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The artificial intelligence application ChatGPT has already been banned in some state schools over concerns it could help students cheat, but some Australian MPs delivered speeches partially written by the tool in parliament this week to illustrate the challenges and opportunities posed by the technology.
ChatGPT has a reputation for saying a lot without saying much at all, so perhaps it’s ideally suited to the job of parliamentary speechwriter – or maybe it’s smarter than we give it credit for.
To find out, we searched Hansard for parliamentary speeches made by Australian MPs in 2020 and asked ChatGPT to opine on the same subjects – ranging from the role the arts play in society to the government’s obligation to provide good dental care.
See if you can tell them apart here:
Ben Doherty
When the email arrived, everything changed.
“Congratulations, you have been … ” The rest of the words swam away through tears.
After the confusion of being forced to flee a violent homeland as a child, after the trauma of five years held on Nauru, Sahar Ghalsemi had been accepted into university in Australia. She would study law on a full scholarship.
“I was sitting here crying my eyes out, because I had achieved something for myself,” Sahar says. “I had been allowed to. It was the greatest feeling.
“As a refugee, I’d always been made to feel that I couldn’t do things; the things that other people were allowed to achieve, they weren’t for me. So for me to be accepted to university … it was everything. I had fought for my future. I couldn’t stop crying.”
But after seven weeks at university in the first semester of 2022 – “the best days of my life,” Sahar says – the Australian government, without warning, rescinded her right to study.
She was forced to quit, her university required to disenrol her, and she has never been allowed back.
Read the full story here:
Two men have died and another is fighting for life after a violent incident at a home in Melbourne’s south-west.
Emergency services were called to a stabbing at a Wyndham Vale home about 3am on Saturday, AAP reports.
Two men died at the Carmichael Drive property and the third suffered life-threatening injuries. Paramedics transported him to hospital for treatment.
Police have not released any details about the identities of the men involved.
A crime scene has been set up and detectives from the Homicide Squad are investigating
Health practitioners were reported for alleged misconduct at almost double the rate in the last year, according to Australia’s health regulator, AAP reports.
Botched procedures, inappropriate sexual relationships with patients, and wrongfully issuing vaccination exemption certificates to people were among serious breaches resulting in referrals to tribunals.
Nationwide, there were 344 referrals made in the 2021-22 financial year, recorded by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
This was up from 180 cases in the previous year.
A spokesperson for AHPRA said a Victorian-based practitioner was found to have provided vaccine exemptions not in accordance with government legislation.
Victorian practitioners lodged the highest number of appeals (37) in tribunals about national board decisions in the past year, with Queensland based professionals lodging the second highest amount (21).
Of the 187 matters decided by a tribunal, more than 98% resulted in disciplinary action for the health care worker.
One practitioner was disqualified for seven and a half years after being found to have sexually assaulted a patient.
Hutchinson continues:
We are expecting power outages, trees coming down, the potential for houses to lose rooms. [The cyclone] has been downgraded to a category two so that is a blessing, but based on prior experiences, the last time a cyclone hit Norfolk Island of this strength was in the mid 1990s and there was damage at that time. So it is not the first time that the island has experienced this and I’d doubt very much it will be the last.
Asked what his biggest worry is, Hutchinson lists about three, including the welfare of visitors to the island, and the potential for the hospital to get damaged:
If we were to get an accommodation house that lost its roof, and other things, we’ve then got to deal with those things. All of those businesses have been made aware of what we are expecting them to do in respect of supporting their guests at their facilities. That is probably, for me, the biggest risk,
The hospital is probably the single biggest risk as well, but again there are contingencies in place. If they were to lose a roof or something, we have got contingencies in place to deal with that.
Another issue may be coastal erosion:
With relatively high cliffs around most of the island the only part of the island really that is exposed is the world heritage area down near Kingston and there are no residents in that part of the island, so we might get a little bit of coastal erosion, as I’ve mentioned before, trees coming down, power lines, power supplies being impacted.
Norfolk Island administrator says move to red alert being considered
Hutchinson says there are “probably anywhere between 800-950 visitors on the island at the moment.”
Flights have been suspended for the next couple of days, although the usual flight from Sydney arrived as scheduled yesterday, as did the flight from Brisbane on Thursday.
Hutchinson talks through the cyclone warning system, which starts at green at the beginning of cyclone season in November, moving through eventually to red:
We’ve moved through four stages of alertness, we are now at an orange. The Emergency Management Norfolk Island is meeting now and there is the possibility that they will then increase that to the highest level of alert, which is a red alert, and that basically means that people stay at home and don’t go out.
People are doing the right thing. The community has been well communicated with and, as I say, we have just got to now see this out. There is an emergency shelter that has been set up just now, where I am at the moment in the hall, so that is probably going to be used we think by visitors to the island.
Norfolk Island administrator says there are power outages from Cyclone Gabrielle
Norfolk Island administrator Eric Hutchinson is speaking to ABC News Breakfast this morning about the incoming Cyclone Gabrielle.
He seems confident that the island is in as good a position as it can be at this stage, given the worst of the cyclone won’t hit until this evening:
It was a pretty wild night but the impact of Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle isn’t expected to make its full impact until early this afternoon and that can potentially extend into the early hours of Sunday morning.
I will say, though, that emergency management Norfolk Island, we’ve had an incredible amount of support through the National Emergency Management Agency.
We are in a very good position. People understand, we’ve got good communication, albeit that we are having some power outages even now, we are in a pretty good position in terms of the planning and preparedness that the island is in at the moment.
Man charged with murder over death of woman west of Brisbane
A 21-year-old man has been charged with murder over the death of woman west of Brisbane, AAP reports.
The 19-year-old was found in a critical condition after reports she collapsed at a home in Bundamba, a suburb of Ipswich, on 4 February.
She was taken to hospital but died the next day.
On Friday, investigators arrested the 21-year-old Dinmore man in Brisbane.
He was charged with one count of murder (domestic violence offence) and will face court today.
Hidden donors handed more than $90m in “dark money” to Australian political parties in the financial year of the last federal election, new analysis shows.
Australia’s weak donation disclosure rules allow for the source of large swathes of money to be hidden from public view.
A new Centre for Public Integrity analysis of donations data released last week shows the source of $91.32m of party income – almost one-quarter of total party income – was hidden from public view in 2021-22.
The source of money is generally hidden from public view where donations are less than $14,500 – the Australian Electoral Commission’s disclosure threshold in 2021-22 – even if a single donor splits up a larger donation into multiple instalments below that amount.
Corporations that pay political parties significant sums of money as membership of their business forums – including the Liberals’ Australian Business Network and Labor’s business forum – are also not required to disclose their payments publicly. That’s despite criticism that the observer programs are effectively cash-for-access schemes.
The amount of dark money given to political parties in the 2021-22 election year was significantly up on the 12 months prior, when the source of $68.26m in funds was unknown. The analysis suggests that $1.53bn in dark money has been given to parties since 1998-99.
Read the full story here:
Emma Kemp
A landmark study on the use of homophobic language in men’s community sport has found education campaigns run by professional rugby players did nothing to stop young players and their coaches from mindlessly using words such as “fag” and “poof” in team settings.
The results from Monash University, just published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, directly contradict broadly accepted recommendations that this type of behaviour can be reduced through the formal delivery of education via videos or in-person talks – a practice used regularly in different sports around the world.
They have also prompted Australian rugby officials and players to call for more resources to further address a “sport-wide” problem that is harming LGBTQ+ youth in numerous codes.
Read the full story here:
BoM warns of Cyclone Gabrielle trajectory
Here’s a visual of the trajectory tropical cyclone Gabrielle is expected to take today as it heads straight for Norfolk Island.
The Bureau of Meteorology says gale winds will increase to what’s classified as destructive winds – gusts above 155km/h – from this afternoon. There’s also the risk of abnormally high tides, damaging surf and heavy rain.
Stephanie Convery
Good morning folks, Stephanie Convery with you now and into this Saturday. Thank you to my colleague Martin Farrer for getting us started this morning!
In her weekly tour de horizon, our political editor Katharine Murphy has been looking at the forthcoming Aston byelection forced by Alan Tudge’s resignation this week.
This key first electoral test since last May presents Liberal leader Peter Dutton with the chance to portray Labor as the enemy of suburban families by allowing inflation and interest rates to rise. It gives him a chance of holding the seat, she writes, but only if he can stick to this script and stop Labor making it about his naysaying.
While Dutton wants Aston to be a referendum on the cost of everything, Labor can also stage a referendum on naysaying and negativity from the alternative prime minister. If Albanese can make Aston a ballot on Dutton’s abrasive leadership style, what are the consequences for the Liberal leader if he loses? While Dutton is overwhelmingly supported by colleagues, and the moderate wing was all but decimated last May, not everyone loves the strategy.
Read the full piece here:
Our media business expert, Mark Sweney, has been analysing the strategies playing out around News Corp and why Rupert Murdoch’s empire was forced to announce 1,250 job cuts this week after a plunge in profits of almost a third.
He says that it serves as a stark reminder that the billionaire mogul’s abortive attempt to reunite his media empire was built on a mission to protect his weakest publishing assets.
To find out more about what’s going on inside the company you can check out Mark’s whole article here:
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our rolling news coverage for the day. I’m Martin Farrer and I’ll be looking at some of the breaking stories overnight before my colleague Stephanie Convery comes along to take the helm.
Our top story this morning is that amid demands by opposition MPs for the government to have Chinese-made technology removed from official buildings, it turns out that the Australian Signals Directorate said a year ago it was up to government departments whether to use equipment from Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua. Peter Dutton was defence minister at the time the advice was given to departments. And Senate records show the late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching had raised concerns the devices when the Coalition was still in office.
Residents of Norfolk Island are bracing for the arrival of Cyclone Gabrielle later today, threatening to batter the remote Australian outpost with powerful waves and devastating 200kmh winds. The category-three tropical cyclone is less than 1,000km from the island and on a direct path to it. The Australian defence force, federal police and emergency personnel teams were on standby. Tourists and visitors have been urged to flee before Gabrielle makes landfall on Saturday. New Zealand will be the next stop for Gabrielle and residents of North Island are already battening down the hatches.
Indigenous leaders have rebutted suggestions for constitutional recognition without a voice to parliament at the end of a week when the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has been made to work hard to justify the proposal. The Indigenous Empowered Communities delegation, a group of 10 Indigenous people from across the country, visited Canberra this week to shore up support among parliamentarians who might be wavering under a negative barrage from the Coalition. The group’s chair, Ian Trust, said constitutional recognition through an Indigenous voice was the only pathway forward. “The status-quo can no longer be tolerated,” he told AAP.
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