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Australia's housing market trembles as homeowners confront rising interest rates and mortgage defaults surge. Predicted by some a decade ago, this shift stems from years of speculative investing and homes transforming into commodities. The challenge now: can policymakers balance housing affordability without destabilising the market's value?
As artificial intelligence evolves, warnings of an AI surpassing us in cognitive abilities grow louder. Yet, these threats, which echo sci-fi nightmares, are met with skepticism and complacency, rather than fear. Are our human minds, fine-tuned by evolution to grapple with tangible, immediate threats, ill-equipped to comprehend the abstract risk of a runaway AI?
Australia’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) came about as a reaction to the abuses recorded at the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth prison. To monitor compliance with OPCAT, UN independent inspection teams are permitted to conduct unannounced visits to any place where people are deprived of liberty. But on October 24, a Corrective Services NSW spokesperson announced that inspection teams were ‘refused entry without incident’.
Most people would agree that the government should have the power to cancel the visas of, and deport, non-citizens who are serious or dangerous criminals. Nobody wants to be the victim of a crime or to live in an unsafe society. We have enough criminals without keeping additional ones.
American novelist Jonathan Franzen has in his last three fictional works taken words that loom large in the collective consciousness and built worlds around them. First, it was Freedom (2010), then Purity (2015), and now Crossroads (2021). The latter title, of course, refers to a literal and figurative decision-making moment, but also the mythic locale where blues singers, notably Robert Johnson, made their pacts with the devil.
The images are simultaneously striking and terrifying. A raging grassfire that is shooting flames into the sky and destroying nature around it and lapping perilously close to the fences around Central NSW’s Lithgow Correctional Centre. As local residents were evacuated and highways were closed to protect public safety when the fire raged out of control just before Christmas in 2019, 400 prisoners remained detained.
There are a number of current issues within our present Australian political system, issues we need to remedy brought to light with strong media attention. But in contrast, how much media attention is being paid to this ongoing scandal of First Nations peoples who, while representing just 3.3 per cent of the population, now represent an extraordinary 30 per cent of the nation’s prison population?
Approaching the walled and caged building where the sentence was carried out, our young fellows have always been struck by something of a paradox proclaimed in two signs at the door: ‘Bureau of Corrections’ alongside ‘Lethal Injection Chamber’. They were quick to seize upon it. ‘How can you correct and rehabilitate a person after you have killed him?’ they would ask.
For a nation with such a significant convict history, Australians take a peculiarly puritanical approach to prisoner welfare. Punishment, not rehabilitation, is often viewed as the point of the justice system. We take a very dim view of anything that could be construed as a prisoner perk. One such perceived privilege is access to the internet.
Oh, what I would give to be able to vote for an Australian Ardern, or to see either major party boldly back a woman leader with the grit and humanity exhibited by AOC. Because the 'same-old' bungling status quo of Australian politics is failing us. The lack of support for women looking to become tomorrow's leaders is failing us.
There is still a segment of the internet obsessed with enforcing 'correct' grammar: the self-styled Grammar Police. In communicating with others, grammar provides clarity, and Australian standard grammar is one way of accomplishing that. But knowing the standardised rules is a skill not everyone has the same access to.
Many of the kids in the juvenile justice system have been abused, come from dysfunctional families or state care, or have untreated behavioural or mental health problems. Warehousing them in punishing idleness and expecting passive compliance, let alone any recovery, is fanciful. I have begun to think about how we could respond to these kids in a holistic way, with a strong emphasis on prevention and diversion. These proposals relate to current the system in Victoria, but generalise easily.