tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/federal-government-1167/articlesFederal Government – The Conversation2024-03-20T19:02:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2260182024-03-20T19:02:57Z2024-03-20T19:02:57ZCompanies vying for government contracts could soon have to meet gender targets. Will we finally see real progress?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583045/original/file-20240320-16-fm9yug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4624%2C2666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businesswoman-standing-leading-business-presentation-female-681211267">Jacob Lund/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian government wants to make sure its contracts – worth almost <a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/government/procurement">A$75 billion annually</a> – don’t just deliver taxpayers value for money, but also promote gender equity.</p>
<p>Under <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/07/labor-gender-equality-targets-government-contracts-katy-gallagher-national-press-club-speech">proposed procurement policy changes</a> announced earlier this month, large companies that wish to bid for government contracts will first have to meet some gender equality conditions.</p>
<p>How exactly will these measures work across Australia’s huge private sector, and what kind of an impact could they have?</p>
<h2>Not a new idea</h2>
<p>Federal tender processes – the way we try to award government contracts to the best possible providers – currently follow a set of <a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/government/procurement/commonwealth-procurement-rules">Commonwealth procurement rules</a>. </p>
<p>They must provide value for money, encourage competition and ensure that public funds are used in an “efficient, effective, economical and ethical” way.</p>
<p>Using tenders as a lever to achieve gender equality isn’t a new idea. It’s been recommended around the world, including by the <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/5d8f6f76-en.pdf?expires=1710753868&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=FBD77B99061A635D9246913C75E5D286">OECD</a>, the <a href="https://www.adb.org/publications/gender-responsive-procurement-asia-pacific">Asian Development Bank</a>, and the <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/governance/gender-and-equality-public-procurement#:%7E:text=Only%201%25%20of%20the%20%2411,and%20costliness%20of%20procurement%20processes.">World Bank Group</a>. </p>
<p>The idea is for the government to use its “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/07/labor-gender-equality-targets-government-contracts-katy-gallagher-national-press-club-speech">purchasing power</a>” to incentivise – and in effect pressure – companies to take bolder steps toward achieving gender equality. </p>
<p>It’s a way to make sure the government’s direct efforts to <a href="https://genderequality.gov.au/">promote gender equality</a> aren’t being contradicted or undone elsewhere in the ways taxpayers’ money gets spent.</p>
<h2>Existing requirements for Australian companies</h2>
<p>In Australia, companies with at least 100 staff are already required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) on <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/pay-and-gender/6-gender-equality-indicators">six gender equality indicators</a>. These indicators cover: </p>
<ul>
<li>workforce composition</li>
<li>board composition</li>
<li>the gender pay gap </li>
<li>the availability of flexible working arrangements</li>
<li>employee consultation processes</li>
<li>policies on sexual harassment.</li>
</ul>
<p>Bidding for some government contracts also requires companies to prove their compliance with the WGEA’s reporting processes. This involves <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/reporting-guide/ge/eligibility-compliance#:%7E:text=For%20organisations%20that%20have%20reported,Insights'%20tab%20within%20the%20Portal">downloading a certificate</a> from the agency’s website. </p>
<p>Under the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/07/labor-gender-equality-targets-government-contracts-katy-gallagher-national-press-club-speech">proposed changes</a>, large companies with more than 500 employees will have to go beyond just reporting their numbers. If they want to remain in the running for government contracts, they will need to set and achieve measurable targets for their organisation across at least three indicators. </p>
<p>As Senator Katy Gallagher, the minister for finance, women and public service, explained while <a href="https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/gallagher/2024/national-press-club-address-working-women-national-strategy-gender-equality">announcing the measures</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We in the government believe that shining a light on what’s actually happening in workplaces will put pressure on employers to rethink how they hire, promote and remunerate their staff.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Concerns about implementation</h2>
<p>There are concerns around the practicality, market effects and reach of such a large-scale procurement policy. But there’s reason for us to be optimistic that Australia’s proposed design goes some way to mitigate these concerns. </p>
<p><strong>1. Companies might not know how to conduct this analysis</strong></p>
<p>Some might say there’s a risk these new requirements will be overly burdensome for companies not already conducting this kind of analysis. Such companies may lack the resources and technical knowledge to undertake extra steps.</p>
<p>It’s a fair concern. <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/5d8f6f76-en.pdf?expires=1710848416&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=4A37780D3D8773D8E00A60BEDF27F7F7">OECD research</a> shows that a lack of clarity around “what to do” is the main challenge with gender equality procurement practices globally.</p>
<p>But a key strength of Australia’s proposal is that it leverages existing data collection processes that companies have already invested in, not adding burdensome extra demands.</p>
<p>There’s evidence for the effectiveness of this approach at a state level. In a 2022 pilot, the Western Australian government introduced a new requirement that bidders for its contracts prove their compliance with WGEA’s existing reporting procedures. An <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/government/document-collections/gender-equality-procurement#evaluation">evaluation</a> of the program found the new criteria made a big difference in sharpening businesses’ awareness and understanding of gender equality.</p>
<p>To further mitigate this risk, the Australian government can invest in providing informational guidance to businesses on what will be required of them. Victoria’s Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector has already done this for <a href="https://www.genderequalitycommission.vic.gov.au/applying-gender-impact-assessment-procurement-policy">state government tenders</a>.</p>
<p><strong>2. Less competition for tenders?</strong> </p>
<p>If an extra layer of requirements squeezes out potential contenders in the business community, there’s a risk it could lessen competition for government contracts. </p>
<p>Economists have good reason to worry that weaker competition could push up the price of the products and services on offer, a loss for taxpayer value. </p>
<p>But Victoria’s <a href="https://www.buyingfor.vic.gov.au/introduction-social-procurement-framework">social procurement framework</a> helps us navigate this concern, prompting us to consider the ways “value for money” can mean more than just getting the cheapest price. </p>
<p>A broader definition of “value” would include progress toward social goals that provide significant benefit to the community – such as women’s equality. </p>
<p>Gender equity practices themselves are an often overlooked source of extra value, through the broader ideas, innovation and skill sets that diversity brings. These measures mean that a new pool of businesses can join the competitive mix.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="woman wearing hardhat works on an engine" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583053/original/file-20240320-27-i05mki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gender equity policies have a tangible value, enriching the workforce with new ideas and skillsets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wears-yellow-hard-hat-holding-vehicle-part-1108101/">Chevanon Photography/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>3. Limited reach</strong> </p>
<p>For companies that don’t have to vie for government contracts, there’s a good chance these new measures won’t carry much weight. However, the government has other ways to put pressure on them. </p>
<p>Already, the WGEA has the power to publicly “<a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/what-we-do/compliance-reporting/non-compliant-list">name and shame</a>” companies that don’t comply with legal requirements to submit their gender equality data. </p>
<p>Following the public spotlighting of companies with the biggest gender pay gaps, the “non-compliance” list calls out companies that aren’t even submitting their data at all.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/qantas-pays-women-37-less-telstra-and-bhp-20-fifty-years-after-equal-pay-laws-we-still-have-a-long-way-to-go-223870">QANTAS pays women 37% less, Telstra and BHP 20%. Fifty years after equal pay laws, we still have a long way to go</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There are some widely known names on the <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/Employers-named-as-non-compliant-under-the-Workplace-Gender-Equality-Act-for-2022-2023-Gender-Equality-Reporting-March-2024.pdf">latest list</a>: General Motors, Manly Warringah Sea Eagles Club, Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, and several Melbourne-based McDonald’s stores.</p>
<p>It’s unclear just how much <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/Gender-smart%20Procurement%20-%2020.12.2017.pdf">being named on this list</a> – or being deemed ineligible for government contracts – matters to these companies, or to their customers and clients.</p>
<p>It’s these companies – slipping through the cracks and outside of the scope of government contracts – that we will still need to focus on.</p>
<p>Procurement is just one lever in a multi-pronged strategy to achieve gender equality. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-018-9997-4">Evaluations</a> suggest some procurement strategies are unlikely to boost women’s bidding success unless the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01446193.2019.1687923">other deeper barriers</a> that limit women’s involvement are also broken down. However, Australia’s existing investment in data collection means they could still be a powerful tool.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonora Risse has undertaken research for WGEA and made a submission to the review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act. She serves as an Expert Panel Member on gender pay equity for the Fair Work Commission. She receives research funding from the Trawalla Foundation and the Women's Leadership Institute Australia. She is a member of the Economic Society of Australia and the Women in Economics Network.</span></em></p>Businesses with more than 500 employees will need to meet targets against at least three gender equality indicators.Leonora Risse, Associate Professor in Economics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235312024-02-19T13:36:32Z2024-02-19T13:36:32ZFAFSA website meltdown: How to avoid additional frustration with financial aid applications<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576239/original/file-20240216-16-d8twal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5455%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some colleges are extending the traditional May 1 deadline for students to accept offers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-with-digital-tablet-having-problems-royalty-free-image/832996896?phrase=paying+for+college+stressed+out&adppopup=true">valentinrussanov via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Congress passed the <a href="https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/article/fafsa-simplification-act">FAFSA Simplification Act in 2020</a>, it was touted as making it easier for more families to access the government funding they need to send their children to college. But as recent events have shown, it actually <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/frustration-all-around-the-fafsas-rocky-rollout">made things more complicated, frustrating and confusing</a>.</p>
<p>While the new federal student aid form – known as the FAFSA – is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/fafsa-changes-what-you-need-to-know/#:%7E:text=The%20new%20FAFSA%20application%20requires,one%20has%20less%20than%2050.">much shorter and requires less manual entry</a> of tax information, there were glitches and delays in rolling it out, as with many new websites.</p>
<p>Initially, families could access the FAFSA only for a limited time during a “<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2024/01/03/fafsa-soft-launch-vexes-families-and-counselors">soft launch” period in December</a>.</p>
<p>Now the form is accessible to families for them to complete, but the data is not flowing out to schools and colleges. Applicants are also discovering another problem. Often, students and parents may need to consult other documents or each other as part of the application process, so they will pause their application to complete it later. However, after initially logging into the FAFSA website, many students and parents experienced difficulty when returning to finalize their submission. The simplified FAFSA application has been online since the end of December, but users are still <a href="https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/topics/fafsa-simplification-information/2024-25-fafsa-issue-alerts">experiencing some problems</a>.</p>
<p>The Department of Education’s student aid calculations have also been delayed as it incorporates a <a href="https://financialaidtoolkit.ed.gov/tk/announcement-detail.jsp?id=fafsa-changes-student-aid-index">new formula</a> intended to expand eligibility for financial aid. The department also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/01/fafsa-income-allowance-protection-calculation-error/">made an error</a> in the formula when adjusting for inflation. The calculations used for the determination of aid eligibility had been based on outdated consumer price index rules from 2020 but have since been corrected. All of this has delayed sending aid calculations to schools. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://drexel.edu/news/archive/2023/November/Dawn-Medley-to-join-Drexel-as-SVP-for-Enrollment-Management">longtime college administrator</a> who has developed programs to improve access to higher education, I see this situation as a well-intentioned but poorly executed effort. Ultimately, I believe the changes to FAFSA will help more students realize their dream of earning a degree, but this year I’m afraid it may cause many to abandon it.</p>
<p>To better understand the situation and what might come next, it helps to know how the government and schools work together to provide financial aid.</p>
<h2>Measuring ability to pay</h2>
<p>The Department of Education <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/1150">created the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 1992</a> to determine how much the federal government believes a family can contribute for a child’s college education. To be eligible for <a href="https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/grants/pell">Pell Grants</a>, <a href="https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/work-study">federal work-study</a> or even <a href="https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/article/how-to-apply-for-federal-student-loan">student loans</a>, students and families must complete the FAFSA. </p>
<p>Submitting the FAFSA prompts the Department of Education to set the amount it will offer in loans and other federal funding. The department then sends that information to the schools to which a student has applied. From there, the schools determine what additional financial aid they can provide. The schools make a final offer of financial assistance, called an award notice or award letter, to prospective students. Typically, this process takes a couple of months, and students <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/financial-aid-award-letter/">can expect to receive their award letter</a> from schools by the end of March, depending on when they filled out the FAFSA.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">What happens after submitting your FAFSA form?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On Feb. 13, 2024, the Department of Education announced <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/amid-fafsa-delays-education-dept-will-reduce-verification-requirements-for-aid-applicants">a temporary fix</a> intended to shorten the department’s application review process, which would enable schools to make their offers sooner.</p>
<h2>Extensions granted</h2>
<p>In the meantime, some institutions have taken steps to alleviate stress and provide more clarity to applicants. Many schools have chosen to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/14/dc-colleges-extend-admissions-deadline-fafsa-delay/">extend students’ time</a> to accept their offer, moving from the traditional deadline of May 1, which is known as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/education/student-resources/college-decision-day/#:%7E:text=Each%20year%2C%20National%20Decision%20Day,might%20enforce%20different%20decision%20deadlines.">National Decision Day</a>, to May 15 or even June 1. </p>
<p>Some have created their own <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/business/fafsa-delays-financial-aid.html">mini FAFSA application</a> to shortcut the aid application process; others are using their own aid calculators. Drexel University, where I oversee financial aid, has decided to forgo the FAFSA process and make a final offer based on another profile on a platform called <a href="https://cssprofile.collegeboard.org/">College Scholarship Service</a> that applicants complete.</p>
<p>None of these solutions is perfect. My peers and I are concerned that the frustration and confusion will lead students, <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/fafsa-delays-raise-concerns-some-students-will-miss-out-on-college-aid/">particularly those who are the first in their families</a> to go to college, to walk away from higher education altogether.</p>
<p>Students and families should now expect schools to communicate regularly, provide clear and concise information, and encourage students to fill out both a College Scholarship Service profile and a FAFSA if they haven’t already. The financial aid process is complicated, but it’s the responsibility of schools to distill it into a set of simple steps for their applicants.</p>
<h2>Practical tips</h2>
<p>Here are a few tips for students and their families going though this process right now:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Families should communicate with schools to see whether they are able to receive official offers based on net price calculators, College Scholarship Service profiles or school-created solutions. Students can do this via the schools’ websites, texting, email or even phoning. </p></li>
<li><p>If families do not have a guaranteed award from a school, they should ask for a deposit deadline extension so they have the full information they need to make a decision.</p></li>
<li><p>Institutions want to assist and support students through this period of uncertainty, so don’t be afraid to ask questions and stay in touch with the experts who have the most updated information.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dawn Medley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A college administrator offers insights into the rocky rollout of the Department of Education’s supposedly ‘simplified’ financial aid form.Dawn Medley, Senior Vice President of Enrollment Management, Drexel UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221592024-02-08T03:11:12Z2024-02-08T03:11:12ZWhat’s the secret to attracting more women into politics? Give them more resources<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573630/original/file-20240205-15-mja2se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With Victorian council elections to be held in October, the state government’s target of reaching 50-50 gender representation at the local level is under threat.</p>
<p>While the state achieved a record <a href="https://www.localgovernment.vic.gov.au/our-programs/gender-equity">43.8%</a> of women elected to councils in 2020, outperforming most federal and state parliaments, and succeeded in achieving gender parity in <a href="https://pathwaystopolitics.org.au/knowledge-hub/scorecard-women-political-representation/#local">47 out of 76</a> councils, the overall 50-50 gender representation target by 2025 will still be difficult to reach.</p>
<p>Globally, <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/equal-representation-the-debate-over-gender-quotas-part-1/">gender quotas</a> have been a tried and tested way of lifting women’s political representation. But <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10361146.2018.1449802">research</a> also shows quotas can divide public opinion, and they work better in some <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26384931?seq=15">contexts</a> than others. With this in mind, we wanted to test alternative measures to support women in politics, which also attract public support.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/understanding-public-support-for-policies-aimed-at-gender-parity-in-politics-a-crossnational-experimental-study/C2BFCDE1454D3F39D6A2172B44403AC7">latest research</a> shows Australians are generally supportive of giving women politicians a range of resources such as better compensation, childcare and housekeeping funds, and more flexibility with online meetings, to help keep them in office. </p>
<p>Australia struggles with women’s representation in its parliaments across our three tier system. Despite a record number of women entering the federal parliament in 2022, Australia is currently ranked <a href="https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=3&year=2023">34th</a> in the world for women’s representation in the lower house. </p>
<p>While local governments tend to fare slightly better, they also struggle to achieve equal gender representation. In response, the Victorian government set a target in 2016 for <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/our-equal-state-victorias-gender-equality-strategy-and-action-plan-2023-2027/introduction-our-equal-state">50% women councillors and Mayors by 2025</a>. </p>
<p>Achieving this goal is important because it makes society more equal, reflecting the fact that women account for just over 50% of the population. </p>
<p>There are other benefits too. Local government can be an excellent <a href="https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cwppp_pubs/34/">training ground</a> for women politicians, which may in turn bolster women’s representation in other tiers of government. And so, women need more support to ensure they can run for local government and be supported once in office.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-liberal-party-is-failing-women-miserably-compared-to-other-democracies-and-needs-quotas-110172">The Liberal Party is failing women miserably compared to other democracies, and needs quotas</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Challenges for women politicians</h2>
<p>Women face unique challenges as politicians. Our research shows a major issue facing women politicians is their competing work and family roles. </p>
<p>Trying to meet the demands of work, family and politics creates role strain for women politicians. In a <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.254818847363461">previous study</a> with logistical support from the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA), we found these demands meant younger women were much less likely to run for local government than older women and men of all ages. </p>
<p>Our research shows this creates stress, strain and high levels of burn-out for women politicians. It can also lead to higher attrition rates, making it harder to close the gender gap. Many men politicians, of course, also had families and paid employment, but most also had a secret weapon – partners at home to manage the domestic demands. </p>
<p>This means women politicians are entering their jobs with heavier loads and the weight of these demands are a source of constant strain. </p>
<p>To counter this, we tested public support in three countries for non-quota measures like additional resources to keep women in public office, to move closer to gender parity. </p>
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<h2>Gender responsive governments</h2>
<p>Governments have long toyed with the question: how do you centre gender in decision-making to create governments that support women and men equally? And, importantly, will the public support this decision-making? </p>
<p>To understand these questions, we conducted an experiment drawing reponses from more than 25,000 people in Australia, Canada and the United States. We presented people with a hypothetical scenario: A politician has young children at home, travels a lot for work and is doing a great job. They are thinking about re-running in the next election but find managing work and family life to be difficult. What kind of resources, if any, should they be provided? We then provided a range of options to measured their level of support for: a pay raise, a childcare allowance, or money to outsource housework. </p>
<p>Testing support at both local and federal levels of office, we found public support across countries for giving women more resources than men to help women stay in politics. We found respondents were especially supportive of extending these resources to women elected to local government, where compensation is less and supports are most needed. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-missing-women-of-australian-politics-research-shows-the-toll-of-harassment-abuse-and-stalking-168567">The missing women of Australian politics — research shows the toll of harassment, abuse and stalking</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>So, what are the lessons we can draw here? Well, it is clear that women need additional resources to remain in office. Our <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.254818847363461">earlier research</a> on women in local government in Victoria showed a missing cohort of young women who are building families at the exact moment that they could be building political careers. </p>
<p>We know from decades of national statistics that women are underrepresented in all areas of government – local, state and federal. Women politicians report significant strain in trying to do it all and do it well. </p>
<p>They need additional resources such as childcare and flexible meeting times to stay in office. Our latest work finds that citizens are supportive of these concrete solutions to support women in politics and lift women’s participation rate.</p>
<p>We know that women bring unique strengths to politics and we know, from decades of research, that we all benefit from more equal parliaments to create a more equal society. </p>
<p>With the Victorian local government elections around the corner, now is the time for fresh thinking and policies to deliver women the resources they need to participate in politics to benefit us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Ruppanner receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a grant with the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Carson receives funding from an ARC Linkage grant with the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA). This latest research was supported through Professor Carson's fellowship with the Women's Leadership Institute Australia (WILA).</span></em></p>New research shows giving women more resources to balance their competing work and domestic lives would help even gender disparity at all levels of political representation.Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, The University of MelbourneAndrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169082023-11-06T22:59:48Z2023-11-06T22:59:48ZHigh Court, then what? NT remote housing reforms need to put Indigenous residents front and centre<p>The relationships between tenants and landlords are often fraught, but it’s fair to expect a house to meet basic standards, like having a back door.</p>
<p>That wasn’t the case for an Aboriginal woman in a remote community, who was part of a successful class action to sue the landlord for failing to provide a habitable house.</p>
<p>Last week, the High Court <a href="https://eresources.hcourt.gov.au/showCase/2023/HCA/31">ruled</a> residents of the community of Santa Teresa (Ltyentye Apurte) could be compensated for the “distress and disappointment” caused by the poor state of their government-managed houses.</p>
<p>So how can such housing be better managed? And what needs to be done to ensure houses in remote communities do not just meet the legal standard, but exceed it?</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-back-door-for-5-years-remote-communitys-high-court-win-is-good-news-for-renters-everywhere-216821">No back door for 5 years: remote community's High Court win is good news for renters everywhere</a>
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<h2>Big result, but ongoing problems</h2>
<p>Seventy public housing residents in Santa Teresa commenced the legal action against their landlord, the NT government, in <a href="https://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nt/NTCAT/2019/12.html">2016</a>.</p>
<p>By the time the High Court decision was handed down in 2023, both lead applicants had died. Just as remote housing tenants must wait prolonged periods for repairs, the lengthy delay for housing justice outlasted them. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in the NT, residents of Laramba have also been pursuing compensation for the landlord’s failure to undertake housing repairs, and arguing for a right to safe drinking water in their homes. </p>
<p>In October this year, the <a href="https://arena.org.au/safe-drinking-water-in-nt/">NT Supreme Court</a> found the landlord, the NT government, is responsible for ensuring safe drinking water at those premises. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1652427646574243840"}"></div></p>
<p>The Santa Teresa High Court decision is <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-back-door-for-5-years-remote-communitys-high-court-win-is-good-news-for-renters-everywhere-216821">potentially significant</a> for tenants across the country. </p>
<p>However, a right to seek compensation for distress and disappointment is not a silver bullet for housing justice. </p>
<p>The challenge is to maintain housing and essential services at such standards that render these types of lawsuits unnecessary.</p>
<h2>When your landlord is the government</h2>
<p>The NT government has not always been responsible for remote community housing.</p>
<p>Most remote communities are located on Aboriginal land owned under the <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/alrta1976444/">Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976</a>. </p>
<p>Through the NT Intervention, the Commonwealth government compulsorily acquired five-year leases over entire communities. </p>
<p>A policy of “secure tenure” made subsequent housing and infrastructure investment contingent on long-term remote community leases to governments. </p>
<p>Indigenous Community Housing Organisations were effectively <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718522001944">dismantled</a>, and the introduction of “mainstream” tenancy arrangements under a public housing system followed. </p>
<p>One of the unanticipated consequences of this change was the ability of tenants to use the <a href="https://legislation.nt.gov.au/en/Legislation/RESIDENTIAL-TENANCIES-ACT-1999">Residential Tenancies Act</a> as a “<a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/INFORMIT.062772924394473">tool of empowerment</a>”.</p>
<p>Residents could now push back against <a href="https://www.academia.edu/44672286/2021_Housing_waste_in_Remote_Indigenous_Australia_In_The_Temporalities_of_Waste_Out_of_Sight_Out_of_Time_eds_F_Allon_R_Barcan_K_Eddison_Cogan_75_86_Routledge_New_York_and_London">entrenched low expectations</a> for the timeliness and quality of remote housing repairs.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/think-private-renting-is-hard-first-nations-people-can-be-excluded-from-the-start-192392">Think private renting is hard? First Nations people can be excluded from the start</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Current programs falling short</h2>
<p>In response to the cases at Santa Teresa and Laramba, the NT government has sought to reform its remote housing maintenance program. </p>
<p>In 2021, the NT government introduced its <a href="https://tfhc.nt.gov.au/housing-and-homelessness/healthy-homes">Healthy Homes</a> program. It aims to prioritise cyclical and preventive maintenance to improve the quality of houses as well as health outcomes for tenants.</p>
<p>The reforms reflect many <a href="https://www.niaa.gov.au/resource-centre/indigenous-affairs/remote-housing-review">reviews</a> that have recommended such measures.</p>
<p>If implemented effectively, Healthy Homes can improve <a href="https://www.healthabitat.com/">housing hardware</a> and increase the lifespan of existing housing.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.menzies.edu.au/page/Research/Indigenous_Health/Preventive_health/Healthy_Homes_Monitoring_and_Evaluation_Project/#:%7E:text=Healthy%20Homes%20is%20framed%20as,undertake%20'healthy%20living%20practices'">evaluation of Healthy Homes</a> found the average maintenance spend per house to be about $6,000 per year.</p>
<p>While seemingly significant, this is much less than is spent <a href="https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/368">by Housing SA</a> on housing on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in northwest South Australia, where expenditure in 2021 exceeded $10,000 per house.</p>
<p>The key mechanism that underpins the NT’s Healthy Homes is a yearly condition assessment requirement, generating maintenance work without relying on tenant reporting. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.menzies.edu.au/page/Research/Indigenous_Health/Preventive_health/Healthy_Homes_Monitoring_and_Evaluation_Project/#:%7E:text=Healthy%20Homes%20is%20framed%20as,undertake%20'healthy%20living%20practices'">The evaluation</a> found that from July 2021 to February 2023, only 1,315 such inspections had been undertaken across a total of 5,498 houses included in Healthy Homes.</p>
<p>This is equivalent to an inspection of only 23.9% of houses. </p>
<p>The Santa Teresa case also laid bare significant issues with the NT government’s record-keeping, which don’t appear to have been fixed.</p>
<p>The evaluation found:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>NT government datasets cannot distinguish between preventive and responsive maintenance</p></li>
<li><p>reporting requirements mean maintenance data is unreliable for determining how quickly repairs were undertaken</p></li>
<li><p>a significant proportion of maintenance work is coded miscellaneous, meaning it is not possible to determine the proportion of works by trade type.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The combination of these factors makes it very hard to assess whether and how approaches to remote community maintenance might be improving.</p>
<h2>Bringing remote housing up to scratch</h2>
<p>So a High Court case has reaffirmed the rights of Santa Teresa tenants and the current remote housing maintenance program is inadequate. What happens to NT remote housing now?</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/land-and-housing/national-partnership-remote-housing-northern-territory-2018-23#:%7E:text=On%2030%20March%202019%2C%20the,for%20Aboriginal%20Territorians%20in%20remote">National Partnership for Remote Housing Northern Territory</a> expired in July 2023.</p>
<p>Commonwealth funding was extended for another year. A new agreement is currently being negotiated.</p>
<p>To meet the needs of remote communities, this agreement must be tripartite. The peak body <a href="https://ahnt.com.au/">Aboriginal Housing NT</a> and Northern Territory land councils require rights to determine funding allocations and policy directions, as well as the territory and federal governments.</p>
<p>This is necessary for the meaningful participation and empowerment of those Aboriginal organisations in key decision-making under the agreement, and to enshrine their place as equal partners in the ongoing governance of remote housing in the NT. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-housing-policies-must-be-based-on-community-needs-not-what-non-indigenous-people-think-they-need-162999">Aboriginal housing policies must be based on community needs — not what non-Indigenous people think they need</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>Federal funding of remote housing is required into the long term. A ten-year funding agreement should support all of remote communities, town camps and homelands.</p>
<p>Because of historical underfunding and neglect, this funding also needs to increase and the Commonwealth Government must remain on the hook.</p>
<p>The Santa Teresa case has shown the ongoing legacy of underinvestment and neglect. </p>
<p>Aboriginal residents of remote communities and their representative organisations must be supported to play a central role in determining the future of the places they call home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Grealy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, and the NT Department of Territory Families, Housing and Communities. He is affiliated with Menzies School of Health Research and the University of Sydney. Details related to specific projects are available on his public profiles. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyllie Cripps receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government and State Governments to conduct research and evaluations. Details related to this are on her public profiles.</span></em></p>Last week, the High Court ruled the community of Santa Teresa could be compensated for the “distress and disappointment” caused by their poor housing. So how can such housing be better managed?Liam Grealy, Research fellow, Menzies School of Health ResearchKyllie Cripps, Professor, Director Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies (SOPHIS), School of Social Sciences (SOSS), Faculty of Arts, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110822023-08-07T12:06:43Z2023-08-07T12:06:43ZHousing is a direct federal responsibility, contrary to what Trudeau said. Here’s how his government can do better.<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541282/original/file-20230804-20651-ldda9c.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5955%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a visit to an apartment complex under construction in Hamilton, Ont., on July 31, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/housing-is-a-direct-federal-responsibility-contrary-to-what-trudeau-said-heres-how-his-government-can-do-better" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-housing-responsible-feds-provinces-1.6924290">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated</a> that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility” at a funding announcement in Hamilton, Ont. on July 31. </p>
<p>This statement is neither accurate nor politically smart, with recent polls suggesting that <a href="https://abacusdata.ca/canadian-politics-polling-abacus-data-january-2023-2/">70 per cent of Canadians</a> think the Liberal government isn’t adequately addressing the high and growing cost of housing.</p>
<p>While the word “housing” isn’t mentioned in the 1867 Constitution Act or <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html">1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a> as a federal, provincial or municipal responsibility, the rights to “life, liberty and security of the person” as well as “equal protection” in the Charter can’t be achieved without adequate housing. </p>
<p>The right to housing — which Canada has promised to enforce in numerous <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights">international</a> <a href="https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples">covenants</a> — was enshrined in <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-11.2/FullText.html">Canadian law by the current government in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>Instead of taking responsibility for the housing needs of Canadians, the federal government has been participating in the same “<a href="https://centre.irpp.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/05/Closing-the-Implementation-Gap-Federalism-and-Respect-for-International-Human-Rights-in-Canada.pdf">ambiguity, turf guarding, buck passing and finger pointing</a>” they accuse other governments of doing, as was recently seen in the treatment of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-ottawa-cant-wash-its-hands-of-torontos-refugee-crisis/">refugee claimants in Toronto</a>. </p>
<h2>History of federal housing engagement</h2>
<p>Trudeau seems to have forgotten about the federal government’s previous involvement in housing. After the Second World War, the Canadian government helped create a million low-cost <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-24/the-design-history-of-toronto-s-victory-houses">Victory Houses</a> using government land, direct grants and industrialized production processes that allowed new homes to be assembled in as little as 36 hours. </p>
<p>From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, between <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/cjnser586">10 and 20 per cent</a> of new construction was non-market housing — public, community and co-op — supported through federal land, grants and financing partnerships with provincial and municipal governments.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-study-reveals-intensified-housing-inequality-in-canada-from-1981-to-2016-173633">New study reveals intensified housing inequality in Canada from 1981 to 2016</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As a result of federal government actions, the <a href="https://economics.td.com/esg-housing-wealth-inequality">average home cost 2.5 times the average household income in 1980</a>. Today, the average home in Canada costs 8.8 times the average income, with homes in Toronto and Vancouver costing 13.2 and 14.4 times respectively.</p>
<p>The production of non-market housing <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/22/Why-Cant-We-Build-Like-1970s/">fell off a cliff in 1992</a> when the federal government downloaded responsibility for affordable housing to provinces.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph illustrating how government-funded affordable housing dropped in the mid-1990s" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541291/original/file-20230804-15-3lr4h7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Canadian government reduced its spending on affordable housing after 1992 when it shifted the responsibility onto provinces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Brian Clifford)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Private rental construction <a href="http://neighbourhoodchange.ca/documents/2014/09/suttor-2009-rental-housing-paths-canada-compared.pdf">dropped precipitously after 1972</a> when the federal government cut back on taxation incentives. The housing crisis has its roots in the federal government’s neglect of affordable housing over decades. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph illustrating that the amount of purpose-built rental housing in Canada increased from 1950 to 1974, before decreasing until 1999." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541292/original/file-20230804-25-awyo9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The construction of purpose-built rental housing dropped after 1972 when the federal government cut back on taxation incentives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Greg Suttor)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Five priorities for the federal government</h2>
<p>There is an opportunity for real federal leadership with the recent announcement that <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-cabinet-shuffle/">Sean Fraser will take on a combined Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities</a>. Rather than dodging responsibility, the federal government should pursue five priorities.</p>
<p>First, the federal government must return to using a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-governments-across-canada-need-common-income-based-definition-of/">single income-based definition of affordable housing</a> in its programs, as it did from the 1940s to the 1990s. </p>
<p><a href="https://hart.ubc.ca/">Evidence-based supply targets for provinces and municipalities</a> would reflect the fact that 78 per cent of households in need of housing can afford no more than $1,050 a month for rent and homeless people no more than $420 a month. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Construction workers building a home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541283/original/file-20230804-17929-5cp2vk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The housing crisis has its roots in the federal government’s abandonment and ongoing neglect of affordable housing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, <a href="https://chra-achru.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Blueprint-for-Housing_CHRA-2022.pdf">delivery of genuinely affordable housing</a> — including a fair share of <a href="https://nichi.ca/">Indigenous housing built by and for Indigenous people</a> — will require land from all three levels of government, grants to non-market housing providers and low-cost financing. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/about/economics/economics-publications/post.other-publications.insights-views.social-housing--january-18--2023-.html">Scotiabank’s recommendation to double non-market stock</a> with 655,000 new or acquired homes over the next decade is a starting point to <a href="https://eppdscrmssa01.blob.core.windows.net/cmhcprodcontainer/sf/project/placetocallhome/pdfs/canada-national-housing-strategy.pdf">eradicating homelessness by 2030</a> and reducing the core housing needs of 530,000 families by 2028.</p>
<p>Third, a <a href="https://www.gensqueeze.ca/price_on_housing_inequity">progressive surtax placed on the most expensive homes</a> in Canada, or redressing the $3.2 trillion capital gains tax shelter for principal residences, could fund an improved National Housing Strategy with a stronger focus on those who need housing the most.</p>
<p>Fourth, the government must meet the needs of its rapidly growing population and ensure middle-income families can afford to raise their children in urban areas.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-how-canada-can-create-more-rental-housing/">Taxation reform</a> and offering long-term, low-cost financing for purpose-built rental homes are both federal government responsibilities. So is supporting Canadian firms to become world leaders in <a href="https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/news/local-news/brantford-company-becoming-a-world-leader-in-modular-housing">prefabricated modular housing</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People walk past a small, rectangular residence. A city skyline is visible in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541285/original/file-20230804-20651-k8vdyv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A temporary modular housing suite on display in Robson Square in downtown Vancouver in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ben Nelms</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Provinces and municipalities must step up</h2>
<p>The final priority the federal government should consider <a href="https://womenshomelessness.ca/wp-content/uploads/EN-Rights-Based-GBA-Analysis-of-NHS-28-Sept-2021.pdf">is using conditional agreements for infrastructure funding</a> to encourage other levels of government to do more.</p>
<p>Provincial and territorial <a href="https://maytree.com/changing-systems/data-measuring/welfare-in-canada/">welfare rates</a> and <a href="https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/cant-afford-rent">minimum wages</a> don’t match housing costs. Insufficient provincial funding for <a href="https://www.abeoudshoorn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Indwell-Project-Final-Report-Feb-9-2023.pdf">health and social supports</a> has put federal rapid housing initiatives at risk. </p>
<p>Provinces must improve residential tenancy protections to stop the <a href="https://housingresearch.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/2023-05/estimating_no-fault_evictions_in_canada_0_2.pdf">rising tide of evictions</a> and <a href="https://rentals.ca/national-rent-report">double-digit rent increases</a>. Municipalities need to revise <a href="https://makehousingaffordable.ca/housing-action-plan/">zoning codes</a> to allow four- to six-storey buildings in all residential areas and 10- to 30-storey buildings close to rapid transit stations.</p>
<p>Municipalities must stop making it harder for multi-unit housing to be built. Barriers, including placing restrictions on how many units can be built, setting parking requirements, imposing onerous development charges and elaborate design requirements, must be eliminated.</p>
<p>By amending the <a href="https://www.larchlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Eliason_CoV-Point-Access-Blocks-report_v1.2.pdf">federal building code</a>, municipalities could scale up smaller, affordable, accessible and energy-efficient apartment buildings with family-sized units.</p>
<p>Rather than passing the buck for housing, the federal government must take the lead on affordable housing supply, the <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/discrimination-and-supply-contribute-to-housing-affordability-crisis-survey-finds-1.6148493">most pressing issue Canadians are facing today</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carolyn Whitzman receives funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Flynn receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. </span></em></p>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments about housing not being the primary responsibility of the federal government miss the mark.Carolyn Whitzman, Housing Policy Researcher, Expert Advisor, Housing Assessment Resource Tools and Adjunct Professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaAlexandra Flynn, Associate Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2074822023-06-12T11:49:48Z2023-06-12T11:49:48Z‘If you want to die in jail, keep talking’ – two national security law experts discuss the special treatment for Trump and offer him some advice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531249/original/file-20230611-23-dl1h4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2953%2C1921&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former President Donald Trump on his airplane on June 10, 2023, two days after his federal indictment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-president-donald-trump-speaks-to-staff-and-reporters-news-photo/1258608437?adppopup=true">Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Lawyer Thomas A. Durkin has spent much of his career working in <a href="https://www.luc.edu/law/faculty/facultyandadministrationprofiles/durkin-thomas.shtml">national security law</a>, representing clients in a variety of national security and domestic terrorism matters. <a href="https://www.luc.edu/law/faculty/facultyandadministrationprofiles/ferguson-joseph.shtml">Joseph Ferguson</a> was a national security prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, where Durkin was also a prosecutor. Both teach national security law at Loyola University, Chicago. The Conversation U.S.’s democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with the two attorneys about <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23839628-trump-indictment">the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump</a> on Espionage Act and other charges related to his retention of national security-related classified documents.</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-repeat-trumps-claim-doj-weaponization-after-2nd/story?id=99963397">The word “weaponized”</a> has been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-magnifies-attacks-justice-department-post-charges-speech-2023-06-10/">used by Trump</a>, his supporters and even his GOP rivals to describe the Department of Justice. Do you see the Trump prosecution as different in any notable way from other Espionage Act prosecutions that you’ve worked on or observed?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: Obviously, it’s different because of who the defendant is. But I see it in kind of an opposite way: If Trump were anyone other than a former president, he would not have been given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/us/reality-winner-nsa-sentence.html">luxury of a summons to appear in court</a>. There would be a team of armed FBI agents outside his door at 6:30 in the morning, he would have been arrested and the government would be immediately moving to detain. So the idea that he’s being treated differently is true – but not from the way his supporters seem to be arguing. </p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: What you have is a method, manner and means of pursuing this matter and bringing it forward to indictment that actually completely comports with the deepest traditions and standards of the Department of Justice, which would normally consider all contexts and the best interests of society. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dark haired man with a bear approaching a lectern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531252/original/file-20230611-150540-ts7ejl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Special Counsel Jack Smith briefly discussed the Trump indictment on June 9, 2023, in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/special-counsel-jack-smith-makes-a-statement-from-the-news-photo/1258577211?adppopup=true">Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>If Trump were your client, what would you advise him to do?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: The first thing I would do is show him a guidelines memo, which we typically create for every client to help them understand the potential consequences of the charges. Under the <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/qa-on-trumps-federal-indictment/">U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, the consequences for Trump under this indictment are serious</a>. My quick calculations indicate that you’re talking about 51 to 63 months in the best case and in the worst case, which I’m not sure would apply, 210 to 262 months. </p>
<p>Whether he wants to roll heavy dice, that’s up to him. But those are very heavy dice. </p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: I might pull media statements that he has made in the last couple years and explain to him how they have complicated the ability to defend him. I’d put on the table to him that I need to see every statement that he is going to make in the political realm about this before he makes it. I’d tell him he’s otherwise basically hanging himself. </p>
<p>I’d tell him: If you want to die in jail, keep talking. But if you want to try to figure out a way that brings about an acceptable resolution - a plea deal that opens the door to a lighter jail sentence than what the guidelines threaten and, possibly, even no jail time – you need to turn it down or at least have it screened by your lawyers. </p>
<p><strong>Are there specific things he might say between now and a trial that could deepen his trouble?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: No question about that. And people should understand that the things that he said already are being used as <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23839628-trump-indictment">evidence of intent</a>. From now on, the repetition of them constitutes new admissible evidence. It’s not like, “Oh, I’ve already said it, so I might as well keep saying it.” </p>
<p>That does not mean that he cannot offer the broad brush characterization, “I’m being wronged. This is the weaponization of law enforcement and the justice system against me, and I will be vindicated,” however imprudent I might think that was. But anything that goes beyond that, and into the actual particulars, referencing the documents themselves, will just make it worse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pile of pages from an indictment." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531253/original/file-20230611-25-wqcduw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pages from the unsealed federal indictment of former President Donald Trump on 37 felony counts in the classified documents probe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-pages-are-viewed-from-the-news-photo/1258567425?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>The Trump indictment provides <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/09/trump-indictment-takeaways-00101376">extensive details</a> of what was said and done. Do you take those as true, or as allegations that need to be proved?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: Both. They are technically the allegations that need to be proven, but when you’re speaking at that level of granularity, these are things that actually exist in proof, the proof that is to come. </p>
<p>The government basically raises the bar when it provides this form of granularity. The federal government is a risk-averse enterprise when it comes to these matters, so nothing is put in the indictment unless it exists in actual fact.</p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: If you’re defending someone, you treat the allegations as true.</p>
<p><strong>Can you imagine a situation with all of the facts laid out in this indictment but where they would not indict?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: No.</p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: That’s why we both say that in fundamental respects, this isn’t different from other national security cases. These cases work from the premise that this is a fundamental compromising of the interests of the United States. And those are the cases that the government pursues tooth and nail. With so much in the public domain, and with so much of the defendant himself speaking to all of this, it almost puts the government in a position of saying, “Well, OK, if we have to, here we go.”</p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: There’s only one reason the government could not bring this case, and that’s fear of violence or an attack on the republic. Once you do that, then you might as well close the Department of Justice and forget about any rule of law. </p>
<p><strong>Trump knows a lot of state secrets. An angry Trump in prison has risks. If he were found guilty, what does incarceration look like for him?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: I can tell you what it would mean to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-espionage-act-what-might-it-mean-donald-trump-2023-06-11/">anyone else</a>. They’d be put in a hole in the wall in <a href="https://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/flm/">maximum security at Florence, Colorado</a>, and they would apply what’s called “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-24000-requests-special-confinement-conditions">Special Administrative Measures</a>.” Several of my terrorism clients have had those imposed on them. There’s a microphone outside their solitary confinement to monitor anything that they say, even between prisoners. Their mail is extremely limited. Their telephone contact is extremely limited. And that’s what would happen to anyone else similarly situated. </p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: Trump’s insistence on keeping talking about this creates a record that would justify isolation in maximum security on the basis that “We can’t trust this man not to continue to talk. We can’t trust him not to further share these secrets with people who may wish to do harm with them. The only way to avoid that is to put him in isolation in supermax where he doesn’t get to talk with people, except under these extremely closely monitored circumstances, certainly isn’t in a general population situation, gets to take a walk in a courtyard for one hour out of the 24 hours of the day, and the other 23 hours, leaving him mostly without human contact.”</p>
<p><strong>Is there a specific line he could cross that would force the government to seek to detain him prior to trial?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Durkin</strong>: I predict that if he keeps it up, and especially if he keeps suggesting or threatening violence, that the government will be put in a position where they don’t have a choice but to try to move to detain him. In the real world, that’s what would happen if it was anybody but him. Normally, you can’t be threatening this type of stuff without being put in detention. </p>
<p><strong>Ferguson</strong>: The smart play here would be for a judge to put him under a gag order that instructs him on what he may and may not say publicly. That’s already been done by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/23/1177644144/trump-stormy-daniels-judge-new-york-hush-money-case-carroll">a New York judge in the other pending criminal case</a> against Trump. This would be a complicated exercise in balancing First Amendment rights with national security interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If you were Trump’s lawyer, what would you advise him to do now? Two national security specialists have some words for and about the former president after his federal indictment.Thomas A. Durkin, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Loyola University ChicagoJoseph Ferguson, Co-Director, National Security and Civil Rights Program, Loyola University ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2052712023-05-09T18:11:40Z2023-05-09T18:11:40ZPassport bottleneck is holding up international travel by Americans eager to see the world as COVID-19 eases<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524978/original/file-20230508-221323-4jr98o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C333%2C3895%2C1938&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A JetBlue employee poses next to a Boston replica of London's Big Ben before the launch of nonstop flights between Boston and London in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jet-blue-employee-gets-her-photograph-taken-standing-next-news-photo/1239787161?adppopup=true">David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The World Health Organization declared on May 5, 2023, that the COVID-19 pandemic is <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/05/1136367">no longer a public health emergency</a>. Although the virus is still causing <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00">hospitalizations and deaths</a>, many travelers who were reluctant to go abroad because of the pandemic now feel freer to travel internationally again.</p>
<p>That’s going to be a whole lot easier to do this summer if <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-apply.html">you already have a valid passport</a>. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/03/travel/passport-processing-wait-times.html">wait times for getting one</a> are soaring. The <a href="https://www.state.gov/update-on-passport-processing-times/">State Department says it can take up to 13 weeks</a> for it to process passport applications, and up to nine weeks for expedited service that requires the payment of extra fees. It’s <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unprecedented-demand-for-passports-antony-blinken-state-department/">getting about 500,000 passport applications a week</a>, which is at least 30% more than last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March. And delays in processing were <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/passport-application-wait-times-2022">already aggravating in 2021 and 2022</a>.</p>
<p>I’m among the many Americans who have had to <a href="https://abc11.com/us-passport-renewal-status-application/12963897/">cancel or delay trips</a> because of the long wait times. I was hoping to fly to London for a weeklong break between teaching economics courses. Unfortunately, renewing my passport took so long I couldn’t go.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/hiring-retention/2021/07/state-dept-staffing-surge-wont-address-passport-backlog-overnight-union-warns/">government says staffing issues</a> are contributing to the delays. As an economist who <a href="https://blogs.bu.edu/zagorsky/">researches the everyday experiences of consumers</a>, I wondered if there was more to the story, since international travel is a big business. U.S. residents <a href="https://www.trade.gov/data-visualization/monthly-travel-trade-monitor">spent around US$17 billion</a> in just the month of March 2023 going abroad.</p>
<h2>Origin of passports</h2>
<p>Passports <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadians/celebrate-being-canadian/teachers-corner/history-passports.html">have been around a long time</a>. They became more widespread about four centuries ago during the reign of the French King Louis the XIV. The king gave people with <a href="https://www.royal.uk/passports?page=1">royal connections</a> letters asking foreign officials to let the traveler “passe port” – French for pass through – the port or border of <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/about/history/did-you-know/passport-protection">another country safely</a>.</p>
<p>You can find a similar statement in the front of every U.S. passport, which “requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance.”</p>
<p>One reason for the passport bottleneck in the United States is a long-term increase in demand for those official blue booklets. Back in 1989, there were three valid passports for every 100 people in this country. Today there are more than 45 passports for every 100 Americans. More recently, many Americans who let their passports expire because they were avoiding international travel when the pandemic began are <a href="https://thepointsguy.com/news/passport-processing-status/">eager to travel again</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="uLbW6" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/uLbW6/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Changes after 2000</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/population.html">U.S. population has increased</a> about 1% each year over the past three decades. During that same period the <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/">number of people holding a valid passport</a> has jumped an average of 10% each year, 10 times faster than population growth.</p>
<p>Part of the rising demand for passports followed a policy change in the early 2000s. <a href="https://1997-2001.state.gov/briefings/statements/971219d.html">Before then no passport was required</a> for U.S. citizens to travel to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. A driver’s license or an official document like a birth certificate was suitable documentation to visit countries that shared a common border with the U.S. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/timeline-travel-documents-at-the-canada-u-s-border-1.834929">By 2009, however, a passport was needed</a> to visit those nearby countries by air, land or sea.</p>
<p>But the new rules don’t fully account for the surge in passport issuance. In 2010, about 100 million people had valid U.S. passports. Today, <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/">over 150 million</a> do.</p>
<h2>Lost, stolen and damaged passports</h2>
<p>Another reason for the passport boom is that the State Department is fielding more requests than before for reissued passports to replace lost or stolen documents. </p>
<p>One problem while traveling is <a href="https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Border-management/Look-after-your-travel-document">keeping your passport safe</a>. While so far <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-americans-shouldnt-fear-traveling-abroad-118305">no one has ever stolen my passport</a>, I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-googles-plan-to-blanket-wilderness-with-wi-fi-is-a-bad-idea-49632">spilled food on it while climbing mountains</a>, <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/passports/replacing-your-passport-after-the-storm.html">gotten it soaked in a monsoon</a> and crushed it in my luggage <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-would-anyone-want-to-sit-on-a-plane-for-over-18-hours-an-economist-takes-the-worlds-longest-flight-122433">on the world’s longest flight</a>.</p>
<p>If your passport is ever lost, destroyed or stolen, you need to file a <a href="https://eforms.state.gov/Forms/ds64.PDF">DS-64 form</a> with the State Department. Filing this form prevents a thief from using that passport. The data is not just kept in the U.S. but is also sent to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/interpol-washington/pr/interpol-stolenlost-travel-document-database">Interpol’s Stolen/Lost Travel Document database</a>, which prevents worldwide travel by someone posing as you when traveling with your stolen passport.</p>
<p>The government periodically releases the number of DS-64 forms filed. In 2005 <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-2005-09-06/05-17636">a bit more than 100,000</a> were submitted. This jumped fivefold to <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/09/2021-18829/30-day-notice-of-proposed-information-collection-statement-regarding-a-lost-or-stolen-us-passport">over 500,000 people who reported losing</a> their passports in 2021.</p>
<h2>Who gets passports?</h2>
<p>Where do passport applications come from? </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, states with more people tend to get more passports. For example, <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/">Californians got the highest number of passports, about 2.7 million, in 2022</a>.</p>
<p>But some states have more wanderlust than others. After adjusting for <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-state-total.html">population, over the past few years</a> the top two sources for international travel are the <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2022/acs/acsbr-011.pdf">high-income states</a> of New Jersey and Massachusetts. <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/">Around 1 out every 17 residents</a> in those places applied annually for a passport. </p>
<p>The states where residents are the least likely to apply for a passport are the <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2022/acs/acsbr-011.pdf">low-income states</a> of Mississippi and West Virginia. In those places only about <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/">1 out every 65 residents</a> applied on average each year.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>One of the reasons passport processing times have gotten so long is that many people are taking trips they put off in the spring of 2020. What can be done? </p>
<p>I suggest two things.</p>
<p>First, the <a href="https://www.trade.gov/press-release/ntto-releases-survey-international-air-travelers-siat-outbound-monitor">Caribbean is one of the most popular U.S. tourist destinations</a>. U.S. travelers today can visit the <a href="https://www.travelchannel.com/destinations/us/photos/no-passport-required">U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico without a passport</a> because they are U.S. territories. I believe that expanding this access to a small number of Caribbean countries, as was possible before the 2009 policy change, would boost tourism and reduce passport demand.</p>
<p>Second, citizens with a current passport should be able to use it while waiting for a renewal. Right now old passports must be submitted with renewal forms, which blocks international travel. The State Department doesn’t really need the old documents. It recently ran a trial allowing <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-passport/renew-online.html">people to renew passports online</a> without asking for their current passport books.</p>
<p>Once a new passport is issued, the old one becomes invalid. This could present a problem for people traveling abroad while their passport renews. There is a simple solution for this. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the State Department <a href="https://www.state.gov/extension-of-temporary-measure-allowing-return-travel-to-the-united-states-on-expired-u-s-passport-2/">allowed U.S. citizens who were abroad when their passports expired</a> to reenter the country.</p>
<p>Extending this policy would mean people could continue traveling no matter how long it takes to renew their passport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Precautions taken in response to COVID-19 explain some but not all of the recent long delays in getting a passport.Jay L. Zagorsky, Clinical Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1968702022-12-20T05:03:40Z2022-12-20T05:03:40ZThe Morrison government spent a record amount on taxpayer-funded advertising, new data reveal<p>The federal government is a big spender in the advertising world, regularly spending more than major companies such as McDonald’s, Telstra and Coles. New data <a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/publications/reports/campaign-advertising-australian-government-departments-and-agencies-report-2021-22">released on Friday by the Department of Finance</a> shows that in the lead-up to the May 2022 election, the Coalition government’s advertising spend skyrocketed yet again.</p>
<p>The past financial year was the biggest year on record for taxpayer-funded advertising. The previous federal government spent A$339 million on taxpayer-funded advertising campaigns in 2021-22, well above the <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Grattan-Institute-advertising-report.pdf">25-year average</a> of about $200 million a year.</p>
<p>In the first six months of 2022, the previous government was the <a href="https://www.mediaweek.com.au/nielsen-unveils-the-biggest-ad-spenders-for-the-first-half-of-2022/">biggest advertising spender</a> in the country.</p>
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<img alt="Graph showing annual federal government spending on advertising campaigns" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502056/original/file-20221220-16-yqs7ym.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The Morrison government ran 28 separate advertising campaigns last financial year – the most on record. Many were for legitimate purposes, such as an $89 million campaign encouraging take-up of the COVID-19 vaccine, and a $25 million campaign urging people to fill out the Census.</p>
<p>But sometimes, taxpayer-funded advertising campaigns seek to confer a political advantage. This is often achieved by including party slogans or colours, and/or spruiking government achievements – often in the lead-up to elections.</p>
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<img alt="Chart showing the top 20 most expensive taxpayer-funded campaigns for 2021-22" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502021/original/file-20221219-22-4nj10j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<h2>Why does government advertising spike before elections?</h2>
<p>Taxpayer-funded advertising typically spikes in election years, and 2022 was no exception.</p>
<p>In the six months leading up to the 2022 election, the Coalition government spent about <a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/publications/reports/advertising">$180 million</a>, compared with about $120 million in the six months leading up to the 2019 election.</p>
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<img alt="Chart showing federal government advertising spend spikes just before federal elections" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502022/original/file-20221219-18-4nzzzb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>An otherwise legitimate campaign might be strategically run pre-election to encourage a positive impression of the government. For example, an $18 million federal government campaign on recycling was called out by the then-Labor opposition as “<a href="https://www.joshwilson.org.au/2022/02/15/more-waste-more-rubbish-government-spends-millions-on-greenwashing-again/">ridiculous and self-serving greenwash</a>”.</p>
<p>But usually, pre-election advertising also contains messages that look politically motivated – promoting the government’s policy platform on key election issues.</p>
<p>For example, the $28.5 million Emissions Reduction campaign – the third most expensive campaign of the year – ran from September 2021 to April 2022, and sought to promote the government’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/14/coalition-spends-31m-on-ads-spruiking-efforts-to-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions">good progress</a>” on reducing greenhouse emissions and switching to renewable energy. The campaign clearly used messaging that created a positive image of the government’s performance, and lacked a call to action that might justify it on public interest grounds.</p>
<p><a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/new-politics-depoliticising-taxpayer-funded-advertising/">Grattan Institute analysis</a> shows that typically, about a quarter of government spending on advertising is politicised in some way, by both sides of politics. Historically, about $50 million on average each year has been spent on campaigns that are politicised.</p>
<p>The former government’s “<a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-12/Campaign%20Advertising%20by%20Australian%20Government%20Departments%20and%20Agencies%20-%20Report%202021-22.pdf">COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan</a>” fell into this category, because it blatantly spruiked the government of the day, without requiring any action or behaviour change from citizens.</p>
<p>Officially, the campaign sought “to inform Australians about the government response to the recurring challenges being faced and reassure [us] there was an adaptable and future-focused plan in place for the economy”.</p>
<p>This was criticised by Labor Senator Tim Ayres in early 2022, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/treasury-suspends-10m-ad-blitz-promoting-economic-recovery-and-coalitions-job-record-due-to-poll/news-story/5b42f2f756ba253a81bf15c25eb9b933">who asked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What possible public purpose is there in ‘Australia’s Economic Plan – we’re taking the next step’? […] What is it asking people to do apart from vote Liberal?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why is politicisation of taxpayer-funded advertising harmful?</h2>
<p>Politicisation of taxpayer-funded advertising is wasteful and creates an uneven playing field in elections.</p>
<p>Government advertising budgets are well above the expenditure of individual political parties, even in election years.</p>
<p>We won’t know until February 2023 how much political parties spent in the 2022 federal election. But in the lead-up to the 2019 election, <a href="https://transparency.aec.gov.au/download">the Coalition spent $178 million, Labor $122 million, and Clive Palmer $89 million</a>, with advertising only a portion of their expenses.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-big-money-influenced-the-2019-federal-election-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-the-system-131141">How big money influenced the 2019 federal election – and what we can do to fix the system</a>
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<h2>How things should change</h2>
<p>The new federal government has announced it will cut taxpayer-funded advertising, although by how much is not yet clear. Labor has promised to tackle <a href="https://www.adnews.com.au/news/the-federal-government-slashes-advertising-budget">advertising</a> as part of its broader “rorts and waste” audit.</p>
<p>That promise to cut wasteful spending will be best tested by whether Labor tightens the rules and oversight for government advertising.</p>
<p>Public money should not be used to spruik government policies. It should be used only on public-interest advertising campaigns that have a clear “need to know” message and a call to action.</p>
<p>An independent panel should be established to check compliance. The panel should have the power to knock back campaigns that aren’t compliant – whether they are politicised, or more generally don’t offer value for money.</p>
<p>And if the rules are broken, then the political party – not the taxpayer – should foot the bill for the entire advertising campaign.</p>
<p>Establishing a proper process is the only way to truly reduce waste and restore public confidence in genuinely important government messages.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Kate Griffiths and Anika Stobart are coauthors of <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/new-politics-depoliticising-taxpayer-funded-advertising/">New politics: Depoliticising taxpayer-funded advertising</a>, Grattan Institute, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute's activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Politicisation of taxpayer-funded advertising is wasteful and creates an uneven playing field in elections.Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Grattan InstituteAnika Stobart, Senior Associate, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1938322022-11-03T05:49:34Z2022-11-03T05:49:34ZThe Robodebt scheme failed tests of lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust<p>The Robodebt royal commission is currently hearing evidence of <a href="https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/robotdebt-royal-commission-centrelink-whistleblower-speaks-out/f21ac934-68c3-40a0-9d47-a1ffc709c5c0">tremendous hardship</a> inflicted on people by a government that appeared to have little concern for the people its actions affected. </p>
<p>The bureaucratic process was malign, and it harmed and stigmatised welfare recipients.</p>
<p>Despite questions about the scheme’s legality, the program recovered about $750 million from around 380,000 people by a process called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/11/robodebt-court-approves-18bn-settlement-for-victims-of-governments-shameful-failure">income averaging</a>. This involved sending debt notices that came as a surprise to the recipients who had virtually no options to challenge these notices.</p>
<p>The whole process was outrageous. It led to severe trauma among many of the poorest people in the country, mental health episodes and some <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Centrelinkcompliance/Second_Interim_Report">reported suicides</a>.</p>
<p>When the matter finally came to court as a result of a class action involving about 400,000 people, the government made a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-17/robodebt-victims-welcome-government-1.2-billion-settlement/12889380">$1.2 billion dollar settlement</a> in 2020, but did not admit liability. It was absurd politics and absurd financial management.</p>
<p>What was the main driver? Was it recovery of money, or something else? The royal commission will answer these questions.</p>
<p>Irrespective of the final outcome, Robodebt lacked integrity and projected the government’s deficit of trust towards its most vulnerable citizens. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robodebt-was-a-fiasco-with-a-cost-we-have-yet-to-fully-appreciate-150169">Robodebt was a fiasco with a cost we have yet to fully appreciate</a>
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<p>This wasn’t an example of artificial intelligence gone mad. Automation in public administration is inevitable and can bring great benefits. AI expert professor Anton van den Hengel, wrote in an email to the authors of this article:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Automation of some administrative social security functions is a very good idea, and inevitable. The problem with Robodebt was the policy, not the technology. The technology did what it was asked very effectively. The problem is that it was asked to do something daft.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Centrelink took income data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and matched it with social welfare recipients’ income as self-reported to Centrelink. These income data were averaged, and though income fluctuated making recipients eligible for welfare payments, many were issued with debt notices.</p>
<p>The onus of proof was firmly placed on welfare recipients to prove their innocence.</p>
<h2>A policy lacking integrity</h2>
<p>There’s evidence many public servants were uneasy with the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Centrelinkcompliance">process</a>. Evidence is also coming out that government lawyers cautioned about its <a href="https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/transcript-hearing-day-4-1-november-2022">legality</a>.</p>
<p>The ATO also advised the Department of Social Services the scheme was “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/721-million-robo-debt-refund-must-be-sped-up-lawyers-say-20200604-p54zn2.html">unlawful</a>”.</p>
<p>Evidence is being heard now by the royal commission regarding the scheme’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/02/robodebt-royal-commission-legal-doubts-centrelink-welfare-debt-recovery-scott-morrison-backing-inquiry-hears">lawfulness</a>. This isn’t new, as law professor Terry Carney <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Centrelinkcompliance/Second_Interim_Report">wrote in 2018</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>there can only be a debt if another provision [of the Social Security Act] creates it. There is no relevant provision ‘automatically’ creating a debt just because data-matching shows a discrepancy…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Carney also pointed to the flawed arguments in the government’s legal defence of debt averaging practices and the effective reversal of the onus of proof onto welfare recipients.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-true-cost-of-the-governments-changes-to-jobseeker-is-incalculable-its-as-if-it-didnt-learn-from-robodebt-158059">The true cost of the government's changes to JobSeeker is incalculable. It's as if it didn't learn from Robodebt</a>
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<p>Impartiality is a central feature of government, but Robodebt had a disproportionate impact on welfare recipients. The complexity of the welfare system, and the lack of access – particularly in remote areas – ensured many were effectively unable to challenge debt notifications they received from Services Australia. People with the technical means to engage with a large bureaucracy were often able to challenge the notices, but those who weren’t were left out in the cold.</p>
<p>Integrity and trust in government is fundamental to a civil society and one in which legitimacy is accorded to actions of government, even though they may be unpopular or harmful to some people.</p>
<p>In this case, the fundamental principles of governance – a shared view between citizens and the state – fell short of normal expectations. The policy undermined the trust between government and the people, which resulted from an inability to establish a system to correctly identify and review debts owed to the government.</p>
<p>Governments are often concerned about the diminishing trust citizens have in them. Yet Robodebt sent a clear message to Australians that their government did not trust them.</p>
<p>Overall the scheme lacked integrity. It was a malign policy – and without even going into issues of whether it was designed to be malign or whether it became malign over time – and it set a very poor example for the conduct of government.</p>
<p>The lessons for the future are that lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust should underpin all government actions. These are so obvious that it seems superfluous to state them the way we have. But hopefully this will be one enduring lesson from Robodebt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robodebt sent a clear message to Australians that their government did not trust them.Adam Graycar, Professor of Public Policy, University of AdelaideAdam Masters, Lecturer, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1824062022-05-05T12:41:34Z2022-05-05T12:41:34ZWhat would it mean to codify Roe into law – and is there any chance of that happening?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470889/original/file-20220625-18-jy05t3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C5560%2C3653&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify Roe.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-addresses-the-supreme-courts-decision-news-photo/1404904365?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Abortion rights advocates are looking for alternative ways to protect a woman’s right to the procedure following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768">Supreme Court’s decision to overturn</a> Roe v. Wade.</em></p>
<p><em>Responding to the ruling by the majority conservative justices, President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/06/24/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-supreme-court-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/">called on lawmakers to act</a>. “Let me be very clear and unambiguous: The only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose and the balance that existed is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law,” he said.</em></p>
<p><em>But is enshrining abortion rights in legislation feasible? And why has it not been done before? The Conversation put these questions and others to <a href="https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/linda-c-mcclain/">Linda C. McClain</a>, an expert on civil rights law and feminist legal theory at Boston University School of Law.</em></p>
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<h2>What does it mean to ‘codify’ Roe v. Wade?</h2>
<p>In simple terms, to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/codify#:%7E:text=To%20codify%20means%20to%20arrange,by%20subject%2C%20into%20a%20code.">codify something</a> means to enshrine a right or a rule into a formal systematic code. It could be done through an act of Congress in the form of a federal law. Similarly, state legislatures can codify rights by enacting laws. To codify Roe for all Americans, Congress would need to pass a law that would provide the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/us/what-is-roe-v-wade.html">same protections that Roe</a> did – so a law that says women have a right to abortion without excessive government restrictions. It would be binding for all states.</p>
<p>But here’s the twist: Despite some politicians saying that they want to “codify Roe,” Congress isn’t looking to enshrine Roe in law. That’s because <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> hasn’t been in place since 1992. The Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744">Planned Parenthood. v. Casey</a> ruling – which was also overturned in the latest ruling on abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – affirmed it, but also modified it in significant ways. </p>
<p>In Casey, the court upheld Roe’s holding that a woman has the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy up to the point of fetal viability and that states could restrict abortion after that point, subject to exceptions to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman. But the Casey court concluded that Roe too severely limited state regulation prior to fetal viability and held that states could impose restrictions on abortion throughout pregnancy to protect potential life as well as to protect maternal health – including during the first trimester.</p>
<p>Casey also introduced the “<a href="https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/WWH-Undue-Burden-Report-07262018-Edit.pdf">undue burden” test</a>, which prevented states from imposing restrictions that had the purpose or effect of placing unnecessary barriers on women seeking to end a pregnancy prior to viability of the fetus. The Dobbs ruling replaces the “undue burden” test with the much weaker “rational basis” test for judicial review. Going forward, state restrictions on abortion must receive a “strong presumption of validity” and courts must uphold them as long as there is a “rational basis” for the legislature thinking that those laws advance “legitimate state interests.”</p>
<h2>What is the Women’s Health Protection Act?</h2>
<p>Recent efforts to pass federal legislation protecting the right to abortion center on the proposed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3755/text">Women’s Health Protection Act</a>, introduced in Congress by U.S. Rep. Judy Chu and sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal in 2021. It was passed in the House, but is <a href="https://time.com/6152473/abortion-roe-v-wade-democrats/">blocked in the Senate</a>.</p>
<p>The proposed legislation was built around the undue burden principle of the now overturned Casey ruling. It sought to prevent states from imposing unfair restrictions on abortion providers such as insisting a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbnqw4/abortion-clinics-are-closing-because-their-doorways-arent-big-enough">clinic’s doorway is wide enough</a> for surgical gurneys to pass through, or that <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/targeted-regulation-abortion-providers">abortion practitioners need to have admitting privileges</a> at nearby hospitals.</p>
<p>The Women’s Health Protection Act used the language of the Casey ruling in saying that these so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws place an “undue burden” on people seeking an abortion. It also appealed to Casey’s recognition that “the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.”</p>
<p>Without eliminating the filibuster, which would require 50 votes in the Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass. However, after Dobbs was announced, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin – who opposes eliminating the filibuster – issued a statement <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-congress-protect-abortion-rights-now/story?id=85647505">that he supported a bipartisan effort</a> to “put forward” legislation to “codify the rights Roe v. Wade previously protected.” </p>
<h2>Has the right to abortion ever been guaranteed by federal legislation?</h2>
<p>You have to remember that Roe was very controversial from the outset. At the time of the ruling in 1973, most states had restrictive abortion laws. Up to the late 1960s, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/28/archives/gallup-poll-finds-public-divided-on-abortions-in-first-3-months.html">majority of Americans opposed abortion</a>. A poll at the time of Roe found the public evenly split over legalization.</p>
<p>To pass legislation you have to go through the democratic process. But if the democratic process is hostile to what you are hoping to push through, you are going to run into difficulties.</p>
<p>Under the U.S. system, certain liberties are seen as so fundamental that protecting them should not be left to the whims of changing democratic majorities. Consider something like interracial marriage. Before the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395">Loving v. Virginia State</a> that banning interracial marriages was unconstitutional, a number of states still banned such unions.</p>
<p>Why couldn’t they pass a law in Congress protecting the right to marry? It would have been difficult because at the time, the <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx">majority of people were against</a> the idea of interracial marriage.</p>
<p>When you don’t have sufficient public support for something – particularly if it is unpopular or affects a non-majority group – appealing to the Constitution seems to be the better way to protect a right. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean you can’t also protect that right through a statute, just that it is harder. Also, there is no guarantee that legislation passed by any one Congress isn’t then repealed by lawmakers later on.</p>
<h2>So generally, rights have more enduring protection if the Supreme Court rules on them?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/constitutional.aspx">Supreme Court has the final word</a> on what is and isn’t protected by the Constitution. In the past, it has been seen as sufficient to protect a constitutional right to get a ruling from the justices recognizing that right.</p>
<p>But the opinion in the Dobbs case which overturned Roe and Casey also points out that one limit of that protection is that the Supreme Court may overrule its own precedents.</p>
<p>Historically, it is unusual for the Supreme Court to take a right away. Yes, they said the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson ruling</a> – which set up the legal basis for separate-but-equal – was wrong, and overruled it in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>. But Brown recognized rights; it didn’t take rights away. </p>
<p>In the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court has taken away a right that has been in place since 1973. For what I believe is the first time, the Supreme Court has overridden precedent to take away a constitutional right from Americans.</p>
<p>Moreover, the majority opinion penned by Samuel Alito is dismissive of the idea that women have to rely on constitutional protection. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">Alito wrote</a>, adding: “The percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”</p>
<p>But this ignores the fact that women <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/roe-v-wade-overturned-supreme-court-abortion-draft-alitos-legal-analys-rcna27205">rarely make up close to half</a> of the members of most state legislative bodies. Moreover, as Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor countered in their dissent, the point of constitutional rights is that they “should put some issues off limits to majority rule.”</p>
<h2>So are attempts to get Congress to protect abortion rights realistic?</h2>
<p>Republicans in the Senate successfully blocked the proposed Women’s Health Protection Act. And unless things change dramatically in Congress, there isn’t much chance of the bill becoming law. </p>
<p>There has been talk of trying to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-abortion-move-sparks-calls-ending-senates-filibuster-2022-05-04/">end the filibuster rule</a>, which requires 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. But even then, the 50 votes that would be needed might not be there.</p>
<p>What we don’t know is how this Supreme Court decision will affect the calculus. Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski <a href="https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senators-collins-and-murkowski-introduce-bill-to-codify-supreme-court-decisions-on-reproductive-rights_roe-v-wade-and-planned-parenthood-v-casey">introduced legislation</a> earlier this year that would codify Roe in law, but that bill isn’t as expansive as the Women’s Health Protection Act. It too failed.</p>
<p>Perhaps in the wake of the court’s overruling of Roe and Casey, <a href="https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-statement-on-scotus-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade">calls for bipartisan efforts</a> to “codify” Roe may signal increased willingness to pass federal legislation to protect abortion access. But some Republicans in Congress <a href="https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/06/24/republican-mccarthy-congress-abortion-roe-v-wade">are already calling for federal legislation</a> to do exactly the opposite.</p>
<p>And then there are the midterm elections in November, which might shake up who’s in Congress. If the Democrats lose the House or fail to pick up seats in the Senate, the chances of pushing through any legislation protecting abortion rights would appear very slim. Democrats will be hoping that the Supreme Court ruling will mobilize pro-abortion rights voters. Indeed, in his remarks on the Supreme Court decision, Biden made clear that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/politics/midterms-politics-abortion/index.html">Roe is now on the ballot</a>.</p>
<h2>What is going on at a state level?</h2>
<p>Liberal states like Massachusetts have <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2020/12/29/massachusetts-senate-override-abortion-access/">passed laws that codify Roe v. Wade</a>. Now that the Supreme Court’s decision is out, expect similar moves elsewhere. Other states are going a step further by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/01/1095813226/connecticut-abortion-bill-roe-v-wade">protecting residents who help out-of-state women</a> seeking abortion. Such laws would seemingly counter moves by states like Missouri, which is seeking to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-11/editorial-missouri-might-make-it-illegal-to-help-a-woman-get-an-abortion-elsewhere-thats-ridiculous">push through legislation that would criminalize helping women</a> who go out of state for abortions.</p>
<p>The dissent anticipates a host of such state efforts in the wake of Dobbs. In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">his concurrence</a>, Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the question of whether, in light of Dobbs, a state may “bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion.” He said the answer would be “no,” based on the constitutional right to “interstate travel.” But whether states will feel constrained from trying these and other measures to restrict out-of-state abortion care for their residents is another question.</p>
<h2>Wouldn’t any federal law just be challenged at the Supreme Court?</h2>
<p>Should Congress be able to pass a law enshrining the right to abortion for all Americans, then surely some conservative states will seek to overturn the law, saying that the federal government is exceeding its authority. </p>
<p>If it were to go up to the Supreme Court, then conservative justices would presumably look unfavorably on any attempt to limit individual states’ rights when it comes to abortion. After all, Dobbs repeatedly asserts that Roe and Casey erred by removing the abortion issue from the states. Similarly, any attempt to put in place a federal law that would restrict abortion for all would seemingly conflict with the Supreme Court’s position that it should be left to the states to decide. That said, the dissenters warned that there was nothing in the Dobbs majority opinion that limited passing federal legislation to restrict or ban abortion throughout the United States.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article was updated on June 25, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda C. McClain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to act over abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But is there a route to legislation?Linda C. McClain, Professor of Law, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1727692021-11-29T13:00:33Z2021-11-29T13:00:33ZScanlon survey shows community fears about COVID can spike quickly, as governments face Omicron<p>Australians’ concern about the pandemic ebbs and flows dramatically as waves come and go, according to research that also shows that COVID has not shaken the nation’s social cohesion.</p>
<p>The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s 2021 Mapping Social Cohesion Report found that in July last year, 63% of respondents believed the pandemic the “most important problem facing Australia today”, while only 15% nominated the economy.</p>
<p>Monash University’s Andrew Markus, who wrote the report, said the spike reflected “an unprecedented level of concern obtained in response to an open-ended question that typically obtains a broad range of responses”. </p>
<p>But by November 2020 only 32% rated the pandemic as the most important problem, with 24% saying the economy.</p>
<p>Then in the July 2021 survey, with adverse publicity about the vaccine rollout and the third wave starting, the rating had jumped to 59%, and the economy was down to 9%. </p>
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<p>This rollercoaster of public concern is especially relevant given the emergence of the new Omicron strain, about which information remains sparse. It shows how quickly developments in the pandemic can change people’s priorities. </p>
<p>With an election looming in the first half of next year, the Scanlon numbers highlight that what will be to the forefront of the public’s mind is unpredictable months out – partly dependent on the course of the pandemic abroad, and hence in Australia.</p>
<p>The Scanlon survey, which has been running since 2007, covered 3572 people in 2021 and asked more than 110 questions. It also included qualitative research.</p>
<p>As has been reflected in other research, the survey found that trust in government, which had been low, jumped after the pandemic hit but has started to fall. Trust in the federal government to do the right thing for Australians all or most of the time was 44% in 2021. This was 10 points down on July 2020, but remained well above the long term average.</p>
<p>Approval of the federal government’s response was 52% this year, down from 85% last year.</p>
<p>Despite the Morrison government’s periodic condemnations of prolonged harsh interstate border closures, the public were supportive.</p>
<p>“The state governments that were able to halt virus transmission and avoid lengthy lockdowns continued to be rated very highly with approval of the Western Australian and South Australian government close to 90%, while New South Wales, which also had enjoyed a very high level of approval in 2020, saw approval fall to 59%,” the report says.</p>
<p>“While there were protests against government lockdowns which gained much media attention, the survey finds that approval of lockdowns won close to 90% endorsement.”</p>
<p>In July this year 87% across the nation viewed lockdown restrictions as definitely or probably required. In the states most affected, the numbers were 91% in NSW and 85% in Victoria.</p>
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<p>Despite the difficult times, Australians were remarkably optimistic about the future: 71% were optimistic in 2021, actually up from the pre-COVID 2019 figure of 63%.</p>
<p>Reflecting the impact of the high level of government financial help during the crisis, “the surprising finding is that in 2020 and 2021 more positive responses were obtained for a number of financial questions when compared with the previous two years”.</p>
<p>For example, 71% were satisfied with their present financial situation in July this year.</p>
<p>One dramatic change in the survey was a major increase in people’s perception of how big a problem racism is.</p>
<p>Since November last year there has been a 20 point rise in the proportion saying racism was a very big or big problem, to 60%.</p>
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<p>The report says such a rise in response to a general question was almost unprecedented in the Scanlon surveys, and its timing was difficult to explain. There was no indication of an increase in the proportion of respondents with xenophobic and racist views, it says.</p>
<p>But in the latest survey, as in past Scanlon surveys over the years, the highest level of discrimination was reported by Australians of non-English speaking backgrounds.</p>
<p>Asked whether they had experienced discrimination in the last year because of their colour, ethnic origin or religion, 11% of the Australian born said they had, as did 12% of those born overseas in an English speaking country.</p>
<p>This compared to 34% of those born overseas in a non-English speaking country, including 38% of those born in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, and 40% of all respondents born in Asia.</p>
<p>The qualitative research, undertaken by Trish Prentice, senior researcher at the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, involved 66 interviews across all mainland states, with a focus on areas with relatively high cultural and religious diversity.</p>
<p>“The interviews indicate social cohesion has not been broken by the pandemic. There was no evidence of widespread tensions in communities, of conflict or the ongoing targeting of members of certain cultural communities,” the report says.</p>
<p>But the interviews brought out differences in the experiences and ability to cope between different cohorts in the community.</p>
<p>Women felt particular impacts (for example in general they had greater responsibility for home schooling) and children were affected by reduced social contact, which had implications for their development.</p>
<p>Parents with poor English had barriers helping their children, and those with poor literacy felt helpless in dealing with home schooling. Refugees and asylum seekers experienced a greater psychological impact.</p>
<p>The report constructs a “cohesion index” which combines subjective and objective indicators to build a monitor of cohesion. The indicators used were income, employment, health, education and community participation. Indicators were tracked over the decade 2008-18. Using 2007-8 as a benchmark of 100, there had been a small decline of six points in the decade.</p>
<p>Despite the strong social cohesion, the report points to potential threats to it, including the substantial number of young people who do not make a successful transition from school to further education, training or employment.</p>
<p>The research for the report was funded by the Scanlon Foundation, supplemented by the federal government. The Scanlon Foundation was established in 2001, aiming to enhance and foster social cohesion in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s 2021 Mapping Social Cohesion Report found that while concern about the pandemic ebbs and flows, COVID has not shaken the nation’s social cohesion.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1690942021-10-01T10:29:38Z2021-10-01T10:29:38ZAustralia’s international borders to reopen from November. It’s one big step towards living with COVID<p>“Australia will be ready for takeoff very soon” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison today as he <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/next-steps-reopen-world">announced</a> the ban on international travel will be lifted some time next month.</p>
<p>Returning Australian citizens and permanent residents will be able to quarantine at home for seven days if fully vaccinated with a TGA-approved vaccine.</p>
<p>The recognised vaccines include those already approved for use in Australia by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson/Janssen, as well as Sinovac and Covishield (Covishield is AstraZeneca’s vaccine made in India).</p>
<p>Unvaccinated returnees will still need to enter managed hotel quarantine for 14 days until Australia moves beyond Phase C of the National Plan.</p>
<p>Those who can’t be vaccinated, including young children and those with a medical exemption, will be counted as vaccinated for travel.</p>
<p>Arrival caps will also be abolished for fully vaccinated returnees.</p>
<p>Today’s announcement is one big step towards allowing vaccinated Australians to return home soon, as we move to a future that somewhat resembles pre-COVID life.</p>
<h2>Is seven days enough?</h2>
<p>Home quarantine trials in South Australia and New South Wales will answer this question.</p>
<p>Authorities will be testing returnees and the proportion of those who are COVID-positive, as well as when they test positive, will inform decision-making. This will also be monitored on an ongoing basis once we open up and can be adjusted if it turns out a higher than acceptable number of travellers test positive between day seven and 14.</p>
<p>Currently, <a href="https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/weekly-reports.aspx">NSW data</a> tell us less than half of 1% of returnees in hotel quarantine are testing positive. The NSW Surveillance report from August 21 shows only 4% of those positive cases were in fully vaccinated.</p>
<p>The low percentage of returnees who are positive will matter less anyway as Australia progressively moves towards “living with COVID” with a background rate of the virus in the community.</p>
<p>We know fully vaccinated people can still get infected, but at <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm">much lower rates</a>. There’s also mounting <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.20.21262158v1">evidence</a> suggesting their infectious period is shorter than unvaccinated people, so they’re less likely to pass the virus on. Importantly, there’s now a better than 70% reduction in risk of having a serious infection requiring hospitalisation in all of the vaccines the <a href="https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccines-not-registered-australia-current-international-use-tga-advice-recognition">TGA has recognised</a> for international arrivals.</p>
<h2>How will we ensure people stay home?</h2>
<p>South Australia is currently <a href="https://www.covid-19.sa.gov.au/home-quarantine-app/home-quarantine-sa-user-faqs">trialling</a> an app that uses geo-tagged facial recognition software to ensure people stay home during quarantine.</p>
<p>If this app proves successful it might be rolled out across Australia.</p>
<p>It might also include supports for other aspects of compliance, like prompts to get tested, a checklist of symptoms and other ways to check in with returnees.</p>
<p>Random checks by police or ADF personnel have proven home quarantine and isolation have high levels of compliance. Something similar could also be brought in at some point if there were compliance concerns.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/home-quarantine-for-vaccinated-returned-travellers-is-extremely-low-risk-and-wont-damage-their-mental-health-162436">Home quarantine for vaccinated returned travellers is extremely low risk, and won't damage their mental health</a>
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<p>One thing that’s more difficult to monitor is whether other people come into the house of a person meant to be isolating. The risk of transmission to the visitor is much higher than if the returnee ventured out. But this is the same risk we currently have with isolating close contacts locally.</p>
<p>Ultimately the system will need to rely, in part, on trust. We know Australians are generally very compliant, and many people will be desperate to travel again and reunite with family and friends. The majority will be likely to comply with the requirements to facilitate keeping travel open.</p>
<p>The system will be safe enough — and that’s all we need going forward.</p>
<h2>What about other household members?</h2>
<p>One question yet to be answered is whether everyone else in the house has to quarantine if housing a returned traveller.</p>
<p>With the risk of a fully vaccinated returnee being positive very low, so too is the risk to the household. If they do return a positive test on one of their test days, their household members may also be required to quarantine. <a href="https://theconversation.com/rapid-antigen-tests-have-long-been-used-overseas-to-detect-covid-heres-what-australia-can-learn-168490">Rapid Antigen Tests</a> might be useful for early detection of infection in these cases.</p>
<p>Another question is whether we will still have offshore screening, <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-travel-and-restrictions/coronavirus-covid-19-advice-for-international-travellers">requiring</a> a negative test prior to departure for Australia?</p>
<p>The finer details will emerge and probably change over time as we collect data and manage changing risks. We’ll probably start conservatively and then gradually open things up more and more as we learn which components of risk mitigation are proportionate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="window view from plan" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424147/original/file-20211001-15-1bby7xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some details of home quarantine on return from overseas still need clarification.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1488085061387-422e29b40080?ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2062&q=80">Unsplash/Eva Darron</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Which states will go first?</h2>
<p>International travel will open to states and territories gradually <a href="https://twitter.com/covidbaseau/status/1443797822294265858">as they reach 80%</a> of over-16s fully vaccinated. So we won’t have to wait until all jurisdictions have individually hit the threshold.</p>
<p>Based on vaccination uptake rates, the ACT and NSW will likely be the first to open, followed by Victoria.</p>
<p>Tasmania is still tracking well but other states are lagging behind. Queensland and Western Australia will probably be the last to open their borders. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1443776012580392981"}"></div></p>
<p>This is broadly in line with the national plan, but is coming probably a month or two earlier than looked possible in June. Vaccination rates, particularly in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, have been spurred on by significant COVID outbreaks. States are also assessing the distribution of vaccine coverage to ensure there are no parts of the community left behind by the time of opening.</p>
<h2>What about travel bubbles?</h2>
<p>The Prime Minister flagged potential bubble arrangements with countries like New Zealand where there’d be no quarantine requirements. The list of such countries will likely change over time, depending on circulating variants and country risk profiles.</p>
<p>We’re probably heading in the direction of eventually not requiring quarantine for returnees at all, only testing. For now, it’s clear we’re moving towards a system that manages risks rather than operating with zero risk tolerance.</p>
<h2>Will contact tracers be able to cope?</h2>
<p>As fully vaccinated people contribute less to transmission and are at less risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms, all states and territories will progressively shift the risk settings that underpin contact tracing. We have used comprehensive contact tracing, casting the epidemiological net wide to ensure not one contact of a case who might have contracted the virus was missed.</p>
<p>The chance of someone being positive drops away the more casual the exposure. Once you no longer have to be fearful of missing even just one case, we can make the net smaller and just trace the people at highest risk.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/worksafes-hotel-quarantine-breach-penalties-are-a-warning-for-other-employers-to-keep-workers-safe-from-covid-168968">Worksafe's hotel quarantine breach penalties are a warning for other employers to keep workers safe from COVID</a>
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<p>We might reach a stage where even close contacts just have to get a test, without having to quarantine.</p>
<p>This shift brings with it some risk of cases to the community, but we’re likely to have an ongoing, even if low, level of cases in the community. A low rate of introduction across international borders will not materially add to that. It’s about managing risk and being much more selective about identifying who’s at risk in a highly vaccinated population.</p>
<h2>What about new variants from overseas?</h2>
<p>Watching what variants are circulating will be a priority and some border rules changes might be needed if new risks are identified. For example, stricter arrangements for people arriving from “high-risk” areas where a particularly worrisome variant has emerged.</p>
<p>The system can be adapted for changing risks. There might be more transmissible variants which emerge, but we also might start using next-generation COVID vaccines which are a better fit for variants and precautions can be dialled down.</p>
<p>Being highly vaccinated allows Australia to move away from the ultra-conservative ways we’ve had to manage the pandemic previously, and allows us to start reopening to the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169094/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Bennett receives funding from the NHMRC and MRFF. Catherine was also an independent advisor on the AstraZeneca Vaccine Advisory Committee. </span></em></p>Is a 7-day home quarantine enough? What are the risks? And how will we ensure people stay home? Epidemiologist Catherine Bennett answers your questions.Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1690032021-09-29T20:09:07Z2021-09-29T20:09:07ZWhat happened during the last government shutdown: 4 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423932/original/file-20210929-66205-8fwr30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C22%2C2986%2C1899&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Red sky at night, federal workers take fright? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-early-morning-sun-lights-up-the-sky-behind-the-u-s-news-photo/72581249?adppopup=true">Mark Wilson/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. is (once again) staring down the barrel of a <a href="https://www.crfb.org/papers/qa-everything-you-should-know-about-government-shutdowns">government shutdown</a>. </p>
<p>Barring progress on a spending bill to fund government agencies past Sept. 30, 2021 – and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/us/politics/debt-limit-spending-bill.html">Democrats are busying themselves</a> trying to get such a measure through Congress – federal workers could find themselves being sent home, or asked not to come in.</p>
<p>For how long is uncertain. Over the last few decades, the length of government shutdowns has crept up. The most recent one, which started on Dec. 22, 2018, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-happens-when-us-federal-government-shuts-down-2021-09-27/">lasted 35 days</a>, marking the longest shutdown to date.</p>
<p>During that period, The Conversation ran a series of articles that helped explain what was at stake, who suffers and why. Below are some insights gleaned by experts from previous government shutdowns that may give a clue as to what the U.S. can expect should the lights go off at midnight on Sept 30.</p>
<h2>Who is affected</h2>
<p>The federal workforce currently <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43590.pdf">comprises around 2.1 million civilian employees</a>. In the shutdown of 2018-2019, some 800,000 workers were affected by the government shutdown. Of those, around 380,000 were furloughed, meaning they could not work or get paid, while the rest worked without pay for the duration of the shutdown.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uab.edu/cas/pspa/people/faculty/nevbahar-ertas">Nevbahar Ertas at the University of Alabama at Birmingham</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-federal-workers-affected-by-the-shutdown-5-questions-answered-109631">broke down those numbers</a> for The Conversation. She explained that the vast majority of federal employees work and live outside of Washington, D.C. The work they perform ranges from protecting waterways and ensuring food safety to investigating crime. </p>
<p>In fact, federal workers “are employed in over 300 different occupations,” Ertas notes. Salaries vary along with the roles, but, as of 2017, the average federal salary was US$69,344.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-federal-workers-affected-by-the-shutdown-5-questions-answered-109631">Who are the federal workers affected by the shutdown? 5 questions answered</a>
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<h2>What happens to consumer spending</h2>
<p>One short-term consequence of not paying so many people is that it provides a short-term brake on consumer spending, according to Scott Baker, <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/baker_scott_r.aspx">a professor of finance at Northwestern University</a>.</p>
<p>Analyzing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-economic-impact-of-a-government-shutdown-109182">impact of the 2013 government shutdown</a> – which saw some federal workers furloughed for more than two weeks – Baker found that it led to an immediate 10% decline in average spending for households in which at least one member worked for an affected federal agency. For households with a member furloughed in the shutdown, the drop in consumer spending almost doubled.</p>
<p>This is a problem not just for federal employees and their families. As Baker explains, it has a ripple effect on local businesses. One area of particular concerns is restaurants. When people tighten their purse strings, eating out is one of the first things to go. Given the challenging times the restaurant trade has had during the pandemic, any additional disruption would come as a further blow. </p>
<p>“In addition, the longer the shutdown lasts, the worse its impact,” Baker notes.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-economic-impact-of-a-government-shutdown-109182">What's the economic impact of a government shutdown?</a>
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<h2>The impact on health and safety</h2>
<p>Shutdowns don’t affect only the financial well-being of the U.S. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/mw4303a.cfm">Morten Wendelbo at American University School of Public Affairs</a> writes, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-will-harm-the-health-and-safety-of-americans-even-after-its-long-over-109843">disruption to business-as-usual can harm</a> the government’s ability to provide health services and protect the public from disasters.</p>
<p>This manifested in a number of ways during the 2018-19 shutdown. Disaster preparedness was one of the areas affected. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was forced to cease working on a several projects, and even those that continued were impacted by staff shortages as a result of federal furloughs. Among those temporarily sent home in that shutdown were hurricane modelers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Similarly, government employees tasked with managing forests prone to fires were affected by the shutdown. </p>
<p>“First responders and emergency experts use the off season to prepare for the next disaster season, but reports show that the prolonged shutdown is preventing some of this preparation, such as training for essential staff and forecasters,” Wendelbo explains.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-will-harm-the-health-and-safety-of-americans-even-after-its-long-over-109843">The shutdown will harm the health and safety of Americans, even after it's long over</a>
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<h2>Science suffers</h2>
<p>“When the U.S. government shuts down, much of the science that it supports is not spared,” writes <a href="https://www.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-members/angela-k-wilson/">Angela Wilson of Michigan State University</a>. </p>
<p>She should know. As the head of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Chemistry, Wilson endured two shutdowns: “The 1,800 NSF staff would be sent home, without access to email and without even the option to work voluntarily, until eventually an end to the shutdown was negotiated.”</p>
<p>And it wasn’t just her agency. Scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Parks Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey, among others, are also typically furloughed in government shutdowns. Such enforced periods out of work can be particularly disruptive for scientists who rely on critical windows for their work. </p>
<p>“If something happens only once a year and the moment is now – such as the pollination window for some drought-resistant plants – a researcher will miss out and must wait another year,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-gets-shut-down-right-along-with-the-federal-government-109690">Wilson explains</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-gets-shut-down-right-along-with-the-federal-government-109690">Science gets shut down right along with the federal government</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Congress is working on a spending bill to avert another government shutdown. Scholars explain what’s in store if they fail.Matt Williams, Senior International EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621842021-07-07T05:08:30Z2021-07-07T05:08:30ZSeen to be green? Research reveals how environmental performance shapes public perceptions of our leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410033/original/file-20210707-21-1hnqnp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5502%2C3654&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent months, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56854558">pressure</a> both domestically and internationally to do more on climate change. In contrast, state governments have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/02/net-zero-emissions-by-2050-target-climate-summit-president-thanks-australian-states-but-not-morrison-government">applauded</a> for adopting more ambitious emissions reduction targets.</p>
<p>Data from the <a href="https://www.australianleadershipindex.org/">Australian Leadership Index</a> suggests these differences may have electoral consequences. It found environmental outcomes increasingly shape how voters view their political leaders. And alarmingly for the Morrison government, the public has well and truly registered its lack of action on climate change.</p>
<p>In 2020, public attention on COVID-19 provided some cover for political leaders not acting on climate change. But from February to April this year, when climate issues rose to the fore, producing positive environmental outcomes became a key driver of public perceptions of political leadership.</p>
<p>As the next federal election looms, voters are watching closely to see whether the Morrison government’s environment and climate policies serve the public interest.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People hold protest signs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410037/original/file-20210707-15-19vdbdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Australians are concerned about the environment and want political leaders to act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>What is the Australian Leadership Index?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australianleadershipindex.org/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrOXbkYXQ8QIVDq-WCh3GywCtEAAYASAAEgK-P_D_BwE">Australian Leadership Index</a> is a national survey which has been running since 2018. It seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of how perceptions of leadership change in response to events over time and across sectors and institutions.</p>
<p>Each quarter, the index surveys 1,000 adults to reveal how institutional leaders – those in government, private, public and the not-for-profit sectors – can show leadership for the greater good.</p>
<p>Such leadership is as much about process as outcomes. Given this, the survey measures public perceptions of the extent to which leaders try to create positive outcomes in three areas: social, economic and environmental. It also looks at perceptions of leaders’ transparency, ethical standards and accountability.</p>
<p>Among the questions asked of survey participants is whether state and federal governments are focused on producing positive environmental outcomes (such as protecting natural places and improving sustainability) and the extent to which this determines how favourably they view these institutions. </p>
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<img alt="Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley and Prime Minister Scott Morrison." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410038/original/file-20210707-17-18e37ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Participants are asked if governments are producing good environmental outcomes. Pictured: federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
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<h2>Who’s doing best on the environment?</h2>
<p>On climate change policy, the Morrison government has opted to prioritise investment in low-emissions technology rather than introduce taxes or set emissions reduction targets. </p>
<p>In late April, the weakness of Australia’s national policies were laid bare during a global climate summit convened by US President Joe Biden. Australia was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/insufficient-biden-administration-criticises-australia-on-climate-20210422-p57lb9.html">criticised</a> before and after the summit for failing to set clear targets for emissions reduction.</p>
<p>This criticism did not go unnoticed by the voting public. Our survey showed from February to April 2021, the proportion of Australians who agreed the federal government was producing positive environmental outcomes declined from 38% to 25%.</p>
<p>The decline may also be linked to a major independent report by Professor Graeme Samuel in late January, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-major-report-excoriated-australias-environment-laws-sussan-leys-response-is-confused-and-risky-154254">declared</a> Australia’s environment was in a poor state and national laws protecting it were flawed and badly outdated. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/spot-the-difference-as-world-leaders-rose-to-the-occasion-at-the-biden-climate-summit-morrison-faltered-159295">Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered</a>
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<p>The picture was different for perceptions of state governments. From February to April 2021, the proportion of Australians who believed state governments were producing positive environmental outcomes increased from 26% to 37%.</p>
<p>Australian states and territories have taken relatively ambitious action on climate change, including committing to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/02/net-zero-emissions-by-2050-target-climate-summit-president-thanks-australian-states-but-not-morrison-government">net-zero emissions by 2050</a>.</p>
<p>However, only around one-third of respondents believed governments at any level were focused on producing positive environmental outcomes. Clearly, even the states have more work to do in this area.</p>
<p>In the months since April, public attention has largely turned back to the COVID-19 pandemic, and scores on environmental performance reverted to previous levels. Last month, the proportion of Australians who agreed the federal government was producing positive environmental outcomes was at 37%. And it was 25% for state governments.</p>
<p>This reflects how national conversations about climate change and other environmental issues — including mainstream and social media and other forms of public debate – can shape voter opinions.</p>
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<p>When people evaluated the overall leadership of governments in 2020, producing positive environmental outcomes had a 3% impact on their assessment. In January to April of 2021, this figure rose to 10%. This meant the environment became the third-largest driver of leadership perceptions, behind responsiveness to people’s needs (34%) and transparency (16%).</p>
<p>From May to June, however, the importance of environmental outcomes fell back to 3%. Again, this reflects the effect of media coverage in shaping voter attitudes to their leaders. </p>
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<h2>Keeping the environment in the spotlight</h2>
<p>So what does all this mean? Governments wanting to be seen as good leaders must have strong, well-implemented climate and environment policies. And when media coverage and public debate is heavily focused on these issues, governments cannot easily brush them aside.</p>
<p>Concern about the environment is <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-80-of-australians-care-about-climate-action-why-dont-they-vote-like-it-157050">not guaranteed</a> to sway a person’s vote. But our results suggest when public attention is focused on environmental issues, voters look to their leaders for an effective response.</p>
<p>It follows, then, that keeping climate change and the environment in the national spotlight will force governments to act with more urgency and serve the greater good.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/let-there-be-no-doubt-blame-for-our-failing-environment-laws-lies-squarely-at-the-feet-of-government-141482">Let there be no doubt: blame for our failing environment laws lies squarely at the feet of government</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vlad Demsar receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Pallant receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Wheeler receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Wilson receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia T. Gray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Colin Bednall receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.</span></em></p>Alarmingly for the Morrison government, the public has well and truly registered its lack of action on climate change.Vlad Demsar, Lecturer of Marketing, Swinburne University of TechnologyJason Pallant, Senior Lecturer of Marketing, Swinburne University of TechnologyMelissa A. Wheeler, Senior Lecturer, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of TechnologySamuel Wilson, Associate Professor of Leadership, Swinburne University of TechnologySylvia T. Gray, Research Assistant and Casual Academic, Swinburne University of TechnologyTimothy Colin Bednall, Senior Lecturer in Management, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1628602021-06-18T04:03:37Z2021-06-18T04:03:37ZThe limits of advocacy: arts sector told to stop worrying and be happy<p>Most people with an interest in art and culture in Australia believe it is in deep crisis, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t think the crisis predated the pandemic. COVID-19 has smashed every sector involved in live events and on-site attendance. But art and culture stand out as receiving <a href="https://www.unisa.edu.au/contentassets/33e97267a93046f1987edca85823e7b1/cp3-working-paper-01.pdf">little government sympathy and less support</a>.</p>
<p>This underwhelming response comes off the back of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160">19% per capita cut in federal funding</a> over the past decade and the declining visibility of the “arts” in its <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/massive-backwards-step-australia-to-no-longer-have-a-federal-arts-department">host ministry</a>. Many in the arts sector are convinced they are in the middle of a “culture war”. </p>
<p>Having tried spruiking economic impact, jobs and growth, AI-resistant “creativity”, all to no avail — what’s next for a sector battling for survival? </p>
<h2>Past failures</h2>
<p>Two recent reports — the <a href="https://newapproach.org.au/imagining-2030-preparing-arts-culture-creativity-plan/">first from the think tank A New Approach (ANA)</a>, the <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/312235">second from John Daley</a>, ex-Director of the Grattan Institute — argue the problem is art and culture’s own failure to effectively “advocate” for their worth as legitimate targets of public funding. </p>
<p>That might come as a shock to a sector that since 1994’s <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/29704">Creative Nation</a> has been pushing the importance of its economic contribution, turbo-charged by the adoption of creative industries rhetoric from the UK after 1998 (think: “the creative economy”).</p>
<p>Clearly, the economic approach hasn’t worked. According to Daley, this was always barking up the wrong tree, with arguments made “by people who don’t believe them to people who don’t believe them”. </p>
<p>It’s a good line, but not quite right. Artists might not work primarily for money (which is lucky), but the belief that art and culture are a crucial part of Australia’s post-industrial economy, and that this should bring government recognition, is deeply ingrained in the sector. Hence the <a href="https://wakeinalarm.blog/2020/06/20/art-as-industry/">consternation</a> when these arguments did not cut through in 2020.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-politics-of-dancing-and-thinking-about-cultural-values-beyond-dollars-139839">Friday essay: the politics of dancing and thinking about cultural values beyond dollars</a>
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<h2>Don’t worry, be happy?</h2>
<p>What will convince hard-nosed policymakers in Treasury departments then? Daley’s answer is simple: the arts produce “happiness”. He suggests this is the metric the arts should use to demonstrate their value. It is highly unlikely this will sway policy, where employment metrics have failed. Worse, it simply misdescribes what art is. </p>
<p>Reducing art to “happiness” ignores centuries of debate about its complex purposes going back to Aristotle. </p>
<p>Does “happiness” really describe the dark energies and ecstatic highs of popular culture? The anger and joy that Shakespeare provokes? And “happiness” didn’t drive funding of our biggest contemporary cultural investment — the new War Memorial — with its gravitas, solemnity, and confrontation with the meaning of death. </p>
<p>The problem is not specific to “happiness”, which is just the next word in a chain of key terms leading the sector a merry dance around the abattoir walls to its next funding cut. Rather it is the concept of “advocacy” itself that isn’t right.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1405065720149385221"}"></div></p>
<h2>Building on shared values</h2>
<p>Advocacy works best in situations where basic values are broadly shared. Then issues can be raised and agendas pushed in a melee of healthy civil debate. When that consensus breaks down, when there is no common value ascribed to arts and culture in the first place, advocacy breaks down too. </p>
<p>Health and education need no “advocates” per se (though this consensus too is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/13/australian-universities-brace-for-ugly-2022-after-budget-cuts">showing signs of stress</a>). When art and culture need to advocate for their very existence, they are already in deep trouble.</p>
<p>This problem can be seen in its political dimension in the ANA’s latest report, <a href="https://newapproach.org.au/imagining-2030-preparing-arts-culture-creativity-plan/">Imagining 2030</a>. Taking their cue from sectors like sport, defence and agriculture, they suggest the “cultural and creative industries” need a coherent economic plan as a basis for advocacy to government. </p>
<p>So it’s back to the old approach: framing art and culture as an industrial sub sector, calculating its <a href="https://nationalindustryinsights.aisc.net.au/industries/arts-culture-entertainment-and-design">financial worth</a>, and trying to fit into Australian Bureau of Statistics parameters. The difference is that now the pitch is to be made to “middle Australia”, says the ANA. </p>
<p>Nowhere in this report is middle Australia defined, <a href="https://newapproach.org.au/perceptions-of-arts-culture-report-3/">though elsewhere</a> the sourced “focus group” is described as “middle-aged, middle income swing voters from suburban and regional Australia”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jane-austen-monet-and-phantom-of-the-opera-middlebrow-culture-today-145176">Jane Austen, Monet and Phantom of the Opera – middlebrow culture today</a>
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<h2>Call and response</h2>
<p>We all know what this means. From <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-22/tom-switzer-on-75-years-since-menzies-forgotten-people/8546742">Robert Menzies’ campaign slogan</a> of the “forgotten people” in 1942, through <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443050509388004?journalCode=rjau20">John Howard’s appeal</a> to Australian “battlers” in the 1990s, to the present government’s Trump-like culture war against “<a href="https://www.paulfletcher.com.au/portfolio-speeches/sydney-institute-address-why-do-we-fund-the-arts">the elites</a>” — it is a rhetorical figure in Coalition attacks on those it perceives to be its opponents. </p>
<p>The democratic impulse of opening up the arts to everybody becomes an entreaty to the “<a href="https://www.policyforum.net/the-sensible-centre/">sensible centre</a>”. Those outside it can be ignored.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-your-arts-minister-suffers-from-cultural-cringe-158621">What happens when your arts minister suffers from cultural cringe?</a>
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<p>In this <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/features/covid-19/ben-eltham/creative-industries-inquiry-demonstrates-need-for-national-cultural-policy-as-hearings-continue-261568">call-and-response</a> with the government, ANA shows what can happen to advocacy in an age of political polarisation — you end up where you may not want to go. Deploying the term “middle Australia” aligns ANA with the political territory of the Coalition. But where sport, defence and agriculture play squarely to Coalition constituencies, art and culture does not.</p>
<p>“He found the Archimedean point, but he used it against himself”, as <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1007&context=honorstheses">Franz Kafka wrote</a> about gaining a truthful perspective. From this vantage, those in art and culture better get used to their worth depending on how many jobs they generate for tradies — with <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2021/06/11/utes-tax-write-offs/">utes getting tax cuts</a>, <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/policy/david-tiley/alp-goes-ballistic-about-the-arts-in-parliament-signals-trouble-for-the-government-262733">but not TV drama</a> — and whether funding them passes the pub test in the Coalition’s marginal seats.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-shouldnt-have-to-endlessly-demonstrate-their-value-coalition-leaders-used-to-know-it-136608">Artists shouldn't have to endlessly demonstrate their value. Coalition leaders used to know it</a>
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<h2>Bad advocacy could save the arts</h2>
<p>If we want to avoid walking down an ever-narrowing policy path to a final cull, we need to assert arts and culture’s fundamental value, not play advocacy roulette with government terms <em>du jour.</em> </p>
<p>This means peak bodies saying things governments don’t like to hear, and risking accusations of biting the hand that feeds them. It means robustly maintaining that art and culture are inseparable from social citizenship, and essential to the foundations of our common life. It’s a risk that must be taken. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="outdoor lightshow" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406952/original/file-20210617-18-alc19m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Wilds, recently cancelled along with the Rising festival in Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rising/Eugene Hyland</span></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wesley-enoch-the-2021-budget-must-think-big-and-reinvest-in-the-social-capital-of-ideas-160341">Wesley Enoch: the 2021 budget must think big and reinvest in the social capital of ideas</a>
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<p>And new ideas are out there. <a href="https://www.regen.melbourne">Regen Melbourne</a>, a network of more than 40 organisations and 600 individuals, has added art and culture to its “<a href="https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/">doughnut economics</a>” model of community engagement to create a vision for a liveable sustainable city. </p>
<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://resetartsandculture.wordpress.com">Reset arts and culture collaboration in Adelaide</a> (with which we are involved) places culture at the societal foundation, along with health, education and basic services. </p>
<p>These initiatives might be “bad advocacy” with the current government, but in the long term they are art and culture’s best hope.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two reports — from think tank A New Approach and ex-Grattan Institute director John Daley — say Australian art and culture hasn’t advocated for itself effectively. But we need to try something new.Justin O'Connor, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South AustraliaJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith UniversityTully Barnett, Senior lecturer, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1587302021-04-29T12:47:05Z2021-04-29T12:47:05ZState lawsuits over stimulus tax rule face uphill battle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396369/original/file-20210421-13-oozbx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C106%2C7805%2C5037&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an American Rescue Plan virtual briefing on March 11, 2021 in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vice-president-kamala-harris-speaks-at-an-american-rescue-news-photo/1306551744?adppopup=true">Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>States were told by the federal government that they can’t use pandemic relief funds passed by Congress in March to lower taxes. In response, 16 states have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/us/politics/stimulus-states-lawsuit-tax-cuts.html">restriction</a> in the <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/fact-sheet-the-american-rescue-plan-will-deliver-immediate-economic-relief-to-families">US$1.9 trillion legislation</a>, known as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.</p>
<p>The rescue plan makes $350 billion available to state and local governments over the next four years to cover costs associated with COVID-19. It guarantees every state at least $500 million, but more can be provided based on unemployment numbers and poverty rates.</p>
<p>The law, however, forbids states from using this money “to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in net tax revenue” over those four years. In other words, rescue plan money cannot pay for state tax cuts.</p>
<p>That restriction prompted the lawsuits, which are pending in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Alabama federal courts.</p>
<p>The states claim that the rescue plan’s policies <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-x/interps/129">violate the 10th Amendment</a>, which helps define the relationship between the federal government and the states. </p>
<p>Historically, the Supreme Court has interpreted this provision to prevent the federal government from directing state policy rather than to limit what the feds can do themselves.</p>
<p>The rescue plan might run afoul of the 10th Amendment if it dictated what laws state legislatures must or must not adopt. That would mean states could use the federal money to offset tax cuts. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://case.edu/law/our-school/faculty-directory/jonathan-l-entin">constitutional law professor</a> who has written extensively about federal powers, I think it’s unlikely that the rescue plan violates the 10th Amendment. That’s because it does not order states to do anything. </p>
<h2>Supreme Court precedent</h2>
<p>In 1992, the Supreme Court declared that a federal law ordering states to pass legislation for the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-543">safe disposal of nuclear waste</a> violated the 10th Amendment. And in 2018 the high court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-476">forbade states from authorizing sports betting</a>.</p>
<p>But the rescue plan does not explicitly require or forbid states to enact legislation, as the nuclear waste and sports gambling laws did.</p>
<p>It offers states a deal: If you want federal money, you can’t use it to subsidize tax cuts. States get to choose whether they prefer tax cuts or federal funding. So I believe the 10th Amendment challenge will likely fail.</p>
<p>The plaintiff states rely more heavily on a claim that the tax provision imposes an unconstitutional condition on receipt of their funds. They have two main arguments.</p>
<p>The states assert that the law forbids them from cutting taxes, even though it does not.</p>
<p>They rely on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a provision of the Affordable Care Act that <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2011/11-393">withheld all federal Medicaid funding from states</a> that refused to expand the health coverage program. </p>
<p>This was a real penalty: The feds were already providing more than half of all Medicaid money and would pay virtually all of the additional costs of expanding the program. States that refused to expand Medicaid <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2012/06/28/court-lets-states-opt-out-of-medicaid-expansion">would get no federal Medicaid money at all</a>, leaving them much worse off than they were before.</p>
<p>But the rescue plan does not put the states in a worse position.</p>
<p>The rescue plan seeks only to make sure that the federal spending goes to cover the costs of the pandemic. It imposes a condition on federal spending, something that the Supreme Court has consistently approved.</p>
<h2>Funds for pandemic expenses</h2>
<p>The rescue plan tax provision more closely resembles a law that <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/1016/adrink.html">withheld federal highway money</a> from states that had a drinking age below 21. <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/86-260">The Supreme Court upheld that law</a> in 1987.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court recognized that a condition could be unconstitutionally coercive. But it dismissed that concern because states would lose only 5% of their highway money if they failed to raise their drinking age. Every state except South Dakota complied with the condition. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Harris explains how the Covid relief package will help small businesses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396371/original/file-20210421-19-z3vb3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Vice President Harris embarked on a three-state tour in March to highlight how the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will help small businesses in driving the American economic recovery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vice-president-kamala-harris-right-and-the-second-gentleman-news-photo/1307483418?adppopup=true">Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The same principle should apply here. The rescue plan withholds federal relief if the funds offset state tax cuts. The feds need not provide any relief, but it can make sure that the relief it does provide is used to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-personal-taxes-legislation-coronavirus-pandemic-unemployment-insurance-104c5477a7879abd4117abfea25c30d5">defray pandemic expenses</a>. </p>
<p>The plaintiff states also maintain that the broad scope of the rescue plan’s tax provision – which covers “direct or indirect” reductions in net tax revenue, such as by lowering tax rates or providing tax rebates – makes its coverage ambiguous. That, states claim, violates the requirement that conditions on federal spending be “clearly stated.”</p>
<p>But at least one state, Missouri, concedes that the provision simply forbids applying stimulus money “to offset a specific tax reduction of a similar amount.” That concession could hurt the states in court.</p>
<p>And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has authority to promulgate regulations to clarify any ambiguity. She recently <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0113">issued guidance under the law</a>, stating that changes to state tax laws that take account of recent changes to federal tax law will not be treated as tax cuts under the rescue plan.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<h2>Other payment methods</h2>
<p>Suppose, however, that the rescue plan does have a broader sweep.</p>
<p>States still could provide economic help to their residents and keep all of their COVID-19 money. They could do so by using ARPA money to pay people directly instead of reducing their taxes.</p>
<p>Maybe states should be careful not to label those payments as rebates, which might run afoul of the restriction. But they could avoid that problem by calling them, in <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1319/text">the rescue plan’s words</a>, “assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits” and “aid to impacted industries.”</p>
<p>However these cases get resolved, we should view them as the latest round in the political battle between the states and the federal government over contentious federal policy.</p>
<p>Legal doctrines might evolve, but in many respects these lawsuits are really performances: They allow state officials to score <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-28/california-100-lawsuits-trump-administration">political points with their constituents</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/27/why-texas-likes-to-sue-the-federal-government-a-lot/">whether or not their legal arguments ultimately prevail</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Entin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>States claim the stimulus law assaults state sovereignty by barring local governments from using aid money to cut taxes. But the Supreme Court has consistently approved conditions on federal spending.Jonathan Entin, Professor Emeritus of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1598522021-04-29T01:14:23Z2021-04-29T01:14:23ZMeasuring a president’s first 100 days goes back to the New Deal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397407/original/file-20210427-13-rjaqv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C3%2C1010%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Biden has signed dozens of executive orders during his first 100 days in office, many of them reversing Trump-era policies.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Evan Vucci/AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office as president, he has signed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/117th-congress">11 bills into law</a>.</p>
<p>One was the prominent <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/ncsl-in-dc/publications-and-resources/american-rescue-plan-act-of-2021.aspx">American Rescue Plan Act of 2021</a>, intended to provide broad economic relief and increase distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Another law, not so broad, added <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/578">sesame</a> to the list of allergens for food labeling requirements. A third allows U.S. senators and Senate committees to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/422">share employees</a>. </p>
<p>Most of the remaining new federal laws this year relate to other pandemic relief measures or to public health issues.</p>
<p>President Biden’s other policy proposals are running into the roadblock known as the United States Senate, which may explain why he’s also signed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/">60 executive actions</a> that don’t require the cooperation of Congress. Many of these reversed the policies of his predecessor. </p>
<p>But where did the tradition of using a president’s first 100 days to evaluate him originate?</p>
<h2>Creating the concept</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165961/original/file-20170419-2423-ah1val.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vice President John Nance Garner (left) affectionately pats the head of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The idea began in 1933 with Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR didn’t plan to put himself under scrutiny. Rather, he had in mind measuring the New Deal achievements of the first 100 days of a special congressional session that year. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-24-1933-fireside-chat-3-national-recovery-administration">July 24 Fireside Chat</a>, FDR referred to “the crowding events of the 100 days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.” </p>
<p>In the decades since, journalists, historians and political scientists continued the practice of looking for accomplishments in the early months of a presidency.</p>
<p>During those 100 days, FDR got many <a href="http://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/35195?ret=True">major bills</a> through Congress to battle the economic crisis of the Great Depression. These bills created the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide job opportunities, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to insure bank deposits and the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide rural electricity. This flurry of activity became the standard by which future presidents would be judged. Most came up short.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/106591290105400409">a 2001 study</a>, political scientists John Frendreis, Raymond Tatalovich and Jon Schaff determined that the presidents who followed FDR have not come close to his success levels in seeing proposed bills pass into law so early in their administrations. The authors attributed that to changes in Congress that have slowed down the lawmaking process. </p>
<p>Let’s consider how the presidents have done.</p>
<h2>Truman to Clinton</h2>
<p>Following FDR’s death, Harry Truman’s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/02/26/the-first-100-days-harry-truman-showed-decisiveness-and-intelligence">first 100 days</a> were focused on the closing battles of World War II, with Germany’s surrender occurring less than one month after Truman took office. </p>
<p>Dwight Eisenhower’s first 100 days were similarly dominated by foreign policy, including the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0304/post-stalin.html">death</a> of Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin and negotiations to <a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/korean-war">end</a> the Korean War.</p>
<p>John Kennedy entered office with an ambitious agenda, which included the creation of the Peace Corps, but his first 100 days are probably <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26reeves.html">best remembered</a> for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. </p>
<p>Lyndon Johnson’s first 100 days were largely consumed by coping with the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, but LBJ also used the period and <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/03/05/the-first-100-days-lyndon-johnson-fulfilled-kennedys-legacy">Kennedy’s legacy</a> to begin the groundwork to pass major civil rights and war on poverty legislation.</p>
<p>While Richard Nixon also promoted an ambitious domestic agenda in the White House, his first 100 days contained no major achievements. Nixon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/18/archives/temperate-modest-shrewd-lucky-retiring-conservative-calculating-the.html">told</a> reporters: “I don’t count either the days or the hours, and I have never really thought in terms of 100 days. I plan for the long term.” Later, it was revealed that he had ordered a <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-bombs-cambodia-for-the-first-time">secret bombing</a> of Cambodia during the period. </p>
<p>Gerald Ford’s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/03/19/the-first-100-days-clinton-and-ford-got-off-to-a-rocky-start">first 100 days</a> are best remembered for his swearing-in ceremony following Nixon’s resignation, when he announced that “our long national nightmare is over.” He pardoned Nixon one month later for any crimes the former president had committed in office.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter also had an inauspicious start. Possibly because of his inexperience in Washington, he asked Congress to pursue several different domestic policy goals, many of which never passed into law. Perhaps best remembered from Carter’s early months is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNFKgNoWc0">his speech</a> from the White House to declare that energy policy and efforts to end American dependence on oil were the “moral equivalent of war.”</p>
<p>Ronald Reagan’s administration drew the lesson from his immediate predecessor that it was best to focus on one or two domestic issues during the first 100 days. Reagan spent <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/03/12/the-first-100-days-reagan-pushed-his-agenda-of-tax-cuts-and-less-government">his first months</a> as president promoting an agenda of tax and spending cuts, though those did not pass into law until August 1981, four months later. Reagan’s first 100 days as president were also notable for the assassination attempt made against him, which limited his political efforts for part of the period.</p>
<p>George H.W. Bush’s first 100 days as president were largely a continuation of the policies of the Reagan presidency. They were noted at the time for being <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/23/opinion/president-bush-s-hundred-days-seen-against-ronald-reagan-s-2922-days.html">relatively uneventful</a>, with a congressional battle over a secretary of defense nominee and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dominating the political news.</p>
<p>The biggest political news story during Bill Clinton’s first 100 days was probably the failure of his stimulus package of domestic spending increases to get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate, though the eventual budget that resulted helped steer the United States toward budget surpluses later in the decade. Clinton’s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/03/19/the-first-100-days-clinton-and-ford-got-off-to-a-rocky-start">first month</a> also included his signing of the <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla">Family and Medical Leave Act</a> into law, the start of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/the-awkward-clinton-era-debate-over-dont-ask-dont-tell/381374/">a debate about service of gays in the military</a> and the creation of <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/%22Hillarycare%22_(The_proposed_Health_Security_Act_of_1993)">a task force on national health care reform, chaired by Hillary Clinton</a>. </p>
<h2>The 21st century</h2>
<p>George W. Bush took office in January 2001 after a disputed electoral outcome in Florida led to <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/00-949">a 5-4 Supreme Court decision</a> that essentially made him president. In a politically divided country, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/25/bush.interview.02/">Bush’s strategy</a> seemed to be to avoid controversy and build his political capital, with his major legislative proposals in the time period involving tax cuts and education reform.</p>
<p>Because of the economic crisis that began during Bush’s final months as president, Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office were dominated by the passage of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1/text">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act</a>, a package of economic stimulus investments that <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/first_quarter_2017/the-recovery-act-of-2009-vs-fdrs-new-deal-which-was-bigger">by some measures</a> was even larger than those passed in FDR’s 100 days in 1933. During a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-on-economic-crisis-transition/">CBS “60 Minutes” interview</a> in November 2008, Obama even said he was reading about FDR’s 100 days as an example.</p>
<p>During Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, his main political success was the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/senate-confirms-gorsuch-to-supreme-court-237005">confirmation</a> of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Trump’s <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/04/29/what-happened-in-the-first-100-days-of-trump-presidency/100944988/">first 100 days</a> also featured government malfunction. Massive protests greeted his attempts to ban entry of citizens of certain Islamic countries into the U.S. and suspend refugee entry, and federal judges blocked the bans. Trump’s promised <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1388/repeal-obamacare/">repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act failed</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>Biden already has one significant legislative achievement during his first 100 days, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1319/text">American Rescue Plan Act</a>. He also used his powers as president to <a href="https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/biden-ramps-vaccine-distribution-200-million-doses-end-summer">expedite</a> COVID-19 vaccine distribution, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/19/politics/us-rejoins-paris-agreement-biden-administration/index.html">rejoin the Paris Agreement</a> on climate change, and revoke some of Trump’s border measures and the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-protecting-public-health-and-environment-and-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/">permit for the Keystone XL pipeline</a>. Among the dilemmas he has faced is a large number of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56405009">children seeking asylum</a> in the United States at the Mexican border.</p>
<p>Biden has proposed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan">a sweeping infrastructure plan</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/biden-infrastructure-plan-spending-on-climate-change-clean-energy.html">new climate change policies</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/20/fact-sheet-president-biden-sends-immigration-bill-to-congress-as-part-of-his-commitment-to-modernize-our-immigration-system/">immigration reforms</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/breonna-taylor-joe-biden-race-and-ethnicity-police-legislation-57796a64d9dd71b35aa48ac217249cec">criminal justice and police reforms</a>, among other campaign promises he wants to fulfill. Whereas FDR in the 1930s could count on Democratic majorities in Congress to vote many of the president’s proposed ideas into law, Biden has been unable to accomplish the same so far. </p>
<p>The current tiny Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in Washington, and a Senate filibuster now used to stop almost all significant legislation, have prevented Biden from being able to match FDR’s level of accomplishments during his first 100 days.</p>
<p>If Biden would like during his first year as president to match an FDR level of presidential achievement, it will likely be necessary to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/politics/biden-agenda-bipartisan-deals/index.html">negotiate deals</a> with at least 10 Senate Republicans. Or Biden will need to persuade a group of very <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/08/senate-joe-manchin-opposes-eliminating-or-weakening-the-filibuster.html">reluctant Senate Democrats</a> to abandon the filibuster power once and for all.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-and-the-history-of-the-first-100-days-76268">an article originally published on April 17, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Speel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the Roosevelt administration, it’s become standard to look for accomplishments in a presidency’s early months.Robert Speel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie Campus, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1586212021-04-08T09:51:11Z2021-04-08T09:51:11ZWhat happens when your arts minister suffers from cultural cringe?<p>Who gets what in the arts has long been a topic of much debate. There are myriad issues round elitism, regional distribution, excellence, artforms, organisations versus individuals and so on. Some of this is generated by an unequal allocation of funding as well as the limited amount available overall. But other issues relate to historical approaches and a hierarchy of arts practice.</p>
<p>It is unusual, though, for an arts minister to step into the fray. In 2015, the then arts minister George Brandis decided to <a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-with-the-program-brandis-releases-his-draft-arts-funding-guidelines-44186">change the funding distribution</a> and invent his own funding scheme for excellence. This did not work out well for anyone, including the minister. </p>
<p>Now the current Minister for the Arts, Paul Fletcher, has decided to put his view out there. At a <a href="https://www.paulfletcher.com.au/portfolio-speeches/sydney-institute-address-why-do-we-fund-the-arts">talk on Wednesday to the Sydney Institute</a>, Fletcher attacked the arts sector for being a “cosy club” of elites while raising the issue of “fairness”, particularly in relation to regional and urban distribution of arts funding. </p>
<p>He described the audience for the arts as “an elite group of people wearing black tie going to opening nights in our big cities”. This might sound more like a Labor dig at the top end of town than a Coalition line. The minister seems to be confusing privileged audience members with hard-working arts workers, who could use support rather than insults. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-litany-of-losses-a-new-project-maps-our-abandoned-arts-events-of-2020-148716">A litany of losses: a new project maps our abandoned arts events of 2020</a>
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<h2>Bruised, battered, forgotten</h2>
<p>Perhaps, like many, Fletcher is still feeling a bit bruised from 2020. The art sector was shutdown due to the pandemic and then was generally <a href="https://theconversation.com/too-little-too-late-too-confusing-the-funding-criteria-for-the-arts-covid-package-is-a-mess-145397">ignored for more than eight months</a> by his government, despite the dramatic economic impact on the sector. The extremely slow response by the federal government was not seen by the arts sector as “sensitive” or “fair” for that matter. The federal government did end up providing a large amount of funding at the end of 2020 and into 2021, but the process for deciding “who got what” <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-arts-windfalls-show-money-isnt-enough-we-need-transparency-154725">was hardly transparent</a>.</p>
<p>Now it seems the minister wants to raise issues around elitism and funding share, as well as the urban/regional debate. This seems a little disingenuous given recent <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7199272/mccormack-under-fire-over-regional-grants-fund/">accusations of funding “rorts”</a> at both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/18/sports-rorts-all-recommended-projects-should-receive-belated-funding-report">federal</a> and <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/nsw-grants-inquiry-lays-blame-for-252m-grants-rort-on-nsw-premier-and-deputy-premier-seeks-icac-referral/news-story/3178f1a354db5314c41039c631a92422">state</a> levels. </p>
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<p>Fletcher has declared he wants to see if he can shift the Labor party and Greens from their high ground positions in relation to the arts, while reminding everyone of <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-shouldnt-have-to-endlessly-demonstrate-their-value-coalition-leaders-used-to-know-it-136608">past contributions by the Coalition</a> to the cultural sector.</p>
<p>However, it is the minister’s government that <a href="https://theconversation.com/remember-the-arts-departments-and-budgets-disappear-as-politics-backs-culture-into-a-dead-end-128110">disappeared the “arts”</a> into an amorphous department of infrastructure. </p>
<p>It is the minster’s government that has continued to downplay the importance of Australian content by reducing “<a href="https://www.paulfletcher.com.au/media-releases/media-relase-immediate-covid-19-relief-for-australian-media-as-harmonisation-reform">red tape</a>” obligations to produce Australian content. It is the minister’s government that has continued to <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160">decrease the amount of arts funding available</a>. And yes, it is the minister’s government that chose to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-arts-needed-a-champion-it-got-a-package-to-prop-up-the-major-players-100-days-later-141444">ignore the needs of the arts sector</a> during a time of desperate need.</p>
<p>Yet, in this speech this week, Fletcher <a href="https://www.paulfletcher.com.au/portfolio-speeches/sydney-institute-address-why-do-we-fund-the-arts">claimed</a> the “level of funding committed to the arts by the Morrison Government in 2020-21 has been unprecedented”. Belated additional funding for COVID relief may have increased the federal arts allocation dramatically for the past 12 months. But this additional funding has not been equitably allocated, and the government has continued to ignore cultural workers who were <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-artists-should-be-able-to-access-jobkeeper-payments-its-not-that-simple-138530">not eligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-arts-windfalls-show-money-isnt-enough-we-need-transparency-154725">Latest arts windfalls show money isn't enough. We need transparency</a>
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<h2>Big arts, big funding</h2>
<p>Certainly, it can be agreed arts funding is skewed towards the big end of town. The opera companies, symphony orchestras and major theatre companies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/arts/australia-performing-arts-funding.html">receive more than 60% of the funding</a> available from the Australia Council. </p>
<p>Is Fletcher talking about changing this ratio or providing more money overall? Or is he using the opportunity to have a go at a vulnerable sector when he is meant to be their advocate? The minister maybe diving in at the deep end, without necessarily understanding the full complexity of the arts or arts funding.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is playing to supporters when he argues too much funding is going to urban performing arts companies, rather than, for example, to regional activity or commercial productions that tour.</p>
<p>But professional arts practice is usually located in urban centres because that is where artists live and work. It is also where they can attract the biggest audiences, which is critical when arts activity depends on box office income. Of course, there are also fantastic arts groups and individuals working in the regions that also need to be recognised, celebrated and more generously funded. But in the annual <a href="https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/about/annual-report-2019-20/">Australia Council report for 2019-2020</a>, it is noted that of “government initiatives”, only 5% of total arts funding was allocated to regional areas. If the government was serious about providing more funding to regional areas, it could certainly increase this percentage.</p>
<p>However, since the Coalition parties came into power in 2013, the amount of money available for arts funding has continued to decrease. This is something that could easily be changed given the small amount overall given to arts practice at the Australia Council ($187.1 million in 2019-2020). A further 95 companies have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/apr/06/we-are-witnessing-a-cultural-bloodbath-in-australia-that-has-been-years-in-the-making">lost their funding since 2016</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past eight years there has been a dramatic continual decline in arts funding relative to population growth, which has particularly affected individuals and <a href="https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/degraded-and-demoralised-the-arts-companies-left-behind/">small to medium arts organisations</a>. Is the minister arguing that he wants to give more money to the sector or is he really concerned about electoral boundaries and getting the support of Coalition voters in the regions?</p>
<p>The arts sector would love to have a minister who demonstrates they care about the needs of the sector and does their best to improve the position of the arts in Australian society. Instead, it feels like Fletcher is employing and possibly enjoying a “divide and rule” approach, which helps no one in the end, least of all the arts. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-moments-like-these-we-need-a-cultural-policy-141974">At moments like these, we need a cultural policy</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo Caust has previously received funding from the Australia Council. She is a member of NAVA and the Arts Industry Council SA. </span></em></p>Arts Minister Paul Fletcher has taken aim at what he calls a ‘cosy club’ of arts elites. But his claim of ‘unprecedented’ arts funding and a push for greater fairness don’t add up.Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1559352021-03-25T12:25:10Z2021-03-25T12:25:10ZWho gets Cherokee citizenship has long been a struggle between the tribe and the US government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391389/original/file-20210324-17-1cdahr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C44%2C4217%2C2182&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Cherokee Census card from 1904. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enrollment_for_Cherokee_Census_Card_R645_-_NARA_-_259708.jpg#/media/File:Enrollment_for_Cherokee_Census_Card_R645_-_NARA_-_259708.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/U.S. National Archives and Records Administration</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/cherokee-nation-supreme-court-rules-by-blood-reference-be-stricken-from-tribe-s/article_e79f78b4-756b-11eb-b0bc-13a1954dc30b.html">recent decision by the Cherokee Nation’s Supreme Court</a> struck down a law that freedmen – descendants of people enslaved by Cherokees in the 18th and 19th centuries – cannot hold elective tribal office. The ruling is the latest development in a long-standing dispute about the tribal rights available to Black people once held in bondage by Native Americans.</p>
<p>National media reported this news as a victory against racism in the tribe. “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/politics/cherokee-nation-black-freedmen.html">Cherokee Nation Addresses Bias Against Descendants of Enslaved People</a>,” reads a representative headline from The New York Times.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/3531774">as a scholar of Cherokee law and history</a>, I argue this development can be seen another way: as only the latest chapter in a long struggle between the Cherokee Nation and the federal government over which has the power to determine who should be considered a tribal citizen, and which culture’s values should be most important in that determination.</p>
<h2>Status of freedmen</h2>
<p>On Feb. 22, the <a href="https://www.cherokeecourts.org/Supreme-Court/SC-2017-01-to-current">Cherokee Supreme Court</a> struck the words “by blood” from the <a href="https://www.cherokee.org/our-government/cherokee-nation-constitution/">Cherokee Constitution</a>. </p>
<p>This decision means that the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/us/cherokee-nation-ruling-freedmen-citizenship-trnd/index.html">8,500</a> tribal descendants of Cherokee freedmen can <a href="https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/election-complaint-filed-over-freedmen-descendants-eligibility/article_3589c336-b676-5906-bb9b-d55292529663.html">run for tribal office</a>. Freedmen currently have access to voting and other benefits of citizenship that were not a part of this particular decision.</p>
<p>The Cherokee Nation has wrestled with the tribal citizenship status of freedmen since U.S. officials <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100630013134/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/VOL2/treaties/che0942.htm">forced Cherokees to adopt freedmen</a> into the tribe in 1866. Part of the tension, as I have <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-american-political-development/article/abs/cherokee-political-thought-and-the-development-of-tribal-citizenship/CC9A3DA37538AAE21F1AEBAF9DE061A6">written elsewhere</a>, stems from the Cherokee commitment to limit citizenship to those meeting certain eligibility requirements – in this case, those who are Cherokee by blood. For the Nation, keeping citizenship exclusive preserves both Cherokee culture and status as a distinct sovereign entity. </p>
<p>Historically, U.S. officials, often encouraged by public opinion, have wanted Cherokees to adopt U.S. legal and cultural practices. When not attempting to <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/7690-a-move-to-destroy-the-cherokee-nation">terminate the tribe</a>, U.S. officials have sided with freedmen whenever tribal citizenship disputes <a href="https://casetext.com/case/cherokee-nation-v-nash-4">reach U.S. courts</a>. U.S. politicians have also repeatedly threatened to <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11280553">withhold federal money</a> should the Cherokee Nation not grant freedmen citizenship.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Information from the Cherokee Nation on how to register as a tribal citizen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391276/original/file-20210323-17-1a2jm34.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A screenshot from the Cherokee Nation’s tribal registration webpage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cherokee.org/all-services/tribal-registration/">Cherokee Nation website</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Origins of a conflict</h2>
<p>Before living in Indian Territory – now Oklahoma – Cherokees lived for centuries in the American Southeast. Their society was a collection of towns held together by <a href="https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/education/the-cherokee-clan-system/article_a88fcc42-f3f8-5f33-b575-8cff7d3bffd2.html">clan affiliation</a> and kinship bonds. </p>
<p>These clan and kin relationships were the basis of Cherokee <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691006277/cherokee-renascence-in-the-new-republic">social and political life</a>. Their strong communal ethic, with <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/14444470/serving-the-nation">each person playing a particular role in determining the health and strength of the community</a>, supported and was encouraged by the practice of holding land in common; Cherokees did not own land privately. </p>
<p>Cherokees were also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000271627843600104">intensely spiritual</a>, believing that frequent personal and communal rituals maintained harmony and balance between all living things. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X20000176">Exclusive membership</a>, limited to Cherokees with few exceptions, was one natural extension of their cultural beliefs and practices. </p>
<p>Colonists, later U.S. citizens, wanted to acquire Cherokee land and to make Cherokees more like whites in terms of their religious, government and economic practices. That meant that Cherokees would have to abandon their practice of holding land communally, which made land difficult for U.S. settlers to acquire because they could not deal with individuals. </p>
<p>By the 1820s, Cherokees had adopted many customs and institutions from Americans, including <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-native-american-slaveholders-complicate-trail-tears-narrative-180968339/">Black slavery</a>, a written language and a <a href="https://www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CherokeePhoenix/Vol1/no01/constitution-of-the-cherokee-nation-page-1-column-2a-page-2-column-3a.html">constitution</a>. But instead of making the tribe more white – and thereby giving up their lands, as settlers hoped – the Cherokee constitution declared the tribe’s intent to preserve its lands.</p>
<p>Hungry for Cherokee land and the gold in it, and disdaining the Cherokee way of life, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Removal-Act">Congress in the 1830s gave</a> the president power to force the Cherokee west. Roughly <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820323671/john-ross-cherokee-chief/">16,000 Cherokees</a>, along with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/25/us/pain-of-trail-of-tears-shared-by-blacks-as-well-as-native-americans">many slaves</a>, walked the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory – some <a href="https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/what-happened-on-the-trail-of-tears.htm">4,000 dying</a> as a result.</p>
<h2>1866 treaty</h2>
<p>Cherokees rebuilt their nation in what is now northeastern Oklahoma. Enslaved Black labor aided this process. </p>
<p>When the Civil War began, the Cherokee first <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-native-americans-ended-up-fighting-for-the-confederacy-2019-6">joined the Confederacy</a>. The Nation, however, <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/how-the-cherokee-fought-the-civil-war">experienced a schism</a> that led most, including Chief John Ross, the Nation’s leader, to flee to the Union side. Ross’ rival, Stand Watie, and others remained with the Confederates.</p>
<p>After the war, the U.S. forced the Cherokee Nation to sign the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100630013134/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/VOL2/treaties/che0942.htm">Treaty of 1866</a>. The tribe’s <a href="https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/1839-cherokee-constitution-born-from-act-of-union/article_5621e3f8-f65c-5990-8af2-c889b21b0abc.html">1839 Constitution</a>, affirming previous laws, had stated that Cherokee citizens must be descended from Cherokees, not their Black slaves. But in this peace treaty, Cherokees agreed to make their former slaves full tribal citizens. </p>
<p>This meant granting many who did not share in <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520230972/blood-politics">clan affiliation</a> or Cherokee blood access to tribal services like education and potentially a portion of federal monetary payments.</p>
<p>For many, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234671/cherokee-diaspora">being a Cherokee</a> citizen was not merely about receiving things from the government – it was also about living the Cherokee lifestyle and dedicating one’s life to that culture. Many Cherokees <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/third-annual-message-of-hon-jb-mayes-principal-chief-of-the-cherokee-nation/oclc/593622785">opposed making freedmen citizens</a>, since most were not Cherokee by blood. </p>
<p>Importantly, they <a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc0738405">did not want</a> U.S. officials dictating who could be a tribal citizen. </p>
<p>The 1866 treaty stipulated that only freedmen living on Cherokee land within six months of the signing could be citizens. While some freedmen did gain citizenship this way, Cherokees used that provision to <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520230972/blood-politics">deny it to those who did not return on time</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman who descends from Cherokee Freedmen holding her tribal ID card." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391279/original/file-20210323-2283-1q28xwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rena Logan, whose ancestors were enslaved by the Cherokee Indians in the 1800s, fought to gain full tribal membership for descendants of freedmen like her.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CherokeeFreedmen/c8e7ed4dfd514580bda402f115b55b00/photo?Query=freedmen&mediaType=photo,graphic&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=29&currentItemNo=19">Dave Crenshaw/AP photos</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Termination</h2>
<p>After the Civil War, U.S. officials, settlers and freedmen made demands on Cherokee land and resources. <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/4144838">Freedmen wanted</a> to <a href="https://www.blairpub.com/shop/black-indian-slave-narratives">build a life</a> – most returned to Cherokee territory from surrounding states, as they were not wanted there.</p>
<p>Settlers wanted Cherokee lands. Christian and philanthropic organizations also pressured U.S. politicians to <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393304978">hasten the “civilization” of Indians</a>. This meant forcing them to adopt American economic and social norms – especially private land ownership. </p>
<p>The federal government used freedmen’s petitions for Cherokee citizenship to undermine tribal authority. Freedmen who wanted to live among the Cherokee but were stymied by tribal leaders <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185118">appealed to the Office of Indian Affairs</a>. Federal representatives, called “Indian agents,” stepped in, superseding Cherokee sovereignty, giving freedmen (and white settlers) Cherokee land. </p>
<p>Congress forced the conversion of Cherokee communal lands into individual lots in 1887 with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/dawes-act.htm">Dawes Act</a>. As part of this process, U.S. agents counted those living on tribal land – creating the <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/research/dawes">Dawes Rolls</a>, which divided the inhabitants into three categories: Cherokee, white and freedmen. </p>
<p>Congress’ ultimately successful goal was to dissolve tribal governments, freeing up land for new American cities and farms in Oklahoma – which achieved statehood in 1907. </p>
<h2>Rebirth</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, Congress passed legislation <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/STATUTE-84/STATUTE-84-Pg1091-2">enabling Cherokees to re-form their sovereign government</a>, recognized by the U.S. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/cherokees-ratified-first-modern-constitution-in-1976/article_19fc963d-1df6-5f9c-a700-c8320012fc1e.html">Cherokees drafted a constitution</a> in 1975, re-articulating their sovereignty, including citizenship requirements. </p>
<p>The Cherokee Nation, <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/lemame">40,000 strong</a>, used the Cherokee Dawes Rolls – excluding the freedmen list – to determine citizenship. Identifying individual Cherokee by blood had become impossible without some arbitrary reference point; they chose the 1906 list that U.S. agents had compiled to reestablish exclusive citizenship as a sovereign nation. </p>
<p>Descendants of freedmen objected to Cherokees not including the Dawes freedmen list too; <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185118">freedmen had wanted citizenship</a> to gain access to tribal services and suffrage. This became an even greater issue as the Cherokee Nation <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/lemame">expanded to 200,000 people in the 1990s</a>. </p>
<p>Cherokees have <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312206628">legally and socially wrestled</a> with whether excluding freedmen was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185118">an act of racism</a> or a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X20000176">show of strength against the U.S.</a> for repeatedly denying tribal sovereignty. </p>
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<p>Freedmen struggled against the Cherokee Nation for decades to secure citizenship, often getting the U.S. involved. In 2017, a U.S. district judge ruled that the Cherokee <a href="https://casetext.com/case/cherokee-nation-v-nash-4">do not have the sovereign authority to deny citizenship</a> to freedmen, since they agreed to make them citizens in the Treaty of 1866. </p>
<p>The 2021 decision to strike “by blood” from the candidate requirement is the next step in that process of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1MaAlo2o6s">debating what Cherokee citizenship means</a> – and how to keep it exclusive despite U.S. interference.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron Kushner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the Cherokee Supreme Court ruled that tribal elected officials no longer had to be Cherokee “by blood,” it was the latest chapter in a long-running fight over who controls tribal citizenship.Aaron Kushner, Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528672021-01-07T18:02:53Z2021-01-07T18:02:53ZUS Capitol protesters, egged on by Trump, are part of a long history of white supremacists hearing politicians’ words as encouragement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377628/original/file-20210107-16-rpdrh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C20%2C6639%2C4376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Proud Boys outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-proud-boys-outside-the-us-capitol-in-washington-dc-on-news-photo/1230463103?adppopup=true">(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“President Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress incited a violent attack Wednesday against the government they lead,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/trump-capitol-dc-protests.html">The New York Times’ editorial board wrote</a> on Jan. 6, summing up much of the response to the incursion into the Capitol by rioting Trump supporters that day.</p>
<p>At a rally that morning, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-06/news-analysis-trumps-violent-rhetoric-incites-supporters-capitol-takeover">had urged those supporters</a> to march on the Capitol, saying he would “never concede” and that they should show “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” </p>
<p>The Times was joined in laying the blame at Trump’s feet by many others, including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/07/mitt-romney-riot-violence-reaction-capitol-certification-sot-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/congress-certifies-electoral-college-vote/">Republican Sen. Mitt Romney</a>, who said what happened at the Capitol was “an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”</p>
<p>Among the protesters at the Capitol were members of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/proud-boys-white-supremacist-group-law-enforcement-agencies">white supremacy groups, including the Proud Boys</a>. Their participation in the Jan. 6 events, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/insurrection-capitol-extremist-groups-invs/index.html">egged on by Trump</a>, reflects a long history in the U.S. of local, state and national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period of forming interracial governments and reintegrating former Confederate states into the Union, white city and state leaders in the South tacitly encouraged violence against black voters by state militias and groups like the <a href="http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2934">Ku Klux Klan</a>. They did it in a way that allowed those leaders to look innocent of any crimes. </p>
<p>Those groups used that chaos to end federal power in their states and reestablish white-dominated Southern state governments. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">white supremacists hope the political chaos they contribute to will lead to</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">race war</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-reopen-protesters-really-saying-137558">and the creation of their own white nation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1868 Harper’s Weekly, ‘This is a white man’s government,’ skewering Southern white supremacists fighting Reconstruction laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/98513794/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstruction violence</h2>
<p>Moments of changing social and political power in U.S. history have led to clashes – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed">often armed</a> – between white supremacists and interracial alliances over voting rights.</p>
<p>That history includes the period following the Civil War, when white supremacist organizations saw the postwar rule over Southern states of Radical Republicans and the federal government as illegitimate. They wanted to return to the prewar status quo of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/14301/slavery-by-another-name-by-douglas-a-blackmon/">slavery by another name</a> and white supremacist rule.</p>
<p>As a historian of <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">protests and Reconstruction</a>, I study how those paramilitary groups or self-proclaimed “regulators” consequently spread fear and terror among black and white Republican voters with the support of the anti-black Democratic Party in Southern states. </p>
<p>They targeted elections and vowed to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U7hpAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA2101&lpg=PA2101&dq=%E2%80%9Ccarry+the+election+peaceably+if+we+can,+forcibly+if+we+must.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=vZU88x92mU&sig=ACfU3U34H7Xb-2aUHMGrMKULNiHBUi1D4w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxyZvYgKrpAhXRKs0KHXiiCuUQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ccarry%20the%20election%20peaceably%20if%20we%20can%2C%20forcibly%20if%20we%20must.%E2%80%9D&f=false">carry the election peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must</a>.” </p>
<p>Still, many courageous black and white voters <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_4">fought back</a> by forming political organizations, daring to vote and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/black-south-carolinians-form-militia-protection-1874">assembling their own armed guards</a> to protect themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A leader of the Three Percenters militia movement, Matt Marshall, speaks at an anti-lockdown protest, April 19, 2020 in Olympia, Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/matt-marshall-of-the-right-wing-group-washington-state-news-photo/1210404370?adppopup=true">Getty/Karen Ducey</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Gentlemen of property and standing’</h2>
<p>Then, as today, white supremacists received encouraging signals from powerful leaders. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Property-Standing-Anti-Abolition-Jacksonian/dp/0195013514">gentlemen of property and standing</a>” often led or indirectly supported anti-abolition mobs, slave patrols, lynch mobs or Klan attacks. </p>
<p>Federal investigators in Kentucky in 1867 found that “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">many men of wealth and position</a>” rode with the armed groups. One witness in the federal investigation testified that “many of the most respectable men in the county belong in the ‘Lynch’ party.” Future South Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman reflected on his participation in the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hamburg-massacre/">Hamburg massacre</a> of 1876, arguing that “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ben_Tillman_and_the_Reconstruction_of_Wh/dOA4CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=having+the+whites+demonstrate+their+superiority+by+killing+as+many+as+was+justifiable&pg=PA67&printsec=frontcover">the leading men</a>” of the area wanted to teach black voters a lesson by “having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many as was justifiable.” At least six black men were killed in the Hamburg attack on the black South Carolina militia by the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/red-shirts/">Red Shirts</a>, a white rifle club.</p>
<p>White supremacists knew that they would not face consequences for their violence. </p>
<p>An agent of the federal <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau</a> – set up by Congress in 1865 to help former slaves and poor whites in the South – stated that the “<a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_3">desperadoes</a>” received encouragement and were “screened from the hands of justice by citizens of boasted connections.” </p>
<p>President Ulysses S. Grant <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2070020a/?sp=2&st=text">condemned</a> the Hamburg massacre, arguing that some claimed “the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation.” </p>
<p>Facing community pressure, and without the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743984">presence of the U.S. Army</a> to enforce laws, local sheriffs and judges refused or were unable to enforce federal laws. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armed rioters shown in the aftermath of the multiracial Wilmington, North Carolina, government being overthrown by white supremacists in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/photos/?q=Wilmington,+N.C.+race+riot">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Witnesses were often afraid to challenge local leaders for fear of attack. The “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">reign of terror</a>” was so complete that “men dare not report outrages and appear as witnesses.”</p>
<p>When the U.S. District Court in Kentucky brought charges against two men for lynching in 1871, prosecutors could not find witnesses willing to testify against the accused. The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn82015463/">Frankfort Commonwealth</a> newspaper wrote, “He would be hung by a [mob] inside of twenty-four hours, and the dominant sentiment … would say ‘served him right.’”</p>
<h2>State militias</h2>
<p>As Southern states threw off federal military occupation and elected their own white-dominated governments, they no longer had to rely solely on white terror organizations to enforce their agenda. </p>
<p>Instead, these self-described “<a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/redeemer-democrats">redeemers</a>” formed state-funded militias that served similar functions of intimidation and voter suppression with the support of prominent citizens. </p>
<p>At political rallies and elections throughout the South, official Democratic militias paraded through towns and <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/For_Slavery_and_Union/D917BgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=democratic%20partisan%20militia">monitored polling stations</a> to threaten black and white Republican voters, proclaiming that “<a href="https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10428/1130/butler-joshua-w_almost-too-terrible-to-believe_history_thesis_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">this is our country and we intend to protect it or die</a>.” </p>
<p>In 1870 the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020086/">Louisville Commercial</a> newspaper argued, “We have, then, a militia for the State of Kentucky composed of members of one political party, and designed solely to operate against members of another political party. These militia are armed with State guns, are equipped from the State arsenal, and to a man are the enemies of the national government.” </p>
<p>By driving away Republican voters and claiming electoral victory, these Democratic leaders gained power through state-supported militia violence. </p>
<p>White militias and paramilitary groups also confiscated guns from black citizens who tried to protect themselves, claiming “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xvIYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1057&lpg=PA1057&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+did+not+think+they+had+a+right+to+have+guns.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=30R_twS8pK&sig=ACfU3U2HxA-pbH0zCkMHuGweuTsTwmODWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicxtWNgKXpAhWCaM0KHbwYAMsQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWe%20did%20not%20think%20they%20had%20a%20right%20to%20have%20guns.%E2%80%9D&f=false">We did not think they had a right to have guns</a>.” </p>
<p>White terror groups and their allies in law enforcement were especially hostile to politically active black Union veterans who returned home with their military weapons. Local sheriffs confiscated weapons and armed bands raided homes to destroy their guns. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, ‘The Union as it was,’ Thomas Nast critiques violent white supremacist organizations for forcing African Americans into a position ‘worse than slavery.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2001696840/">Library of Congress/Thomas Nast from Harpers Weekly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guerrilla race war</h2>
<p>During Reconstruction, paramilitary groups and official Democratic militias found support from county sheriffs up to state governors who encouraged violence while maintaining their own innocence.</p>
<p>Today, white supremacists appear to interpret politicians’ remarks as support for their cause of a <a href="https://gizmodo.com/report-over-100-militant-groups-have-been-promoting-se-1843051231">new civil war</a> to create a white-dominated government. </p>
<p>These groups <a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">thrive on recent protests against stay-at-home orders</a>, especially the ones featuring <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/27/why-are-people-bringing-guns-anti-quarantine-protests-be-intimidating/">protesters with guns</a>, creating an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-businesses-lockdown-guns.html">intimidating spectacle</a> for those who support local and state government authority. </p>
<p>Beyond “<a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/blog-revisiting-dog-whistle-politics">dog whistle</a>” politics, as in the past, these statements – and the actions encouraged by them – can lead to real <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/massachusetts-bomb-jewish-nursing-home.html">violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/senate-democrats-demand-action-cdc-doj-curb-covid-19-racism-n1201491">hate crimes</a> against any who threaten supremacists’ concept of a white nation.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-history-of-white-supremacists-interpreting-government-leaders-words-as-encouragement-137873">article originally published</a> May 18, 2020.</em></p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protests that ended in the storming of the US Capitol included members of white supremacy groups, the latest example of such groups being encouraged by politicians to challenge government.Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462922020-09-16T07:30:46Z2020-09-16T07:30:46ZTowards a post-privacy world: proposed bill would encourage agencies to widely share your data<p>The federal government has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-16/government-draft-law-share-personal-data-between-agencies/12666792">announced a plan</a> to increase the sharing of citizen data across the public sector. </p>
<p>This would include data sitting with agencies such as Centrelink, the Australian Tax Office, the Department of Home Affairs, the Bureau of Statistics and potentially other external “accredited” parties such as universities and businesses. </p>
<p>The draft <a href="https://www.datacommissioner.gov.au/data-sharing/legislation">Data Availability and Transparency Bill</a> released today will not fix ongoing problems in public administration. It won’t solve many problems in public health. It is a worrying shift to a post-privacy society. </p>
<p>It’s a matter of arrogance, rather than effectiveness. It highlights deficiencies in Australian law that need fixing.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-accept-government-surveillance-for-now-110789">Australians accept government surveillance, for now</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Making sense of the plan</h2>
<p>Australian governments on all levels have built huge silos of information about us all. We supply the data for these silos each time we deal with government. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to exercise your rights and responsibilities without providing data. If you’re a voter, a director, a doctor, a gun owner, on welfare, pay tax, have a driver’s licence or Medicare card – our governments have data about you. </p>
<p>Much of this is supplied on a legally mandatory basis. It allows the federal, state, territory and local governments to provide pensions, elections, parks, courts and hospitals, and to collect rates, fees and taxes. </p>
<p>The proposed Data Availability and Transparency Bill will authorise large-scale sharing of data about citizens and non-citizens across the public sector, between both public and private bodies. Previously called the “<a href="https://www.datacommissioner.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-09/Data%20Sharing%20and%20Release%20Legislative%20Reforms%20Discussion%20Paper%20-%20Accessibility.pdf">Data Sharing and Release</a>” legislation, the word “transparency” has now replaced “release” to allay public fears.</p>
<p>The legislation would allow sharing between Commonwealth government agencies that are currently constrained by a range of acts overseen (weakly) by the <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/senators-concerned-oaic-will-remain-under-resourced-despite-hiring-31-staff/">under-resourced</a> Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).</p>
<p>The acts often only apply to specific agencies or data. Overall we have a threadbare patchwork of law that is supposed to respect our privacy but often isn’t effective. It hasn’t kept pace with law in <a href="https://theconversation.com/data-privacy-stricter-european-rules-will-have-repercussions-in-australia-as-global-divisions-grow-142980">Europe</a> and elsewhere in the world.</p>
<p>The plan also envisages sharing data with trusted third parties. They might be universities or other research institutions. In future, the sharing could extend to include state or territory agencies and the private sector, too. </p>
<p>Any public or private bodies that receive data can then share it forward. Irrespective of whether one has anything to hide, this plan is worrying.</p>
<h2>Why will there be sharing?</h2>
<p>Sharing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it should be done accountably and appropriately. </p>
<p>Consultations over the past two years have highlighted the value of inter-agency sharing for law enforcement and for research into health and welfare. Universities have identified a range of uses regarding urban planning, environment protection, crime, education, employment, investment, disease control and medical treatment.</p>
<p>Many researchers will be delighted by the prospect of accessing data more cheaply than doing onerous small-scale surveys. IT people have also been enthusiastic about money that could be made helping the databases of different agencies talk to each other. </p>
<p>However, the reality is more complicated, as researchers and <a href="https://www.datacommissioner.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/79_0.pdf">civil society</a> advocates have pointed out. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Person hitting a 'share' button on a keyboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358305/original/file-20200916-24-o601t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a July speech to the Australian Society for Computers and Law, former High Court Justice Michael Kirby highlighted a growing need to fight for privacy, rather than let it slip away.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why should you be worried?</h2>
<p>The plan for comprehensive data sharing is founded on the premise of accreditation of data recipients (entities deemed trustworthy) and oversight by the Office of the National Data Commissioner, under the proposed act. </p>
<p>The draft bill announced today is open for a short period of public comment before it goes to parliament. It features a <a href="https://www.datacommissioner.gov.au/exposure-draft/accreditation">consultation paper</a> alongside a disquieting consultants’ report about the bill. In this <a href="https://www.datacommissioner.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-09/Privacy%20Impact%20Assessment_exposure%20draft%20Data%20Availability%20and%20Transparency%20Bill%202020.pdf">report</a>, the consultants refer to concerns and “high inherent risk”, but unsurprisingly appear to assume things will work out. </p>
<p>Federal Minister for Government Services Stuart Roberts, who presided over the tragedy known as the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nothing-to-apologise-for-minister-backs-stuart-robert-over-failed-robodebt-scheme">RoboDebt scheme</a>, is optimistic about the bill. He dismissed critics’ concerns by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-16/government-draft-law-share-personal-data-between-agencies/12666792">stating</a> consent is implied when someone uses a government service. This seems disingenuous, given people typically don’t have a choice. </p>
<p>However, the bill does exclude some data sharing. If you’re a criminologist researching law enforcement, for example, you won’t have an open sesame. Experience with the national Privacy Act and other Commonwealth and state legislation tells us such exclusions weaken over time</p>
<p>Outside the narrow exclusions centred on law enforcement and national security, the bill’s default position is to share widely and often. That’s because the accreditation requirements for agencies aren’t onerous and the bases for sharing are very broad. </p>
<p>This proposal exacerbates ongoing questions about day-to-day privacy protection. Who’s responsible, with what framework and what resources? </p>
<p>Responsibility is crucial, as national and state agencies recurrently experience data breaches. Although as RoboDebt revealed, they often stick to denial. Universities are also often wide open to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/australian-national-university-hit-by-huge-data-breach">data breaches</a>.</p>
<p>Proponents of the plan argue privacy can be protected through robust de-identification, in other words removing the ability to identify specific individuals. However, <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-simple-process-of-re-identifying-patients-in-public-health-records">research</a> has recurrently shown “de-identification” is no silver bullet. </p>
<p>Most bodies don’t recognise the scope for re-identification of de-identified personal information and lots of sharing will emphasise data matching. </p>
<h2>Be careful what you ask for</h2>
<p>Sharing <em>may</em> result in social goods such as better cities, smarter government and healthier people by providing access to data (rather than just money) for service providers and researchers. </p>
<p>That said, our history of aspirational statements about privacy protection without meaningful enforcement by watchdogs should provoke some hard questions. It wasn’t long ago the government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/10/service-nsw-hack-could-have-been-prevented-with-simple-security-measures">failed</a> to prevent hackers from accessing sensitive data on more than 200,000 Australians.</p>
<p>It’s true this bill would ostensibly provide transparency, but it won’t provide genuine accountability. It shouldn’t be taken at face value.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/seven-ways-the-government-can-make-australians-safer-without-compromising-online-privacy-111091">Seven ways the government can make Australians safer – without compromising online privacy</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Baer Arnold is affiliated with the Australian Privacy Foundation and is a member of OECD data protection working parties. </span></em></p>The new bill would open the gates for your data to freely exchange hands between any ‘accredited’ agency. The proposal is more arrogant than it is effective.Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444192020-08-14T05:30:28Z2020-08-14T05:30:28ZState arts service organisations: effective, engaged but endangered<p>This week the NSW government’s arts funding arm, Create NSW, <a href="https://publishing.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/writing-and-publishing/artshub/funding-cuts-may-close-writing-nsw-260878">removed or significantly reduced funding to arts service organisations</a> including Writing NSW, Playwriting Australia, the National Association of Visual Artists (NAVA) and Ausdance NSW. This short-sighted trend of cutting funding to arts organisations began several years ago.</p>
<p>It is particularly objectionable at a time of a pandemic when <a href="https://theconversation.com/at-moments-like-these-we-need-a-cultural-policy-141974">support for creativity is needed more than ever</a>. The arts are valued in their own right and as contributors to social and cultural inclusion, and should be recognised as part of an essential element in any COVID-19 recovery. </p>
<p>As research think-tank <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au/new-approach/">A New Approach</a> reported recently, creative pursuits assist “individuals and communities to recover from disasters and trauma”. The Create NSW announcement also coincided with the <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/nava-events/2020/nava-advocacy-program/">Arts on the Hill</a> campaign to actively connect artists with federal members of parliament. </p>
<p>The federal government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/remember-the-arts-departments-and-budgets-disappear-as-politics-backs-culture-into-a-dead-end-128110">policy since 2015</a> of reduced funding for the arts has wrought devastation across artforms in the small to medium sector and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/may/19/the-70-drop-australia-council-grants-artists-funding-cuts">reduced funding to individual artists by an estimated 70%</a>. The latest cuts to NSW arts service organisations indicate a more targeted approach to funding cuts.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-politics-of-dancing-and-thinking-about-cultural-values-beyond-dollars-139839">Friday essay: the politics of dancing and thinking about cultural values beyond dollars</a>
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<h2>What are arts service organisations?</h2>
<p>Arts service organisations have an incorporated, not-for-profit structure whose role is to advocate (or speak) on behalf of artists. Historically, they profile their artforms and artists, and promote standards for how artists should be treated. This includes due acknowledgement and remuneration in what is a substantially unregulated sector. </p>
<p>ArtsPeak, <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/public-policy/richard-watts/artspeak-executive-put-advocacy-work-on-hold-254688">whose activities are currently on hold</a>, is the “unincorporated federation” of 33 national arts service organisations such as Ausdance, Australian Writers Guild and Museums Australia. It defines arts service organisations as having a shared purpose to provide support including artform consultation and research, advocacy — such as changes to legislation, regulations and the adoption of “industry” standards — leadership, marketing and professional development. They protect and develop artists’ income generation capacity enabling them to sustain lifelong careers.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1292679807608565761"}"></div></p>
<p>In 2017 the Australia Council for the Arts <a href="https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/service-organisations-scan-rep-5949e8136ae6f.pdf">surveyed 111 arts service organisations</a>. The report categorised their roles as encompassing public communication, maintaining industry standards, administering grants on behalf of the government or benefactors, and capacity building. As such, service organisations were recognised as filling gaps in artform development.</p>
<p>However, the scope to provide these services has diminished in NSW. This month, <a href="https://www.create.nsw.gov.au/news-and-publications/news/10m-in-multi-year-arts-funding-to-foster-the-sector-2/">Arts NSW granted A$10 million to 58 key organisations over four years</a>, a handful of which appear to be service organisations. In comparison, of the <a href="https://creative.vic.gov.au/research/data/funded-investments-data/all-organisations">$45.4 million to 130 key organisations</a> funded by Creative Victoria in 2018-19, 25 were dedicated industry and cultural development organisations. In the coming four years, <a href="https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2019/10/Significant-investment-into-WA-arts-organisations.aspx">Arts WA will support 37 arts organisations with $31 million</a>, 11 of which are service organisations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-arts-funding-in-australia-goes-right-back-to-its-inception-138834">The problem with arts funding in Australia goes right back to its inception</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>NSW in the firing line</h2>
<p>So, NSW arts service organisations appear to have borne the brunt of reduced state funding.</p>
<p>Diversity Arts Australia, the national advocacy organisation for artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, was a deserving but rare recipient of four-year organisational funding from the Australia Council, only to have Create NSW reduce its funding this year. </p>
<p>Writing NSW has lost all $175,000 of its annual funding in one fell swoop — a cut to one-third of its revenue, endangering the remaining two-thirds from income generating activities. It is that previously secure government funding that made it possible to generate the majority of its income from other sources. </p>
<p>Service organisations are perceived by some to be the least important component of the Australian arts system, and so less worthy of support in times of financial duress. This perception is misplaced, because the tailored professional development many offer increases the visibility, viability and inclusiveness of their artforms. This is particularly the case when professional arts training is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/19/incredibly-frustrating-australian-year-12-students-express-dismay-at-skyrocketing-fees-for-arts-degrees">under threat</a> at the tertiary level. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fee-cuts-for-nursing-and-teaching-but-big-hikes-for-law-and-humanities-in-package-expanding-university-places-141064">Fee cuts for nursing and teaching but big hikes for law and humanities in package expanding university places</a>
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<p>Writing NSW and Blacktown Arts Centre initiated the <a href="https://boundlessfestival.org.au/program/#:%7E:text=The%20inaugural%20Boundless%20was%20held,will%20be%20held%20in%202019.">Boundless Festival in 2017</a> to bring emerging and professional writers from Indigenous and culturally diverse backgrounds together for the first time in Australia. Six additional organisational partners were also involved, highlighting the relationships between arts organisations that bring visions to reality. But it also highlights the domino effect after one falls, with others likely to falter as their burden increases.</p>
<h2>An either/or approach</h2>
<p>The role of arts service organisations has diversified beyond its historical role of political advocate. It now encompasses professional development and exposure to markets that otherwise would be outside the grasp of most individual artists and groups. </p>
<p>In the era of COVID-19, severe reductions in state or federal funding compounds the risk of losing these service organisations. This makes the positions of the artists and sector even more precarious.</p>
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<p>Create NSW’s strategy in an already unsatisfactory arts funding environment is either to fund arts-producing organisations or service organisations. This binary approach favours arts production. </p>
<p>It does little to recognise the crucial place of arts service organisations in the value chain connecting creative and cultural activities that contributes <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/news-opinion/2020/fact-checking-role-arts-and-culture-economic-recovery/">at least $111.7 billion</a> to the national economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The author has received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. </span></em></p>Arts service organisations advocate for artists and help develop artforms. Cuts in NSW signal a more targeted approach to reduced government support for the arts and culture.Cecelia Cmielewski, Research Officer, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1416292020-06-29T12:34:45Z2020-06-29T12:34:45ZMorrison announces repurposing of defence money to fight increasing cyber threats<p>The federal government is repurposing $1.35 billion of its planned defence spending over a decade to meet the increasing threat of cyber attacks on Australia.</p>
<p>The announcement follows Scott Morrison recently revealing “a sophisticated state-based cyber actor” was targeting “Australian organisations across a range of sectors including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure”.</p>
<p>Although the government has refused to identify the state-based actor, it is known to be China.</p>
<p>The repurposed funds will boost capabilities provided through the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Cyber Security Centre to identify and ward off cyber attacks.</p>
<p>The government says the funding will enable more threats to be identified, and the activities of more foreign cybercriminals to be disrupted. It will facilitate partnerships between industry and government to help deal with the problem.</p>
<p>A large slice of the money - $470 million - will go to expanding the workforce devoted to fighting the cyber threat. More than 500 new jobs will be created within ASD.</p>
<p>Announcing the initiative, Morrison said malicious cyber activity against Australia was increasing in frequency, scale and sophistication.</p>
<p>“The federal government’s top priority is protecting our nation’s economy, national security and sovereignty. Malicious cyber activity undermines that,” he said.</p>
<p>Some $359.5 million of the spending is over the forward estimates.</p>
<p>The package aims to strengthen protection and resilience at all levels - from individuals and small businesses through to the providers of critical services.</p>
<p>Giving an example of the planned enhanced capability, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said “this package will enable ASD and Australia’s major telecommunications providers to prevent malicious cyber activity from reaching millions of Australians by blocking known malicious websites and computer viruses at speed”. </p>
<p>She said the package “is one part of our $15 billion investment in cyber and information warfare capabilities that will form part of Defence’s 2020 Force Structure Plan to address the rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape”.</p>
<p>Among the funding to develop capabilities to disrupt and defeat malicious cyber activity there will be:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>more than $31 million to enhance the ability of ASD to disrupt cybercrime offshore, and provide assistance to federal, state and territory law enforcement agencies</p></li>
<li><p>more than $35 million to deliver a new cyber threat-sharing platform, so industry and government can share intelligence about malicious cyber activity, and quickly block threats</p></li>
<li><p>more than $12 million which will help ASD and major telecommunications providers to prevent malicious cyber activity from reaching millions of Australians by speedily blocking malicious websites and computer viruses. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Other measures will improve understanding of malicious cyber activity so emerging threats can be identified and dealt with faster. There will be:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>more than $118 million for ASD to expand its data science and intelligence capabilities</p></li>
<li><p>more than $62 million to deliver a national situational awareness capability to better enable ASD to understand and respond to cyber threats on a national scale. This includes informing vulnerable sectors of the economy about threats and the best ways to mitigate them</p></li>
<li><p>more than $20 million to establish research laboratories to better understand threats to emerging technology. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Other spending details will be announced later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>$1.35 billion of defence spending will be repurposed to meet the increasing threat of cyber attacks on Australia.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1399632020-06-14T19:57:09Z2020-06-14T19:57:09ZUniversities and government need to rethink their relationship with each other before it’s too late<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341117/original/file-20200611-114080-f3zoj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m reading Thomas Carlyle’s poetic classic, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1301/1301-h/1301-h.htm">The French Revolution</a>, published in 1837. It occurred to me that the historical narrative of Australian universities and their relationship to government is like that revolution, but in reverse. </p>
<p>Carlyle summarised the goal of the French Revolution with the refrain “victorious analysis”. This was the foundation of Australia’s modern, rational system of government, <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/history-of-the-modern-australian-university/">achieved with universities</a>. It was a triumph that turned out to be deeply flawed, as we will see.</p>
<p>Reversing the revolutionary process, in recent years universities have descended into the kind of aristocratic excess Carlyle described in pre-revolutionary France. This leaves a large scholarly workforce facing (this is Carlyle again) “an indubitable scarcity of bread”.</p>
<p>It is an admittedly dubious historical parallel, but it helps us understand something of the relationship of higher education to Australian politics, and the mess we now face.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-australian-government-letting-universities-suffer-138514">Why is the Australian government letting universities suffer?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The foundation of the Australian university</h2>
<p>In the mid-19th century, when Australians decided they wanted to govern themselves, political leaders knew they needed a university. Politician and university founder <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wentworth-william-charles-2782">W.C. Wentworth</a> went so far as to argue that self-government in New South Wales – the kind of modern, rational government increasingly in vogue since the French Revolution – would be “useless” without higher education.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341373/original/file-20200611-80778-1azs0ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">W.C.Wentworth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia had no aristocracy to overthrow and the founders of our first governments sought a basis for rule that did not rest on inherited position. University graduates, Wentworth believed, were needed to “enlighten the mind, to refine the understanding, to elevate the soul of our fellow men”. They were also needed to train men – and, shortly, women – to fill “the high offices of state”. </p>
<p>In Carlyle’s more flowery language (citing <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king">Plato’s Republic</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly constituted, by victorious Analysis.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This merit-based elite – which some of Wentworth’s contemporaries ridiculed as a “<a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095535679">bunyip aristocracy</a>” – constituted the emerging professional class. Their work as medical practitioners, lawyers, clergy, teachers, charity workers, engineers and politicians was to guide this “rightly constituted” society. </p>
<p>Such modern, rational governments relied on the kinds of knowledge that a university pursued. “Victorious analysis” guided Australian governments through rabbit plagues and conquered parasites and diseases that threatened food supply and human health. </p>
<p>But it also steered the conquest of Aboriginal lands with knowledge of geology, geography, anthropology and agriculture. And it equipped generations of teachers and clergy with the wealth that was Western history, literature and philosophy – embedded in a racialised, moral superiority.</p>
<p>It was not perfect. Indeed, in many ways this “victorious analysis” was downright harmful. </p>
<p>The kind of knowledge the university produced helped build the nation, but it did so by also developing and reinforcing ideas that expropriated Indigenous land and oppressed people of colour. It built and encouraged ideas that determined a human’s worth on the basis of race, gender and sexuality. Universities and the governments they supported structured a so-called “rational” world that extracted value from some people and concentrated it among themselves.</p>
<h2>Exposing the flaw in ‘victorious analysis’</h2>
<p>By the second world war, some of these problems were becoming evident worldwide. In that war, the same “victorious analysis” combined with political regimes that sought to use “rational” knowledge to commit atrocities, even genocide, and demolish cities full of civilians. </p>
<p>It was at work when Nazi doctor <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele">Josef Mengele</a> compared the effects of cruel experiments on twins at Auschwitz. Through those <a href="https://www.history.com/news/nazi-twin-experiments-mengele-eugenics">unspeakable experiments</a> on 1,500 sets of twins, only 200 survived. </p>
<p>The dangers of aligning scholarly knowledge with political regimes was further exposed when, in the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin dismissed, imprisoned or executed thousands of biologists. The reality that their knowledge <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/">may have helped prevent a tragic famine</a> was not more important to Stalin than that their understanding of genetics contradicted government doctrine.</p>
<p>Democratic regimes were not immune. “Victorious analysis” led to the bombing of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/nagasaki-the-last-bomb">Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a>. When <a href="https://doi-org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/10.1080/10314610008596115">news of those horrors</a> filtered through, Western democracies saw the problem engendered by the relationship between modern, rational government and scholarly research.</p>
<h2>Protecting the independence of scholarship</h2>
<p>This did not mean governments sought to dismantle or undermine universities. On the contrary, Australian governments, like most others, invested in them further. However, care was taken, in Australia as elsewhere, to increasingly protect universities from political interference. </p>
<p>At this moment, Nobel-prize-winning author Herman Hesse had his character Joseph Knecht express the significance of scholarly independence in his novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-glass-bead-game-9780099283621">The Glass Bead Game</a>, published in 1943. Describing an age where rulers “determined the sum of two and two” and scholars capitulated (and lost their self-respect), protested (and died) or learned the art of silence (merely going hungry), Hesse’s character concluded that scholarship and politics must not mix:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives comfort and aid to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation. The Castalian [scholar], therefore, should not become a politician.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These sentiments were not confined to fiction. As the Commonwealth government sought to support the expansion of higher education – a tricky task, since education was and is the responsibility of Australia’s states – they were conscious of the contradictions required of them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341378/original/file-20200612-80784-1g4hkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Menzies, here receiving an honorary degree from Winston Churchill in 1941, invested heavily in universities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Museum of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.voced.edu.au/content/ngv%3A53782">1957 Murray Report</a>, arguably the founding document for the modern university in Australia, pointed to exactly this.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here is one of the most valuable services which a university, as an independent community of scholars and inquirers, can perform for its country and for the world. The public, and even statesmen, are human enough to be restive or angry from time to time, when perhaps at inconvenient moments the scientist or scholar uses the licence which the academic freedom of universities allows him, and brings us all back to a consideration of the true evidence and what it may be taken to prove … </p>
<p>… No nation in its senses wishes to make itself prone to self-delusion, or to deceit by other nations; and a good university is the best guarantee that mankind can have that somebody, whatever the circumstances, will continue to seek the truth and to make it known. Any free country welcomes this and expects this service of its universities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the basis of this report, Prime Minister Robert Menzies instigated what is likely the most generous funding Australian universities have ever seen. </p>
<p>He was building on work that Labor did during the war, establishing the Universities Commission and implementing a funding scheme that helped universities build new infrastructure. </p>
<p>The clashes produced by the dual need for scholarly independence and democratic accountability emerged early. “What I am asking,” argued the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wallace-sir-robert-strachan-8962">vice-chancellor at Sydney University</a> in 1943, “is that you give us the money and be done with it.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mills-richard-charles-7593">government bureaucrat</a> replied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a large sum of money and when the Government says ‘We gave this subsidy, did the universities find it all right?’, we must be able to say something more than just ‘Trust the Universities’.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341375/original/file-20200612-80778-n89v1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Miller/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Solutions and compromises were negotiated, though the original problems of “victorious analysis” remained. </p>
<h2>Contesting the moral foundation of the university</h2>
<p>By the 1970s, students and academics began to point out that this rational, supposedly objective system of knowledge veiled ideologies. This was not avoidable, they argued, and so the solution was to seek knowledge systems that were inclusive and decolonising, rather than those that supported established systems of inequality. </p>
<p>Under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s policy of free public education, the university sector expanded, seeking innovative and inclusive methods of learning and teaching.</p>
<p>In retrospect, this disruption in the universities marked a shift in the moral focus of the professional class. Where university graduates were originally central to the colonial project and capitalist expansion, they now turned their moral efforts towards moderating both. </p>
<p>This put them at odds with the political and managerial classes with whom the professional class, in the mid-20th century, had managed the entire world, through institutions like the World Health Organisation.</p>
<h2>Rise of the managerial elite</h2>
<p>But now the professional class split from the managerial class. Using radical student critiques of old moral codes as a springboard, in the 1980s the managerial class sought freedom from traditional moral constraints, which they believed also constrained capitalist growth. </p>
<p>This was more than a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-australian-government-letting-universities-suffer-138514">culture war</a>: it was conflict over the moral foundation – and thus the control – of the economy. It was a kind of class struggle between a changing professional class and a newly separate, managerial class.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341382/original/file-20200612-38702-kpia2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New values infused government and university leadership alike, forging what became known as neoliberalism. By the mid-1980s, “victorious analysis” was no longer the basis of government. Yet, ironically, government and economy alike relied on universities more than ever. Innovation was often key to profitability, and the changing global economy required ever more white-collar workers: university graduates.</p>
<p>In 1987, Labor Education and Training Minister John Dawkins led a <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dawkins-revolution-25-years-on-19291">review of higher education</a> that sought to shift the entire university and college sector from “victorious analysis” to economic asset. Rather than considering the university as a moral institution, it would now be an economic one. An international student “export” market was a key component of 1980s reforms. So too, was massive expansion in the enrolment of Australian students.</p>
<p>But that professional class – which included academics, journalists and teachers, in influential roles – could clearly not be trusted to prioritise capitalist expansion over moral reform. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-what-australian-universities-can-do-to-recover-from-the-loss-of-international-student-fees-139759">COVID-19: what Australian universities can do to recover from the loss of international student fees</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Transformations in higher education, then, wrested institutions from academic control. Over the following two decades, management of universities became a professional pathway almost entirely distinct from the pursuit of scholarship. </p>
<p>We must not romanticise universities run by academics under the old conditions of “victorious analysis”. As we have seen, this did a great deal of harm. But the fact that the system needed to change need not imply a managerialist solution.</p>
<p>Steered by government policy, an expensive managerialist epidemic infected the universities. Every year, millions of dollars in salaries alone propped up a this new “aristocracy”, a managerial elite. </p>
<p>Leaders assured us this was the best way to manage these growing and complex institutions. But, instead, managers encouraged one another to game the government’s funding system to achieve their KPIs (and earn spectacular bonuses). The cost has been a failure to invest in good universities that are sustainable in the long term.</p>
<h2>Failure to build a good university sector</h2>
<p>Looking at the state of the university sector now, we surely cannot consider the managerial salary bill to be money well spent. The present crisis was exacerbated by COVID-19 but was not unexpected. </p>
<p>University leaders were repeatedly warned of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/09/universities-rely-too-much-on-foreign-student-fees-auditor-says">financial risks</a>, of threats to the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/weve-turned-our-unis-into-aimless-moneygrubbing-exploiters-of-students-20170916-gyiv0e.html">university’s legitimacy</a> (and thus community and political support). They have also been reminded continually of their moral responsibility as <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-do-universities-serve-everyone-or-just-the-elite-few-40148">public institutions</a>. And yet, like Carlyle’s King Louis XV, they have pilfered resources that were “sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of the world”. </p>
<p>Like that French aristocracy, the university sector in Australia has been teetering on the edge of ruin for decades. In some ways it is astonishing it has taken so long to tip over. Carlyle, on pre-revolutionary France, noted that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australian universities have long teetered – or, worse, arrogantly swaggered – on a precarious foundation. Their precarity goes beyond their over-reliance on international student fees and management’s tiresome reprises of what Geoff Sharrock calls “<a href="https://geoffsharrockinmelbourne.net/2020/05/18/higher-education-survive-the-tempest-plan-for-more-sea-change/">yesterday’s logic</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341385/original/file-20200612-38742-fpuxz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All of this – the education of young people, the medical research we’ve all been sitting at home waiting to be done, our entire stock of knowledge of history, mathematics, robotics, climate science – sits atop a <a href="https://www.nteu.org.au/article/Does-our--casual-employment-data-stack-up%3F-%28Advocate-25-03%29-21055">93,000-strong</a> workforce of <a href="https://www.nteu.org.au/policy/workforce_issues/insecure_work">casual academics on starvation wages</a>. It is these academics who will probably be out of work within the month. </p>
<p>They will likely be followed by thousands of their better-paid, but still overworked, teaching and researching colleagues, then thousands of the indispensable workers who throughout the pandemic have kept the technology running, the exams timetabled, library resources accessible, the payroll delivered, and who have cared for troubled or confused students. </p>
<p>A good university sector would look at 100,000 very clever, highly qualified and extremely hard-working scholars and see a valuable resource. </p>
<p>A good government would work with them.</p>
<p>The job of building a <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/books/gu-9781925835038.html">good university</a> out of the system we have inherited from history is a more revolutionary task. It is one we all need to share.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Forsyth is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.</span></em></p>While governments have tried to curb universities’ autonomy, the institutions have often spent their money unwisely. And now, we face a crisis.Hannah Forsyth, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1378732020-05-18T13:01:07Z2020-05-18T13:01:07ZThere’s a history of white supremacists interpreting government leaders’ words as encouragement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377618/original/file-20210107-23-vom98g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=70%2C70%2C6569%2C4376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Proud Boys outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-proud-boys-outside-the-us-capitol-in-washington-dc-on-news-photo/1230463103?adppopup=true">Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/03/26/white-supremacists-see-coronavirus-opportunity">White supremacist</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">militia</a> organizations are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/16/835343965/-a-perfect-storm-extremists-look-for-ways-to-exploit-coronavirus-pandemic">exploiting</a> the government’s chaotic response to the coronavirus for recruitment efforts. </p>
<p>Whatever his intention, these groups interpret President Donald Trump’s tweets to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-s-liberate-tweets-extremists-see-call-arms-n1186561">“LIBERATE” states</a> and calling armed protesters “<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/01/echoing-praise-charlottesville-neo-nazis-trump-calls-armed-anti-lockdown-fanatics">very good people</a>” as support for their cause.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">Recent research by the Tech Transparency Project into social media accounts of white supremacists</a>, a nonprofit that researches “the influence of the major technology platforms” on politics, policy and people’s lives, found that “some members of private … Facebook groups reacted to the president’s rhetoric (about lockdown protests) with memes of celebration.” </p>
<p>The white supremacists’ response reflects the United States’ history of local, state and national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period of forming interracial governments and reintegrating former Confederate states into the Union, white city and state leaders in the South tacitly encouraged violence against black voters by state militias and groups like the <a href="http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2934">Ku Klux Klan</a>. They did it in a way that allowed those leaders to look innocent of any crimes. </p>
<p>Those groups used that chaos to end federal power in their states and reestablish white-dominated Southern state governments. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">white supremacists hope the political chaos they contribute to will lead to</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">race war</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-reopen-protesters-really-saying-137558">and the creation of their own white nation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1868 Harper’s Weekly, ‘This is a white man’s government,’ skewering Southern white supremacists fighting Reconstruction laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/98513794/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstruction violence</h2>
<p>Moments of changing social and political power in U.S. history have led to clashes – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed">often armed</a> – between white supremacists and interracial alliances over voting rights.</p>
<p>That history includes the period following the Civil War, when white supremacist organizations saw the postwar rule over Southern states of Radical Republicans and the federal government as illegitimate. They wanted to return to the prewar status quo of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/14301/slavery-by-another-name-by-douglas-a-blackmon/">slavery by another name</a> and white supremacist rule.</p>
<p>As a historian of <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">protests and Reconstruction</a>, I study how those paramilitary groups or self-proclaimed “regulators” consequently spread fear and terror among black and white Republican voters with the support of the anti-black Democratic Party in Southern states. </p>
<p>They targeted elections and vowed to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U7hpAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA2101&lpg=PA2101&dq=%E2%80%9Ccarry+the+election+peaceably+if+we+can,+forcibly+if+we+must.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=vZU88x92mU&sig=ACfU3U34H7Xb-2aUHMGrMKULNiHBUi1D4w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxyZvYgKrpAhXRKs0KHXiiCuUQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ccarry%20the%20election%20peaceably%20if%20we%20can%2C%20forcibly%20if%20we%20must.%E2%80%9D&f=false">carry the election peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must</a>.” </p>
<p>Still, many courageous black and white voters <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_4">fought back</a> by forming political organizations, daring to vote and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/black-south-carolinians-form-militia-protection-1874">assembling their own armed guards</a> to protect themselves.</p>
<h2>‘Gentlemen of property and standing’</h2>
<p>Then, as today, white supremacists received encouraging signals from powerful leaders. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Property-Standing-Anti-Abolition-Jacksonian/dp/0195013514">gentlemen of property and standing</a>” often led or indirectly supported anti-abolition mobs, slave patrols, lynch mobs or Klan attacks. </p>
<p>Federal investigators in Kentucky in 1867 found that “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">many men of wealth and position</a>” rode with the armed groups. One witness in the federal investigation testified that “many of the most respectable men in the county belong in the ‘Lynch’ party.” Future South Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman reflected on his participation in the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hamburg-massacre/">Hamburg massacre</a> of 1876, arguing that “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ben_Tillman_and_the_Reconstruction_of_Wh/dOA4CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=having+the+whites+demonstrate+their+superiority+by+killing+as+many+as+was+justifiable&pg=PA67&printsec=frontcover">the leading men</a>” of the area wanted to teach black voters a lesson by “having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many as was justifiable.” At least six black men were killed in the Hamburg attack on the black South Carolina militia by the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/red-shirts/">Red Shirts</a>, a white rifle club.</p>
<p>White supremacists knew that they would not face consequences for their violence. </p>
<p>An agent of the federal <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau</a> – set up by Congress in 1865 to help former slaves and poor whites in the South – stated that the “<a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_3">desperadoes</a>” received encouragement and were “screened from the hands of justice by citizens of boasted connections.” </p>
<p>President Ulysses S. Grant <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2070020a/?sp=2&st=text">condemned</a> the Hamburg massacre, arguing that some claimed “the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation.” </p>
<p>Facing community pressure, and without the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743984">presence of the U.S. Army</a> to enforce laws, local sheriffs and judges refused or were unable to enforce federal laws. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armed rioters shown in the aftermath of the multiracial Wilmington, North Carolina, government being overthrown by white supremacists in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/photos/?q=Wilmington,+N.C.+race+riot">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Witnesses were often afraid to challenge local leaders for fear of attack. The “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">reign of terror</a>” was so complete that “men dare not report outrages and appear as witnesses.”</p>
<p>When the U.S. District Court in Kentucky brought charges against two men for lynching in 1871, prosecutors could not find witnesses willing to testify against the accused. The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn82015463/">Frankfort Commonwealth</a> newspaper wrote, “He would be hung by a [mob] inside of twenty-four hours, and the dominant sentiment … would say ‘served him right.’”</p>
<h2>State militias</h2>
<p>As Southern states threw off federal military occupation and elected their own white-dominated governments, they no longer had to rely solely on white terror organizations to enforce their agenda. </p>
<p>Instead, these self-described “<a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/redeemer-democrats">redeemers</a>” formed state-funded militias that served similar functions of intimidation and voter suppression with the support of prominent citizens. </p>
<p>At political rallies and elections throughout the South, official Democratic militias paraded through towns and <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/For_Slavery_and_Union/D917BgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=democratic%20partisan%20militia">monitored polling stations</a> to threaten black and white Republican voters, proclaiming that “<a href="https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10428/1130/butler-joshua-w_almost-too-terrible-to-believe_history_thesis_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">this is our country and we intend to protect it or die</a>.” </p>
<p>In 1870 the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020086/">Louisville Commercial</a> newspaper argued, “We have, then, a militia for the State of Kentucky composed of members of one political party, and designed solely to operate against members of another political party. These militia are armed with State guns, are equipped from the State arsenal, and to a man are the enemies of the national government.” </p>
<p>By driving away Republican voters and claiming electoral victory, these Democratic leaders gained power through state-supported militia violence. </p>
<p>White militias and paramilitary groups also confiscated guns from black citizens who tried to protect themselves, claiming “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xvIYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1057&lpg=PA1057&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+did+not+think+they+had+a+right+to+have+guns.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=30R_twS8pK&sig=ACfU3U2HxA-pbH0zCkMHuGweuTsTwmODWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicxtWNgKXpAhWCaM0KHbwYAMsQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWe%20did%20not%20think%20they%20had%20a%20right%20to%20have%20guns.%E2%80%9D&f=false">We did not think they had a right to have guns</a>.” </p>
<p>White terror groups and their allies in law enforcement were especially hostile to politically active black Union veterans who returned home with their military weapons. Local sheriffs confiscated weapons and armed bands raided homes to destroy their guns. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, ‘The Union as it was,’ Thomas Nast critiques violent white supremacist organizations for forcing African Americans into a position ‘worse than slavery.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2001696840/">Library of Congress/Thomas Nast from Harpers Weekly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guerrilla race war</h2>
<p>During Reconstruction, paramilitary groups and official Democratic militias found support from county sheriffs up to state governors who encouraged violence while maintaining their own innocence.</p>
<p>Today, white supremacists appear to interpret politicians’ remarks as support for their cause of a <a href="https://gizmodo.com/report-over-100-militant-groups-have-been-promoting-se-1843051231">new civil war</a> to create a white-dominated government. </p>
<p>These groups <a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">thrive on recent protests against stay-at-home orders</a>, especially the ones featuring <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/27/why-are-people-bringing-guns-anti-quarantine-protests-be-intimidating/">protesters with guns</a>, creating an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-businesses-lockdown-guns.html">intimidating spectacle</a> for those who support local and state government authority. </p>
<p>Beyond “<a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/blog-revisiting-dog-whistle-politics">dog whistle</a>” politics, as in the past, these statements – and the actions encouraged by them – can lead to real <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/massachusetts-bomb-jewish-nursing-home.html">violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/senate-democrats-demand-action-cdc-doj-curb-covid-19-racism-n1201491">hate crimes</a> against any who threaten supremacists’ concept of a white nation.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>White supremacists’ protests against COVID-19 lockdowns reflect the US history of political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments.Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.