Australian Politics
The causes and cures of lethal male domestic violence
Ms Van Badham below recognizes that lethal male domestic violence has increased in recent years but has only vague generalizations and a call for more talking about it to offer as a solution.
She ignores the fact that the broadly feminist value-set that she promotes has never been more widespread and accepted than it is now . To put it crudely, more feminism has been accompanied by more domestic violence. That is the correlation that is being ignored. Correlation is not always causation but correlation is always a feature of causation, as David Hume long ago pointed out.
So it should be a working hypothesis that the increased dominance of feminist values is at least partly to blame for the increase in DV.
And why that night be so is not hard to see. Waleed Aly rightly sees that the major influence on DV is a feeling among men that they are being shamed: "the desire to hurt women actually comes from attackers feeling shamed and humiliated"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13377481/waleed-aly-domestic-violence-crisis-Australia.html
Aly is talking about men being shamed and humiliated by their women partners but being shamed by their culture is an obvious extension of that. Being shamed and humiliated in general is likely to be resented.And there is a huge theme in public discussions to the effect that men and masculinity is "toxic". How are men expected to feel about such a drumbeat of abuse aimed at them? That part of the response might be rage is pretty obvious and that an outlet for that rage might be one of the supposedly superior beings in their presence is hardly surprising
So the supposed remedy for DV -- more feminist values -- might in fact be part of its cause. That possibilty will not be confronted any time soon -- sadly for endangered women. But a broad recognition that extreme feminism is "toxic" would help
In the wake of more, more, more reports of lethal male violence against women in Australia – and the protests demanding actions that have followed them – Michael Salter’s analysis of the problem is refreshingly clear. “Education and public awareness are important but they are not, in themselves, a cure,” the academic wrote last week. “We need a strategic, coordinated, practical approach that integrates many different responses and listens closely to frontline workers and community members.”
Australia’s public conversation about male violence has never been so loud. We’ve arrived at a moment when the community is screaming for action. Even Sky News reports that Australians “want immediate change to combat the domestic violence crisis”.
It’s a long way from 1953’s reader suggestions published in the Adelaide papers: “I’ve found if I take a strap to my wife occasionally, she’s all the better for it. She admits I’ve been a good husband to her.” Back then, papers framed “Can wife beating ever be justified?” as an open question.
That these attitudes remain in the memory of living generations, is, of course, one of the reasons that perpetrators still exist. Research 10 years ago explained that male sex offenders are “more likely to commit sexual violence in communities where sexual violence goes unpunished” and the influence of sexist traditions informs a male rapist’s worldview. Yet decades of public grief, horror and condemnation – as well as feminist activism delivering legal and institutional reform – have upended this traditional majority sanction of male violence and transformed public values. The 30% rise in the rate of Australian women murdered by intimate partners in the last year after three decades of a downwards trend comes, therefore, as a shock.
A bleak national realisation is dawning: while politics does flow downstream from culture, politics still has to solve the problem that culture identifies. Government works most efficiently when reform can be broad-based and structural – and Salter’s point is that the problem is messy and difficult, with unstable patterns, individual cases and no universal solutions. Ending violence against women requires not just sentiment but government, and other institutions, as well every kind of community – from cultural groups to sporting teams to the family – addressing different, variable and changing circumstances and responsibilities.
This week the Albanese government summoned the national cabinet to announce a $925m investment in counter-violence strategies. These include support payments for women fleeing violent relationships, increased funding for services to help those women and resources for action against deepfake pornography and other kinds of online abuse. The prime minister is not making the impossible promise that the policy suite is an immediate end to violence, but “a further step forward”.
The package is couched in terms of pilots and trials and monitoring because what will and won’t work is up against a community of perpetrators relentless in their cruel creativity. The challenges are complex when everything from urban planning to superannuation to care relationship settings can pose risks to women’s safety. I have survived a violent relationship, harassment, stalking and a hospitalisation from sexual assault … yet even I was stunned at the revelation of men using smart fridges to threaten women. Effective responses meet conflicts and contradictions. Note, for example, demands from anti-violence campaigners to revoke reforms to bail laws in Victoria … that were introduced to redress harms imposed by them on Indigenous communities, young people and people with disabilities.
The frustration of handing the policy response over to politicians is, perhaps, that it feels like an admission of powerlessness. But while government pilots start and public resources shift, there remain open fronts for cultural action that we may finally be ready to face.
Incest and other family violence survivors will remind you that the family home remains the most dangerous place for women and children, while 51% of children from abusive homes are abused as adults. In a world that still insists to women and girls that romantic partnership and family should dominate their aspirations and trajectories, the narrative we can, should, must lead is for genuinely empowering alternatives; economic interdependence, sisterhood, friendship, community – especially in the context of a resurgent western far right so active in promoting tradwives and reproductive unfreedom.
Not as culture war for culture war’s sake – but for survival.
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Yarra Valley Grammar School students suspended over disturbing list rating female classmates
This is hysteria over nothing. We all evalute other people's appearance all the time. Why not discuss it? The behaviour described is not uncommon. It is simply adolescents enlisting their friends in at attempt to get an understanding of females, a common puzzle for males of all ages. And the sense of humour in it has been missed. There is nothing abnormal or dangerous about it.
Four boys from a Melbourne private school have been suspended after a list was posted to social media rating their female classmates.
The shocking list was posted by Year 11 students from Yarra Valley Grammar School in Ringwood onto the platform Discord and was discovered by the school last Wednesday.
It featured photos of female students and ranked them from best to worst as 'wifeys', 'cuties', 'mid', 'object', 'get out' and 'unrapeable'.
The students were suspended on Friday pending further investigation, Nine reports.
Yarra Valley Grammar principal Dr Mark Merry spoke to Nine on Sunday and described the post as 'disgraceful'.
'Respect for each other is in the DNA of this school, and so this was a shock not only to us … but it was a shock to the year level and the boys in the year level that see this as way, way out of line,' he said.
He said he was offended by the final category, and has since reported the matter to police to ensure the list wasn't linked to any criminal offence.
'As a father, I find it absolutely outrageous, disgraceful, offensive. As a principal, I need to make some decisions [about] what we do about all of this,' he said.
'My first impulse and concern is about the wellbeing of the girls concerned. I want to make sure they feel assured and supported by the school.'
'We are going to be consulting the police because the language used could be an inferred threat.'
'I don't think it was, but we need to get further advice on that…I'm hoping it was an appalling lapse in judgment.'
It costs around $30,000 a year to send a student to the elite Ringwood private school, and Dr Merry said the school prides itself on teaching 'respectful relationships'.
'We are well aware of the broader issues in relation to respecting women…we need to really do our best to ensure that young men understand their responsibilities and their boundaries of how they should behave,' he said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13385557/Yarra-Valley-Grammar-School-ranking-list.html
***************************************************Labor’s spending urge is a splurge that must end
Canberra, we have a big problem: spending. Your spending, not ours, although it is our money at stake, with not much change out of $700bn this financial year.
Amid a cost-of-living crunch for families, the Albanese government continues to splurge at twice the rate of households.
According to the mid-year budget update, over this financial year and next, Labor’s spending will grow, after inflation, by a cumulative 4.9 per cent, compared with around 2.5 per cent for private consumption.
Workers’ incomes have been squeezed by elevated mortgage interest costs, higher taxes and an inflation rate of 6.5 per cent, based on the ABS measure of living costs for “employee households”.
Canberra, by contrast, has been rolling in revenue post-pandemic because of those temporary high prices for iron ore, coal and gas and that stellar employment growth, pumped up by record migration.
So instead of seeing this bonanza in company and personal income tax as the gift from the fiscal gods that it is, Labor has been increasing its spending – not only adding juice short-term to an economy struggling with inflation but baking in forever commitments in health, aged care, disability services, defence and a larger public service.
As well, there is a range of off-budget grants, soft loans and co-investments that will fund Labor’s green new deal of local manufacturing and renewable energy projects.
Mainstream economists and global agencies have been politely but emphatically telling Jim Chalmers that these public boondoggles and his relatively slack budgeting are not helping the Reserve Bank as it tries to bring inflation back to target with the very blunt interest-rate tool it deploys.
In fact, the loosening of the purse strings by the Treasurer and his provincial counterparts and high immigration have been behind much of the homegrown inflation that governor Michele Bullock is trying to tame.
It’s true Labor is kicking back some of the extra revenue that’s come from bracket creep (when wage inflation smashes into non-indexed tax thresholds, and a worker’s average tax rate rises), with more than $20bn flowing next financial year in the revamped stage three tax cuts.
Again, it’s nice, but it won’t help the RBA’s mission.
Naturally, Chalmers is trying to control the narrative ahead of his annual fiscal extravaganza on Tuesday week, skiting about his prudence in banking almost all of the revenue upgrades this financial year.
What about the remaining three years of the forwards?
And the larger deficits that will follow?
Take away the cyclical and one-off effects from spending and taxing and the federal budget is in structural deficit, for years and years.
Fixing this dire problem will require proper fiscal rules, discipline and serious adults to level with Australians about the difficult decisions that must be taken for governments live within their means.
The Treasurer and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher insist their approach is as tight as a drum and that they’re working overtime to get value for taxpayers by cutting out wasteful spending.
Really? So how can Labor possibly justify an advertising campaign for the coming tax cuts that will likely cost $25m when you consider the $18m in contracted media placement and another third or so more in add-on creative charges.
Is there a single taxpayer among the 13.6 million receiving a tax cut from July 1 who thinks it’s a good idea to spend more of their hard-earned on a political vanity fest ahead of the next election?
And with a straight face, Labor calls this “leaning in” and “quality spending”.
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Hundreds of patients died after catching COVID in Victorian hospitals, new data shows
When Dean's* father was rushed to hospital with a bad case of gastro in February, he assumed he'd be back on his feet in a few days.
Instead, he caught COVID, probably in the emergency department at the Monash Medical Centre, a major hospital in Melbourne's south-east. His 79-year-old dad became so unwell, so quickly, that Dean — who visited him in the infectious diseases ward wearing an N95 mask — was terrified he wouldn't survive.
"He was as sick as I'd ever seen him," said Dean, who was shocked that his father's COVID infection seemed to trigger symptoms of Huntington's Disease, a neurodegenerative condition he'd been diagnosed with many years earlier. "I'd say it was very touch-and-go. I've seen people with cancer a few days before they've died, and there was a look in his eye and he was completely emaciated. He couldn't speak, couldn't communicate — he was just croaking."
Dean was also shocked that most of the hospital staff were wearing surgical masks, some on their chin. It bothered him, he said, because surgical masks are much less effective at preventing COVID transmission than N95 respirators. "No one seemed to give a hoot about protecting themselves or the patients," he said. "From what I know about COVID, I believe all the staff in an infectious diseases ward should be wearing respirators … the fact that it is not standard is just bamboozling."
But perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. For months doctors and public health experts have been warning that too many patients are catching COVID in Australian hospitals with sometimes devastating consequences — though timely statistics are difficult to access because health departments do not publish them.
Now, new data shows thousands of patients caught COVID in Victorian public hospitals in the past two years — and hundreds died — fuelling concerns that hospitals are not taking strong enough precautions against airborne viruses, and calls for stronger leadership from the Department of Health.
Almost one in 10 patients who caught COVID in hospital died
Documents obtained by ABC News under Freedom of Information laws reveal at least 6,212 patients caught COVID in hospital in 24 months — 3,890 in 2022 and 2,322 in 2023. Of those, 586 died — almost six per week, on average — with men dying at a higher rate than women (11 per cent vs 8 per cent).
Though hospital-acquired infections and deaths declined in 2023 — in line with COVID mortality trends in the broader community — the proportion of patients who died after catching the virus in hospital hardly budged, dropping from about 10 per cent in 2022 to about 9 per cent in 2023.
It comes following the release of new research that shows screening hospital patients for COVID and staff wearing N95 masks can substantially reduce infections and deaths, saving the health system potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the long term. Experts say the findings should spark a paradigm shift in the way hospitals approach COVID infection prevention — that's if the latest indicators of illness and death don't.
Too many patients are catching COVID in hospitals, doctors say
Hospitals have become a strange new battleground in the fight against COVID, with doctors and public health experts concerned that too many patients are catching the virus — and an alarming number are dying — as a result of inadequate infection control.
"The numbers indicate that there is a big problem here — these infections and deaths are potentially preventable," said Associate Professor Suman Majumdar, chief health officer for COVID and health emergencies at the Burnet Institute. "We're talking about a specific setting where people are sicker, more vulnerable and more at risk. We need to drastically reduce the risk of people catching COVID in hospital when they don't come in with it. I think we can all agree we can do better — that should be the starting point."
Alarmingly, the proportion of hospitalised COVID patients who caught the virus in public hospitals was much higher last year than in 2022 — up from 13 per cent to 20 per cent, on average — coinciding with a reduction in COVID screening and healthcare worker mask use across the state. Most Victorian hospitals began scaling back infection prevention measures in late 2022, when pandemic public health orders were revoked.
Now, because hospitals determine their own COVID policies, there is wide variation in how they approach the issue. For instance, in the past fortnight several health services — including St Vincent's in Melbourne and Barwon Health — announced they were no longer requiring staff to wear masks in clinical areas because community transmission had fallen (the latest available data shows it's increasing). Others dropped masking and scaled back testing months ago, while some still insist on routine testing and surgical mask use in particular wards.
With golden staph, 'we aim for zero'
"There's no consistency between health services," said Stéphane Bouchoucha, president of the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control and associate professor in nursing at Deakin University. "And there doesn't seem to be leadership from the Department of Health, saying, 'We want to reduce COVID infections in healthcare, therefore … we need to do universal testing, we need to mandate N95 masks for healthcare workers'."
As for the number of people catching COVID in hospital, Dr Bouchoucha said: "I think any hospital acquired infection is concerning". There isn't an "acceptable" number of golden staph or tuberculosis infections — "we aim for zero", he said. "So why don't we do that with COVID?"
He's not the only one asking that question. Staphylococcus aureus or golden staph bloodstream infections can be life-threatening, which is why hospitals track and report them and aim to prevent them using hand hygiene strategies — it's part of hospital accreditation standards and there are targets in every state. But there are no targets or reporting requirements for COVID, Dr Majumdar said.
As a point of comparison, he said, there are about 600 staph aureus bacteraemia infections in Victoria each year, with a similar death rate to COVID hospital-acquired infections. "So why aren't we applying the same mindset and measures for airborne infections such as COVID and influenza?"
At the hospital level, there are several possible answers. Many health services, under huge financial pressure, have rolled back COVID mitigations to try and save money — sometimes against the advice of their own infection prevention leads. Many hospital executives also subscribe to the myth that COVID is "just a cold" and does not warrant taking serious action against, while others have acted on complaints that staff are "sick of wearing" masks.
"Many people are telling me they're tired of wearing masks and some patients are saying they're tired of seeing their carers in masks, as well," Professor Rhonda Stuart, director of public health and infection prevention at Monash Health, told staff at an employee forum in February.
Professor Stuart pointed to a UK study that found removing a surgical mask wearing policy in some hospital wards did not significantly affect the rate of nosocomial COVID infections, or those caught in hospital. "I think we're starting to see that possibly happening across Monash at the moment," she said — "that maybe masks aren't making the difference in hospital-acquired infections".
Testing and N95s save lives and money
But the findings of a new preprint study pose a serious challenge to that claim. For the study, researchers from the Burnet Institute and the Victorian Department of Health, which funded it, used a mathematical model to simulate outbreaks in a hospital with various combinations of interventions in place: different kinds of masks worn or admission testing performed.
They also calculated the statewide financial costs of each intervention — N95 vs surgical masks, PCR vs rapid antigen testing (RAT), and patient bed costs and staff absenteeism — as well as the health outcomes for infected patients.
How scientists are protecting themselves from COVID
Three of Australia's leading COVID-19 experts share their personal safety strategies and reflect on what must happen if we're to blunt the growing health crisis the pandemic is causing — and prepare for the next one.
The results were striking: compared to staff wearing surgical masks and not screening patients on admission, the combination of wearing N95 masks and testing patients using RATs was the cheapest, saving an estimated $78.4 million and preventing 1,543 deaths statewide per year. Staff wearing N95s and screening patients with PCR tests was the most effective option, saving $62.6 million and preventing 1,684 deaths per year.
In other words, testing and wearing N95s to detect and prevent COVID can save lives and money because it reduces the costs of keeping patients in hospital for longer and replacing furloughed staff.
"I think it provides a very persuasive rationale that doing small things to reduce infections can add up to big positive impacts and cost benefits," said Dr Majumdar, a co-author of the study. "It then becomes an issue of how practical it is for hospitals to implement these interventions and change behaviours. We know improving ventilation, testing and wearing masks has been effective during the pandemic, so I don't think there's an argument to say it's not feasible or not worth figuring out how to do."
The Victorian Department of Health did not respond directly to questions about whether it would be acting on the study's findings, or if it was comfortable with current rates of illness and death in hospitals. "Since the pandemic began we have assisted health services to respond to increased impacts of COVID-19 — a roadmap to guide hospital responses was introduced and has remained in place since June 2022," a Department spokesperson said. "Modelling is one of many tools used when developing and evaluating healthcare policy."
Managing 'masking fatigue'
But hospitals don't always follow that "roadmap". Associate Professor Caroline Marshall, head of the Royal Melbourne Hospital's Infection Prevention and Surveillance Service, said her hospital uses a "hierarchy of controls" to prevent COVID transmission — strategies honed in the grim early years of the pandemic when patients and staff were infected in dizzying numbers.
Today, every patient is screened for COVID on admission with a PCR test — which few hospitals still do. COVID patients are generally cared for in single-bed negative pressure rooms by staff in N95 masks. Air purifiers are stationed around the hospital, an old building with not-so-great ventilation.
"To me … any sort of nosocomial infection is a disaster," Dr Marshall said. "So we do our utmost and we're not always successful, but we do as much as we reasonably can [to prevent them] based on the evidence we have and the factors we have to take into account."
One of those factors is the impact of masking on healthcare workers, who Dr Marshall said are "sick of wearing" N95 respirators because they're uncomfortable. At the moment Royal Melbourne Hospital staff must wear surgical masks in clinical areas unless they're caring for COVID, transplant or haematology patients, when N95s are required.
The decision to use surgical masks is influenced by a few things, Dr Marshall said, including the prevalence of COVID in the community, the severity of circulating variants, population levels of immunity and a new tolerance for risk among staff. "If a staff member wants to wear one for whatever reason, they can," she said. "But I think the reality is, at a practical level, you cannot continue to get staff to wear N95 masks forever."
Other infection prevention control experts disagree. For Dr Bouchoucha, masking fatigue is a challenge to be "managed", not succumbed to — including because addressing healthcare workers' concerns about respirator use improves compliance and patient safety. "It's definitely something to take into account," he said. "But we can mitigate it."
Catching COVID made Ruby sick and derailed her care
Many patients feel similarly. When Ruby* caught COVID in hospital earlier this year, she was fully prepared to feel terrible for a few days — but she didn't expect it to completely derail the care she was there to receive.
Ruby was admitted to Upton House, the adult psychiatric unit at Box Hill Hospital, in late January after experiencing family violence and a decline in her mental health. When she tested positive to COVID a few days later, she wasn't surprised: other patients with COVID were allowed to roam freely through the ward without masks, she said, and staff were either in surgical masks — many "below their nose" — or no masks at all.
"It made me really sick," said Ruby, who suffered mostly from gastrointestinal symptoms, brain fog and low mood. "I was pissed off that I'd caught COVID but I didn't realise it would affect my care as much as it did, and I was really shocked at the drop-off in psychiatric support as soon as I had it."
The exterior sign of the Box Hill Hospital, underneath which a bush of white flowers blooms next to a concrete staircase.
Ruby wasn't surprised when she tested positive to COVID during her admission at Box Hill Hospital.(ABC News: Patrick Rocca)
A doctor who prescribed Ruby antivirals dramatically reduced her dose of psychiatric medication without consulting her, she said, which triggered unpleasant side effects. Having COVID also meant her psychiatrist visited her less frequently than he was supposed to, she said, and if she went to the nursing station to ask for paracetamol, she was instructed just to go back to her room. "I also wasn't allowed to go to the kitchen for meals and my food was generally brought to me an hour late, cold, without cutlery," she said. "So most of the time I didn't eat."
Ruby was relieved to be discharged even though she was "in limbo" psychiatrically — feeling much worse than when she arrived — and still testing positive to COVID. "I can't imagine how hard it is to work in a psychiatric unit," she said, adding that the nursing staff were clearly very busy. "But there was a total lack of empathy and then as soon as I had a medical problem [COVID], absolutely no attention or compassion. Something as simple as not being able to get any Panadol was almost traumatic — even though I was in there for more severe trauma issues."
Long COVID will take your health, your wealth — then it will come for your marriage
Long COVID is not just destroying people's health. Behind closed doors, in homes across Australia and abroad, it is irreversibly changing relationships — sometimes for the better, too often for worse.
A spokesperson for Eastern Health told ABC News they were unable to comment on Ruby's case but said if a COVID outbreak occurs, "additional measures are put in place including requirements to wear N95 masks, reduced movement and access to certain wards and clinical areas, increased hand hygiene, taking breaks outside and meeting virtually where possible."
Monash Health also would not address specific questions about Dean's father's admission. "Monash Health provides N95 and surgical masks as part of its infection prevention precautions to protect its patients, visitors and staff," a spokesperson said. "Monash Health cares for COVID-positive patients … in single rooms with negative pressure or negative flow, in addition to requiring staff and visitors to wear appropriate PPE including N95 masks."
At least that's not what Dean observed. He's still upset that the hospital didn't alert him when his father tested positive to COVID, and that his dad blamed himself for catching it in the emergency department in the first place.
"In the whole time of his admission I only saw one staff member … wearing a respirator — I felt overdressed," Dean said. "I'm just horrified that vulnerable people go into a place where they expect to be safe and cared for but are given something that, in this case, potentially nearly kills them and there's no apology — not even acknowledgement."
ABC News requested interviews with infection prevention and control experts at Western Health, Barwon Health and Alfred Health — all declined.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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