Trigger Warning: Mention of physical and sexual domestic violence.

Australia is facing a surge in the rates of domestic violence due to the ongoing pandemic and lockdowns.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recorded an increase of 13% in family and domestic violence-related sexual assaults in 2020 compared to the previous year.

The rate of increase is considerably higher than the two percent increase reported between 2018 and 2019, a contrast compared to the lowest rate of property crimes in 2020 recorded in over 25 years.

Fay Daniel, Director at the service EDVOS (Eastern Domestic Violence Services), said that the number of referrals from external services rose by 20% when compared to pre-lockdown levels.

“50 percent of the referrals we received by the police were labelled high risk and our rates of engagement with first-time victim-survivors doubled when compared to pre covid levels.”

Two-thirds of women who faced domestic violence said the violence started or became worse after the pandemic, according to a survey done by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) due to safety concerns hindering them from seeking help.

Full interactive chart link

Victoria has spent 60 days in lockdown in 2021, which contributes to the rising rates of domestic violence, as stated by the survey, such as spending more time together, higher consumption of alcohol, and less social movement.

“Lockdowns have enabled the perpetrators to have more control over the victim and the constant surveillance has made it harder for the victim to seek help. And as long as these lockdowns continue, I’m afraid we will see another significant increase in the rate of domestic violence unless the government takes drastic measures,” said Daniels regarding how lockdowns have made it harder for victims to receive support.

The Federal Budget of 2021-2022 revealed that domestic violence prevention will receive $1.1 billion this year, a considerably higher figure than last year’s $150 million.

The increase in the budget coincides with the women’s rights gaining more attention and heat with new laws being proposed, one of which was passed on 2^nd September as the Respect at Work bill.

 The government had been facing an increased number of calls to implement Respect@Work, a report from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins including 55 recommendations.

 Some of the recommendations were taken into consideration by the government and approved and more than $64 million is being provided over four years to implement the response to the report.

Currently on average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner and over 30 percent of women have faced physical violence since the age of 15.

If your safety or the safety of someone you know is at risk, call 000. For domestic violence counselling, call the 24/7 helpline 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Clayton is facing a problem of rising rates of illegal dumping in its’ streets.

Illegal dumping is the dumping of the trash illegally on the streets without informing the council or utilising the right methods to dispose of the hard waste.

Illegal dumping on the side of roads costs the council of Monash up to $110,000 annually to remove the rubbish within 24 hours and the cost could potentially be cut by up to $30,000 if the dumpers were to pick up their rubbish within five days.

To enforce this rule, EPA Victoria (Environment Protection Authority Victoria) employs different regulatory tools such as drones, inspections, and partnerships with local councils to locate and prosecute the offenders.

Monash Council also took steps such as introducing a periodic trial when they issued $500 fines if the dumper did not collect their dumped trash within five days and now the offence is officially fined if the identified offender does not dispose of the trash correctly.

“We’re tired of picking up rubbish dumped by people who should know better. The community is paying for this and we think they would rather the money be spent on improving our facilities like playgrounds and sports pavilions rather than cleaning up other people’s mess,” said Councillor and former Mayor Rebecca Paterson addressing the illegal dumping of trash in Monash Council report.

Taqib Abdurrahman, a Monash university student and a Clayton resident, says that the streets are getting filled more and more with trash each passing day which ruins the aesthetic of the area, is hard to traverse, and can be potentially dangerous.

“Many people living in Clayton are university students, most of which are international students, and I feel like they don’t know how to get rid of their trash like furniture and stuff, which leads to them just dumping it in the streets,” says Taqib regarding why illegal dumping occurs frequently in Clayton.

Monash Council offers one free service of collection of hard waste annually to easily provide a way of disposing of hard waste and reduce the illegal dumping rate. More hard waste collection can be called with an extra free anytime throughout the year.

“We only get one chance a year to get rid of our hard waste which is not enough at all. And if you want it for a second time, you need to pay for it, which tends to be pretty expensive,” Taqib says.

“If they really want to reduce the rate of illegal dumping, they should expand the system of hard waste collection.”

“It feels like we are left out of every single conversation,” Sianan Wears says as she talks about her experience as being part of the two minority groups: LGTBQ+ and Indigenous Australian. 

Indigenous Australians who are LGTBQ+ are subjected to the combined effects of both racism and heterosexism, which can have devastating effects on their mental health. According to a survey done in Queensland done for gay aboriginal men, 41% reported experiencing discrimination based on their sexuality. However, 54% of these men also faced racial discrimination from the gay community. 

Australia is a pro-LGBT+ country here multiple events throughout the whole nation celebrating Pride and events supporting the LGBTQ+ community but as colorful as the colors of pride are, the inclusivity in the events itself is not. 

“I remember feeling left out when I was younger, when the media portrayal of gay people was rare and even when they were shown, it was all just white people,” says Sianan, a pansexual indigenous woman who lived in Darwin and moved to Melbourne some years ago. 

“Darwin was a small city so when I moved to Melbourne, I had this vision of more acceptance of me as both someone who is indigenous and someone who belongs to the LGTBQ+ community as most of the time I felt like I had to choose between both.” 

Even though research and a push for more inclusivity is scarce itself for aboriginal people, it becomes even rarer in LGBTQ+ communities in Indigenous communities, a minority amongst a minority. According to an article posted by The Guardian, lack of information and research about LGBTQ+ groups in Indigenous communities is prevalent to the point that there are no statistics for suicide among LGBTQ+ Aboriginal people. The suicide rate among young indigenous people is already alarmingly high, 91 in every 100,000 people and leading cause of death for children under 14.  

Combine that with the fact that suicide rates for LGBT+ are extremely higher compared to their heterosexual demographic (25.6% of LGBT+ people aged 16-17 had attempted suicide in their lifetime while 48.1% of transgender people had attempted suicide), it paints an alarming picture of how little thought is put into about the LGBT+ Aboriginal communities when they are in a dire need of official support and resources dedicated to them to support them through the discrimination and many other factors which hinder their ability to live a life like their demographic counterparts. 

“It’s frustrating seeing excuses for no support for us, it’s not like not many gay (LGBTQ+) people don’t exist in our communities,” says Sianan, expressing her frustration at the lack of support aimed towards LGBT+ Aboriginal communities. 

Indigenous communities are not foreign to the concept of LGBT+. The Tiwi Islands, 80 km up north Darwin, is home to Australia’s highest per capita transgender population where 5% of the entire population identifies as bisexual, gay, transgender or lesbian. They even have local words for the transgendered people which shows that LGBT+ was well known and engraved into Aboriginal culture before the colonization took place. 

Troy-Anthony Bailys of the Jawoyn Nation, an Adelaide-based artist who was completing his PhD about sexual history of Australian Aboriginal, talked to The Hook Up about the history of queer people in Aboriginal culture. He said that in Tiwi Islands, they had set words for different sexual and gender diversity in the language and had set roles, but outside of that not much is known about the history. 

Troy also pointed out that people of Aboriginal communities learned to hide their sexual identities as a way of survival and coping mechanism to survive through the period of Christianization and colonization of Australia. Mimi Spirits are a genderless entity in dreamtime stories of Aboriginal culture and, even though there is not ‘any formal evidence that they are parallels to sexual identity’ Troy said, it still points to a culture which was potentially aware of LGBT+ and integrated them into their culture. 

Although there are multiple organizations dedicated solely to help indigenous LGBT+ people out like Black Rainbow and BlaQ Aboriginal Corporation but compared to the general infrastructure based around the mental health facilities that heterosexuals or non-Indigenous communities are provided with, it is a drop in the ocean. The lack of research and support towards this particular community is glaringly obvious through many issues which are faced by them and how they continue to increase each year instead of declining or even stabilising. For instance, the HIV rates in non-Indigenous Australians have been steadily declining for years while for Indigenous Australians, the rate has been increasing over time and the diagnosis rate is more than double compared to non-Indigenous Australians. 

“It gets pretty sad if I focus on the fact that we are already at an extreme disadvantage just for being Aboriginal Australians but when you add being gay to the equation, it is just a whole another story. The time for change is way past overdue now,” says Sianan, explaining how she feels when the statistics for Indigenous Australians and LGBT+ within that community get brought up. 

As the International Pride Month of June comes closer, Sianan has a request for all the non-Indigenous Australians who are planning to support and raise awareness for the LGBT+ community:  

‘Please let us speak about our issues and amplify our voices. We minorities need to stick together and help each other and when it comes to Indigenous LGBT+ members, we can do better.” 

AirBnB is one of the biggest house-hosting platforms, which has been overlooked in the discussions about industries affected by declining tourism. 

AirBnB has an economic impact of more than $15 billion. It is a popular house hosting platform, mainly used by individuals for holiday accommodation. 

However, due to the immense decline of tourism in the year 2020, AirBnB hosts have taken a hard hit to their earnings. 

Diana rents her house out to tourists visiting the Grampians, a popular spot in Western Victoria, says that the traffic during last year was only local and extremely quiet. 

“Being a pensioner/widow, it has affected my income drastically as our bookings are mostly during holiday seasons,” says Diana talking about the impact that tourism in Victoria had on her as a host. 

Diana is a popular host on AirBnB with high ratings and frequent visitors, earning her the status of a ‘super-host’ on the website. 

Interstate tourists and international tourists made up a large amount of bookings made through AirBnB, both of which took a hard-hit last year. Domestic travel in Australia similarly affected; down by 33.8% compared to last year, while the number of international tourists went down by 2.6 million. 

The federal government has introduced incentives like $200 discount vouchers for holiday bookings in regional areas for a certain period and discounts on interstate flights. 

An avid traveller, Faith Soares, says that the government incentives are very enticing and pushed her to book for holidays this year. 

“I didn’t get to go out and travel much last year, so I am definitely ready to go out and spend this time travelling,” Soares said.

“The government incentives have been a cherry on top and certainly did persuade me to book for longer.” 

Diana also says that bookings have been ‘very frequent since lockdown ended’ for her AirBnB business, showing that the incentives have been working and supporting the industry as intended. 

You probably have picked up your phone, went on your favourite social media and scrolled through it mindlessly, passing away the hours and seen a post or two about the Israel-Palestine conflict. If your train of thought was along the pacifist side of wishing both countries would stop doing this to each other, or if you just scroll past it not wanting to get political, you already have picked a side. 

This conflict is not a new issue emerging amongst the plethora of problems the world has been facing these days. It has been ongoing for about a hundred years now, a hundred years of countless deaths of innocents, and it has yet to reach to a halt (BBC 2021). But that’s a topic for history lessons. While the media has been portraying a picture of this Israel-Palestine conflict as ‘equally devastating’ for both sides, it is further from reality. 

An equal magnitude of conflict would suggest that both sides are on the same level with equal levels of firepower and victims, correct? However, as the most recent conflict between Israel and Gaza, Statistics show that only within the month of May, Israel has had 12 deaths whilst Palestine had 243 deaths, 66 of whom were children. 

Economically, Israel had a military budget of $20.46 Billion while Palestine has no real figure to draw upon. This uneven magnitude of power between these two countries is enough proof that the conflict is not equal and the casualties for one side outweigh the other side by far.  

But you might be thinking, what does that have to do with having no stance on this issue? For years Israel has been controlling the narrative around the conflict and through social media censorship, it continued to shape how the world perceived this issue. But with more people sharing stories of what people in Palestine go through, it makes it harder for social media platforms to censor. Through social media, we can amplify the voices of people who have been losing their homes, families and children for years and face other horrific things such as bombings of media buildings, forced ethnic displacement, which ultimately brings more awareness and provides a medium for change. 

So, the next time you scroll past a post about this conflict without a second thought or stay silent about it, remember that you have already picked a side. 

• By Saqib Ali

“But you know, after a long day at work, I come back home, make myself a warm cup of tea, put on my comfort clothes and go on my phone to have an escape from this tedious and repetitive life. But what do I see when I go on my social media? Hate,” Jess releases an exasperated sigh as she explains her experience with social media.

Internet has been quite a popular method of escaping from reality for a lot of teenagers, way more than their parents because of growing up amongst technology. According to the statistical article posted by Hootsuite, 85% of the Australian population has active social media accounts, a 4.3% increase from the last year. And even though social media is an escape from the lives of ordinary teenagers and gateway to the rest of the world to connect with, finding and connecting with like-minded people and discussing about the common interests, for LGBTQ+ teenagers it is looking for solace in the people who have gone through the same experiences as them, trying to grasp on to any resemblance of normalcy, which they might be lacking in, in real life.

“I remember I was 14 years old, logging onto Reddit every single day and visiting the subreddits about LGBTQ+ community and just scrolling through and passing away my day reading about other people of the community, out and proud and living their best lives.”

Jessica Cheng had always been conflicted about her identity ever since she stepped foot into the uncharted territory of teenage years. Back then, Australia did not even recognize same sex marriages, which was just legalised in December 2017. Early teenage is the point where you are supposed to go on social media, enjoy interacting with your friends and gossip and just post mindless posts which you will regret many years later and be embarrassed about, probably end up deleting them. But not for Jess, just like countless other LGBTQ+ teenagers, who see their existence being debated over and invalidated every single day.

“I have developed a thick skin now, but when you are young, it takes a toll on you when you see people saying you are the biggest abomination and will burn in hell forever for something you did not even get to choose or control you know,” Jess says, her voice sounding like a distant memory, tinged with a little bit of sadness.

A report by Stonewall showed that two in five LGTBQ+ teenagers face cyber bullying, a figure which has decreased over time but still significant. LGBTQ+ community people are 3x more likely to be depressed, 6 in 10 experience verbal homophobic abuse, 80% of which is faced in schools. This shows an extreme lack of safety for teenagers in high schools, taking away the blanket of comfort from them, leaving them vulnerable which is extremely damaging to them, especially mentally.

To cope with this anomaly only faced by the certain group, the teens of the community resort to going online and either create or join a safe space, which is unattainable to them in real life. The safe space gives them a space to be themselves without any fear of abuse, a bare minimum and the default for the rest of the people but a luxury and privilege for the community.

“I think a reason that straight people do not feel much compassion or have a full understanding about the cyber bullying faced by people like us is that they never go through it. Yes, you guys go through issues, but we go through the same issues but with more stacked on top of it just because of our sexuality,” Arthicka Yandawai, Jessica’s partner says, explaining about why straight people have a hard time understanding the struggles of LGBTQ+ community and relating to them.

The rates of abuse and stigma faced by the community is alarmingly high, in real life and in the cyber space too and seeing as schools are transferring more and more towards a cyber environment along with the rest of the aspects of a teenager’s life, it raises the question of how much is too much before drastic actions are taken as schools are already an environment where homophobic abuse faced is at its peak? And on top of already being part of a minority, it is even harsher for people of colour who are part of LGBTQ+ community as they face more discrimination than their white counterparts of the same community.

Placed under a microscope, the discriminations and the hate faced by LGTBQ+ teenagers are a baseless hurtful wave aimed towards a minority, taking away from their safety which result in destructive mindset leading to depression, anxiety and numerous other mental disorders in the teenagers which affect them for the rest of their lives. According to CDC, high school students who identify as part of LGBTQ+ community are 4x more likely to commit suicide compared to their peers.

There are numerous organisations out there that strive to create a safe environment for LGBTQ+ in real life and equip the rest of the people with equipment’s necessary to be a good ally and help in taking step towards a place of equality. These organisations strive to resolve the root cause of the problem, the ignorance and their inability to understand and have compassion for the minority, which will reflect on the cyber space and result in a more cyber positive experience for the minority. Organisations such as Qsafe, an Australian based organisation which provides various resources to LGBTQ+ community, referrals and access to database which can be employed by the community to reach out and get help if needed and even legally, there are laws commissioned by Australian Human Rights Commission which prevents discrimination and unfair treatment regarding their sexuality, such as the Sex Discrimination Act.

But is it enough?

“It warms our heart to see that people are getting more and more accepting of the LGBTQ+ each day. We see less hate on our social media every day and there are a lot of people and organisations that teenagers these days have access to, we did not,” Arthicka says.

“But is it enough? I can not say for sure. I see less hate on social media now yes, but I still want to see the day where there is no more hate and we are all treated equal,” Jessica chimes in.

The tone of Jessica and Arthicka’s voices have a surprising similarity to that of a roller coaster. Sometimes it soars high, when they are reminded of how far the place they live in has come and how it is getting better every day, but there is that anticipation, which borders on fear in their voice, similar to that of the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when the roller coaster is about to fall. And when the topic of the discrimination they faced or their past experiences is brought up, the fall occurs and their voices are coloured with sadness and remind that of an innocent child who does not know why was he punished and tries his best to be the best for his parents, but still ends up being punished. And it is a similar experience faced by many other teenagers of the community in their lives too.

There are happy moments when they get to go out and have a semblance of normalcy, but there will always be the fear lingering behind their thoughts that the next person they pass on the street might say something, or even worse might do something, and these thoughts are not far fetched as seen by numerous studies. And when they try to find an escape, to their own little world and be who they are without any bounds, that space is still hijacked by the majority, taunting them and ostracising them. All that for what? Just because someone is made in a different way, a way which does not affect any other individuals live other than their own but still sparking a debate among the mass majority and even leading to hateful acts. All due to the inability to understand or even respect the individuality of a person.

“We are super happy in our relationship and we post our photos everyday on our social medias. We have surrounded ourselves by people who love and support us for who we are and blocked out the negativity. But just because we are lucky enough, does not mean everyone is,” Jessica says, explaining where she is in life right now.

“And I just wish one day, where when we go out, we don’t have to fear our lives and worry about our wellbeing,” Arthicka adds.

In the end, everyone who is not a part of minority must confront themselves with one simple question;

“How much are we going to take away from the minority? How much is too much?”

Video Brief:

For this video, I carried the same theme throughout my last video and expanded on it in this one. In this video, I focused on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and its various uses, advantages and disadvantages. The goal of this video was to provide the audience watching a sense of Artificial Intelligence and how different people have different views on it, both of which are valid. But bias towards the supporting side was shown in the video because that’s what the creator(I) believed in. My intended audience for this video was intended to be broader than the last video, not focused on one group of people. Any person who is curious about Artificial Intelligence is the intended audience.

The approach to this time was the same as my whole channel, a personality filled video which the users can relate to and connect with me through the video. It should feel like watching someone in real life having a conversation, not someone they are watching through the screen who is miles away. The video shows two sides of a long ongoing debate and while it does not reach a conclusion at the end, it expands on both sides of the debate backed up by facts and scholarly sources.

Reflection:

At the start of making the video, I was brainstorming through different ideas on how I can expand on my last video of being supportive of Artificial Intelligence. But the inspiration came from TikTok where users pretend to be two people having a conversation. This sparked an idea about pretending to be two people, both representing the two different sides of the same coin of Artificial Intelligence. It would make the video more engaging, fun and even more educational as both different sides are debating with references. This is how I ended up creating the narrator: Saqib Ali; the supporter; Saqib and the against, Ali. These both characters represent two sides of me and how I feel about Artificial Intelligence, which is why Saqib The Supporter ends up winning.

The process of editing was surprisingly simple and easy, albeit a bit lengthy. The use of multiple tracks of audio and video came in handy as I put in the video and audio of Saqib on track 1 and Ali on track 2 which made the process easy and fun. Also, one major creative decision was to use voice overs instead of using actual voice for the two characters as it would be easy to manage audio levels and give the video a more comical feel. For the source materials, I had to look up scholarly sources which for both sides, the ones which highlighted the positives of Artificial Intelligence and the ones which highlighted the negatives of it.

The B Rolls were used in an ironic and an extremely self-aware method, which made it fit naturally in the video without it being shoehorned in. The music was used at the start, in the B Roll and at the end. Initially, there was background music while the debate was going on but later chose to remove it because it took away from the immersion of it and did not feel natural.

One challenge I faced during the making of the video was to put all of the reference list in a single graphic at the end of the video as the list was too big to fit in one screen. I could have put it in two graphics easily, but I wanted to take on a challenge. After thinking about it for a while I decided to learn how to make rolling credits which would make it look natural. After watching some YouTube tutorials and numerous trial and errors, I finally learned how to make proper rolling credits.

The new major things that I learned from making this video were:

• Unlinking videos and their sounds
• Using multiple tracks at once
• Use the ducking function (background music goes down when speaking)
• Making rolling credits

There was no proper call to action at the end of the video as it was meant to be open ended and make the viewer ponder over the uses of Artificial Intelligence and how they perceive it. But there was an encouragement of engaging at the end of video by asking them to comment on the video and be a part of the discussion which was started in the video.

Reference List:

Müller V.C., Bostrom N 2016, ‘Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion’, Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence, vol.376, p. 555-572, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26485-1_33

Minsky, M 2007, The Emotion Machine, Simon and Schuster, p.329, <https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OqbMnWDKIJ4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=artificial+intelligence+future&ots=uEK5XuJfMu&sig=0zGx-y99b8Q050uT1Zs4Va0Ot7A&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=artificial%20intelligence%20future&f=false>

‘The danger of AI is weirder than you think | Janelle Shane’ 2019, Video, YouTube, https://youtu.be/OhCzX0iLnOc

‘ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR HEALTH IN NEW ZEALAND’, Hauora i te Atamai Iahiko, AIForum, <https://aiforum.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AI-For-Health-in-New-Zealand.pdf>

Carder, J 2020, ‘Reality Check: The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence’, aiThority, 25 May, Retrieved 27^th May, <https://www.aithority.com/guest-authors/reality-check-the-benefits-of-artificial-intelligence/>

Hip Hop Rap Instrumental (Crying Over You) by christophermorrow is licensed under a  Creative Commons License (3.0)

(https://soundcloud.com/chris-morrow-3/hip-hop-rap-instrumental-2)

Video Brief:

My digital media context is based on Artificial Intelligence. I hope to achieve the goal of people understanding that Artificial Intelligence is portrayed as a negative thing and is a thing which should not be seen in such a negative light. My intended audience for this video is people who view AI in a negative light and fear it. My goal with this video was to persuade them that AI isn’t harmful and expose them to the daily trivial use of AI in our lives, small things which they do not even notice like using their phone’s virtual assistant or shopping online or even flying. The call to action in the video was subtle and mainly focused to make the audience think. Ext time they use Siri or are browsing online, they will think about the video and how AI is useful and helping them and how it shouldn’t be feared.

Reflection:

When most people hear the word ‘Artificial Intelligence’ the first thing that comes to their mind is advanced robots who will take over the planet and enslave humanity. And through this video I wanted to point out how that fear is irrational if thought about. Because AI is not just about robots and complex thinking. We use artificial intelligence to our advantage numerous times in our daily lives without even knowing that is artificial intelligence

. I wanted to highlight this part in my video and use the juxtaposition of it with what comes to people’s mind when they think about artificial intelligence. I used some basic trivial examples like using our phone’s virtual assistant, which is something that is convenient and helps us in managing/planning our day. I also used the example of online shopping, which is something that nearly everyone has done

. I also wanted to include a big example of how trustworthy AI is and after pondering over it for some time I came up with the perfect example to use: planes. Thousands of planes with millions of people in them fly every day. And all planes use artificial intelligence for the autopilot feature. And flying is the safest form of travel in the world. That example will make the viewers think about the safety of artificial intelligence and how trustworthy it is. I also used a scholarly source which explained the workings of artificial intelligence and how it worked on a microscopic level, which was basically a mathematical loop of 0s and 1s.

The use of sound was kept to a minimum and only utilised at the end of the video so that the viewers could focus on the words and process them easily. The tone of the video was intended to be as casual as possible to make it seem like the viewer was listening to a friend talking to them, instead of a Youtuber miles away from them.

I struggled with this video a bit because of the COVID-19 situation and a writer’s block at the planning stage. I had numerous ideas inside my head but getting them on paper and connecting them all to make a video was hard. I did not make a proper storyboard for this video, just some abstract ideas on notes and then connecting them over time.

Reference List:

M. Minsky, “Steps toward Artificial Intelligence,” in Proceedings of the IRE, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 8-30, Jan. 1961.

“Robots” by Kollage Kid is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

“Trumpet Playing Robot” by alisonjpope is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Chill by XXJØRDAN is licensed under a  Creative Commons License.