Senate Select Committee Research Articles

Commentary on the senate select committee into the provision of and access to dental services in Australia: an opportunity for reform.

A recent Senate Select Committee has tabled its report into the provision of and access to dental care in Australia. The Senate Committee heard: There are significant barriers for many people accessing dental care, including high costs, trauma and fear, long waiting times and inaccessible services. There are service gaps, including a lack of special needs dentists, limited mobile services, very few Aboriginal dentists and sparse services in regional areas. There are significant impacts of poor oral health, including pain and suffering, shame and low self-esteem, poor nutrition and poorer general health. There are benefits to good oral health, including the ability to smile, eat and talk, improved confidence, increased productivity and being more employable. There were 35 recommendations for reform centred around the need to put the mouth back in the body and covered by five broad themes: More equitable access. Better integration. National data and coordination. Awareness and education. Culturally safe and accessible care. This paper provides an overview of the problem and focuses on the recommended funding reforms necessary to improve access to dental care.

A partner, not a combatant: the U.S. Congress, intelligence reform, and civil liberties after Vietnam

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, scholars and commentators concerned about civil liberties looked back to the 1970s with an air of nostalgia. Back then, they argued, Congress exposed and constrained executive abuses of civil liberties, most notably through the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the ‘Church Committee’) and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); whereas, since 9/11, Congress has largely accepted a variety of constitutionally dubious activities as part of the ‘War on Terror.’ This article argues that these accounts get the history wrong. Drawing on the Church Committee’s hearings and reports, internal executive branch communications, and the legislative history of FISA, it makes three core claims. First, the Church Committee was more valuable as a source of historical documentation rather than real-time exposure. Second, executive officials took crucial steps towards intelligence reform before the Church Committee was established. Third, the two legislative fruits of the Church Committee – FISA and the creation of permanent intelligence committees in Congress – were forged in a cooperative, rather than adversarial interbranch environment. Thus, the post-Vietnam Congress is best described as a partner, rather than a combatant, in the process of intelligence reform.

A Submission to the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 on the TRIPS Waiver: Intellectual Property, Access to Essential Medicines, and the Coronavirus COVID-19

A Submission to the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 on the TRIPS Waiver: Intellectual Property, Access to Essential Medicines, and the Coronavirus COVID-19

Knowing your audience: Investigating stillbirth knowledge and perceptions in the general population to inform future public health campaigns

BackgroundThe prevalence of stillbirth in many high income countries like Australia has remained unchanged for over 30 years. The 2018 Australian government Senate Select Committee on Stillbirth Research and Education highlighted the need for a public health campaign to encourage public conversations and increase awareness. However, there is little evidence about the community’s knowledge and perceptions towards pregnancy and stillbirth, nor their aspirations for a public health campaign. AimsTo assess the general knowledge, perceptions, myths and attitudes towards stillbirth to inform future public health campaigns. MethodsAustralian participants (n = 344; predominately women n = 294 (85.5%)) were recruited via Facebook.com. They completed a cross-sectional online survey designed to assess their knowledge of pregnancy and stillbirth, with additional questions on socio-demographic characteristics. ResultsStillbirth knowledge and awareness of incidence was low in this sample. Prominent myths, such as baby runs out of room in the uterus (n = 112, 33%) and baby slows down when preparing for labour (n = 24, 27%) were endorsed. Only 25% (n = 85) knew the prevalence of stillbirth in Australia (six per day). Almost two-thirds (n = 205; 62%) agreed that there needs to be a public health campaign, however one in five (n = 65; 20%) were concerned that talking about stillbirth with pregnant women may cause them to worry. Discussion and conclusionOur findings reinforce the need for a targeted campaign, which educates the general population about the definition and prevalence of stillbirth, stillbirth risks and modifiable health behaviours. Appropriate messaging should target pregnant women during antenatal care as well as their support and care systems (family, friends, and care providers).

Submission to the Australian Senate Select Committee on Job Security on the Impact of Insecure or Precarious Employment on the Economy, Wages, Social Cohesion, and Workplace Rights and Conditions.

The Australian Senate announced a Select Committee in December of 2020 "to inquire into and report on the impact of insecure or precarious employment on the economy, wages, social cohesion and workplace rights and conditions." This New Solutions "Document" is a submission to the Australian Senate from independent Australian researchers focusing on the role of perceived job (in)security in this context, acknowledging that it only briefly addresses the role of unemployment, precarious employment, and other aspects of the broader phenomenon of insecure work. Submissions closed in March of 2021, and the Australian Senate is due to report its findings on 30 November 2021.

Submission 38 - Temporary Migration

As the Director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney, Jane McAdam provided a short submission to the Senate Select Committee on Temporary Migration. One of the Kaldor Centre’s areas of expertise is mobility in the context of climate change and disasters. In particular, their work examines how well-constructed temporary migration schemes – as one component of a comprehensive migration programme – can provide a safety valve for people who wish to diversify their livelihoods but not move permanently elsewhere, especially where they enable circular mobility. The submission below focuses on this issue.

Tortured Images in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer & the War on Terror

This article develops an analytic of torture to read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel The Sympathizer beyond its narrative time surrounding the US war in Vietnam. By focusing on Nguyen’s description and uses of torture in the text, the article locates the period’s gender-, sexuality-, and race-based violence as part of an ongoing genealogy of US state-sanctioned torture, predicated upon Orientalist assumptions about pain, sexuality, and humanity. Specifically, the article reads the narrator’s forced confession and his use of staged photographs to torture others in dialogue with the 2004 photographs documenting prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Nguyen’s novel emerged a decade later amid debate on the use of torture, only one year after the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its “Torture Report,” condemning the inhumane interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib. By having his characters draw on US training materials and advisors to implement torture practices infamously replicated decades later, Nguyen demonstrates that United States-led torture is not an exception, but rather state policy. Nguyen’s novel excavates these teleologies of racialized violence in the United States for popular audiences and puts forth a sharp historical critique of US racialized violence and militarized intervention.

Scrutinising COVID-19 laws: An early glimpse into the scrutiny work of federal parliamentary committees

Australia’s parliamentary model of rights protection depends in large part on the capacity of the federal Parliament to scrutinise the law-making activities of the Executive government. Emergency law-making undertaken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the Australian Parliament’s capacity to provide meaningful scrutiny of proposed laws, particularly identifying and addressing the impact of emergency powers on the rights of individuals. In this context, the work of parliamentary committees has become increasingly important. Special committees, such as the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19, have been set up to provide oversight and review of Australia’s response to the pandemic. This article gives an early glimpse into the key features of the COVID-19 Committee and the way it may interact with other committees within the federal system to scrutinise the government's legislative response to the pandemic. It also offers some preliminary thoughts on the capacity of these committees to deliver meaningful rights scrutiny.

GOVERNANCE OF THE FACEBOOK PRIVACY CRISIS

In November 2018, The New York Times ran a front-page story describing how Facebook concealed knowledge and disclosure of Russian-linked activity and exploitation resulting in Kremlin led disruption of the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, through the use of global hate campaigns and propaganda warfare. By mid-December 2018, it became clear that the Russian efforts leading up to the 2016 U.S. elections were much more extensive than previously thought. Two studies conducted for the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), by: (1) Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika; and (2) New Knowledge, provide considerable new information and analysis about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations targeting American citizens.By early 2019 it became apparent that a number of influential and successful high growth social media platforms had been used by nation states for propaganda purposes. Over two years earlier, Russia was called out by the U.S. intelligence community for their meddling with the 2016 American presidential elections. The extent to which prominent social media platforms have been used, either willingly or without their knowledge, by foreign powers continues to be investigated as this Article goes to press. Reporting by The New York Times suggests that it wasn’t until the Facebook board meeting held September 6, 2017 that board audit committee chairman, Erskin Bowles, became aware of Facebook’s internal awareness of the extent to which Russian operatives had utilized the Facebook and Instagram platforms for influence campaigns in the United States. As this Article goes to press, the degree to which the allure of advertising revenues blinded Facebook to their complicit role in offering the highest bidder access to Facebook users is not yet fully known. This Article can not be a complete chapter in the corporate governance challenge of managing, monitoring, and oversight of individual privacy issues and content integrity on prominent social media platforms. The full extent of Facebook’s experience is just now becoming known, with new revelations yet to come. All interested parties: Facebook users; shareholders; the board of directors at Facebook; government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and Congress must now figure out what has transpired and what to do about it. These and other revelations have resulted in a crisis for Facebook. American democracy has been and continues to be under attack. This article contributes to the literature by providing background and an account of what is known to date and posits recommendations for corrective action.

How America Tortures

Americans may find it difficult to acknowledge that top officials in the West Wing of the White House and the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice orchestrated and poorly oversaw a horrific torture program that was responsible for the detention and interrogation of countless detainees. Seventeen years ago, the White House and the Department of Justice created a torture program and, through a series of legal memoranda, attempted to immunize Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents from criminal liability. The language was formal, legalistic, antiseptic, and euphemistic. That, combined with vague definitions of the techniques, disguised the extent of abuse the memos were approving and/or permitting. For many years, virtually no attention has been paid to the specific details of the techniques that were used in America’s name and too little investigation has gone into the specific uses that the CIA made of these techniques. This report presents the specific details of what the torture memos permitted and most importantly, how the techniques were implemented and applied. This report is based on information from many of those who were tortured under the program, including Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Abu Zubaydah), as well as many CIA cables, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, and numerous other government documents. The torture memos described the ten techniques that were designed and approved to torture one person, Abu Zubaydah. All ten techniques were used upon him and, while he has not been allowed to speak, some of his descriptions of those experiences were declassified. They have not been previously examined. The descriptions by Abu Zubaydah of some of the torture techniques is attached as an appendix. The text incorporates parts of his description and when it is included in the text it is always bolded. As compelling as the verbal descriptions of the techniques are, this report publishes the first visual representation of how the torture techniques were performed. The graphic representations are the original works of the man for whom the torture was designed, Abu Zubaydah. Because they have never been published before and because of their historical importance, all eight graphics are presented in full at the beginning of this report. The same graphics are also included in the text where they most appropriately belong. In addition, the CIA’s cables from the beginning of Abu Zubaydah’s torture have also become available and this report allows the reader to see the application of the techniques not only as defined, but as applied, and not only from the CIA’s perspective but also from the perspective of the tortured. This report integrates Abu Zubaydah’s descriptions from the earliest days of his torture with the CIA cables that described those days from the CIA’s perspective. The report will first address persistent conditions which were employed broadly against detainees, followed by an in depth look at each approved torture technique. Finally, the report will address several techniques not specifically approved, but which played a key role in advancing the program. Overall, this report will illustrate how the following factors led to the gross abuse of the torture program: (1) the lack of clarity and purposeful ambiguity in defining what was allowed and what was not allowed during interrogations; (2) the failure by the government to account for the use of persistent techniques and unapproved techniques alongside those that were approved; and (3) the negligence and intentional disregard of the consequences of such a torture program.

‘The most common form of child mortality in Australia’: a human rights analysis of Australia’s response to stillbirth in light of the Senate Select Committee Report on Stillbirth Research and Education

ABSTRACTStillbirth is the most common form of child mortality in Australia, but it has been largely neglected as a public health issue. The Senate Select Committee on Stillbirth Research and Education’s Report (the Report), released in December 2018, and the Australian Government’s Response, released in July 2019, have raised important questions about Australia’s approach to addressing the issue of stillbirth. This article considers that approach in the context of Australia’s health-related obligations under international human rights law, especially its obligation under Art. 12(2)(a) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to take steps to reduce its stillbirth rate. This analysis highlights a number of areas in which Australia is failing to meet these international obligations and suggests specific priorities for the Government as it attempts to respond to the challenges that the Report identifies. The article also considers whether, by taking a rights-based approach, the Government could respond more effectively to those challenges and to the tragedy of stillbirth generally.

Enhancing Congressional Intelligence Committee Effectiveness

This is the second paper in series published by the Center for a New American Security and intends to reboot the policy dialogue regarding steps the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) can take to enhance their effectiveness at overseeing the intelligence community’s activities and bolster public confidence in both their own activities and those of the intelligence community. The goal of this working paper is to provide a fresh assessment regarding whether the committees need significant structural reforms, assess which proposals previously generated are politically feasible, and identify areas for future research.

Governance of the Facebook Privacy Crisis

In November 2018, The New York Times ran a front-page story describing how Facebook covered up knowledge and disclosure of Russian-linked activity and exploitation resulting in Kremlin led disruption of the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, through the use of global hate campaigns and propaganda warfare. By mid-December 2018, it becomes clear that the Russian efforts leading up to the 2016 U.S. elections were much more extensive than previously thought. Two studies conducted for the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), by: (1) Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika; and (2) New Knowledge, provide considerable new information and analysis about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations targeting American citizens. By early 2019 it has become apparent that a number of influential and successful high growth social media platforms have been used by nation states for propaganda purposes. Over two years earlier, Russia was called out by the U.S. intelligence community for their meddling with the 2016 American presidential elections. The extent to which prominent social media platforms has been used either willingly or without their knowledge by foreign powers continue to be investigated as this Article goes to press. Reporting by The New York Times suggests that it wasn’t until the Facebook board meeting held September 6, 2017 that board audit committee Chair Erskin Bowles became aware of Facebook’s internal awareness of the extent to which Russian operatives had utilized the Facebook and Instagram platforms for influence campaigns in the United States. The degree to which the allure of advertising revenues blinded Facebook to their complicit role in offering access to Facebook users to the highest bidder is not known at this time. This Article will not be a complete chapter in the corporate governance challenge of managing, monitoring, and oversight of individual privacy issues and content integrity on prominent social media platforms. The full extent of Facebook’s experience is just now becoming known, with new revelations yet to come. All interested parties: Facebook users; shareholders; the board of directors at Facebook; government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and Congress, must now figure out what has transpired and what to do about it. Senator Warren’s presidential campaign has also placed billboards visible to the commuter trains traveling from San Francisco to the heart of Silicon Valley reading, “Break Up Big Tech.” Hers is just one voice in a growing chorus of political leaders reacting to privacy demands from constituents framed as an antitrust remedy. These and other revelations have resulted in a crisis for Facebook, the leading global social media platform. American democracy has been and continues to be under attack. This article contributes to the literature by providing background and an account of what is known to date and posits recommendations for corrective action.

Ord, steder og andre ting vi tabte i krigen: om redactions

Jens Bjering: “Words, Places, and Other Things We Lost in the War: OnRedactions”The article investigates the use of government redactions in three texts which relate in different ways to the War on Terror: Ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame’s Fair Game, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary. While the formal reason for redacting texts is to prevent specific pieces of sensitive information from reaching the public, the article claims—and supports through its readings—that redactions in these cases also are used as literary-narrative strategies with which to frame the reader’s general reading experience and thus his or her overall impression of and opinion about the War on Terror.

Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania (Eur. Ct. H.R.)

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the CIA established “the High-Value Detainee Program,” also known as the Rendition Detention Interrogation Program. On December 14, 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a heavily redacted 500-page Executive Summary of the Committee's “Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.” The full Committee Study is more than 6,700 pages long and remains classified. The release of the Executive Summary, however, disclosed new facts and provided a significant amount of new information to the European Court of Human Rights—mostly based on CIA classified documents—about the CIA extraordinary rendition and secret detention operations; their foreign partners or cooperators; as well as the plight of certain detainees, including Abu-Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah v. Lithuania is the European Court's first judgment to have taken advantage of the information provided in the Senate Committee's Executive Summary of its Study.

Our Cows and Whales

Our Cows and Whales

American psychologists, the Central Intelligence Agency, and enhanced interrogation.

In two commissioned articles, Health Psychology Open clarifies once and for all the role of two prominent American psychologists in the Central Intelligence Agency program of enhanced interrogation post 9/11. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program and the Hoffman Report produced more questions than answers. In these historically significant articles, Martin Seligman and Joseph Matarazzo assert the truth about their actions and the lessons learned.

Dietary Fat: Friend or Foe?

For many years, low-fat diets were the cornerstone of public health and clinical guidelines for preventing and treating obesity. The US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition released the first national guidelines in 1977. At that time, Dietary Goals for the United States included recommendations to “increase carbohydrate consumption to between 55% and 60% of the energy (caloric) intake” and “reduce fat consumption from over 40% down to 30% of energy intake.” These recommendations were based, in part, on the idea that consuming fat promotes obesity because fat is the most concentrated source of energy in the diet. Despite limited data, the recommendation to reduce dietary fat was underscored in 1984 by an expert panel at the NIH Consensus Development Conference on Lowering Blood Cholesterol to Prevent Heart Disease , and again in 1987 by the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP). Dietary fat was viewed as a “foe” to good health from 1984 through the 1990s. Currently, Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015–2020 (Eighth Edition) focus on eating patterns, and associated food and nutrient profiles, rather than on nutrient intakes. While there is no explicit limit on total fat intake, the Guidelines continue to advocate <10% of calories from saturated fat, consistent with recommendations in developed countries internationally. Interestingly, the daily nutritional goals and healthy eating examples, appended to the Guidelines , reflect an upper limit for total fat of 35% of calories, suggesting continued reluctance to promote higher fat consumption. During the era of low-fat diets, the food industry replaced fat with refined carbohydrate in many products, such that public health messages had unintended consequences. Over the past two decades, the prudence of low-fat diets has come under intense scrutiny, in light of emerging data from prospective cohort studies and randomized controlled trials showing adverse effects of refined carbohydrate on risk …

Interrogating TortureMoral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict. By Michael Gross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation. By Shane O’Mara. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Findings and Conclusions, Executive Summary. US Senate Select Committee on

Interrogating Torture<i>Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict</i>. By Michael Gross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.<i>Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation</i>. By Shane O’Mara. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.<i>Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Findings and Conclusions, Executive Summary</i>. US Senate Select Committee on

Does torture work? Donald Trump and the CIA.

President Trump says that ‘torture works’1,2 His office has released a draft order3 stating an intention to make ‘modifications and additions’ to the policies the US employs for the ‘... safe, lawful, and effective interrogation of enemy combatants captured in the fight against radical Islamism’. This not only worries human rights groups, but it also suggests that he has taken no account of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Study of the CIA‘s detention and interrogation activity from 2001–2009,4 on which he must surely have been briefed. This report concluded (as did the CIA) that torturing prisoners was not an effective means of obtaining intelligence or cooperation. It describes Orwellian ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques including slapping, walling, stress positioning, cramped confinement, sleep deprivation, confinement with insects, waterboarding, sexual …