Intention

• Now we finally have a date for the Voice to Parliament referendum, it’s a good time to return to the terrific work our academic experts have done to explain the Voice to Parliament – as well as debunking some of the misinformation and disinformation we’ve seen so far.
• Many of the questions we have addressed came from readers who took part in our Voice reader survey last year.
• The Australian constitution and the 220-plus page report of the co-design proposed Voice are not very accessible for those of us who don’t speak fluent policy.

Helpful general information:

• Pre-eminent constitutional scholar Anne Twomey reminds us of the referendum basics – what will it say on the ballot paper?
• But what may have been forgotten is how we got here in the first place – and why it matters.
• And is there a risk that proposals that are too detailed, or too vague, can end up being rejected by voters?
• This article explores how factors such as race, religion, and experience with racial interactions may inform how these demographics could vote.

Constitutional and legal explainers

• A constitutional law expert explains Legislation is an unsatisfactory way to institute a Voice to Parliament because, among other reasons, it would make the body insecure and vulnerable to the whims of different governments.
• With 11 Indigenous politicians in parliament, why does Australia need the Voice?
• Why is it legal to tell lies during the Voice referendum campaign?
• Solicitor-general confirms Voice model is legally sound, will not ‘fetter or impede’ parliament Australia’s solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue provided the federal government with legal advice on the Voice to Parliament.

First Nations perspectives

• Kelly Menzel explores the cultural and historical complexities behind many First Nations peoples’ apprehension or uncertainty around the proposed Voice.
• Failure to incorporate Indigenous perspectives has contributed to decades of misinformed, ineffective policy such as the Northern Territory Intervention.
• Why a First Nations Voice should come before Treaty A leading argument against the Voice to Parliament is that Treaty should come first.
• Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people In the Uluru Statement, alongside “Treaty” and “Voice”, there is also a call for “Truth”.

Voice, Treaty, Truth explainers

• Since the Uluru statement was declared in 2017 we have heard calls from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders for “Voice, Treaty and Truth”.
• Our experts explained each stage of this process.
• The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?

How did we get here?

• It was the primary focus of last week’s trilateral summit held at Camp David between US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
• North Korea has increased the rate of its missile testing to record levels, with over 80 launches since the beginning of 2022.
• Read more:
  Solidarity and symbolism the order of the day as US, Japan and South Korea leaders meet at Camp David

Eyes on North Korea

• North Korea has also been accused of supplying weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine, which the DPRK denies.
• This in turn is designed to deter the deepening level of co-operation between autocratic China, Russia and North Korea.
• North Korea has been under UN Security Council sanctions since 2006 for its unlawful nuclear weapons program and severe human rights abuses.
• Read more:
  North Korea: fears of a new famine after three years of COVID isolation and harsh repression

  Even before the Camp David summit, the armed forces of the US, Japan and South Korea had been engaged in trilateral co-operation and military drills in response to North Korean missile launches.

Relations between Japan and South Korea thaw

• All this was made possible by the recent thawing of the diplomatic deep freeze between Japan and South Korea.
• The dramatic improvement in relations between Japan and South Korea were enabled by Moon’s successor, the conservative-aligned Yoon.
• Ever since Japan and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1965, the US has often been frustrated with the prickly relations between its two key allies in North-East Asia.
• Yoon also faces the prospect of his People Power Party losing control of the South Korean parliament in elections next year.

• By contrast, the export of lion bones, claws, skulls, and teeth originating from lion farms is currently illegal.
• This follows a high court declaration in 2019 in which the lion bone export quota was declared unconstitutional.
• This finding adds more weight to various reports about the illegal trade in lion bones over the years.

A nexus of legal and illegal trade

• Recent studies carried out in this way include those focused on the illegal killing, processing, and trade of jaguar parts in South America.
• The South African sources told us about the involvement of captive lion facilities in the international big cat bone trade.
• Essentially, there’s a well-established and effective legal operation which is plugged into an illicit trade network.
• Whereas after a canned trophy hunt the skin, paws, and skull of lions are prized trophies by hunters, the lion’s bones are coveted by illegal wildlife traffickers.

A way forward

• This raised serious questions about whether the government was wavering in its stated intention to shut down the commercial captive lion breeding.
• Instead, there should be a strategy which includes a mandatory time bound termination of the lion farming industry in its entirety.
• Neil D’Cruze works for an international NGO, World Animal Protection as the Global Head of Wildlife Research.

• This describes a network of cars and other vehicles that could exchange data over the internet in an effort to make transportation more autonomous, safe and efficient.
• It could help with a car’s positioning on the road, potentially enable them to be driverless, and provide easier diagnoses of faults.
• Cars already contain more electronic systems than ever, from cameras and mobile phone connections to infotainment systems.

Security bypass

• But one well-known way to bypass this requires a handheld relay tool that tricks the vehicle into thinking the smart key is closer than it is.
• To protect against them, car keys can be placed in Faraday bags or cages that block any signal emitted from the keys.
• To do this, the bumper has to be pulled away so a CAN injector can be inserted into the engine system.
• Once they have gained access to the vehicle, they can then start the engine and drive the vehicle away.

Zero trust approach

• One strategy involves not trusting any messages that are received by the car, referred to as a “zero trust approach”.
• This mechanism is increasingly being implemented by the automotive industry in new cars.

Infotainment system attacks

• One example is the ability for attackers to use “remote code execution” to deliver malicious code to the vehicle’s computer system.
• In one reported case in the US, the infotainment system was used as an entry point for the attackers, through which they could plant their own code.
• Therefore, all vehicle drivers with an infotainment system should have a good understanding of basic security mechanisms that can protect them from hacking attempts.