Indholdsfortegnelse for 87.1 Jan-Mar 2016 i AQ: Australian Quarterly

Suddenly there were no terrorists: only Muslim terrorists. And no boat people: only Muslim boat people. Suddenly, boat people were “illegals”. And suddenly, we were persuaded to be mortally afraid of terrorism. Suddenly, fear and loathing were part of Australia’s political dynamics. But we are a complex country, full of contradictions. Ned Kelly – an Australian folk hero – was also a terrorist by our modern definition. Ian Jones’ latest theory of Ned Kelly is that his murderous exploits were motivated by his wish to establish a republic in north-east Victoria. Laudable as that aim may have been, it had the ideological element needed to convert ordinary criminal conduct into a terrorist offence. Recently, the government flagged its intention to extend the use of control orders to children as young…

In preparation for our conversation I read the journal article. It was a complex piece which outlined the various survival strategies people, families and communities employ in the face of environmental upheaval. There was a small percentage, it noted, that drew on already existing family connections in other parts of the home country, and migrated to join them if all other options appeared dismal. Unsurprisingly this hardly amounted to a future flood of ‘climate refugees’ heading toward Australia. There is no legal basis for the term ‘climate refugee’. Migration is infrequently the first option people will turn to. Displacement internal to the particular country is a far more likely scenario. I talked to the journalist. I repeated information I have memorised over the past five years during the course of…

Genetic engineering in itself is, of course, not new – various techniques that allow scientists to modify genes have been around for some time. But the difference with genome editing is that it is simple, cheap, and accurate; thereby opening up the potentials of genetic engineering on a hitherto unseen scale. Genome editing has a broad range of possible applications in areas such as novel medical treatments, vaccine development, crop innovation and environmental remediation. A variety of approaches fit the genome editing moniker, but the emergence of CRISPR-Cas9 has captured the most attention. What is CRISPR-Cas9? Editing a genome involves introducing a change to a chosen target within a cell’s DNA. The change can take numerous forms, from introducing a small deletion to effecting a precise sequence change. There are…

In 2006 surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford used a device called a morcellator in a routine elective operation on a five-year-old girl, who died during the procedure. The device had not previously been used in children, and nor had it been used for the operation in question. At the inquest, the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust acknowledged that use of the morcellator should have been identified as a novel surgical technique, and that they should have had an effective protocol to protect patients and practitioners during the introduction of new techniques.1 This example illustrates the tension at the heart of surgery. On one hand, we want safe and effective surgical interventions. On the other hand, we want pioneering surgeons who think creatively and develop new techniques and devices…

Technologists are powerful change agents Behind it all are the technologists who make it happen. Technologists in the 21st Century are among the most powerful people in the world. Hundreds, even thousands of years in the future, it is likely that the technological advances of the late 20th and 21st centuries will be recognised as pivotal in the history of humanity, the point at which the exponential growth of digital technology really began. IT ethics The French philosopher Emile Durkheim said that when values are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when values are insufficient, laws are unenforceable. The principle is applicable to technology. In the absence of binding international law, it is imperative that technologists have a moral compass with which to navigate the course of technology development in ways that…

Political Think Tanks We can distinguish between two periods of political think tank activity in Australia. The first period occurred in the decades between the 1940s and the 1980s. During this time, particular think tanks emerged that were closely associated with the labor and non-labor party groupings but which remained formally and operationally separate from their kindred party. The best-known example of a political think tank with strong ties to the non-Labor side of politics was the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). The IPA was created as a response to a number of concerns held by business groups, prominent among them was the election of the Curtin ALP government in 1941. Institutes formed initially in Victoria before fanning out across NSW (later subsumed by the Sydney Institute in the 1980s),…