Australia

Earlier this year, the Australia's eSafety commissioner took X to court over its refusal to remove videos of a religiously motivated Sydney church stabbing for its global users.

The case was ultimately dropped, but commissioner Julie Inman Grant says she received an "avalanche of online abuse" after Mr Musk called her the "censorship commissar" in a post to his 196 million followers.

[...]

A Columbia University report into technology-facilitated gender-based violence - which used Ms Inman Grant as a case study - found that she had been mentioned in almost 74,000 posts on X ahead of the court proceedings, despite being a relatively unknown figure online beforehand.

According to the analysis, the majority of the messages were either negative, hateful or threatening in some way. Dehumanising slurs and gendered language were also frequently noted, with users calling Ms Inman Grant names such as "left-wing Barbie", or "captain tampon".

[...]

Ms Inman Grant said that Mr Musk's decision to use "disinformation" to suggest that she was "trying to globally censor the internet" had amounted to a "dog whistle from a very powerful tech billionaire who owns his own megaphone".

She said that the torrent of online vitriol which followed had prompted Australian police to warn her against travelling to the US, and that the names of her children and other family members had been released across the internet.

[...]

The case turned into a test of Australia's ability to enforce its online rules against social media giants operating in multiple jurisdictions – one which failed after a Federal Court judge found that banning the posts from appearing on X globally would not be “reasonable” as it would likely be "ignored or disparaged by other countries".

In June, Ms Inman Grant's office said it would not pursue the case further, and that it would focus on other pending litigation against the platform.

X's Global Government Affairs team described the outcome as a win for "freedom of speech".

The Australian government should develop a clear policy on identifying and addressing cases of wrongful detention of Australian nationals abroad, Human Rights Watch said in a recent submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Reference Committee. The Committee is currently reviewing the Australian government’s responses to the wrongful detention of Australian citizens overseas.

Oppressive foreign governments have detained Australians on fabricated or unsubstantiated charges, denied them due process rights, and used them as political bargaining chips. Governments have held Australians in poor conditions, with limited access to visits from lawyers, family and friends, and limited consular representation. When the detainees are released, it is often after significant public campaigning and high-level Australian government intervention in their cases.

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"Experience from other countries has shown that when there is a single specialized senior official managing all aspects of hostage diplomacy cases, affected individuals and their families benefit,” [Daniela] Gavshon, [Australia director at Human Rights Watch] said. “Australia should promptly create a role like this for wrongful detention cases so the government can address the special circumstances of each case and allow families to get the support they desperately need.”

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Japan vowed to bolster military ties with Australia during a high-ranking visit on Sept 5, with Tokyo’s top diplomat saying the “like-minded” partners must stick together to combat shared regional threats.

Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Defence Minister Minoru Kihara met their Australian counterparts at an old army fort outside Melbourne, striking deals on greater air force cooperation and expanded military exercises.

They also agreed to jointly help the Philippine Coast Guard, which is locked in an escalating tussle with Chinese ships in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

Interesting article in relation to the media pile-on of Elle Macpherson earlier this week. According to the authors, her decision to avoid chemotherapy may have been completely normal and sensible given her circumstances. We don't actually know because no one from the ABC or any other outlet bothered to check before running their stories citing her former relationship with an anti-vaxxer, or claiming that she ignored centuries of medical advice. The authors conclude that Australians have missed a great opportunity here to discuss the current state of non-invasive breast cancer research and treatment.

Workers who leave the head office to buy a cup of coffee are costing an Australian mining firm too much money, according to its boss.

Managing director of Mineral Resources Chris Ellison said during a financial results presentation on Wednesday he wants to "hold staff captive all day long".

"I don't want them leaving the building," he said.

The head office in Perth has a restaurant, nine staff psychologists, a gym, and other facilities designed to encourage staff to stay in the office. "We have a lot of different benefits that we have brought on," said Mr Ellison, whose company has a strict "no work from home policy". "Why have I done that? Because when I get them first thing in the morning, I want to hold them captive all day long. I don't want them leaving the building.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2310833

Australia said Pacific Island leaders meeting at a summit in Tonga endorsed a contentious regional policing plan Wednesday, a move seen as trying to limit China's security role in the region.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said leaders had agreed to establish up to four regional police training centres and a multinational crisis reaction force.

Under the plan, a corps of about 200 officers drawn from different Pacific Island nations could be dispatched to regional hot spots and disaster zones when needed and invited.

"This demonstrates how Pacific leaders are working together to shape the future that we want to see," said Albanese, hailing the agreement.

He was flanked by leaders of Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga -- a symbolic show of unity in a region riven by competition between China and the United States.

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China's regional allies -- most notably Vanuatu and Solomon Islands -- had voiced concern that the policing plan represented a "geo-strategic denial security doctrine", designed to box out Beijing.

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Australia and New Zealand have historically been the region's go-to security partners, leading peacekeeping missions in Solomon Islands and training in Nauru, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Policing, however, has increasingly become a cornerstone of Beijing's efforts to build Pacific influence.

China tried and failed to ink a region-wide security pact in 2022, but has since been plying some under-resourced Pacific police forces with martial arts training and fleets of Chinese-made vehicles.

Australia and longtime ally the United States were caught napping in 2022 when China secretly signed a security pact with Solomon Islands -- the details of which have not been made public.

China now maintains a small but conspicuous police presence in Solomon Islands, sending a revolving cadre of officers to train locals in shooting and riot tactics.

The new theme seems deadset on replacing content with whitespace, driving my father in particular mad (he's having more luck finding Australian news on DW than the ABC right now; and he is sore that he has to hunt for the "Science" news category now in menus).

Not sure how long they'll keep the ?future=x flag available, but for now it gives you about double the number of articles per page.

Up! Up! Coles' annual profits are up to $1.1 billion.

And to think the Reserve Bank still acts as though inflation and the cost of living crisis is due to wages (below the rate of inflation) or consumer spending, rather than corporate profiteering.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/27/coles-reports-8-surge-in-annual-profit-to-11bn-amid-cost-of-living-crisis

@australia #news #politics #finance #business #auspol #coles #woolworths #capitalism #auspol

We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!

Former staff members at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) have accused the rights group of mistreating them over their pro-Palestine views.

"In one instance, I was informally cautioned by a senior official for using the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ on my personal social media," said Badge's letter.

"Similarly, I was informally reprimanded for summarising a UN press release on the situation of women and girls in Gaza."

Since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza in October there has been a public outcry from pro-Palestine campaigners over what they say is "censorship" across Australia's institutions.