the young people requiring support or intervention.

Put together, this has limited the government’s capacity to support and fund communities working with the most at-risk or vulnerable youth.

The government’s position on these communities is that they are too risky to work with. In reality, it is too risky not to work with them.

To make us truly safe – not just from terrorism, but from other serious crimes too – the government needs to go back to basics. Australia should invest a lot more in longer-term community partnerships and develop more preventive measures, such as community-led interventions. These interventions must be developed by those outside the government’s national security apparatus.

A major government rethink is required if it is truly going to keep us safe.

Clarke Jones, Research Fellow, Research School of Psychology, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Australian Politics: 17 July 2013

The asylum seeker controversy in Australia is deepening, with four more deaths after another tragedy at sea last night. There is yet another boat in distress right now as well. Compassion would seem to be much in need from where I sit, yet most Australians seem to have very little when it comes to the plight of refugees and/or asylum seekers.

Still, an election can’t be too far away as the various parties begin the usual pledges to spend money on this and that – certainly infrastructure needs are great in this country.

Meanwhile Kevin Rudd has held a community cabinet meeting overnight.