LAST WEEK THIS MORNING
90 day detention ban
Kylea Tink, a ‘Teal Independent’, has tabled a bill urging the government to put a stop to indefinite detention of asylum seekers.
The bill would make it illegal for the Australian government to detain asylum seekers for longer than 90 days and will put an end to detention of children.
Ms Tink reintroduced the bill last monday in an effort to put an end to what she calls “Australia's uniquely cruel immigration detention regime.”
"It is us recognising that, as a nation, we have obligations under international human rights to treat everybody with respect," she said.
“to treat everybody in the same way that we wish to be treated if we ended up in a situation where we had to flee our own shores.”
This Migration Amendment Bill amended the Migration Act 1958, ensuring Australia complies with its human rights obligations.
According to the Department of Home Affairs, average time spent in Australian immigration detention centres is 565 days compared to 30 days in Canada and 48 days in the US.
"In the current environment, we are still a nation that has one of the worst reputations globally in terms of meeting our international human rights obligations," Ms Tink said.
"There is an expectation from the broader Australian population that we do accept that it's not OK to hold people indefinitely and that it's not OK for our government to hold children.
"It's a really abhorrent chapter in our nation's history."
It was ruled in November that non-citizens could not be lawfully held in indefinite immigration detention, leading to the release of 150 detainees.
Asylum Seeker resource centre director, Jana Favero urges the Albanese government to pass the bill, pointing out that it aligns with his party's platform.
Ms Favero said mandatory detention must be abolished and time limits is a critical first step.
"There is no future, there's no certainty for how long they will be there," Ms Favero told reporters in Canberra.
"Every day in detention is a denial of freedom and denial of basic liberty and human rights."
The Asylum Seeker resource centre has put forward a petition with over 10,000 signatures to parliament which calls for the release of an additional 140 people.
Deepfake jail time
Under a new law, the sharing of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes will be illegal and punishable up to seven years in prison.
Deep Fakes are fabricated videos or images where a person has been superimposed onto another for the purpose of making them look as if they did something they never did.
The decision follows the Attorney- General, Mark Dreyfus’, introduction of a bill to Parliament to criminalise the sharing of sexually explicit deep fakes without consent in June.
Additional funding was also given to the Office of eSafety Commissioner and the federal review into the Online Safety Act was brought a year forward.
In a statement last week, the Attorney-General’s office said the images “are overwhelmingly targeted towards women and girls, perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes and contributing to gender-based violence.”
“This insidious behaviour can be a method of degrading, humiliating and dehumanising victims,” The Attorney-General said.
“This bill strengthens existing Commonwealth Criminal Code offences and introduces a new aggravated criminal offence to target those who use technologies to artificially generate or alter sexually explicit material (such as deepfakes) for the purposes of non-consensual sharing online.”
The bill will now be signed off by the Governor-General.
Dreyfus acclaimed the Albanese government's commitment to tackle harmful practices like doxxing and improve on Australia privacy protections overall.
“The Albanese government is committed to tackling gender-based violence in all forms,” Dreyfus added.
However, shadow Attorney-general Michaelia Cash, said that while the opposition supported the bill, deepfakes are already covered by existing laws.
Greens Senator Larissa Waters also criticised the bill on the basis of its neglect to criminalise the creation of deep fakes.
“it would be better that the images weren’t so easy for anyone with internet access to create and then share,” she said.
Sexual Violence Protests in India
On the 14 August, tens of thousands of women protested in the Indian state of West Bengal after the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata.
Protests soon spread to several major cities. On the weekend, doctors nationwide participated in a strike organised by the Indian Medical Association.
On 9 August, the 31-year-old doctor was attacked while taking a nap in the hospital’s seminar room after a gruelling 36-hour shift.
Her body was later discovered in the room, bearing extensive injuries.
A volunteer worker at the hospital has since been arrested in connection with the murder.
Her parents remembered how hard their only child worked to become a doctor.
“We come from a lower middle-class background and built everything on our own. When she was little, we struggled financially.” her father, a tailor, said.
“People would say, ‘You can’t make your daughter a doctor’. But my daughter proved everyone wrong and got admission in a government-run medical college,”
According to ABC News, they could not believe that something “so barbaric” could happen to their daughter in a hospital, widely considered to be a safe place.
The case has highlighted the challenges faced by women and healthcare workers who have demanded a thorough investigation into the murder.
A report by Deloitte found that 46% of women in India worry about their safety while commuting or at work.
Indian women’s participation in the workforce was less than 33% in 2023, significantly lower than the global average of 47%.
If India seeks to achieve its target of 8% GDP growth, it must raise female force participation to 43.4% by 2030.
These are not the first instances of protests responding to violence perpetrated against women in India.
In 2012, the gang-rape and murder of 22-year -old Jyoti Singh on a moving bus was a watershed moment that forced the government to strengthen laws, including making stalking a punishable offence.
Independent journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick wrote in The Guardian that reducing violence against women is not just about tightening laws and crisis centres, but also about addressing India’s entrenched societal misogyny and investing in women’s organisations.
Roxanne Tickle Discrimination Case
A landmark Federal Court ruling has held that a transgender woman’s exclusion from a female-only app constituted unlawful discrimination.
This has been the first time the Federal Court has weighed into gender identity discrimination.
In 2021, Roxanne Tickle downloaded Giggle for Girls social networking platform.
The platform advertised itself as an “online refuge” for women and required users to provide a selfie which was assessed by AI software to verify that they were a woman.
Although Ms Tickle’s photo was initially accepted, her account was later restricted via a manual override.
She initiated the first claim of discrimination on the basis of gender identity since alterations to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013.
Lawyer’s for Giggle’s CEO, Sall Grover, argued that the app was a special measure intended to achieve substantive equality between men and women.
While Justice Robert Bromwich found that a claim of direct discrimination failed, he determined that indirect gender identity discrimination had occurred against Ms Tickle.
This was based upon the condition imposed by Giggle that Ms Tickle was required to have the appearance of a cisgender woman.
Justice Bromwich stated in his decision last Friday that the defendants argument that an individual's sex at birth was unchangeable failed.
“These arguments failed because the view propounded by the respondents conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years.”
“Those cases establish that in its ordinary meaning, sex is changeable.” he said.
Ms Tickle additionally sought orders for a written apology, which Justice Bromwich declined, saying that any apology from Ms Grover “would be through clenched teeth and utterly devoid of sincerity,”.
Despite expressing an intention in court that she would not restore Giggle unless allowed to exclude transgender women, Grover has since told reporters she now plans to reinstate the app.
The court was told that Grover repeatedly misgendered Ms Tickle in media interviews and in hundreds of posts made to her 93,000 followers.
Justice Bromwich ordered that in addition to legal costs, Ms Tickle be paid $10,000 in compensation.
This is a mere fraction of the $200,000 that Ms Tickle originally sought.
Outside of court, Ms Tickle said that the case had “stolen” the last three years of her life.
“I brought my case to show trans people that you can be brave and that you can stand up for yourself.” she said.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission Anna Cody supported the judgement, saying “We now know…you cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,”.
A gay icon dies: Sydney aquarium mourns death of Sphen
Sydney’s Sea Life Aquarium was filled with penguin song after the death of gay penguin Sphen last Thursday morning.
Sphen’s same-sex partner, Magic, and their fellow gentoo penguins vocally mourned Sphen’s passing in a display never before seen by aquarium staff.
Sphen died of natural causes at 11 years-old.
Sphen and Magic’s partnership made the penguin couple globally famous in 2018, even inspiring a Mardi Gras float in 2021.
Since then, the pair had successfully fostered two chicks: Sphengic (Lara) in 2018 and Clancy in 2020.
Penguin keeper Renee Howell told The Guardian that same-sex partnerships are considered somewhat common among penguins, however the difference with Sphen and Magic was their even division of duties as parents.
“They took their individual [turns] on the nest, and they would go out and search for food, and then they’d come back and swap the care of the egg,”.
“They definitely divvied up the roles quite evenly between the two.” she said.
The aquarium’s general manager Richard Dilly told ABC News about the extensive impact Sphen had.
“The loss of Sphen is heartbreaking to the penguin colony, the team, and everyone who has been inspired or positively impacted by Sphen and Magic’s story,” he said.
References
Bhowmick, N. (23 August 2024). India is outraged at a young doctor’s rape and murder. We have been here too often. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/23/india-is-outraged-at-a-young-doctors-and-we-have-been-here-too-often
Dubey, K. (21 August, 2024). ‘She wanted to live a good life’: Parents of Indian doctor raped and murdered on night shift’. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yl0799k1wo
McKinnell, J. (23 August, 2024). Transgender woman’s exclusion from female-only app was unlawful, judge finds. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-23/nsw-sydney-giggle-transgender-discrimination-court-judgment/104260546
(23 August, 2024). ‘Stolen years of my life’: Roxanne Tickle speaks after landmark ‘what is a woman’ case win. SBS News. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/stolen-years-of-my-life-roxanne-tickle-speaks-after-landmark-what-is-a-woman-case-win/hpznmt4mq
Wind, E. (22 August, 2024). Magic moment: Sydney aquarium filled with song after sea birds mourn death of gay penguin Sphen. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/22/magic-moment-sydney-aquarium-filled-with-song-after-sea-birds-mourn-death-of-gay-penguin-sphen
Roberts, M. (22 August 2024). Sphen the penguin, known for same-sex love story, dies at Sydney aquarium aged 11. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-22/nsw-sydney-sphen-famous-gay-penguin-dies/104255298