This question, or slight variants of it, has been asked by pollsters across the country in an attempt to gauge support for the former Prime Minister amongst voters.

According to some recent polls a return to Rudd as leader would deliver the Labor Party a boost of more than 8 per cent in key marginal seats, mitigating the huge swing against the government most commentators are predicting will occur this September and potentially giving them a shot of winning the election.

But how much stock can we place in polls that ask questions in the abstract and don’t factor in the associated turmoil and trauma that would inevitably follow another leadership change?

The Labor Party itself certainly puts a lot of stock into these kinds of polls. They were used as the excuse for knifing Rudd in the first place, and replacing him with Julia Gillard, who polls said would lift Labor’s primary vote. As we know, Gillard led Labor into an election that resulted in Australia’s first hung parliament since 1940 and a series of policy and communication blunders since has resulted in her popularity plummeting.

It’s similar polling, though this time suggesting that a shift back to Rudd is necessary to stave off electoral doom, which is being used internally within the party to agitate for another leadership change. By most accounts, a significant shift has occurred amongst former Gillard supporters who have resigned themselves to the fact they are likely to lose, and lose bad, under her leadership and a change to Rudd is required to limit the loss.

So we’ve established that these sorts of questions, and the response to them in the electorate, are taken very, very seriously. What’s incredibly surprising is how few people have questioned their veracity when on past performance, federally and within the basket case that is NSW Labor, they’ve proven to be very wrong.

NSW Labor’s internal ructions in the 2007-2011 period of government are so infamous they’ve been dubbed the “NSW disease” in political circles. The “disease” refers to both the massive allegations of corruption facing senior party figures, but also the leadership merry-go-round that saw Labor change leaders twice. In each of those situations, polling was used as the main justification.

The last leadership change, which saw Nathan Rees replaced by Kristina Keneally, was initially lauded as polls showed Keneally’s approval and “likeability” ratings were sky high. However, they started to collapse pretty quickly and ultimately Keneally led Labor to one of its worst defeats on record, with the party recording a primary vote 5 per cent lower than what they were tracking under Rees’ leadership. The lesson from NSW seems pretty clear – changing leaders might sound like a good idea in the abstract but once it actually happens, the gloss wears off pretty quickly and there’s a high likelihood you lose even more support.

So how might this translate to a federal level for Labor? While we’ve seen plenty of polls saying Rudd’s return to the leadership would boost Labor’s chances, and that’s been used internally to advocate for his return, as the likelihood of Rudd becoming Prime Minister again has increased there seems to be evidence that this is no longer the case.

A poll out today suggests that if Rudd was returned to the Prime Ministership, that would make roughly the same amount of people less like to vote for Labor as more likely. In other words, a shift to Rudd would have no impact on Labor’s vote.

That conclusion fits the “NSW disease” argument that even though when people are asked in the abstract how they would respond to a leadership change, when it actually happens, or looks inevitable, support slips even further.

One strong thesis is that when people are answering questions along the lines of the one at the beginning of this article, they’re actually responding to a slightly different question – “Would you vote Labor if Rudd had never been deposed” rather than “Would you vote for Rudd after yet another messy leadership coup”.

The last argument in relation to why the popular response to Rudd’s return may not be as rosy as polls currently suggest has to do with the basic mechanics of it. Gillard has made it clear she will not be stepping down of own volition, meaning that any transition will require a delegation of the much despised “faceless men” blasting her out. The public didn’t respond positively to that situation in 2010, and it’s not an outrageous proposition to suggest that there might be a backlash to Australia’s first female Prime Minister being deposed by a group made up of men from Labor’s right-wing faction. This accusation is particularly likely to hurt Labor in seats with a high proportion of working women, like Batman and Grayndler, where the Greens are in with a strong shot of winning.

There’s also the issue that Rudd will have a short amount of time in which to assemble his own policy agenda and Labor will have to rework it’s entire campaign messaging and look and feel, which is currently dominated by key Gillard policies such as Gonski and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as well as references to “Gillard Labor”.

It’s possible that a return to Prime Minister Rudd might aid Labor in key marginal seats, as some polls have suggested. There is, however, a substantive body of evidence based on public reaction to the 2010 coup, the NSW Labor experience and the fact that all the polls are based on hypothetical scenarios, that suggests that removal of Australia’s first female Prime Minister by “faceless men” could see Labor plumb currently unimaginable new depths of unpopularity.

Osman Faruqi
@oz_f

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Bill Gates and Q&A host Tony Jones listen as UNSW Vice-Chancellor Fred Hilmer speaks to the audience, Premier Barry O’Farrell waits to speak at the right.

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man was broadcast tonight on ABC’s Q&A. Filmed on location at UNSW’s Sir John Clancy Auditorium as part of his whirlwind trip, Gates attempted to try and convince Australia to honour foreign aid pledges.

The creator of Microsoft and co-founder of the  Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation, Bill Gates will be spending 14 hours in Australia in an attempt to compel the government to increase its foreign aid budget in the midst of its decision to delay meeting foreign aid targets until 2017-18.

Demand to see Gates speak was high,  with almost 3,500 students and alumni entering the UNSW competition for tickets, resulting in the university being inundated with requests to attend the talk.

While Gates spoke of engaging in discussions surrounding  topping up aid budgets from the current 0.34% of Australia’s gross national income, or 34 cents in every $100, he implicitly compared Australia to the UK, who have pledged  0.7%, despite having been significantly more impacted by the Global Financial Crisis.

Admitting he was a little disappointed with the government’s stalling of their commitment to meet the target of 0.5%, he remained positive nonetheless.

As he had been in interviews earlier in the day, Gates was thankful for the amount that Australia currently gives, but was insistent that there is still much more to be done.

Perhaps what was not adequately covered was the existence of philanthropy in Australia, or lack thereof. Whilst in America there is a culture of giving from the rich, with 15% of their earnings being donated, Australian aristocrats donate a measly 1%, a deficit of generosity which extends top-down from the nation’s richest.

In an effort to buck the trend, Australian businessman and philanthropist, Dick Smith recently moved to shame the 4 major bank CEO’s into giving back to the community, but results were unpromising.

However, such miserliness is reported to more widespread than Australia’s super rich. Anecdotal evidence exists that the more affluent a suburb is considered to be, the less likely individuals from those areas are to donate to charities.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO), has also released figures showing that over 2000 individuals whose annual income surpassed $1 million registered no charitable donations when claiming in their tax returns in previous years.

Audience member, Alex Peck told Tharunka that whilst it was interesting to hear Gates’ insights on a wide range of topics, he would have liked to have heard more on his philosophy around wealth and capital.

“It seems like there’s more going on between his socially responsible side and his successful business side, as evidenced in his comments around taxation and loopholes”, he said.

NSW Live Below the Line Assistant Manager, Ammy Singh said she believes that having someone exert their influence for good is one of the most powerful tools for the 1.2 billion people currently living in extreme poverty, who are often relegated to mere statistics.

“It’s not a coincidence that the Australian government announced an extra $80 million in polio prevention immediately after meeting with Bill Gates today”, she said.

Gates also met with both major party leaders today, and reported that  Tony Abbott was a ‘very nice man’, but due to the fact he isn’t an Australian voter, he didn’t feel he had the right to make any demands of the Leader of the Opposition.

Questions ranged from whether there had been any advances in the production of condoms to increase pleasure to the wearer, to whether he was intending on cryogenically freezing himself as a part of his bucket list to outwit death.

He also responded to one question about Zambian economist, Dambisa Moyo’s book ‘Dead Aid’ , accusing it of being  ”responsible for spreading evil”. “She didn’t know much about aid and what aid was doing…she is an aid critic” he said.

In her book, Moyo says that despite Africa receiving over $1 trillion dollars in aid, many of the poorer nations of the continent are worse off than prior to what she refers to as “misguided development policy”.

Whilst waiting for technical difficulties to be solved, host Tony Jones turned to impromptu audience questions where Gates recalled reluctantly attending an event where he met the world’s 3rd richest man, Warren Buffett . “My mum usually asks me to go to one thing a month, and she’d already filled that quota” Gates said, who attended nonetheless and went on to become close friends with the business tycoon and fellow philanthropist, 25 years his senior.

Lamenting that he’s usually asked questions about business models or Microsoft’s competition with IMB, Gates admitted to being “fascinated” by Buffett and his hard questions concerning current global issues . Gates and Buffett now work together with Bill’s wife, Melinda in areas of global health such as vaccination, reproductive health and education, acting as the three trustees of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Singh praised the Gates foundation’s initiatives for contributing to the sustainability of foreign aid, as many organisations do not have the funds to engage in research.“One of the great things about  philanthropy is it opens up a realistic way of investing in not only basic life-saving foreign aid, but also innovation in researching the best way of going about aid and development”, she said.

UNSW Chancellor, David Gonski referred to Gates as  “a true global leader and champion for the betterment of society by tackling global health issues”, while Vice-Chancellor Fred Hilmer jokingly credited him as being one of the causes for students not being present on campus.

UNSW’s own Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society is one of many recipients of funding from the Gates foundation, who have received almost $13 million for HIV antiretroviral therapy research, which will hopefully lead to the improvement of millions of lives worldwide.

 Renee Griffin

Memo to media studies lecturers and tutors anywhere on earth: Feel free to tell your students to write for Tharunka.

We love getting contributions, we love being controversial, we love making people think and we love it that you love us.

But let’s keep it real, can we?

When a slew of email submissions was received by the editors this month, excitement that the student body was engaging with the publication filled the office.

As one of the editors at Tharunka, I was surprised and impressed by the sudden influx. Granted, not all the articles were worth publishing, but the thought seemed to be there, nonetheless.

So, we started picking through the best of the pitches, preparing to tell the authors how to make them better and mentally picturing how the finished stories could be presented on the page.

But early on Monday morning, a more unsettling article was submitted by University of Sydney (USYD) student, Joshua Tassel. The article described an assignment being undertaken at USYD by Media Politics students under the tuition of Dr Peter John Chen.

Here’s how the assignment sheet starts:

‘Project 2: Prank Tharunka

Using your understanding of the process-orientation of journalism, design and execute a false story that you attempt to get published in the UNSW student newspaper, Tharunka. You will need to research the aspects of journalistic practice used by the paper, what type of issues are likely to be covered, and how you would go about getting the issue into the paper. Once completed (successfully or not), reflect on the practice of PR that uses an understanding of media practice to promote particular messages in your final report.’

Suddenly, the strange influx of contributions made more sense. UNSW’s august journal, Tharunka, was being pranked, by another university.

Having now spoken to a number of USYD students in the course involved, we know a lot about the pranking plot.

This assessment will make up 25% of the students’ grades for the semester in Chen’s class. The only publication available for “pranking” is Tharunka, and there is no scope for pitching a real news story. Reading back over all the articles we’d been given over the course of April and May, it seemed fairly clear that most of the articles were either too vague to be real attempts at stories, or purely fictitious.

Whistleblower Joshua said that he was one of the few students who had issue with the assignment.

“I haven’t heard anyone else react the same way as I have, and I actually copped some criticism from people quite close to me today when I told them what I’d done,” he said.

“I can see Peter’s point in regards to teaching us about the manipulation of the journalistic creed, how media outlets can be usurped and misled, and how our theories of media operation stand up to the test of an actual submission,” Joshua said.

“However, I don’t know why Tharunka in particular was chosen as the sole target, and neither do I understand why we were instructed to plant a fake story.”

“I want to be a journalist one day, and I want to adhere to a moral code wherein lying and deceitfulness are strictly prohibited. Not only would this assignment contravene that moral code, it would go against all the codes of conduct I feel apply to the situation.”

Interestingly, the assessment task seems to go against all the ethical codes of conduct presented in the course outline, which reads:

‘Academic honesty is a core value of the University. The University requires students to act honestly, ethically and with integrity in their dealings with the University, its members, members of the public and others.’

“It doesn’t live up to their own standards of academic honesty applied to the students. Under no circumstances would that assignment pass an ethics test if an honours student proposed it. It contravenes the ethics that Peter himself has attempted to impart upon us. If it has passed an ethics test, I would be incredibly mystified.”

In his submission to Tharunka, Joshua noted that there was no honest way to execute the assignment.

‘My group in particular began by asking ourselves ‘how on earth would we get this published?’ Suggestions included lying, impersonation, libel, and stories that could not possibly be followed up on by editors. Generally speaking, we have sought to manipulate you, plant a false story, and be the stereotypically smug Sydney University Arts student in the process.’

While another student — who spoke to us on condition of anonymity — seemed concerned about the backlash caused by being honest with Tharunka, Joshua said he wasn’t particularly concerned.

“I fully understand the potential implications of being a whistleblower, but the fact remains, I’ve done this too late and let it fester for too long. As someone told me today, ‘this could be your foot in the door to journalism’. And that’s sure as hell NOT why I’m doing this.

“I’m not doing it for any self-motivated reasons, nor because I feel like I would do poorly in the assignment, but because I feel it’s the right thing to do. It needs to be made clear that a practice such as this is completely impermissible.”

Some of the articles submitted to Tharunka as part of the pranking plot were believably dull, while others were completely ridiculous. One pitch, suggesting an article on how to create rainbow crossings, was laughably transparent. A number of students, claiming to be from UNSW, even used their USYD email addresses. A quick Facebook search told us the rest. When asked for UNSW student identification, two students just made them up.

One attempt at humour was titled, ‘You Made the Right Choice’, and suggested a number of ridiculous reasons for UNSW’s supposed superiority over USYD.

‘As any Facebook meme or procrastinating Year 12 student will tell you, USYD looks deceptively like Hogwarts. But where is the magic really at? UNSW founded its first Quidditch team a year before USYD. Our team ‘Snapes on a Plane’ won the Triwizard cup last year, beating USYD with the same teamwork Harry used to beat Voldemort. So for all witches, wizards and Slytherins at heart, come to UNSW. All are welcome…unless you’re a Hufflepuff.’

Another article’s headline read, ‘Bachelor of Tarts?’, and claimed, ‘It has emerged that Jennifer Hawkins has been nominated for an Honorary Degree from the University of New South Wales.’ To save the embarrassment of students involved in a compulsory assessment task, they will remain unnamed in this article.

Ending his submission on a high note, Joshua stated, ‘The measure of journalistic standards as embodied in this task seeks to foreground deceitfulness, a trait nobody could possibly desire in a journalist. It’s predatory, awful, and lacks any kind of morality for the potential outcomes for Tharunka.’

The University of Sydney academic who set the assignment, Dr Peter Chen, however, defended the assessment.

“On a number of levels my motivation is actually very good,” he said. “It’s all about graduate attributes,” Dr Chen told Tharunka.

He said that the assessment task was an applied research task which allowed students to critically analyse their findings, having dealt with the process of publishing in a busy newsroom.

He suggested that, as an editor, I should be interested in the social experiment. “This is where I’d like you to be pleased; I oriented my students toward topics that I thought were significant.”

Defending the assessment, he said, “I don’t think there’s anything particularly unusual about stunt journalism.”

Reasoning that they would have been more “easily identifiable” for him if they’d actually been published in the newspaper, Chen offered that, in hindsight, he thought asking his students to plant false stories was a “bad idea”.

When asked whether the assignment had passed an ethics test, he admitted that it had not.

“If I was overseeing an Honours student, yes, I would have had to go through all the ethics tests, but as it is, just for teaching, all I have to do is to get my head of department to sign off on it. This is where you’re going to kill me, if you ask whether or not I did do that, well, no, I didn’t.”

We won’t kill you, Peter.

In fact, we’ll be glad to have your students’ contributions. Real ones, that is.

Lily Ray

  This is just one of the effects of the increasing casualisation of the university workforce. Half of the undergraduate teaching at Australian universities is done by casual staff. For staff, this means more precarious work conditions, and for students, it means no consulting hours to ask for feedback or support. At the same time, restructuring in Australian universities swells the ranks of management, and the percentage of student fees that goes towards teaching is dropping in proportion to those that go towards administration.[1] Meanwhile, the university experiences increasingly truncated semesters, course cuts, staff cuts, and diminishing student-to-teacher ratios. These changes are the result of a neoliberal restructuring of the university according to a new economic model, which seeks to run universities as if they are businesses. These issues surfaced during the bargaining for a new enterprise agreement at Sydney University, and a 48-hour strike was called last week.

The strike was called by the NTEU and the CPSU for a whole host of reasons pertaining to the new agreement, with disagreement centring on management’s desire to remove various protections, such as commitments to anti-discrimination and intellectual freedom, from the agreement, as well as attempts to limit the unions’ freedom to organise in the workplace. Working conditions, particularly increasing casualisation and the proposed abolition of the 40:40:20 provision, which states that academics’ workload should be 40 per cent research, 40 per cent teaching and 20 per cent administrative work, were also a topic of contention in the bargaining process.

  People joined the pickets to support the NTEU’s bargaining efforts, but also because of wider concerns about how the university is changing. Very few, if any mainstream media outlets, have reported on these issues, and university management has consistently misrepresented them. Even The Australian quoted the 7 per cent pay rise claim directly from management’s email. It was hardly surprising that few of the students I spoke to at the strike had any idea why it had been called. When I started to talk about some of the reasons for the strike, many students were shocked and surprised. Many were concerned about the conditions of workers, and supported their struggle, but also realised how these work conditions would impact on their own education. I suspect that, before the strike, they had never been able to talk with staff about how these experiences affect us all.

  Many students crossing the picket expressed regret, support, and real stress that they would fall behind if they didn’t attend, despite promises from management that they wouldn’t be penalised. Perhaps they felt these promises were a little hollow, and with no clear process offered by management for students to raise concerns. I think they were right to feel worried.

I had conversations with students who opposed the strike, and their comments revealed a great deal about how they viewed the university. They talked about how much money they’d spent to be there, and were dismissive of staff concerns. Some already saw themselves in the position of management, saying they thought staff were greedy and should have less sick leave and be paid less. Students told staff on the picket to “fuck off”; one student told a government department lecturer to “get a job”. These students already saw the staff at the university as service providers, paid to work for them. They did not feel any solidarity for the people who made their university experience possible. On some occasions they were aggressive; some even spat on and physically attacked picketers.

  For me, this strike exposed more clearly the class politics of the university. It allowed me, for the first time, to start talking to people I didn’t know about what the university should be. It provided a space in which the small subset of very privileged students who have always made me feel uncomfortable started to say what they really thought. It was eye opening as well as threatening.

  The level of cooperation between university management, security and riot police was also alarming. Riot cops were called to the campus and arrested people violently for chanting in a lecture. It wasn’t clear what law they were supposed to be breaking, but the police violence was a clear sign that the university was happy to silence dissent, and demonstrated the complicity of the state in this silencing.

  In the aftermath, it seems that the majority of students at Sydney Uni supported the strike, but some have voiced concerns about disruptive tactics. Some argue that pickets at the gates and noise protests in lecture theatres and libraries were unhelpful, because they limited students the right to choose whether to support the strike, or unfairly affected their education. I think that the short-term inconvenience of a small number of disrupted lectures is minor compared to the much greater inconvenience of an increasingly casualised workforce. Further, I was surprised by the language of rights and free choice used by students crossing the picket; I don’t know if they realised they were telling me that they had a right to my labour. I felt that the rights they talked of were thinly veiled claims of entitlement and privilege. Other critics have argued that disruptive actions went too far. I hope that people can engage a little more critically with where they have chosen to draw the line of acceptable political activity — it seems they have taken the police involvement as the point at which reasonable protest ends, and I do not think the police are in a good position to make that decision.

[1] For example, in 2003 at UWS, 62.5 per cent of student fees were spent on teaching and learning, in 2012 it was only 38.3 per cent.

Kathryn Ticehurst 

  By now, I hope we have all gorged ourselves on the extensive footage available of the event, which frankly couldn’t have happened in a better place. Not that I wish any harm on the Russians or that they would even notice. No, Russian skies were the perfect stage because the nation’s corrupt police force makes the dashboard camera in a car as necessary an installation as the steering wheel or the gun. If it wasn’t for police officers with greasy palms we’d all be impoverished of the thousand-angled footage. For the unenlightened, it went like this.

  On February 15th, without warning, a 17-metre wide, 11,000-tonne asteroid entered the atmosphere above Russia falling at 18km per second. The atmosphere took most of the stink off and broke the asteroid into many pieces — now called meteors — until the drag incensed the largest fragment into an explosive air burst 23.3km above Chelyabinsk. The meteor released 0.4 petajoules of energy in a concussive shockwave that injured over a thousand people and caused over US$100million in damages. In the metric most utilised when communicating meteor events: that is equivalent to six Hiroshima blasts. [1] Coincidentally, this happened just hours before the 30-metre wide 2012-DA14 flew between the Earth and the orbital height of its geosynchronous satellites, such as those of the Oko system; like a bullet hitting the brim of your hat. We know it was mere coincidence because the objects’ trajectories betrayed vastly different origins, but coincidences collated by our pattern-loving brains form a narrative of inevitability — and, in this instance, that could be a good thing. Although it would be easy to be pessimistic remembering what happened after Apophis.

   The most famous astronomer in the world, Neil deGrasse Tyson, whipped up interest during 2006 for the biggest asteroidal threat to our planet: 2004-MN4. The object presented a 2.7 per cent chance of colliding with Earth in 2029, which was so unprecedented the asteroid earned the official name of Apophis, Egyptian god of uncreation. [2] If 325-metre wide Apophis was to land on Earth, it would certainly be the most catastrophic event recorded. Just how catastrophic? According to predictions made by researchers at Imperial College London and Purdue University, [3] an asteroid the size of 2012-DA14 — the one that passed between your scalp and the satellite providing your single uncle with Foxtel — would have released six times the air burst energy as the one over Chelyabinsk; 7km closer to ground-level too. One that was 85-metres in diameter would release 177 times the energy at only 400-metres above ground; low enough to land right in the lap of someone drinking a banana daiquiri in the Petronas Towers’ sky-lounge. Apophis would enter the atmosphere with the energy of 7845 Chelyabinsk meteors — over 47000 Hiroshima blasts [4] — skipping the mid-air conflagration crap to leave a crater 4.3km wide and the same across. [5] Tyson rendered the catastrophe well enough, in his folksy, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sort of way, but did a better job suggesting how we might avert it. The most feasible plan was to detonate a nuclear weapon above the surface of Apophis, just far enough so as not fracture it, but still to irradiate a layer of surface material. The material blowing off Apophis would nudge it off its trajectory. While not as satisfying as blowing it up, like in Armageddon, [6] it does have the noted advantage of not simply partitioning doom into smaller pieces. Tyson also proposed hovering near the rock with a ship so massive its gravitational attraction would skew Apophis’ trajectory, essentially towing it out of the way. A nudge was the objective of all solutions, including some of the zanier ones, like painting the object white (probably with chalk) to absorb more solar radiation, erecting sails on it to catch the solar wind, strapping a rocket onto it, and shooting it with fucking lasers. Of course, those options involve inventing many technologies, which would increase the minimum warning time needed — a decade — to perhaps multiples of that. And that’s with a good deal of luck in our breast pocket too. Luckily, nothing had to be researched, and no money had to be spent because further observations by NASA and others ruled out the apocalypse in 2029. The date of impact was revised to 2036 and the likelihood to 0.018 per cent; then down to 0.002 per cent; 0.0004 per cent; to currently a 0.000000714 per cent chance — that’s 1 in 140 million — of colliding with Earth in 2036. [7] Everyone was free to resume mid-thought that funding space exploration and pure astrophysical research was wasteful again. [8]

  However, with the Chelyabinsk event (the biggest impact in 100 years) [9] and the closest fly-by in recorded history (2012-DA14) happening within hours of each other, the world realised anew that we live on a mote of dust. Two days after Chelyabinsk, NASA put US$5million into the reassuringly named Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). A day after that, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced US$2million for an asteroid defence program. Then nothing. Endless catastrophising news pieces and sound bites from vainglorious scientists (I’m looking at you, Tyson) have thankfully settled, but so has any renewed impetus. When it wasn’t absolutely certain that we were all going to die, attention wavered and decisions stopped being made; a gratingly familiar scenario.

  A “We the People” petition is currently open to raise NASA’s budget to one per cent of the 2014 US federal budget, [10] a level it hasn’t been at since 1993 when the Hubble telescope was newly launched and increasing humanity’s store of wonder in ways never dreamed of. Of the 100,000 signatures needed by April 6th to prompt an official reply from the Whitehouse, it has 5,521 of them. Even before January’s joke petition to build a real Death Star screwed the pooch by forcing the limit up to 100,000 signatures from the 25,000 it easily surpassed, the petition for NASA has fewer signatures than I have regrets. NASA recently addressed US congress on March 19th asking for a funding increase for programs to observe and deflect asteroids, and the reply from the committee chairman Lamar Smith was, “Maybe we can help you out. Don’t know.” As if NASA was a burnt-out tweaker asking a dealer for an extra rock, just to get them through the Easter drought. This is a global problem and a penurious NASA hurts us all. Cuts to NASA have already caused them to withdraw funding for Australia’s Siding Spring Survey, the only programme tracking near-Earth objects that may nail the southern hemisphere. Come this July, power will be shut off, and the slack won’t be picked up until Chile’s Large Synoptic Survey Telescope begins operation in 2020. That is seven years where the entire bottom half of this planet is open to cavitation. Potentially there are over one million asteroids with Earth-approaching orbits, with only a fraction accounted for. 95 per cent of the real world-enders are tracked and catalogued, and none pose a threat within a time span like seven years, [11] but only 10 per cent of objects between 140-metres to 1km in diameter are known. Only one per cent in the 30-100m range are known of, and anything less than 30-meters across is all but invisible to current technology. And we have seen what 17-metres of banshee rock can do.

  The proposals to get us and our technologies to a level where we won’t be vulnerable to sudden ruin were promptly made after Chelyabinsk, and just as promptly forgotten about or rejected. We need a truly international effort to observe, catalogue, and heaven forbid, deflect objects heading to our planet. A global effort will be of even greater import if the object can’t be deterred, and ruin is inevitable. Nothing short of full scale nuclear war would elicit such dire humanitarian need.

  So we are back to Petrov and his big red button. I mentioned the story at the outset because the world Petrov lived in was one of misplaced hysteria; and worse yet, misplaced focus. We so often live in a dread of our own making, and act full-bloodedly in ways to combat that dread. But when the adversity is truly global, truly cosmic, we yield to cosy ambivalence. It’s a pattern in the psyche of our species of ape. We struggle unthinkingly to put the match to that cotton, but in one white moment, none of it will matter.

  Does this remind you of anything else?

[1] And, by my calculations, almost enough to power the ghastly Manly LGA at 2012’s rate of electrical consumption for a whole year. A similar event which I lamentably haven’t the space to write about occurred over Tunguska in 1908 — also in Russia. Boy, they can’t catch a break, can they? — and let off enough energy to keep Manly going until 2165. Chilling.

[2] Apophis is the Greek appellation for whom the Egyptians called Apep.

[3] These predictions are for a stony asteroid moving at 12.7km per second, so the actual figures would vary of course.

[4] Making Manly The Eternal City.

[5] Assuming many things: trajectory, asteroid composition, asteroid fragmentation and place of impact in sedimentary rock.

[6] I know you’ve seen Armageddon and I know you liked it too. I also know that you wouldn’t think the most outrageous detail — mining an asteroid, namely — would be the only part of the film in the extended catchment area of reality. In truth, NASA uses Armageddon in its management training program as it contains 168 astronomical impossibilities, but landing craft to mine an asteroid for its metal guts is not one of them. Quarries of rare elements like platinum, palladium, and gold, and the more workman-like iron, cobalt, and nickel fill the orbital plane between Mars and Jupiter; indeed, the only reason the metals are in the Earth’s crust is because asteroids impregnated the infant planet with them. Bonkers as it sounds, it has been estimated that they contain enough wealth to furnish every blessed one of us with US$100billion. With that sort of dosh up for grabs it’s hardly surprising that the earliest projections figure extensive mining projects to begin in 2023.

[7] Apophis currently has a slightly larger chance of landing in 2068: 0.00023 per cent.

[8] A sentiment that reached critical mass during the launch of the Curiosity mission to Mars last year, exposing the depths of pettiness in people who denounced the mission as a waste — primarily on twitter, ironically. For all we can expect the Curiosity mission to teach us, it was scant investment. Here’s the perspective: the US plans to pimp-out its air force with 2443 F-35 fighter jets which, conservatively, cost around $250million each. That’s near a decapitating $600billion: enough for 240 Curiosity rovers to turn Mars into small parking lot. One we’re going to need when we’re forced to move there.

[9] Since Tunguska.

[10] NASA’s budget for 2013 is US$19billion, less than half of one per cent of the total federal budget.

[11] As of now, the highest known chance of collision comes on the vapour trail of 1950-DA. It has a diameter of 1.1km — only 7-11 per cent the rock that took care of the dinosaurs, but enough to make a strong statement — and a maximum 0.33 per cent chance of hitting the Earth on March 16, 2880. It’s only a 1 in 300 shot, but if it did land it wouldn’t come a moment too soon, to gracefully spare the world from the 949th St Patrick’s Day in a row.

Gonzalo Peralta

  But even in this case, the fact that the victim had been drinking gave her attackers an out. On social and traditional media, America seemed to mourn the guilty verdict. The attackers were 16 and 17 — the same age as the victim — and part of the school football team. CNN stated that the guilty verdict made “lives fall apart” and described the attackers as “football stars, very good students”. Much of the focus was on the attackers, how difficult the sentencing process was for them, what the lasting effect on the attackers would be — and little about what the lasting effect on the victim would be. A young woman was raped. She was the victim. The attackers— no matter their age — committed a horrendous crime, and the media focusses on how this crime will affect them for the rest of their lives, not how it will affect the victim.

  Social media was even more horrifying. People calling the victim a liar, a “loose drunk slut”, stating “it’s not rape … it’s the girls fault” and “be responsible for your actions ladies before your drunken decisions ruin innocent lives [sic]”. Those innocent boys sexually assaulted a young woman, and she is the one to ruin their lives? The internet may bring out the troll in everyone, but sifting through the tweets makes it obvious that the attitude is an epidemic, not just the belief of a few isolated assholes.

  Unfortunately, it just reinforces what a lot of people have been taught their entire lives. It’s your fault if you get assaulted when you’re drunk. It’s your fault if you get assaulted when you’re wearing a short skirt. It’s your fault if you get assaulted when you’re walking home alone. It’s been said before, but that isn’t what we need people to hear. We need people to hear what rape is  — that it’s not just a stranger assaulting a young, scantily clad woman in the bushes — and we need to teach people that it’s never acceptable. Not for any reason. We need to teach people the importance of consent, understanding it, and that alcohol is not a replacement for it.

  Until we do that, sixteen year olds — and every other age too — will blame themselves for sexual assault when they’re the victim. They won’t report it when it happens to them, because they think that they are in the wrong, or they think that no one will believe them anyway. Because they were drunk. Because their attackers are such nice, promising boys. Because she can’t commit rape, she’s a girl!

  I was sexually assaulted when I was sixteen. Like the victim in the Steubenville case, my attacker was a nice, promising boy. He was well-loved in our high school community, which was close-knit, to say the least. Unlike the victim in the above case, I wasn’t intoxicated — but there was something else holding me back, as well as the fact that he had such a good reputation. He was my boyfriend at the time. At that point, I didn’t really have the conception that rape could really happen in a relationship, and it’s because of that lack of education that I never reported the rape. I told myself that it was my fault. That I hadn’t been a good enough girlfriend. That even if I could report it, I was seen as a slut at school anyway, and there was no one that would ever believe me. Not the police, not my schoolmates, and probably not even my friends.

  And if this recent case is anything to go by, I was right.

  If I had reported him, it’s not likely that the case would have caught the media attention like the Steubenville case did. But maybe someone’s case would have; someone who didn’t report their assault because they were so afraid of the backlash that has accompanied sexual assault trials again and again and again. Sexual assaults continue not to be reported for a number of reasons; perceptions that it won’t succeed even if they report the assault, perceptions that they won’t be believed, perceptions that it “wasn’t really rape”. Survivors of sexual assault continue to suffer in silence, coping in their own way, and the attackers continue to suffer no repercussions as a result. Now, no victim of sexual assault — or victim of any crime — has any obligation to report the crime, but we should be minimising the barriers to reporting crime, and not making the victims feel like they are the ones in the wrong. Because victims of crime, particularly victims of sexual assault, are not in the wrong.

  It just seems like the media needs to get that message as well, before we can pass it onto the victims.

Amelia Kerridge

  After attending, I decided the answer to that is almost anything.

  Don’t get me wrong, sex is a pretty good thing. Although I shudder to think of it, sex is the reason I, and you, dear reader, are here. I’m entirely sex-positive.

But the overriding feeling I got from Sexpo was that it was there to make the Benjamins for faceless multinational conglomerates, not celebrate the strange and unparalleled phenomenon that is human sexuality. Whilst advertised as providing a “fun, vibrant and positive atmosphere for like-minded people to enjoy all things adult”, the only agreeance I have with that heading was that it was “adult”. It’s hard to be positive when you’re bombarded with multiple stands promising a “designa vagina” for $4999, or group bookings to Thailand for cheap “cosmetic tourism”.

  As I watched “Trinity Porter and the Wildest Women in the West” stack three-high on top of each other, fingering and probably going down on each other (I wasn’t paying too much attention) naked on stage, I actually found it dull. In fact, I found it so scintillating that I think I yawned, because it’s contagious, and I saw my companion yawning seconds before me.

  If ol’ Trinity and her work colleagues appeared to enjoy their performance, and not just look like they were trying to get enough dough to enter rack city, bitch rack rack city, bitch, then I would have thought “hats off to you, sisters”, but their lobotomised eyes, magnified on two big screens and cast out to the grandstands sang a different tune. And that tune was flat.  These women were clearly just doing the rounds.

  Many adult entertainers develop dissociative syndrome to be able to psychologically cope with their jobs, and these women were displaying all the right symptoms. I once spoke to a sex worker who told me she did things like trying to memorise all the Chinese dynasties in chronological order whilst “on the job”. I suppose that’s the cave you crawl into when your life consists of travelling around from city to city having your vagina spat on by two other women in front of large crowds of strangers.

  Looking around and surveying people’s reactions to this, I doubt anyone got aroused. Even the rambunctious group of acne-clad 18-year-old boys next to me didn’t seem to be digging it. If Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell were somehow able to procreate, this event would have been their progeny. It was just so damn awkward. I thought it interesting that the male strippers only got down to their thongs. Obviously, men showing their junk was too controversial, but male strippers are just funny rather than sexual, so everyone was was more or less happy.

  Not to be dissuaded, I dragged my companion around, eager to get an accurate understanding of the convention. Some stuff was genuinely funny, like Pricasso, a loquacious and talented pink-vinyl-chap and cowboy-hat-wearing artist whose modesty was concealed only by a small zip-up pouch. who paints pictures with his…appendage (obviously). His artworks were actually pretty good. As we chatted to him about the university in Sydney his son is currently attending and his “body-friendly” paint recipes, he seemed more like a friendly British uncle than exhibitor at Sexpo. There was also a stall for Hero Condoms that promised to distribute a condom to people in developing countries to reduce HIV for for every condom bought by  Australians.

  Some stuff was just to be expected, there were enough vibrators and male mastubatory aids (that I was assured are ergonomically designed and made from the highest quality Japanese silicon) and female role-play costumes to fill a Hugh Hefner house. There were pole-dancing stalls and many lingerie stalls.

  Other stuff (in my opinion) was just messed up, like the blow-up granny sex-doll with removable false teeth.

  There was also the gerbil train, which featured mannequins getting their penises guillotined, submissive women being pissed on, being sprayed in the face with mist coming out of a dummy’s penis, a guy on all fours shitting out of a light-up tube and a whole bunch of other things.

  Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s normalising some people’s sexual habits so we can work toward one big happy sexual world where pissing on people for sexual gratification is accepted, or maybe it’s just homogenising and commercialising fucked-up stuff that porn is perpetuating.

  Whilst I find a lot of the stuff that people are into doesn’t exactly float my boat, I try not to judge. For previous articles and some fairly extensive quantitative research for major assignments etc, I’ve probably seen more porn than your average 15-year-old male. (Try explaining THAT to your computer-fixy guy when you come to him with a virus-laden laptop and a search history that would make Jenna Jameson blush.  He won’t believe you, but whenever you run into him randomly at the bus stop, he’ll smirk at you and give you a look that says “I know what you’re into”).

  As a result of said psychologically-damaging porn-viewing, I figured there wasn’t much I haven’t seen. Having said that, watching an overweight guy dressed up as a cat having the absolute shit flogged out of him by his boyfriend in the BDSM stand made me a little bit uncomfortable, my companion was almost convulsing out of disgust.

“He loves it, he has one of the highest pain thresholds out of everyone I know, he can be bleeding (from the lashings) and not even wince”, I’m informed by a good-looking clean-cut guy, who tells me he’s a doctor at St Vincent’s and is interested in “electrical-play”. “But get him with electricity and he’ll drop, it’s just about knowing your strengths and weaknesses” he added.

Chatting to this guy about using needles and injecting fluids that give you 24-hour penis or breast implants, sensory deprivation and slaves, I’m struck by how normal he appears and how we could as well have been having a conversation about cornflour.

  After declining to sit on on what he describes as the world’s best chair-vibrator, I feel compelled to prove I’m not a fuddy-duddy and so he electrocuted my and my companion’s arm at 25 per cent. It wasn’t so bad, just tickled in a slightly stinging way. Like getting a tattoo on a fleshy part of your body. Taking my laughter as an indication of me disregarding the pain, he assured me that turning it up to 100 per cent is no longer a walk in the park, but that it looks really cool in the dark because you can see the electrical current.

  In that way, I feel that sexpo could offer a kind of refuge for those who feel like they’re abnormal. On the other hand, I felt lot of the stands were just out to make money by telling people that they, or the sex they’re having, isn’t good enough.

  I know a lot of female friends who do things they’re not comfortable with or that hurt them because they’re too scared of being seen as old-fashioned or uptight. These are normally empowered and intelligent women. I work with a guy who thinks that ejaculating on a passed-out woman’s face and taking photos of it on her phone is an acceptable, nee brag-worthy accomplishment, but alas, I digress.

  Leaving the Sex Maze, a collection of mirrored walls, I navigated my way through with the labyrinth with the encouragement of an unconvincing voiceover telling me “Oh baby, like that”. Like WHAT, exactly? Navigate through the maze “like that”? I was glad our media passes meant we didn’t have to fork out the two or so bucks for entry. Making our way to the Fetish demonstration exhibition, we ran into an obstreperous and very caustic dominatrix woman in lingerie and thigh-high boots parading around harassing men by physically blocking their path whilst ululating how they’re “guaranteed  to see a pussy for two bucks” over a microphone. To me, it seemed more like a fishmongerer selling their catch than a sexy romp, or general exploitative practice.

  Probably the most offensive and pernicious part were the “Designa Vagina” stalls that promised to increase male and female enjoyment. Given that some of the poor women pictured in the A4 folders of “before” and “after” actually would need surgery, as they had extreme deformities, out of the 15 or so, only two could be considered to be outside the normal range for the size of their vaginas (that’s 2-10cm, girls).

  Hiding my media pass lanyard, two young guys were looking at the pictures.“Is this not normal?”, one of them asked the woman at the stall “God no, that’s gross”, the obviously professional stand-operator responded.

  So, would I recommend Sexpo? If it was free, maybe once — just to check it out — but I wouldn’t pay for it. I was that curious/dumb kid who licked the metal freezer door and super-glued my fingers together, I totally get curiousity. But, at the end of the day, the overriding theme of the day for me was indifference. At least you get street cred when you super-glue your fingers together. Imma stick to that.

Renee Griffin
@reneesgrenades

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 When I was five, my parents bought a block of land in Barrington, NSW, which is kind of near Taree and Forster. Over the next four or so years, we built a mud-brick house on it. My parents, a variety of relatives and some guy called Trent, who we found on the side of the road in town, built the house over weekends, school holidays and all manner of other days off that we had over the course of my primary school career.

 Barrington is rural. I have fond memories of throwing rocks in the river for hours (before I learned how to skip them), canoeing around the little billabong — occasionally falling into the stagnant water. We climbed all the trees in the bush, made pretend food out of moss and other bits of nature. It was a proud moment for me, the day that my parents let me lay one of the bricks in the kitchen, and I did my best to help pave the steps that led to the front door. More often than not, my help ended with a desperate plea to “go play in the bush, please”, but I wasn’t particularly deterred.

 I have vague memories of my parents having several near-death experiences during the construction of the house. Dad fell through the ceiling on one occasion, and my mum almost drove off a cliff. I think Dad almost knocked us into the billabong with a boulder at one point, but near misses make good stories, and nobody was ever more badly hurt than when we had run-ins with the bully-ants up the hill.

The nearby town of Gloucester had a yearly celebration in winter called “Snowfest”, when a truckload of “snow” would be brought down the mountain and dumped in the park. There were snowman-building competitions and the NSW Rural Fire Service would provide the goodie-bags.

When the house was finally complete, we had the comforts of hot water and electricity. In the evenings, we would gather kindling to bring a fire to life in our old, iron potbelly stove, while Mum made some sort of delicious stew and Dad finished fencing the perimeter off to keep out the neighbours’ goats and cattle.

 We had warmth and light, but the house still doesn’t have a phone line, mobile reception or television. We played board games, walked through the bush, made cubby-houses, tamed bush-turkeys and invented thousands of strange games to pass the time. A few trees covered in flood-rack provided a house for fairies, Norah and Alistinia, who ate from round leaf plates that dropped from one of the weight-bearing columns.

 Needless to say, we weren’t the best-dressed kids at school, back home. Most of our wardrobe consisted of very practical, but somewhat daggy overalls, tracksuit pants with ankle-cuffs and skivvies. Mum made a lot of our early clothing and it always fit pretty well.

I guess where I’m going with all of this is that my experiences in the Australian bush are, quite possibly, more important to me than I can really relate through a column like this. The separation from city and suburban living, our learned appreciation of willy-wagtails and water-rats is absolutely invaluable. I still go to that house with my friends, housemates and colleagues when I have the chance, and I show them the cows being milked at the dairy farm. We canoe down the rapids in the Barrington River, and we talk about how very lucky we are to really have a break from this smoggy jungle of skyscrapers. When I ask for company to drive up the hill and get reception, send a text or check our emails, I rarely get a taker. Everybody needs a break, and there’s no place better than in a house in the bush, made from mud, overlooking a billabong and 50 species of birds.

Lily Ray
@lilydray

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