Tech council’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
Australia’s tech lobby group was probably hoping that its annual summit would help with some recent bad coverage for the industry. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans.
In an effort to stave off criticism over a failure to do much about poorly behaved members, the Tech Council of Australia (TCA) used its national summit to launch a set of industry standards for “improving diversity and inclusion in tech”.
We can only imagine TCA CEO Damian Kassabgi’s face when one of the country’s leading venture capitalists, AirTree Ventures partner Craig Blair, went off message during a panel. According to the AFR, his comments suggested that he was in favour of supporting “deeply flawed” company founders and the industry should be looking for “problem children who we can build incredible cultures around”. Not exactly a zero tolerance policy.
Similarly, organisers had no doubt hoped that a speech by Victorian parliamentary secretary Bronwyn Halfpenny would demonstrate the deep, shared views and understanding of industry and government when it comes to technology. This commitment was somewhat undermined by Halfpenny’s references to how the world was being revolutionised by “A1” (instead of AI, presumably) as reported by Nine papers.
Finally, we heard that harrison.ai founder Aengus Tran was asked about how his company deals with people’s privacy when it comes to AI. According to the founder of one of Australia’s hottest health tech companies, “respecting the privacy and security of data from the patient is incredibly important in the context of what we do”.
It sounded like a good answer, but falls a little flat considering that company’s response to a Crikey investigation showing that patients had no idea that harrison.ai had used their chest x-ray data to train AI.
At the time, a company exec internally told investors that it had received sensitive patient data from another company, I-MED, and that questions about how I-MED got it was for that company. (“The legal basis for usage of I-MED data by Harrison is via the data licence agreement that we have in place, governed by relevant laws,” said company COO Peter Huynh.) Essentially, not our problem.
But, hey, maybe Crikey has a different idea of what “respecting the privacy and security of data” means.
Lovely jubbly!
Jamie Oliver has had a hell of a ride on his latest trip to Australia. It varies depending on who you ask, though — if you ask The Daily Telegraph, it’s all “lovely jubbly”. Splashed across its front page (albeit covered by a promotional liftout for the summer of cricket) was an interview with the British celebrity chef by entertainment writer Jonathon Moran, canvassing Oliver’s favourite Sydney restaurants and declaring the harbour city as having “some of the best restaurants and produce in the world”. He particularly likes Gigi’s Pizzeria in Balmain, if you were wondering.
Absent, however, was any mention of Oliver’s recent faux pas. His second children’s book (everyone’s writing one these days, aren’t they?) was pulled from shelves worldwide after criticism over its portrayal of a First Nations child in foster care, who is abducted by the book’s villain because “First Nations children seem to be more connected with nature”. The book also reportedly used Gamilaroi (NSW and Queensland) language attributed to characters from Mparntwe (Alice Springs).
While The Daily Telegraph didn’t make any mention of this, the article did note that the paper would be presenting an award at Oliver’s inaugural Food Hero Awards. We asked editor Ben English why it left out any mention of the withdrawn book, and whether it considered the incident to be important or relevant context for coverage of Oliver’s current tour of Australia. He didn’t respond for comment.
The publisher Penguin Random House UK (which clarified that the company’s Australian arm was not involved in the release) has confirmed to multiple outlets, including The Guardian, that it did not undertake a cultural consultation, and Oliver has since apologised.
A little Green oopsie
“Greens announce election plan to wipe all student debt in the key Greens target seat of Wills.”
That was the title of an email sent to press gallery reporters on Monday by the office of Senator Mehreen Faruqi. It sounded confusing — and slightly pork-barrelly — at first. Did the Greens really propose to only wipe the debt of the former students in their key target seat of Wills?
But a spokesperson quickly cleared it up for us: “Sorry for the confusion. Announcement is to wipe ALL student debt, but the presser will be in the target seat of Wills.” The party invited its candidate for that seat, Samantha Ratnam, to speak at the press conference as well.
Wills — the inner Melbourne electorate which already included such hip neighbourhoods as Brunswick — will now also cover “strong Greens voting areas around Brunswick East, Carlton North and Fitzroy North” after a recent redistribution, according to ABC elections guru Antony Green.
The redrawn map means Labor’s position will be “significantly weakened” and local member Peter Khalil’s margin from the last election of 8.6% would be slashed to an estimated 4.6%, Green wrote.
As for the debt wiping plan, it comes a week after Labor announced its own plan to ease the debt burden of graduates. Labor’s more modest offer of taking 20% of loans would eliminate about $16 billion worth of debt for three million Australians, SBS reports.
