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Content Warning: This blog includes mention of mental ill-health and suicidality. 

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) is the national peak body for people working to improve the health, rights and well-being of trans and gender diverse (trans) people. This year, the biannual AusPATH Conference was held in Melbourne from 2-4 November.

The Trans Health Research Team presented 12 oral presentations and 3 posters over the 3-day conference, sharing both recently published and yet-to-be-published research to an audience of over 500 attendees. 

Dr Lachlan Angus presenting his research on anti-androgens at AusPATH Conference 2023. 

Clinical research presentations

Endocrinologist and researcher, Dr Lachlan Angus presented his latest clinical trial findings, including a randomised controlled trial (RCT) comparing spironolactone and cyproterone in trans people commencing oestradiol, and a cross-sectional study looking at bicalutamide as an antiandrogen.

Authors: Dr Sav Zwickl and A/Prof Ada Cheung.

Content Warning: This article contains brief mentions of psychological distress, life satisfaction and gender congruence.

A trans woman. Credit: Supitnan via Adobe Stock.

There is no consensus on optimal oestradiol levels for trans people using oestradiol gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). International guidelines vary, suggesting goal oestradiol concentrations anywhere between 250 pmol/L and 1000 pmol/L, but these recommendations are based on expert opinion and the approximate range for cisgender women across the menstrual cycle, rather than clinical evidence.

Over the last few years, we have observed an increase in trans people in Australia seeking high doses of oestradiol, while their doctors understandably have reservations about prescribing oestradiol GAHT well above levels recommended in current Australian guidelines.

Authors: Dr Brendan Nolan and Dr Sav Zwickl.

Content Warning: Mention of depression, gender dysphoria and suicidality.

Trans Health Research recently published findings from our study on the impact of fast access to testosterone gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) on mental health and wellbeing in the peer-reviewed journal, JAMA Network Open.

Reandron testosterone, which was used in this study. Credit: Steve Tritton via Shutterstock.

Results showed significant reductions in gender dysphoria, depression, and suicidality after 3 months with early testosterone GAHT use compared to standard care. Remarkably, over half of the study participants receiving testosterone experienced resolution of "thoughts of hurting themselves or that they were better off dead".

Authors: Dr Sav Zwickl and A/Prof Ada Cheung.

What are oestradiol implants?

An estradiol implant is a small, slow-release pellet containing the hormone oestradiol. Implants are inserted into the fatty tissue under the skin, preferably in the top of the buttock.

The Australian Informed Consent Standards of Care for Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy recommend a starting dose of 100mg every 6-12 months, and a maximum dose of 200mg every 6-12 months. In a recent survey, we asked trans people using oestradiol implants about the frequency of their implants, and the majority reported that their implant was replaced when their oestradiol blood concentrations fell below a certain level (57%), indicating the importance of regular blood tests. 15% of the people we asked, had their implant replaced 6 monthly, while 4% had it replaced every 9 months, and 8% yearly.

A trans woman speaking with a nurse. Credit: Renata Angerami via iStock.

Why do so few doctors prescribe implants?

Authors: Dr Julian Grace & Dr Sav Zwickl.

Content Warning: This article contains brief mentions of genitalia, and other body parts. When referring to specific parts of the body, we use anatomical/medical terms e.g., clitoris, breast.

I’m over 18 and thinking about gender-affirming hormone therapy. Where do I start?

There is a lot of information out there about gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). Not all of it is correct, and some of it might be applicable elsewhere, but not in Australia. So, let’s start with the basics.

Trans and gender diverse people have all different types of feelings about GAHT. While some people want to start hormones and see big changes as quickly as possible, others want to take it slowly, and it may take years to decide that GAHT is right for them. Some people might pause their GAHT for different reasons (e.g., to achieve a pregnancy), some are happy to stop their GAHT after achieving certain physical changes, and others don’t want GAHT at all. All of these are valid pathways, and no one pathway makes a person more or less trans.

Author: Joël Murray (they/them), living and working on unceded Wangal Country, Eora Nation.

Content Warning: This blog discusses topics of sex, sex work, injecting drug use, stigma, and identity-based discrimination.

Credit: Maksym via Adobe Stock.

Dr Brendan Nolan (center) with international trans health colleagues at ENDO 2023.

ENDO is the leading global meeting on endocrinology (hormone) research and clinical care hosted by Endocrine Society. The annual meeting provides an opportunity for endocrinologists, health care practitioners, and scientists to come together and showcase cutting-edge advances in research and medicine, with presentations spanning the spectrum of science, clinical care, and social implications.

A/Prof Ada Cheung (left) with Dr Brendan Nolan (right) at ENDO 2023.

Two of our clinical researchers, A/Prof Ada Cheung and Dr Brendan Nolan, joined over 7,000 other attendees at ENDO 2023 in Chicago from June 15-18.

From left to right: Dr Angela Nicholas from the Centre for Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Dr Sav Zwickl from Trans Health Research, and Leo Rhodanthe from DISCHARGED.

Content Warning: This article contains mention of suicidality and discrimination faced by the trans community.

The National Suicide Prevention (NSP) Conference is an annual conference hosted by Suicide Prevention Australia. The conference provides a space for suicide prevention experts to showcase evidence-based solutions and robust discussion, and is widely regarded as the premier event in the suicide prevention calendar.

Despite almost half of trans people attempting suicide at some point in their lives, trans suicidality has been notably absent from previous years’ conferences.

Teddy Cook (ACON Health and TRANSform collaborator) and Ariel Ginger (TRANSform researcher) presenting research findings at the Australian Professional Association of Trans Health Conference in Darwin, 2022.

What is TRANSform?

TRANSform: An Australian longitudinal gender health study is an ongoing research project that aims to produce priority-based and community-led research to improve the health and wellbeing of the trans and gender diverse community.

Anyone who has a gender that is different to what was presumed for them at birth, currently living in Australia, and aged 16+ can join TRANSform. Since its launched three years ago, over 2,000 trans and gender diverse (trans) people from all over Australia have taken part, making TRANSform the largest ever trans research project in Australia.

Not only is TRANSform the largest project in terms of participant numbers but it is also the largest ever trans-led project in Australia. Trans people lead every stage of the research, from design to implementation, data analysis and reporting.

Authors: Stephanie Sheahan & Tomi Ruggles.

Content Warning: This article contains reference to genitalia, sexual arousal (erections), fertility, and sexual health. When referring to specific parts of the body, we use anatomical/medical terms e.g., penis, testicles, nipples, sperm etc.

Note: Not all people want the same changes from using oestrogen, anti-androgens, and progesterone, and not all bodies will respond the same to hormone therapy. All the body changes described in this article are typical but not universal. You can watch some videos showing the diversity of individual experiences at the bottom of this post.

Credit: Igor Alecsander.

What is oestrogen?

Oestrogen, or estradiol, is a sex hormone that is produced naturally in our bodies, and in people who were born with ovaries it is the main sex hormone. Testosterone is produced by the testicles, so people born with testicles will tend to have a naturally higher level of testosterone, and it will be their main sex hormone.

Authors: Dr Sav Zwickl & Elliot O’Donoghue.

Content Warning: This article contains reference to genitalia, menstruation (periods), and sexual health. When referring to specific parts of the body, we use anatomical/medical terms e.g., clitoris, vaginal canal.

Note: Not all people want the same changes from using testosterone and not all bodies will respond the same to hormone therapy. All the body changes described in this article are typical but not universal. Lower doses of testosterone and lower levels of testosterone will likely impact the rate of changes, and whether some changes occur at all. You can watch some videos showing the diversity of individual experiences at the bottom of this post.

Authors: Dr. Sav Zwickl and Dr. Alex Wong.

Content Warning: This article contains descriptions and images of genitals. We also reference menstruation (periods), sexual activity, and other sexual health topics. When referring to specific parts of the body, we use anatomical/medical terms e.g., clitoris, vaginal canal.

Note: Not all people want the same changes from using testosterone and not all bodies will respond the same to hormone therapy. All of the body changes described in this article are typical but not universal. Lower doses of testosterone and lower levels of testosterone will likely impact the rate of changes, and whether some changes occur at all.

Image credit: Gender Spectrum Collection.

2022 has been a year of challenges but also opportunity and hope. We have experienced a climate of intense, harmful political 'debate', often contrary to scientific evidence and the lived-experience of the trans community. Whilst we are steadfastly focused on undertaking scientific research to improve trans health, in 2022, our voices as science communicators has never been more important.

As clinicians treating trans people and as researchers in trans health where >50% of our team are trans people with lived experience, we have a unique perspective to educate the public and influence policy debate. In 2022, we shared our research through media, peer-reviewed publications, national and international meetings, seminars, and conferences, and in training sessions with healthcare professionals. Refreshingly, we’ve seen Australians rebuke the politics of division at the Federal election and our resilient community come together.

Below are some highlights from our year.

I want to make a brief intervention here to highlight an aspect of degrowth climate mitigation strategy that has so far been inadequately developed.  It is widely understood that scaling down less-necessary forms of production can contribute substantially to decarbonization, in two direct and obvious ways. First, it directly reduces emissions in addition to what can be achieved through efficiency improvements and renewable energy deployment.  Second, it reduces total energy demand and therefore makes it possible to decarbonize the energy system much more quickly, because it is not necessary to install as much new infrastructure, and the process of doing it involves less extraction and emissions. These are powerful benefits.

But there are several other benefits to a degrowth scenario that are less widely understood and are worth considering.

Here is a list of studies, surveys and polling results that shed some light on popular perceptions of post-capitalist ideas. I will seek to update this list periodically.

Support for post-capitalism

1. A survey shows that a majority of people around the world (56%) agree with the statement “Capitalism does more harm than good”. In France it is 69%, in India it is 74%. Source: Edelman Trust Barometer, 2020.

2. A study found that in 28 of 34 countries, a majority of respondents hold anti-capitalist positions. Source: Economic Affairs, 2023.

3. A study of the US, Canada, Australia and the UK found that in all four countries, a majority of respondents aged 18-34 (54-61%) agreed that “socialism will improve the economy and well-being of citizens”. Source: Fraser Institute, with polling done by Leger, 2023.

One of the central insights emerging from research on degrowth and climate mitigation is that universal public services are crucial to a just and effective transition.

Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there.

In 2020, the UNDP published a new metric that for the first time seeks officially to adjust the Human Development Index (HDI) for ecological pressure, accounting for countries’ carbon emissions and resource use on a per capita basis.  This is an important step forward; I support the effort and I applaud the work of those who are involved.  But the new metric, known as the Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (or PHDI), also suffers from several significant limitations, and in the end does not tell us very much about sustainability.  

Rikard Warlenius has written an article on what he calls “the limits to degrowth”.  In it, he states that because degrowth researchers argue the climate crisis cannot be addressed by decoupling alone (which is true), the only conceivable alternative is to drastically reduce GDP (which is false). He also applies GDP reductions to developing countries. These are ill-informed approaches to climate mitigation that no serious academic would propose, and which scholarship on degrowth and climate justice explicitly rejects. 

The paper is based on false claims about the scientific literature, uses invalid methods, and yields cartoonish results: Warlenius says that to keep global warming to 1.5C, global GDP would have to decline by 86%.  In the UK, GDP per capita would have to decline by 97% (!). Indeed, he goes so far as to say that GDP per capita would have to decline for many lower-income countries too, including India by 39%, Indonesia by 68%, Brazil by 82%. 

These are bizarre figures that have nothing to do with what degrowth proposes. The scientific literature takes a categorically different approach to climate mitigation, with empirical evidence from degrowth scenarios that strongly contradicts Warlenius’ claims. Warlenius does not engage with this literature, or even cite it. This is not an acceptable approach to science.

In a recent article published in World Development, we drew on newly available data to calculate that India suffered 50-165 million excess deaths during the mortality crisis of 1881-1920 (an average of 1.3 to 4.1 million excess deaths per year over the period, depending on our assumptions about ‘normal’ mortality). Following recent scholarship, we attribute the crisis to British colonial policy, such as the use of asymmetrical tariffs and technology restrictions to undermine India’s manufacturing sector, and the forced drain of foodstuffs and raw materials out of India for export to England. In 1902, the Indian economist Romesh C. Dutt estimated that the annual outflow of goods from India was sufficient to meet the nutritional requirements of 25 million people. As Dutt put it: “If any of the prosperous countries of the world – America or England, France or Germany – had been subjected to such conditions, would not that country have been reduced to poverty, and visited by famines, within a few decades?”

We highlighted these figures in a short piece for Al Jazeera. Tirthankar Roy then challenged our claims in a series of tweets, which we respond to here. 

Over the past few years, this graph has become something of a sensation.  Developed by Our World In Data and promoted widely by Bill Gates and Steven Pinker, the graph gives the impression that virtually all of humanity was in “extreme poverty” as of 1820 (i.e., living on less than $1.90 per day, PPP; less than is required for basic food). OWID has used this figure to claim that extreme poverty was the natural or baseline condition of humanity, extending far back into the past: “in the thousands of years before the beginning of the industrial era, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today.”  In other words, virtually all of humanity, for all of history, was destitute until the 19th century, when at last colonialism and capitalism came to the rescue. 

Social media has been ablaze with this question recently.  We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that roughly half of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs.  But the question at stake this time is different.  A couple of economists on Twitter have claimed that the world average income is $16 per day (PPP).  This, they say, is proof that the world is poor in a much more general sense: there is not enough for everyone to live well, and the only way to solve this problem is to press on the accelerator of aggregate economic growth.

This narrative is, however, hobbled by several empirical problems. 

1. $16 per day is not accurate

First, let me address the $16/day claim on its own terms.  This is a significant underestimate of world average income.  The main problem is that it relies on household surveys, mostly from Povcal.  These surveys are indispensable for telling us about the income and consumption of poor and ordinary households, but they do not capture top incomes, and are not designed to do so. In fact, Povcal surveys are not even really legitimate for capturing the income of “normal” high-income households.  Using this method gives us a total world household income of about $43 trillion (PPP).  But we know that total world GDP is $137 trillion (PPP).  So, about two-thirds of global income is unaccounted for.

Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky have a new book out, Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal. It’s an important contribution to the emerging GND literature, from two thinkers I respect.  But in recent interviews, when Pollin has been asked about degrowth, he has responded with claims that are factually incorrect and, I think, intentionally misleading.

Take for example this recent interview in Vox, where Pollin makes a rather strange assertion: “The fact of the matter is, degrowth is not a solution, just in terms of simple mathematics. Let’s say we cut global GDP by 10 percent, which would be a bigger depression than the 1930s. What happens? We cut emissions by 10 percent. It’s no solution at all.”

In late 2017, Branko Milanovic wrote a blog post titled “The illusion of degrowth in a poor and unequal world.”  He penned it, he says, following a conversation he had with a proponent of degrowth, which was me.  I wrote a response, which I have updated here for clarity, and to account for new data.

To recap Milanovic’s argument: he imagines a scenario in which we cap global GDP at present levels.  Poor countries then increase their GDP per capita to the global average, while rich countries decrease their GDP per capita accordingly.  He says that this would entail a reduction of production and consumption in the West, with economic activity slashed to one-third of its present size.

A number of people have asked me to respond to a piece that Andrew McAfee wrote for Wired, promoting his book, which claims that rich countries - and specifically the United States - have accomplished the miracle of “green growth” and “dematerialization”, absolutely decoupling GDP from resource use. I had critiqued the book’s central claims here and here, pointing out that the data he relies on is not in fact suitable for the purposes to which he puts it.

In short, McAfee uses data on domestic material consumption (DMC), which tallies up the resources that a nation extracts and consumes each year. But this metric ignores a crucial piece of the puzzle. While it includes the imported goods an economy relies on, it does not include the resources involved in extracting, producing, and transporting those goods. Because the United States and other rich economies have come to rely so heavily on production that happens in other countries, that side of resource use has been conveniently shifted off their books.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting a lot of attention these days, thanks in large part to the excellent work of Stephanie Kelton and Nathan Tankus, two of the movement’s most effective communicators. Over the past few weeks a number of people inspired by their work have asked me whether there is scope for thinking about degrowth from a MMT perspective.  My answer: definitely. In fact, the two belong together.

First, a bit of background.  MMT may sound complicated but in fact it is remarkably simple (here is a good place to start).  It points out that governments that control their own currencies are not like households. They do not have to “balance their budgets”, and, crucially, they do not have to tax or borrow before they can spend.  In reality, they create the money they spend - and they can create as much of it as they want.  This is clear to anyone who has been paying attention since the global financial crisis of 2008.  Countries like the US and UK have created extraordinary amounts of money to prop up the banking system.  The same thing is happening right now, in response to the COVID-19 crisis: governments are simply creating the money they need to respond.  This has always been the case, of course, but right now it’s happening out in the open, for all to see.  The notion of budget constraints has been revealed as a myth.

During the debate about global poverty that unfolded earlier this year, the Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith wrote a piece discussing some of my claims.  While some of Smith’s points are worth engaging, the piece makes a number of misleading assertions — assertations that illustrate the sort of sleight of hand to which many defenders of the grand poverty-progress narrative have resorted.

This tendency is clear beginning with the title: "The world really is getting richer, as poor countries catch up".  The title is incorrect on two fronts. 

How should we measure inequality?  There are two metrics that economists use: relative and absolute. In the past I have argued that the relative metric – which is by far the dominant approach, embodied in the standard Gini index, in the famous “elephant graph”, and in logarithmic distribution graphs – is problematic in that it is aligned with the interests and perspectives of the rich, and effectively obscures real inequalities in the distribution of new income around the world.  From the perspective of justice, and indeed from the perspective of the poor themselves, what really matters is the absolute gap between rich and poor, not relative rates of change.

There are two primary methods for measuring inequality - relative and absolute. In the discipline of economics, the former has become dominant by far. It is embodied in the standard Gini index, in the famous “elephant graph”, and in logarithmic distribution graphs (follow the links to see my critiques of each of these).

According to the relative metric, if the income of the poor increases at a faster rate than the income of the rich, this is recruited as a decline in inequality even if the absolute income gap between the two continues to widen.

Take for example a poor country whose average income goes from $500 to $1,000 (a 100% increase), and a rich country whose income goes from $50,000 to $75,000 (a 50% increase). The poor country’s income has grown twice as fast as the rich country’s, relative to its starting point.  According to the relative metric, this is a decline in inequality (and is represented as such in the Gini index, the elephant graph, and the log scale). But the gap between them has nonetheless exploded, from $45,500 to $74,000.  According to the absolute metric, inequality has worsened.

During the debate about global poverty that erupted earlier this year, one fact kept getting repeated: maybe poor people’s incomes haven’t increased enough to lift them out of actual poverty (grudgingly admitted), but at least they’ve been rising.  For those who seek to defend neoliberal globalization, this fact has become a precious touchstone. 

While it is true that the average incomes of poor people have increased since 1981, there are two crucial caveats to this that we need to pay attention to. 

1) First, the increase has not been steady.  Indeed, there have been long periods over the past few decades where the average incomes of the global poor (those living on less than $7.40 per day, the minimum necessary for decent nutrition and normal life expectancy) didn’t rise at all, and quite often actually fell.  Here are a few examples:

• In Latin America and the Caribbean, the average income of the poor fell after 1981 and didn’t recover its previous level until two decades later.

• In the Middle East and North Africa, the average income of the poor fell after 1990 and didn’t recover its previous level until a decade later.

• In South Asia, the average income of the poor fell after 1996 and didn’t recover until 2008.

There is a powerful infographic that has been circulating on social media for a couple of years now. It illustrates a dramatic transformation from a “two hump world” in 1975 to a “one hump world” today. It was created by Hans Rosling and Gapminder.

Most everyone who’s interested in global inequality has come across the famous elephant graph, originally developed by Branko Milanovic and Christoph Lakner using World Bank data. The graph charts the change in income that the world’s population have experienced over time, from the very poorest to the richest 1%.

We can update the elephant graph using the latest data from the World Inequality Database (WID), which covers the whole period from 1980 to 2016 using a method called “distributive national accounts”. Here’s what it looks like in real dollars (MER), developed in collaboration with Huzaifa Zoomkawala (click through for a series of interactive charts that Huzaifa has created):

Last week Vox published an article on the global poverty debate.  The piece – by journalist Dylan Matthews – raises a few issues that I think are worth addressing.  I set out nine brief points here, responding to specific quotes from the article.

1. “As Roser is quick to note, it’s not ‘his’ chart — it’s similar to charts many economists working on poverty have produced, such as one in Georgetown professor Martin Ravallion’s book The Economics of Poverty.”

There is in fact a key difference between the two charts. It all comes down to context.  Ravallion’s is in an academic text that is intended primarily for circulation among academics.  The inadequate nature of the long-term poverty estimates is well known among academics, who take them with a big grain of salt.  Roser’s chart, on the other hand, is an infographic designed for mass consumption on social media.  The chart itself – as in the version Gates tweeted – makes no reference whatsoever to the problems with the data.  On the contrary, it creates a powerful illusion of certainty. A key piece of my argument has been to say that this is irresponsible public communication. That’s why I say the chart should be taken down.

2. “Roser, as he stressed repeatedly in messages to me, just wants to be clear on what the facts say.”

Max Roser and Joe Hasell have written a post defending the methodology behind their long-term poverty graph.  It is not addressed to me, but it was written in response to my critique (which you can read here).

Unfortunately, their response doesn’t engage with most of my substantive arguments.  They do not address the evidence on how the $1.90 line is too low to be meaningful.  They call $1.90 “extreme”, which it is – and that is precisely why it should not be used in public communication.  Remember, the World Bank has repeatedly pointed out that it is too low to inform economic policy.  Why then should it be acceptable for Gates, Pinker and Roser to use it to inform public discussion about economic policy (i.e., whether the global economy is working for the world’s majority or not)?  As I see it, Roser should stop using $1.90 in his flagship graphs. 

Roser and Hasell also do not address the critique, made by Sanjay Reddy and many others, that the PPP baselines that underpin the $1.90 line overstate the purchasing power of the poor.  Nor do they address my argument that progress against global poverty is actually worsening, when poverty is measured against our capacity to end it.

Australians are sitting with anticipation awaiting August 2024, when the Commonwealth Government promised to deliver a draft bill to update the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act). But there’s another bill that’s poised to outshine the Commonwealth’s and champion state privacy rights.

In May 2024, Western Australia (WA) tabled its Privacy and Responsible Information Sharing Bill 2024 (Wa.) (Bill). We’re delighted by this development and in this blog post, our Board member Piotr Debowski will walk you through what we love about the Bill, what we are less keen on, and what we think the WA government needs to do some more thinking on. We focus our attention on the privacy aspects of the Bill, but the Bill does also contain provisions facilitating the sharing of information within the WA government.

The Bill is currently in front of the WA Legislative Assembly. If it passes, it will be handed to the Legislative Council for consideration. 

The BOSE outline the Australian Government’s expectations that apps, websites, social media and other services will take reasonable steps to keep Australians safe. Read more about the BOSE on the eSafety website here.

In late 2023 the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts announced they would be amending the Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE) Determination. A range of changes to the original BOSE have been proposed, including expectations related to generative AI and recommender systems. Digital Rights Watch provided feedback which you can read below, or download a PDF here.

The original BOSE Determination was made in 2022. You can read Digital Rights Watch’s submission in response to the original draft BOSE here.

The Australian government must act on its commitment to bold reform of Australia’s Privacy Act in order to uphold the safety, wellbeing and autonomy of children, according to an open letter today delivered to Attorney General Mark Dreyfus. The Open Letter was coordinated by Digital Rights Watch, and has been co-signed by 22 organisations across public health, children’s rights, and privacy advocacy. It also has over 800 signatures from members of the public in support. 

The Privacy Act has been the subject of a years-long review process, which has involved extensive community engagement. The latest report from the Attorney General’s department made dozens of recommendations, which were largely accepted by the Australian government in September 2023. The next stage is for a bill to be tabled but advocates are growing concerned about when this will take priority.

Australia’s commitment to privacy rights lags behind similar liberal democracies, posing a particular problem for children given their specific vulnerabilities. There is an urgent need to update Australia’s privacy laws for the twenty-first century. 

The letter highlights the negative impacts of invasive data-driven business models upon children—and indeed everyone—that the Privacy Act currently leaves unchallenged. It warns of the harms caused by endless engagement, targeted online advertising, rampant misinformation, and the normalisation of surveillance as the price for participation in online life.  

Under the Online Safety Act, the eSafety Commissioner can require industry bodies to draft industry codes to deal with Class 1 and Class 2 material. In 2022, a group of industry bodies commenced drafting industry codes to handle Class 1A and 1B material – this includes Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and/or Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM), “pro-terror” material, as well as material that deals with crime and violence, and drug-related content.

In June 2023, the eSafety Commissioner registered 5 out of the 8 proposed industry codes. Of the remaining 3 codes, a sixth was registered after amendments to reflect the developments in generative AI. The eSafety Commissioner declined to register the final two codes – for ‘Designated Internet Services’ and ‘Relevant Electronic Services’, based on the decision they did not go far enough to safeguard users in Australia. Given the proposed codes did not meet the expectations of the eSafety Commissioner, they then drafted industry standards. In November 2023, the eSafety Commissioner opened public consultation on the draft industry standards for 31 days.

40 organisations from around the world have today delivered a joint letter to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, calling for protections for privacy, digital security and end-to-end encryption. 

The letter was coordinated by Digital Rights Watch, Access Now, and the Global Encryption Coalition Steering Committee, and has been co-signed by organisations including Signal, Mozilla, Proton, the Tor Project, Electronic Frontiers Australia, and more. It was also signed by 560+ supporting members of the public.

The letter is in response to two draft industry standards proposed by the eSafety Commissioner under the Online Safety Act, which are open for public consultation until 21 December. The standards would apply to a broad range of services including email, messaging, and personal file storage, and include a range of proactive detection obligations to detect, remove, disrupt and deter illegal content. However, as there are no safeguards for encryption, the standards would require end-to-end encrypted services to undermine the security and privacy of their users in order to comply. 

Signatories acknowledge the severity of harm caused by the dissemination of illegal content, and recognise the need for regulation to enhance online safety. Contrary to the goal of the standards, what is being proposed will make everyone less safe online.