Health services across Australia struggled to operate today when the Optus network collapsed, reminding us of how much in our lives rely on healthy digital technology environments.
This week’s ICYMI highlights wins in public policy and research, and a stack of new research, but it also canvases many risks to health, including a Tory MP’s cruel take on homelessness that met a sharp rebuke from Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University.
The quotable?
It’s not a ‘lifestyle choice’ to be poor or homeless. It’s people who can’t afford to live in modern Britain, who don’t have family able to help, who suffer from mental illness without support – it requires empathy & kindness, not blame & cruelty.”
Where lies the threat?
Professor Stephen Duckett from the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health drew attention this week to a study published in Science Direct on ‘Misinformation and the epistemic integrity of democracy’, saying he’d examined it from the lens of the recent Voice referendum.
The paper examines attacks on procedures and processes, on evidence-informed policy making and on “the messengers”, including scientists, and asking what is the common denominator.
It calls for corrective political action on the toxic effects on democracy of misinformation and associated attacks on scientists but concludes: “At the time of this writing, it is difficult to avoid the realization that one side of politics—mainly in the U.S. but also elsewhere—appears more threatened by research into misinformation than by the risks to democracy arising from misinformation itself.”
Optus crash hit health care
The 13-hour plus network outage for Optus mobile phone and internet customers today had a significant impact on healthcare, prompting Victoria’s Health Minister to urge people to call 000 from a non-Optus network, while many other health services and hospitals struggled to operate.
The yet to be explained outage, which drew all of Melbourne’s rail network to a halt, raises major concerns about digital security, particularly in the lead up to summer, amid major warnings about bushfires.
Climate: Pacific can’t cop ongoing emissions
The Pacific Elders Voice (PEV), a group of former Pacific heads of states and diplomats, has challenged Australia to ‘walk the talk’ on climate change at this week’s 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM52) in the Cook Islands, or risk losing support for co-hosting COP31 in 2026.
In a detailed letter, PEV said it was concerned that Australia’s “failure to match its words with its actions extends beyond fossil fuels”. They were also concerned it had failed to represent Pacific interests as a member of the Loss and Damage Transitional Committee.
“We maintain our position that the endorsement of co-hosting Australia’s COP31 with the Pacific, be conditional on greater climate action and provision of greater new and additional climate finance,” they said, The PEV is urging the Forum to delay its decision “to allow the Pacific countries to arrive at a united position as well as give Australia time to demonstrate tangible climate action, and what its global leadership will look like if made COP President with the Pacific’s endorsement”.
COVID: invisible and in circulation
Watch: 231026 Senator Janet Rice questions about IPC in RACF
Read: How covid-19 spreads: narratives, counter narratives, and social dramas
Global health and (in)justice
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever infects health workers in Pakistan outbreak
Sudan: Women and girls abducted, held ‘in slave-like conditions’ in Darfur
Global health reporting
Making and urging change
ACT raises the age of criminal responsibility to 14 with nation-first legislation
VALS: Public intoxication to finally be decriminalised
Indigenous health, justice, rights
Chief Justice Stephen Gageler this week became the first chief justice of the High Court to make a formal national acknowledgement of Indigenous Australians, and invited Indigenous barrister Tony McAvoy SC to open the speeches at his swearing-in ceremony.
Sadly, the recognition came amid tragic news at the other end of the justice system, with the dead of an Aboriginal man at Perth’s Hakea Prison, the sixth Aboriginal prisoners to die in custody in Western Australia this year.
Meanwhile, also in WA, came the $180 million settlement of a class action over wages stolen from thousands of Aboriginal workers in the state, with the successful claimants telling the ABC it recognises the role effective slave labour played in building the state’s economy.
Read the First Peoples’ Assembly Annual Report
Read the full story
Indigenous research wins MJA Award for Excellence in Medical Research
Read all about it!
The complex impact of COVID‐19 on cancer outcomes in Australia
Link to the full article in Health Research Policy and Systems here
The Car-free Livability Programme 2019
The Atlantic: The Great Social Media–News Collapse
Inside Story: Medicare’s forty-year update
Appointments, announcements & anniversaries
Coming up
Wiyi Yani U Thangani Framework for First Nations Gender Justice and Equality weblink
Some personal favourites!
