Joint Select Committee Research Articles

King Mob and Contempt of Congress

Abstract The aftershocks of the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, continue to ripple through the American public square. The United States Department of Justice brought over 750 criminal charges against the assailants. The United States House of Representatives appointed a Select Committee to investigate the riot. And the public continues to discuss the meaning of January 6 as these criminal prosecutions continue and the House's investigation concludes. Although this is the first time in American history that a mob actually breached the Capitol, riots and insurrections attempting to overawe parliamentary bodies on their own grounds are well precedented in the Anglo-American legal tradition. The purpose of this article is to provide historical context for affrays like the Trump Riot of January 6 and provide a framework for how legislatures should respond. Parliamentary precedents on both sides of the Atlantic prove that anyone who riots at the legislature is in contempt of parliamentary privilege. The legislature can refer such contempt to the executive for criminal prosecution. In egregious cases, however, the legislature should not hesitate to vindicate itself by using its own contempt power. The legislature should appoint a joint select committee or independent commission to investigate and hold those politically responsible to account. There may be cases when an officer or an agent of the executive provokes or incites a riot at the Capitol. The legislature must prevail in its efforts to bring them in for a hearing and compel them to produce discovery. Of the three coordinate branches of the federal government the legislature is first among equals. Parliamentary privilege must therefore trump executive privilege during an investigation of an assault on the national assembly. Any member of the executive who contemptuously incites a mob at the seat of government is liable for discipline under the inherent power of Congress.

Submission to the Joint Select Committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum

Submission to the Joint Select Committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Shaw the Fighter (Bernard Shaw and the Censors. Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen)

Bernard Shaw and The Censors: Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen by Bernard F. Dukore

Reviewed by: Bernard Shaw and The Censors: Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen by Bernard F. Dukore Audrey McNamara BERNARD SHAW AND THE CENSORS: FIGHTS AND FAILURES, STAGE AND SCREEN. By Bernard F. Dukore. Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries series. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020; pp. 286. Bernard Dukore's invaluable book, Bernard Shaw and the Censors: Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen negotiates with the utmost clarity a very particular time in the history of the development of stage and screen drama. His treatise for this book on censorship is to create a better understanding of how Shaw came to engage with the censor and censorship, both unsuccessfully and successfully. Dukore's argument is very clear. He states in the preface that "the book is not only about Shaw the Failure, though that is an important part of it, but also and primarily about Shaw the Fighter, and what a splendid fighter he was" (x). The structure of the book works to create a strong narrative on the magnitude of censorship and the furiousness and dedication of Shaw to its abolition, even if he gets in his own way at times. Setting the scene from the opening chapter of what being the censor and censorship entailed in Victorian and Edwardian England, Dukore investigates the stranglehold the censor had on the performative arts while literature was not seen to be as divisive or influential on societal mores. He provides a detailed historical context that explores the patriarchal thinking and control that monarchies and governments exercised on their subjects, especially their female ones. In truth, he exposes the hypocrisy and double standards that were in play at the time and asserted that "the demand for respectability so falsified life as dramatized on the stage that the 'theatre offered only an escape from life, not an examination of it'" (20). The chapter sets solid groundwork for the arguments to follow. Entering stage left in chapter 2, Shaw began, in what is often used as a throwaway remark, his lifelong battle with the censor, starting as early as 1886 as a critic and emerging playwright. Dukore illuminates how Shaw's battle with censorship was intent on having "stage censorship 'abolished root and branch: exterminated, annihilated'" (44). He examines how Shaw, in admiring the work of Ibsen argued for the right of women to be portrayed not as the perceived ideal version of womanhood, but as living individuals in their own right, something that was to become a major feature in his own plays. The chapter considers in depth how the censor dealt in such a completely different manner with Ibsen's Doll's House, which was licenced, and Ghosts, which was not, and about which Shaw declared the later was less subversive than the former. The argument moves to give great consideration to the complexities of Shaw's campaign for his second play Mrs. Warren's Profession both in England and America and concludes that, on that occasion, "the censor had beaten him" (60). "Shaw's Campaign against the Censors: Press, Public Opinion and Parliament," the third chapter, demonstrates the strength of Shaw's feelings on abolishing the Lord Chamberlain, as Dukore quotes Shaw stating that "the monarchy should be abolished, since the King rules the theatre … by divine right" (90). Dukore presents another rich tapestry in his discussion of the second part of the first decade of the twentieth century, when two of Shaw's plays, Press Cuttings and The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, were banned by the censor. Shaw circumvented the censor by organizing that Blanco Posnet was performed (after an almighty battle with Dublin Castle) on the Abbey Stage in Dublin in 1909, over which the censor had no power. 1909 was also the year that Shaw appeared as a witness at the Joint Select Committee of Parliament to argue his case for the abolition of censorship. Dukore's detailed presentation and analyses of that meeting offers a new understanding of the stifling restraint of censorship that dramatists constantly battled and why Shaw worked so tirelessly against it. Shaw's battle with the censor moved to a new level with the introduction of movies, as chapter 4 discusses. The...

Law Reform Processes and Criminalising Coercive Control

ABSTRACT In 2005, Reg Graycar and Jenny Morgan published ‘Law Reform: What’s in It for Women?’ in which they raised a number of issues and tensions faced in feminist engagements with law reform processes. Relying on Graycar and Morgan’s work I explore three recent law reform processes focused on whether coercive control should be criminalised: the NSW Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control, the Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, and the South Australian exposure Bill. All answered this question in the affirmative. However, there were distinct differences in terms of their respective terms of reference, processes undertaken, participation of diverse and marginalised groups, consideration of implementation issues, and engagement with existing research. This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of these processes. The importance of Graycar and Morgan’s work is that it insists that we examine the processes of law reform, and not just the outcomes. While outcomes are obviously critical, the processes necessarily shape what those outcomes might be. The diversity of views around criminalisation of coercive control meant that attention to these processes was critical, particularly for those who are most likely to experience violence and state interventions in their lives.

Co-Designing Change

Co-Designing Change

‘More than a Thought Bubble…’

‘More than a Thought Bubble…’

Why Woman Want Vote?: Writings of Stri Dharma on Woman’s Suffrage in Madras Presidency, 1922 – 1936

The Women's suffrage movement in India fought for Indian women's right to political enfranchisement in Colonial India under British rule. Beyond suffrage, the movement was fighting for women's right to stand for and hold office during the colonial era. In 1918, when Britain granted limited suffrage to women property holders, the law did not apply to British citizens in other parts of the Empire. Despite petitions presented by women and men to the British commissions sent to evaluate Indian voting regulations, women's demands were ignored in the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. In 1919, impassioned pleas and reports indicating support for women to have the vote were presented by suffragists to the India Office and before the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and Commons, who were meeting to finalize the electoral regulation reforms of the Southborough Franchise Committee. Though they were not granted voting rights, nor the right to stand in elections, the Government of India Act 1919 allowed Provincial Councils to determine if women could vote, provided they met stringent property, income, or educational levels. Madras in 1921 granted votes to wealthy and educated women, under the same terms that applied to men. In the Government of India Act 1935 the British Raj set up a system of separate electorates and separate seats for women. Most women's leaders opposed segregated electorates and demanded adult franchise. Stri-Dharma, a monthly newspaper stood for the women’s suffrage movement with the support of the Women Indian Association of Madras from 1922 to 1936.

Re: Comments on the Data Protection Bill, 2019

Barbados is pushing to advance a digital development agenda. Central to this effort is an appropriate consumer protection framework. Passage of comprehensive data protection legislation is seen as critical to this effort. Enter the Data Protection Bill, 2019. Prior drafts were floated as far back as 2005 and as recently as first quarter 2018. Following public comments, the 2019 edition of the Bill was crafted to reflect heavy inspiration from both the European General Data Protection Regulation and the United Kingdom's Data Protection Act, 1998. While the dual sources of inspiration are clear, the application to the draft resulted in a proposed act with some unworkable elements. This paper represents expanded commentary, following previous oral submissions to a Joint Select Committee of the Barbados Parliament by the author on June 26, 2019.

Averting the Multiemployer Pension Solvency Crisis

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) multiemployer pension insurance program faces projected insolvency, driven by systemic underfunding of multiemployer pension plans. To address this brewing crisis, Congress has established a joint select committee to develop multiemployer pension reforms. Primary causes of the crisis include lax funding rules and inaccurate valuations of pension assets and liabilities. Explanations frequently offered for underfunding, such as financial market downturns and the declining proportion of active workers, fail to account for the relative weakness of multiemployer pension finances. Reforms should establish accurate asset and liability measurements, safeguards against further deterioration of underfunded plans, improved incentives for plan trustees, stronger funding requirements, and risk-based premiums. Legislators may wish to consider authorizing the PBGC to relieve plans of so-called orphan liabilities, subject to strict requirements that any relief must reduce projected claims on pension insurance. Lawmakers must be firm in declaring that no taxpayer funds will be used to bail out multiemployer pensions.

Taking ‘a rightful place in our own country’: Indigenous self‐determination and the Australian people

AbstractThis is an edited transcript of a talk given to the colloquium at the Whitlam Institute held on the 21st February 2018 on the topic of the title of this address. Here Linda Burney indicates the state of play in the Labor Party's response to the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ at that time including this Party's recommendation to the Government that it establish a Joint Select Committee to enable the Commonwealth Parliament's Response. Such a committee was established: ‘On 19 March 2018, the Parliament agreed that a Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples be appointed to inquire into and report on matters relating to constitutional change’ (Commonwealth of Australia 2018, 2). Linda Burney is a member of the Joint Select Committee that has produced an Interim Report (July 2018), and which is co‐chaired by Senator Patrick Dodson (First Nations Caucus within the Labor Party) and Julian Leeser, a Coalition Government MP.

A comparative content analysis of media reporting of sports betting in Australia: lessons for public health media advocacy approaches

BackgroundHarmful gambling is a significant public health issue. There has been widespread discussion in the Australian media about the extent and impact of sports betting on the Australian community, particularly relating to young men and children. Given the role that the media plays in influencing policy change and political agendas, and the acknowledgement that media based advocacy is a fundamental component of successful advocacy campaigns, this research aimed to investigate how different stakeholder groups discuss sports betting within the Australian print media. The study uses this information to provide recommendations to guide public health media advocacy approaches.MethodsA quantitative content analysis of print media articles was conducted during two significant Parliamentary Inquiries about sports betting - (1) The Joint Select Committee Inquiry into the Advertising and Promotion of Gambling Services in Sport (2012/2013), and (2) 'The Review of Illegal Offshore Wagering (2015/2016). A total of 241 articles from 12 daily Australian newspapers were analysed. Statistical analysis was used to compare frequency of, and changes in, themes, voices and perspectives over time.ResultsDiscussions about the marketing and communication of sports betting was a main theme in media reporting (n = 165, 68.5%), while discussions about gambling reform decreased significantly across the two time periods (p < 0.0001). The presence of sports betting industry (p < 0.0001), sporting code (p < 0.0001) and public health expert (p = 0.001) voices all increased significantly across the two time periods. There were very few (n = 11, 4.6%) voices from those who had experienced gambling harm. Finally, while there were significantly fewer articles taking the perspective that regulation changes were needed to protect vulnerable sub-populations (p < 0.0001), articles that had a neutral perspective about the need for regulation change increased significantly across the two time periods (p < 0.0001).Discussion and conclusionsMapping the media reporting of sports betting is important in developing effective public health advocacy approaches. This study indicates that discussions about the marketing strategies utilised by the sports betting industry was still a main theme in media articles. However, discussions relating to sports betting reforms, in particular to protect individuals who may be vulnerable to the harm associated with these products and their promotional strategies (for example children and young men) decreased during the time periods. Public health advocates may seek to address the decrease in media reports about reform by developing clear evidence-based messages about why regulatory reform is needed, as well as the potential consequences of not implementing reforms. Working with organisations to build capacity for people who have experienced gambling harm may help ensure that individuals with a lived experience of harm have an increased voice in the media.

Extralegal Violence: The Ku Klux Klan In The Reconstruction Era

This article is a response to the Equal Justice Initiative’s 2015 report on lynching, which aimed to provide a comprehensive account of racial terror since 1877. Although the study encompassed three years before the commonly used beginning date of research on lynching, the author argues that it omitted a great number of cases from the Reconstruction era (1865-1877). In this essay, she evaluates testimonial evidence from the 13 volumes of the Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States published by the U.S. Congress in 1872, citing specific cases of atrocities committed by the Ku Klux Klan in the years following the Civil War. A close examination of these reports reveals that the level of extralegal violence inflicted on African Americans in the Reconstruction era has been severely underestimated. Researchers are called to extend their investigations of lynching to include this period of history in order to develop a more truthful account of racial terror in this country.

Indigenous Dispossession in the 21st Century

Northern Australia, that 39 per cent of landmass north of the Tropic of Capricorn, remains at the frontier of colonial expansionism. The most recent policy contribution to this imperative is the report of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia, Pivot North ('Report'). The Report is part of the latest process to develop a white paper aimed at defining policy for 'realising the full economic potential of the north.' It follows decades of similar unfulfilled reports, but supports an invigorated government platform expressed in the Coalition's 2030 Vision for Developing Northern Australia.

Sequestration Will Hit Pay But Spare Incentives

Medicare physician pay would be cut by at least 2% in 2013 while some Affordable Care Act programs would be spared the automatic cuts called for under the Budget Control Act of 2011, according to a report from the federal Office of Management and Budget. The report provides details on how to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal budget by 2021 and was mandated after the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed to do the same. The process – known as sequestration – would cut funding for most federal agencies across the board. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report noted that the estimates are preliminary; the true magnitude of the cuts won't be known until sequestration actually occurs. The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care immediately released an analysis by Avalere Health with more specifics on the effect of sequestration on skilled nursing facilities around the country. SNFs will face cuts totaling $782.5 million in 2013 and $9 billion over 10 years, according to the analysis. The five hardest hit states would be California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Illinois. The sequestration cuts would be on top of the $65 billion reduction in Medicare funding that SNFs face over a decade from other recent federal-budget reductions, according to the alliance. In September, AMDA joined more than 100 other medical organizations in a letter urging Congress to “work diligently during the fall to reach a bipartisan agreement to pass legislation nullifying the Medicare physician payment cuts called for under the Budget Control Act's (BCA) sequestration provision and the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.” Separately, an AMDA statement said that the association advocates a permanent repeal of the SGR and the implementation of a 5-year period of stable Medicare physician payments that keep pace with the growth in medical-practice costs while the program transitions to new payment models (see story, page 18). “Sequestration is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction,” according to the OMB report. The agency called on Congress to avoid sequestration either by passing the President's budget proposals or otherwise approving “a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction package.” Under sequestration, there would be a 9.4% cut to defense discretionary funding, 10% to mandatory defense programs, 8.2% reduction to nondefense discretionary funding, and 7.6% to nondefense mandatory programs. Medicare – including physician and hospital payment – is slated for an $11 billion cut in 2013 alone. The 2% reduction would continue yearly through 2021. The American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, and American Nurses Association in a joint statement said that as many as 766,000 health care and related jobs could be lost by 2021 if the Medicare cuts are allowed to stand, in part because of the reduction in payments to physicians and hospitals. They also predicted a ripple effect, including reduced spending on goods and services by health care providers and organizations, as well as reduced household purchases by health care workers who lose their jobs. Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, president of the AMA, said, “Coupled with the looming 27% Medicare physician payment cut, this 2% sequester will hurt patient access to care and will inject more uncertainty into our Medicare system.” Other programs at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that would take a hit under sequestration: health insurance exchange grants ($66 million); state demonstration grants ($40 million); fraud and abuse ($78 million); the prevention and public health fund ($76 million); the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology ($1 million); the Office of Inspector General ($5 million); the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund ($5.6 billion). Many programs would be exempt from sequestration, however, including the Children's Health Insurance Program, Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for participating in health IT programs, and the consumer operated and oriented plan and the pre-existing condition insurance plan, both of which were part of health care reform. Food and Drug Administration funding would be cut $319 million, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would see at least a $490 million budget reduction, with $14 million of that coming out of the World Trade Center Health Program Fund. Funding for the National Institutes of Health would be cut $2.6 billion.

Rescuing the Budget Process

There is no doubt that the budget process is broken. Congress has not even tried to agree on a Budget Resolution—the normal first step in the annual budget process–for several years. Instead, hopes of a major agreement designed to stabilize the rising debt have rested on the creation of special mechanisms outside the regular budget process. First there was the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the Simpson Bowles Commission) in 2010. When no legislative action followed that report, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden tried to hammer out a deal withHouse and senate leadership. ThenU.S. President Barack H. Obama and U.S. Speaker John Boehner worked together on a “grand bargain” both political parties could accept. After these efforts failed—and the debt ceiling debacle in the fall summer of 2011 showed how deeply broken regular congressional processes had become—hopes were pinned on yet another special committee. Legislation created the Joint Select Committee (JSC), dubbed the “Super Committee,” and gave it a tight deadline and truly extraordinary powers. Optimists thought that the JSC might succeed. If it had had strong from the president and the leadership in both houses, it might indeed have been able to agree on actions to stabilize the rising debt and use its powers to set the federal budget on a sustainable path. But that support did not materialize, gridlock prevailed, and the JSC became one more entry on a list of failures. Gridlock is likely to last at least through the 2012 presidential election, perhaps longer. But even if one of these extraordinary mechanisms had succeeded in reaching a “grand bargain,” this dismal history simply illustrates how completely the normal budget process has failed. Our much-vaunted democracy should not have to abandon its normal decision processes and concentrate power in the hands of an ad hoc group to solve a budget problem.

Critical Access Hospital (CAH) Graduate Medical Education (GME): Too Little, and Maybe Too Late

In the context of national scrutiny on graduate medical education (GME) from both the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,[1][1] Xierali et al,[2][2] bring our attention to the ongoing needs of rural underserved communities and the potential role

Paternalism and the Pokies: Unjustified State Interference or Justifiable Intervention?

The Australian Productivity Commission and a Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform have recommended implementation of a mandatory pre-commitment system for electronic gambling. Organizations associated with the gambling industry have protested that such interventions reduce individual rights, and will cause a reduction in revenue which will cost jobs and reduce gaming venue support for local communities. This article is not concerned with the design details or the evidence base of the proposed scheme, but rather with the fundamental criticism that a mandatory pre-commitment policy is an unacceptable interference with the liberty of the individual, and of organizations. It is argued that the concept of paternalism is a useful lens with which to study the interactions between business and society on this issue. It is contended that the benefits of a pre-commitment system to problem gamblers and society are socially and economically significant, and the cost to recreational gamblers, particularly the cost in terms of interference with the liberty of the individual, is minimal. Pre-commitment also requires gambling businesses to act in a more socially responsible manner. It is concluded that the proposed legislation constitutes a paternalistic intervention by government on the interaction between business and society, and that this is justified.

Censorship and Immorality: Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple

This essay challenges the tendency in censorship studies to focus on banned works and causes célèbres. It suggests that critics need to attend more carefully to adversarial works that have eluded detection by authorities to better understand censor-avoiding and censor-baiting techniques. In examining Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, I argue that Shaw was subversive of morality and censorship through encoded attacks on the institution of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. This becomes clearer through analysis of Shaw's censorship discourse in the years following the writing of the play in which he taps into its ethos and adopts the perspective of the title character, especially in his promotion of American-style post-performance trials of plays as against the British system of applying for licences before production. Shaw also undertook auto-intertextuality by drawing upon The Devil's Disciple in composing The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, a play that intentionally provoked British censors and provided him with ammunition when he appeared before the Joint Select Committee on the Censorship of Plays in the summer of 1909. I end by noting how Shaw himself refused war-time productions of The Devil's Disciple because of its threats to morality and its potential for instigating radical change.

Censorship and Immorality: Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple

This essay challenges the tendency in censorship studies to focus on banned works and causes célèbres . It suggests that critics need to attend more carefully to adversarial works that have eluded detection by authorities to better understand censor-avoiding and censor-baiting techniques. In examining Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple , I argue that Shaw was subversive of morality and censorship through encoded attacks on the institution of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. This becomes clearer through analysis of Shaw’s censorship discourse in the years following the writing of the play in which he taps into its ethos and adopts the perspective of the title character, especially in his promotion of American-style post-performance trials of plays as against the British system of applying for licences before production. Shaw also undertook auto-intertextuality by drawing upon The Devil’s Disciple in composing The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet , a play that intentionally provoked British censors and provided him with ammunition when he appeared before the Joint Select Committee on the Censorship of Plays in the summer of 1909. I end by noting how Shaw himself refused war-time productions of The Devil’s Disciple because of its threats to morality and its potential for instigating radical change.