Planet A 

A report submitted to UNESCO recommends that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef be classified as ‘in danger’ in light of the decades of damage from coral bleaching events and the ongoing threats to the reef from the effects of climate change. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said Australia was ‘blindsided’ by the recommendation and alluded to the role politics plays in the decisions of international bodies like the China-chaired UNESCO. The government’s energy policy includes continued support for fossil fuels, which make Australia one of the world’s largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases.

Tourism is Queensland’s third largest industry, but mining is the largest, and the government is unlikely to shift away from coal despite concerns that tourism will decrease with reef degradation driven by warming ocean temperatures. The government’s commitment to coal puts Australia at odds with strategic partners, including G7 members the US and UK, which have pledged to divest from coal as part of their commitments to combat climate change.

Democracy watch

Hundreds of Palestinians are protesting in the West Bank following the death of Nizar Banat while in the custody of the Palestinian Authority. Banat was an activist and political candidate known for his social media videos on the PA’s security ties with the Israeli military, and political corruption.

Mahmoud Abbas became president in Palestine’s first elections in 2005. He is still in office, and has indefinitely postponed this year’s elections because of a dispute with Israel about the voting eligibility of Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem. Abbas’s critics have accused him of being out of touch with the Palestinian people, who are beginning to lose faith in the possibility of a two-state solution. Yet Israel and Western donors continue to support Abbas and the PA over fears that Hamas will take power if Abbas is removed.

The protests, however, have highlighted the increasing authoritarianism of Abbas’s government and the deteriorating respect for human rights demonstrated by PA security forces.

Information operations

US authorities have seized the domain names of 33 Iranian government–affiliated websites hosted on US-owned domains, joining over 100 others seized last year. The 33 sites were operated by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, a government-linked outfit that imitates news organisations. The US alleged that the union and other government-linked groups conducted covert influence operations during the 2020 US federal election. The 2021 US national intelligence assessment named Iran, China and Russia as the primary foreign actors that attempted election interference in 2020.

The US action comes days after Iran’s president-elect, conservative hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, ruled out meeting with President Joe Biden, saying that Iran’s missile program and support for regional militias were not up for discussion. Raisi’s remarks could be aimed at shoring up conservative support before he takes office in August or posturing for a better deal as Iran’s nuclear deal talks resume.

Follow the money

On 24 June, the main pro-democratic newspaper in Hong Kong, Apple Daily, in operation since 1995, printed its last edition, of 1 million copies. Using the controversial national security law, the Hong Kong Security Bureau arrested Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily’s parent company Next Media, and five other executives. The authorities have frozen approximately US$2.3 million worth of assets from three companies—Apple Daily, Apple Daily Printing and AD Internet—in an effort to silence the company and as an example to like-minded Hong Kong news media.

Next Media has requested that the Security Bureau partially unfreeze the companies’ assets so they can pay outstanding wages to their employees. In return, Hong Kong authorities have asked for employees’ details and ‘sensitive information’. The company has yet to make a decision, and the Next Media Trade Union has emphasised that the privacy of employees is the priority. However, if the company does hand over information, it may prompt more companies to reassess their business holdings in Hong Kong in light of the uncertainties raised by the security law and its impact on Hong Kong’s economy.

Terror byte

Rwandan prosecutors have requested a life sentence for US Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Paul Rusesabagina, who faces nine terrorism charges linked to his opposition political party, the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change, including membership and financing of a terrorist group.

Rusesabagina was the subject of an Oscar-nominated film, Hotel Rwanda, which focused on his role in sheltering 1,268 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees during the 1994 genocide. He has since been living in exile in the US and Belgium, becoming a prominent critic of Rwanda’s growing authoritarianism.

Rusesabagina alleges that in August 2020 he was forcibly removed from Dubai to Rwanda on a Greek chartered airline under false pretences, saying he was led to believe that the flight was destined for Burundi. A Rwandan court has ruled that these allegations are false.

The Rwandan government has faced multiple accusations of spying on international dissidents in Canada, Australia and South Africa. The rules governing extradition of alleged terrorists are haphazard under international law due to lack of consensus on the definition of terrorism. Rusesabagina’s alleged deception and forced rendition expose the lengths authoritarian regimes may go to to capture dissidents in defiance of international legal norms.

Gendered disinformation targets women in politics and journalism

Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women Around the World blog, Melanne Verveer and Lucina Di Meco argue that gendered disinformation thrives on social media platforms under the guise of free speech, threatening women’s rights and democratic freedoms.

In a recent study, 90% of women in the global south reported experiencing targeted online abuse, including threats and ‘vicious’ gendered disinformation campaigns. Verveer and Di Meco contend that these campaigns emerge from patriarchal and authoritarian structures and are designed to undermine and discredit women, particularly women of colour and women in leadership. The portrayal of women as ‘untrustworthy, unintelligent, too emotional, or sexual’ can also incite or encourage gendered violence.

Verveer and DI Meco argue that gendered misinformation erodes democratic standards by discouraging women from seeking positions of power or engaging in fields like journalism and politics. They also argue that official disinformation campaigns targeting female political opponents ‘erode liberal values and democratic principles all together’.

The solutions they propose include working with platform administrators, in close consultation with female leaders and activists, to develop robust standards and ensure women in vulnerable fields have the online tools and support networks they need to respond to gendered disinformation campaigns.

The impact of Lebanon’s socioeconomic crisis on women

On 25 May, the UN deputy special coordinator for Lebanon, Najat Rochdi, briefed the UN Security Council’s informal expert group on WPS on the ongoing socioeconomic crisis in Lebanon and its impact on women, which has been compounded by the Covid-19 lockdown, the Port of Beirut explosion that rocked the country in mid-2020, and the subsequent resignation of the entire Lebanese government.

Rochdi noted that the crisis had deepened gender inequalities in Lebanon and reiterated the UN’s calls for a reform-oriented government that strengthens female participation and supports recovery efforts that are inclusive of women.

In the aftermath of the Beirut port disaster, women in households in the explosion radius were disproportionately impacted. A 2020 UN Women report found that 51% of the affected population identified as female-headed households. The report also noted that the explosion had reduced access to food, first aid and reproductive health services, and increased the risk of homelessness and of gender-based violence.

Constitutional crisis in Samoa exposes barriers to women’s political representation

A piece by Kerryn Baker in Australian Outlook argues that women’s political representation is at the core of Samoa’s constitutional crisis. On 9 April, the country held an election and Fiame Naomi Mata‘afa, who leads the FAST party, edged out incumbent Prime Minister Tuila‘epa Sa‘ilele Malielegaoi and his Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) by a slim majority. However, the HRPP has challenged FAST’s victory and Tuila‘epa has refused to recognise Fiame as the new prime minister.

The disagreement between the HRPP and FAST party centres on the interpretation of a provision in the Samoan constitution mandating that women make up 10% of parliamentarians. Five women were elected, bringing women’s representation to just 9.8%.

Baker theorises that the impasse could result in wider vilification and opposition to gender quotas in parliament. Currently, 6.8% of senior political positions in Pacific island nations are held by women, suggesting a potentially hostile environment. If Fiame is officially recognised as prime minister, this is likely to bolster support for women’s political participation in the region.

UN Women focuses on sustainability and social justice

UN Women has released a briefing on its forthcoming feminist plan for sustainability and social justice, which aims to respond to the ways in which Covid-19 has exacerbated gender inequality and amplified women’s vulnerabilities around the world. The plan will provide practical guidance and constructive policy suggestions to create a more ‘equal and sustainable future’.

McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that during the pandemic, women were 1.8 times more likely to lose their jobs than men. Women also take on around 75% of unpaid and underpaid domestic labour.

The plan sets out three priorities: ‘building a caring economy’ for essential healthcare workers ‘generating sustainable livelihoods for all’ to provide a robust social-protection system for women, especially those involved in informal economy; and ‘ensuring a gender-just, green transition’ by creating and investing in jobs focusing on sustainability for women.

Gender and the operational effectiveness of UN peace operations

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security published a report on how gender impacts UN peace operations, based on interviews and case studies from UN peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

One of the report’s key findings was that, despite women being under-represented in peacekeeping operations—they make up less than 5% of all military personnel, 11% of personnel in formed police units and 28% of individual police officers—women’s participation improved community engagement across the various missions.

The findings highlight the importance of uniformed women peacekeepers in interacting with women and girls and building trust in communities. Their presence helps to change community perceptions of gender roles and careers and, in some cases, leads to increased reporting of sexual harassment and violence against women.

Evidence suggests that their presence also helps deter sexual misconduct by male personnel during missions, though this adds an extra burden of responsibility on women to monitor their colleagues. The study also found that, while women were more effective in some peacekeeping areas, labelling them as the ‘most effective’ peacekeepers left them with no room for error in their performance and led to a ‘sense of disenfranchisement amongst uniformed men’.

Sea state

The US Navy has christened its new littoral combat ship USS Canberra, the second US vessel to be named after the Australian capital and the only ship in the current fleet to be named after a foreign capital. Australia’s defence attaché to the US, Commodore Matthew Hudson, said the ship’s naming, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty, speaks to the ‘strength of friendship’ between the US and Australia. Independence-class trimarans like the Canberra have faced ongoing engine problems and other issues, which the US Navy has recently launched a taskforce to address.

Iran’s largest warship has sunk in the Gulf of Oman after a mysterious onboard fire. The supply ship IRIS Kharg was evacuated, with its crew suffering 33 minor injuries and no casualties. The incident occurred near the sensitive shipping corridor of the Strait of Hormuz. The sinking of the Kharg represents a significant loss to Iran’s naval capabilities, as the purpose-built oiler and cargo ship was often relied on for the country’s long-distance naval operations.

Flight path

On 4 June, the US Navy conducted a historic aerial refuelling using a Boeing MQ-25 Stingray UAV to refuel an F/A-18 Super Hornet, the first time an unmanned tanker has refuelled a manned aircraft. The head of the navy’s unmanned aviation and strike weapons program, Rear Admiral Brian Corey, said, ‘This flight lays the foundation for integration into the carrier environment, allowing for greater capability toward manned–unmanned teaming concepts’, noting that the MQ-25 ‘will greatly increase the range and endurance of the future carrier air wing.’

Forbes journalist David Axe has examined the US Air Force’s plans to expand its base network and distribute airpower across the Indo-Pacific to mitigate the threat of Chinese missile barrages during wartime. Two bases, Kadena on the Japanese island of Okinawa and Anderson on Guam, have long been home to the majority of the USAF’s assets in the region and are within range of China’s missiles. In response to this threat, the air force plans to spread its warplanes across potentially dozens of smaller bases throughout the Indo-Pacific, prepositioning weapons and equipment to reinforce the smallest air fields.

Rapid fire

Rheinmetall has delivered 25 Boxer combat reconnaissance vehicles as part of phase 2 of the Australian Army’s LAND 400 project. These early Boxers were built in Germany, where there are currently more than 30 Australians learning production processes before manufacturing shifts to Australia. Rheinmetall Defence Australia boss Gary Stewart says the Boxers’ ‘survivability and mobility’ will be a major boost for the army’s armoured cavalry. Along with Hanwha, Rheinmetall is also in the running for phase 3 of the LAND 400 program with its Lynx infantry fighting vehicle.

Under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military modernisation goal, the People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps is undergoing an evolution. The PLANMC has focused on enlarging its multi-domain and multi-mission capacities, especially broadening the navy’s ability to undertake land operations. State television recently showed PLANMC troops inspecting ZTQ-15, or Type 15, lightweight battle tanks as some infantry units transform themselves into ‘combined arms’ outfits.

Final frontier

NASA has announced two new missions to Venus to be launched by 2030 as interest in the planet heats up. The DAVINCI+ probe will collect data about the composition of Venus’s atmosphere and the VERITAS orbiter will map the topography and temperature of the planet using radar and infrared sensors. The missions will be NASA’s first to Venus in more than three decades, but it won’t be alone—the space agencies of Europe, India and Russia and private companies, like California-based RocketLab, are all developing their own Venus missions.

The Australian National University is leading a multinational project that will provide high-quality images to shed light on some of the mysteries of distant galaxies. The MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph (MAVIS) instrument will be fitted to a telescope at the European Southern Observatory and is being developed in collaboration with Australia’s Macquarie University and institutions in Italy and France. In addition to helping explore the solar system, Macquarie University’s Richard McDermid says the project also demonstrates Australia’s capability to develop sophisticated instruments.

Wired watchtower

The US Justice Department has recovered more than half of the money extorted by the hackers that caused the Colonial Pipeline shutdown. The department’s digital extortion taskforce seized a bitcoin wallet containing 75 bitcoins, representing around US$2.3 million of the company’s US$4.4 million ransom payment. Cryptocurrency has become the preferred method of payment for hackers because it enables them to hide their identities, and many analysts have noted that the rise of ransomware attacks has coincided with the rise of cryptocurrency.

On 4 June, the Nigerian government announced that it was suspending Twitter indefinitely due to ‘the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence’. The announcement came two days after Twitter removed a post by the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, for violating its terms of use by threatening to punish groups responsible for recent attacks on government buildings. Despite few Nigerians using the social media platform, it is a popular site for people to organise anti-government protests.

Indigenous perspectives are rarely foregrounded in national policy debates. Australia has a long history of imposing solutions on First Nations communities and expecting increased economic participation and social inclusion to follow. This is a domain of quick fixes that more often reinforce historical injustice, rather than engage in the long-term project of listening to and being led by Australia’s diverse First Nations communities.

To help address this gap on the digital and defence policy front, ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre IndigiCyber, Defence and Space program is launching ‘IndigiCyber Conversations’, a thought leadership series of podcasts, articles and interviews.

This series aims to celebrate the unique skills and perspectives of First Nations Australians at all levels of seniority in discussions on both digital issues that affect them and on the Indigenous experience in participating in Australia’s broader environment.

Most importantly, the series will explore ways in which Indigenous communities can lead partnerships with government on solutions to digital challenges.

This first conversation between Wulli Wulli computer scientist Benjamin Sylvester Millar from the Australian National University and Indigenous engagement expert Dion Devow is relevant to all organisations trying to attract diverse talent and participate in a reconciliation journey.

The budget announcement on digital skills promised initiatives to increase the quantity and quality of cybersecurity professionals. However, it’s been a long-standing challenge for many government agencies to attract and, more importantly, to retain talent from the communities they purport to serve.

Millar articulates a message that governments at all levels could push to attract more people into digital roles: they’re creative jobs and working with data is a creative endeavour.

‘There’s such a stigma around degrees and jobs that relate to data. It’s always, “smart people go and code”. It’s not true. It’s a creative thing to be doing. It’s just like learning another language.’

Despite the work that’s been done to make it easier to understand the knowledge, professional and behavioural skills that underpin qualifications in Digital Career Pathways frameworks, Australia still faces an acute skills shortage in the digital economy and cybersecurity.

Governments need to better craft projects in consultation with Australian communities to define digital problems and solutions to attract talent to the sector and to reinforce the benefits of those  services.

The iterative process that frequently defines innovation is an uneasy fit for top-down government services because government projects must work immediately and be fit to serve a diverse citizenry.

So, we frequently see projects leading to poor service delivery because off-the-shelf solutions are not built around community needs and lack adequate consideration of technological access and affordability.

From an Indigenous perspective, as Millar and Devow discuss, many are attracted to professions that make a difference. A better understanding of how technology can help communities might attract more Indigenous candidates.

‘Lots of Indigenous students gravitate towards healthcare and law because it’s pretty obvious what the impact is. You train to be a nurse and you can go into community and help people, help blackfellas in general … how tech helps community is less obvious.’

The aspiration to deliver positive policy programs to communities is common to Indigenous employees in the Australian Public Service. A study by the ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research found that ‘an overwhelming motivation involved a desire to make a useful difference—that is, to help improve government policy and programs [and] serve their community’.

The flipside of this, and one reason why Indigenous employees leave, says the study, is ‘the extent to which political considerations and political expediency appeared to pervade the APS …  [undermining] their sense of being able to become meaningfully involved in positive policy initiatives, or deliver useful programs to Indigenous people’.

There are lessons here for the Australian Defence Force too. All military services look set to miss their commitments to a 5% Indigenous recruitment target by 2025. Indigenous psychological perspectives have not been integrated in psychometric testing in recruitment. There are data gaps in understanding why Indigenous people leave the services, and training gaps in digital skills, mentoring and leadership for Indigenous employees.

In ICPC’s consultations with the ADF we’ve found one step that would be truly transformative: for the services to build relationships that prioritise trust and friendship with communities over the achievement of a mission objective. Transactional initiatives will not confer benefits to the community and are a significant reason for continual failures.

It’s also not sufficient to tick a box of digital participation and recruitment outreach without simultaneously ensuring that data is controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and used to advance the ability to make decisions about development, justice and equality.

Millar explains that every choice has to do with data. ‘So, it’s about ways we can make the data and how it’s presented to people friendly to Black Australia. Because at the moment, everyone who works on it is mostly white’.

Within the corporate sector, diversity is seen to be a key driver of innovation. ICPC’s analysis of 205 cybersecurity firms in Australia, found that fewer than 3% have Indigenous initiatives and many defence companies are only beginning their reconciliation journeys.

Many organisations don’t know where to start or what kinds of initiatives and support are appropriate for Indigenous Australians. Some organisations simply want to tick a box to satisfy Defence contract requirements that stipulate engagement with Indigenous initiatives.

US President Joe Biden has made diversity a key aspect of his platform, not only because equal opportunity is a core principle of American democracy, but also because of the ongoing effects of historical injustices.

In Australia, diversity and inclusion initiatives are often seen as tokenistic rather than an integral part of innovation processes and workforce planning. There needs to be wider engagement with reconciliation action plans and appreciation of some of the challenges of being an Indigenous employee.

Initiating a reconciliation action plan is a way to systematise engagement with Indigenous Australia at the boardroom level. It’s a way for an organisation to initiate a program of activities that inverts the responsibility for employment pathways. Instead of placing the demand on Indigenous people to be ‘work ready’, it shifts focus to an organisation’s readiness to employ Indigenous people.

Companies that implement Indigenous pathways for employment like cadetships, internships and  graduate positions send an important signal to First Nations Australians that some organisational thinking has been done about Indigenous employment. These pathways are not about lowering standards but sending a signal, creating opportunities and networks for Indigenous people who are often first-in-family and lack the professional networks of their white counterparts.

[Indigenous pathways are] about giving Black Australia an opportunity to go into [a profession]. I feel that there’s more stigma that comes about from going through a diversity program than comes from someone getting a job because their dad is a partner in a firm.

There’s also a mental block when someone sees an application, especially if no-one in your family has done it before, it’s like, ‘it’s not for me’. Whereas, if there’s a label on it, it signals that this space is open to an Aboriginal man or woman to come in and do that job.

It’s important to understand the pressures that organisations put on Indigenous employees. Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney’s Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research found in a survey that 65% of Indigenous employees said they felt they had to work harder to prove that they, as an Indigenous person, could do the job.

Indigenous employees also have what the researchers describe as a ‘high cultural load’—being called upon to do not only their job, but also to ‘organise NAIDOC Week events, doing acknowledgements of Country or seeing all Indigenous clients on top of their other work’.

Millar describes how cultural load placed additional pressures on him while studying.

‘Any issue that has something to do with Indigenous issues, I’m expected to be an authority on. So that’s a huge amount of pressure.’

Cultural expectations also played a role shaping Millar’s work and study decisions, a situation common to many young Indigenous Australians, who often have caring responsibilities. ‘I feel somewhat obligated to go out and earn a wage so I can support people back home … it plays a part in lots of choices I make,’ he says.

Millar’s community, particularly his grandmother, played a crucial role in influencing him to finish school. This is reflective of the wider literature which suggests that community elders play an important role in influencing schooling decisions. Institutional support at ANU also helped.

One of the ways to excite the next generation of Indigenous future STEM champions is to recognise that young First Australians are experts in their own lives. It’s important to listen respectfully to their journeys and to meaningfully engage them in the policymaking that directly affects them and their communities.