The Algorithm Age

Australia’s first truth-telling inquiry has found the British committed genocide of the Aboriginal people in Victoria during their colonisation of the country. The Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report, tabled in the parliament on Tuesday, detailed atrocities like “mass killings, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption, assimilation”. The “decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria ”, the report said, “was the result of a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups”. “This was genocide .” The report recommended that the Victorian First Peoples be compensated, including financially, and asked the government to use a treaty framework to “provide redress for injustice which has occurred during and as a result of the colonial invasion and occupation of First Peoples’ territories”. This would entai...

Two important events concerning sexual harassment took place this week. Australian female-led hospitality advocacy group Sorry Not Sorry toured the United Kingdom, raising awareness of sexual harassment in the hospitality industry. Last year, its founders, along with other former staff for hospitality giant Swillhouse , reported being sexually assaulted at work, rostered alongside their assailants, pressured to take drugs, encouraged to have sex with customers, harassed, discriminated against, and their reports to management ignored. Just days later, this masthead published an explosive exposé about the Merivale hospitality empire, alleging that its VIP customers routinely engaged in lewd and unwelcome sexualised behaviour towards its female staff. Swillhouse and Merivale have denied any wrongdoing. In this same week, a new report by the Australian Human Rights Commission was released, highlighting the ongoing and seemingly intractable problem of sexual har...