FLC Admin

Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US Department of War – Michael West

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Most people won’t be aware that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has established a new command.

Headed by Commissioner Krissy Barrett, our national police force is made up of five regional commands (Northern, Eastern, Central, Southern and Western) and a number of functional commanders dealing variously with crime, fraud and corruption, cyber operations, counter-terrorism and special investigations, and protective security. No surprises there – the AFP structure is well established and pretty much what you would expect.

But now there’s a new AFP “AUKUS Command”, established with little fanfare and headed by AFP Assistant Commissioner Sandra Booth.

AUKUS Command’s roles are centred on security for the AUKUS nuclear submarine project and interestingly include ‘Public Order Management’, but its mandate is much broader than protecting nuclear submarines.

The AFP’s FOI response came in late and was covered with large swaths of black ink redacting most of the information, but enough has been revealed to show that the Government is boosting its capability to deal with anticipated political protest activities against a much expanded US military and intelligence presence in Australia.

Nuclear protestors not tolerated

Although anti-nuclear protests focused on visiting US Navy nuclear powered submarines have so far been small in scale, the AFP has likely been alerted to the possibilities of larger scale water-borne protest by the “Rising Tide” environmental actions at Australia’s largest coal export terminal at Newcastle.

Protest groups involved in those activities have already been subject to close scrutiny by the AFP and New South Wales Police.

But wait, there’s more, much more

But it turns out that protecting nuclear submarines is only part of the AUKUS Command’s responsibilities.

Major upgrades are taking place at a number of other Australian Defence Force facilities to accommodate an expanded US military presence in Northern and Western Australia.

Significant works have also been underway at Australian intelligence facilities, including a major perimeter security upgrade and installation of new satellite dishes at the ASD’s Shoal Bay Receiving Station, nineteen kilometres north-east of Darwin.

As the US defence and intelligence footprint expands, it’s likely that the AUKUS Command’s security and “public order management” responsibilities will be quite wide-ranging.

Source: Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US Department of War – Michael West

OHCHR | Call for input to thematic report to HRC62: Violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women

Background

The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (IE SOGI), Mr. Graeme Reid, is preparing a thematic report on violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women worldwide, to be presented to the 62nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2026. This investigation seeks to understand the distinct and intersecting forms of violence and discrimination that LBQ women face across diverse contexts globally.

Source: OHCHR | Call for input to thematic report to HRC62: Violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women

‘Novel’ case draws reprimand – Proctor

A principal has been fined, publicly reprimanded and barred from obtaining a practising certificate for 12 months for professional misconduct in a disciplinary first in Queensland.

The principal and legal practitioner director was charged with failing to exercise ‘appropriate forensic judgment called for’ by filing an affidavit on behalf of a client that included explicit and sensitive material.

The practitioner was acting for the respondent to an application for a protection order under the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld). In preparing an affidavit on behalf of his client he attached photographs depicting the applicant naked.

In its decision the Tribunal accepted that the placing of the material before the court was a legitimate forensic purpose under Rule 17.1 of the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules, however, the method adopted for the provision of the evidence was at issue.

“All that was required was to inform the court that there would be a necessity to tender sensitive material and to seek directions how best to do so,” the Tribunal said in its decision.

“The filing of the affidavit, even in the relatively closed environment of the court involved in such applications, necessarily required publication to the applicant seeking a protection order, and others required by their duties to deal with the affidavit. Given the principal objects of the DFVP Act include the safety, protection and well-being of those who fear or experience domestic violence and to minimise disruption to their lives the very act of filing the explicit images within the affidavit potentially involved an act of domestic violence itself. Hence the need for forensic judgment in this difficult area.”¹

Source: ‘Novel’ case draws reprimand – Proctor

Nurse in patient pronoun row will face no further action, trust says

A nurse warned over using incorrect pronouns to address a transgender patient will face no further action over concerns she breached patient confidentiality when she spoke to the media about the incident, Epsom and St Helier Hospitals NHS Trust said.

Jennifer Melle faced a private disciplinary meeting with Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust on Tuesday.

Ms Melle, 40, from Croydon, south London, said she was racially abused by a transgender patient at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton in May 2024 after she referred to them as “Mr”.

The nurse was given a written warning from the trust at the time and continued in her role, and the trust also wrote to the patient to warn them that threatening and racist language was not tolerated.

After Ms Melle spoke to the media about her experience in March 2025, she was suspended with full pay, over concerns the patient could have been identified from press reports, potentially breaching patient confidentiality.

Ms Melle is taking the trust to an employment tribunal in April over claims of harassment, direct discrimination and indirect discrimination, because of her gender critical beliefs, relying on the protected characteristic of religion or belief because of her evangelical Christian beliefs.

She has been supported in her case by Darlington nurses Bethany Hutchison and Lisa Lockey, and Fife nurse Sandie Peggie, who have all been involved in tribunals regarding facilities shared with transgender colleagues.

Source: Nurse in patient pronoun row will face no further action, trust says

Major Step Forward on Gun Safety After Bondi Tragedy – Gun Control Australia

20 January 2026

Gun Control Australia welcomes the passage of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Act 2026 and commends the Albanese Government, with Greens support, for acting decisively to strengthen Australia’s gun laws in the wake of the Bondi mass shooting.

This legislation represents a significant step forward in protecting our communities. It establishes a national firearms buyback scheme – an approach with a proven record of reducing the number of high-risk firearms in circulation and preventing future tragedies.

The reforms also strengthen firearms background checking by enabling assessments to draw on defined national intelligence inputs, closing critical gaps that have existed across jurisdictions. In addition, the legislation strengthens oversight of firearm and related component imports and exports at Australia’s borders.

We particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to establishing a National Firearms Safety Council, as proposed by Greens Senators Larissa Waters and David Shoebridge. The Council will provide independent, evidence-based oversight to ensure firearm laws and regulations consistently prioritise public safety across Australia.

These reforms align with long-standing community expectations, reinforced yet again by the horror of the Bondi gun massacre. Australia is home to more than four million privately owned firearms, many of them stored insecurely in suburban homes. Around 2,000 guns are reported lost or stolen each year, roughly one every four hours.

By reducing the number of firearms in the community and strengthening national safeguards, this legislation will help make Australia safer. While there is more work to do, today marks an important and historic step toward preventing gun violence and protecting lives.

Source: Major Step Forward on Gun Safety After Bondi Tragedy – Gun Control Australia

Civil Service to hire trans equality chief as Labour dithers over Supreme Court ruling | The Telegraph

The Government is advertising for a senior civil servant to “lead on trans equality”.

A new policy manager at the Cabinet Office will focus on the “implications” of 2025’s judgment, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the term “women” in the Equality Act referred to biological sex, meaning trans women are not women under equalities law.

However, Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, has continued to block the publication of guidance that would force business and public bodies to protect women-only spaces.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said: “We are in the absurd situation that civil servants are advising Bridget Phillipson on the EHRC code of practice while the head of the Civil Service is claiming he cannot tell those staff members what rules are lawful until the guidance is finalised.

“Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office is telling individual government departments to take their own legal advice rather than developing a single, standard policy that follows the law. This is an untenable position. Sex Matters will be considering its legal options.”

Source: Civil Service to hire trans equality chief as Labour dithers over Supreme Court ruling

Deborah Meaden admits ‘I was tunnel-visioned’ over cancel culture denial as BBC star makes U-turn | GB News

Deborah Meaden has conceded that her “eyes have been opened” to the dangers of cancel culture after initially appearing to question its existence earlier this week.

The Dragons’ Den star found herself at the centre of a heated online debate when she questioned GB News regular Adam Brooks for “examples” of when anyone has “cancelled, sacked or arrested” in Britain for their opinions.

Ms Meaden’s request for evidence prompted an avalanche of responses from high-profile figures and ordinary citizens alike, each sharing their experiences of cancellation.

The exchange, which took place earlier this week, has since been viewed by hundreds of thousands of users and sparked widespread criticism of the BBC star’s handling of the numerous examples presented to her.

Among those who responded was Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, who recounted how he lost his career and a musical adaptation of the beloved sitcom after speaking out against transgender ideology in defence of women’s rights.

Pool player Lynne Pinches, GB News regular Connie Shaw, former Green Party deputy leader Sharar Ali, and many others also provided Ms Meaden with accounts of their experiences.

And returning to the social media platform on Sunday, Ms Meaden conceded she framed her initial enquiry “poorly” and that she was “tunnel-visioned” on her belief that some solely used the concept of free speech as an excuse to express hate speech.

Swimmer Sharron Davies, who’s no stranger to cancel culture herself, praised Ms Meaden for acknowledging the newfound information she’d received. “Thank you for taking the time,” Ms Davies began.

Source: Deborah Meaden admits ‘I was tunnel-visioned’ over cancel culture denial as BBC star makes U-turn

Why Young Women Moved Left While Young Men Stayed Sane | ZeroHedge

Bill Ackman quote-tweeted a graph showing the partisan gap between young men and women almost doubled in 25 years.

Women moved radically left. Men stayed roughly where they were.

Before getting into the mechanism, something important: this pattern isn’t only American. It’s global.

The Financial Times documented last year that the gender ideology gap is widening across dozens of countries simultaneously. UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, Brazil, Tunisia. Young women moving left on social issues, young men either stable or drifting right.

South Korea is the extreme case. Young Korean men are now overwhelmingly conservative. Young Korean women are overwhelmingly progressive. The gap there is even wider than the US. Contributing factors include mandatory military service for men (18 months of your life the state takes, while women are exempt) and brutal economic competition. But the timing of divergence still tracks with smartphone adoption.

Women evolved in environments where social exclusion carried enormous survival costs. You can’t hunt pregnant. You can’t fight nursing. Survival required the tribe’s acceptance: their protection, their food sharing, their tolerance of your temporary vulnerability. Millions of years of this and you get hardware that treats social rejection as a serious threat.

Men faced different pressures. Hunting parties gone for days. Exploration. Combat. You had to tolerate being alone, disliked, outside the group for extended periods. Men who could handle temporary exclusion without falling apart had more options. More risk-taking, more independence, more ability to leave bad situations.

This shows up in personality research. David Schmitt’s work across 55 cultures found the same pattern everywhere: women average higher agreeableness, higher neuroticism (sensitivity to negative stimuli, including social rejection cues). Men average higher tolerance for disagreement and social conflict. The differences aren’t huge, but they’re consistent across every culture studied.

Not better or worse. Different selection pressures, different adaptations.

But it means the same environment affects them differently. Consensus pressure hits harder for one group than the other.

Social media is a consensus engine. You can see what everyone believes in real time. Disagreement is visible, measurable, and punishable at scale. The tribe used to be 150 people. Now it’s everyone you’ve ever met, plus a world of strangers watching.

And look at the timeline. Facebook launched in 2004 but was college-only until 2006. The iPhone was launched in June 2007. Instagram in 2010. Suddenly, social media was in your pocket and in your face, all day, every day.

Women were roughly stable through the early 2000s. The acceleration starts around 2007-2008.

The mental health collapse among teenage girls tracks almost perfectly with smartphone adoption, with stronger effects for girls than boys. The same vulnerability that made social exclusion more costly in ancestral environments made the new consensus engines more capturing.

This machine wasn’t designed to capture women specifically. It was designed to capture attention. But it captures people more susceptible to consensus pressure more effectively. Women are more susceptible on average. So it captured them more.

Universities flipped to 60% female while simultaneously becoming progressive monoculture. The institution young women trust most, during the years their worldview forms, feeds them a single ideology with no serious opposition.

Four years surrounded by peers who all believe the same thing. Professors who all believe the same thing. Reading lists pointing one direction. Disagreement is not even rare, it’s socially punished. You learn to pattern-match the acceptable opinions and perform them.

Women got ideological conformity. Men got withdrawal. Porn. Video games. Gambling apps. Outrage content. The male capture wasn’t “believe this or face social death.” It was “here’s an endless supply of dopamine so you never have to build anything real.”

Different machines, different failure modes. Women got compliance. Men got passivity.

The answer isn’t “women are emotional” and it isn’t “social media bad.” The answer is that we built global-scale consensus engines and deployed them on a species with sexually dimorphic psychology. The machines captured the half more susceptible to consensus pressure. Then they started capturing the other half through different mechanisms.

We’re watching the results in real time. Two failure modes. One graph. Both lines are moving away from each other and away from anything healthy.

Source: Why Young Women Moved Left While Young Men Stayed Sane | ZeroHedge

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) Exposure and Cancer – NCI (published Jan 2025)

What is DES?

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is a synthetic form of the female hormone estrogen. It was prescribed to pregnant women between 1940 and 1971 to prevent miscarriage, premature labor, and related complications of pregnancy (1). The use of DES declined after studies in the 1950s showed that it was not effective in preventing these problems, although it continued to be used to stop lactation, for emergency contraception, and to treat menopausal symptoms in women (2).

In 1971, researchers linked prenatal (while in the womb, or in utero) DES exposure to a type of cancer of the cervix and vagina called clear cell adenocarcinoma in a small group of women (3). Soon after, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notified health care providers throughout the country that DES should not be prescribed to pregnant women (4). The drug continued to be prescribed to pregnant women in Europe until 1978 (5).

DES is now known to be an endocrine-disrupting chemical, one of a number of substances that interfere with the endocrine system to potentially cause cancer, birth defects, and other developmental abnormalities.

What is the cancer risk of people who were exposed to DES in utero?

The overall risk of cancer is not elevated in people whose mothers used DES while pregnant compared with the general population (6–8). However, females exposed to DES in utero, commonly called DES daughters, are at increased risk of several specific cancers.

Do the children of women who took DES have problems with fertility and pregnancy?

Several studies have found increased risks of premature birth, miscarriage, and ectopic pregnancy in females exposed to DES in utero.

Some studies suggest that the increased risk of infertility in DES daughters is due mainly to uterine or fallopian tube problems (14).

Males exposed to DES in utero have an increased risk of testicular abnormalities, including undescended testicles or development of cysts in the epididymis (15). There is also some evidence of increased risks of inflammation or infection of the testicles (15). However, DES sons do not have an increased risk of infertility, even when they have genital abnormalities (15).

What health issues might DES grandchildren have?

The data also suggested that infertility was greater among DES granddaughters than among unexposed women of the same age (25) and that they may have an increased risk of preterm delivery (24). However, this association is based on small numbers of events and was not statistically significant. Researchers will continue to follow these individuals to study the risk of infertility.

Recent studies have found that DES granddaughters and DES grandsons may have a slightly higher risk of cancer (26) and birth defects (27), including hypospadias in DES grandsons (28). However, because each of these associations is based on small numbers of events, researchers will continue to study these groups to clarify the findings.

How can people find out if they took DES during pregnancy or were exposed to DES in utero?

Women who think they used DES during pregnancy, or people who think that their mother used DES during pregnancy, can try contacting the health care provider or institution where they received their care to request a review of their medical records. If any medications were taken during pregnancy, obstetrical records could be checked to determine the name of the drug.

Is it safe for DES daughters to use hormone replacement therapy?

Each woman should discuss this question with her health care provider. There is no evidence that hormone replacement therapy is unsafe for DES daughters. However, some clinicians believe that DES daughters should avoid these medications because they contain estrogen (32).

Source: Diethylstilbestrol (DES) Exposure and Cancer – NCI

“It doesn’t touch me”, Rachel Ward is unbothered by online trolls – The Australian Women’s Weekly

Rachel Ward speaks out after receiving an on-slaught of online hate simply for ageing and choosing to do so naturally.

It was days before Christmas – mid-summer – and cicadas trilled in the background as actor, director and beef cattle farmer Rachel Ward posted a video to her Instagram feed thanking friends and neighbours for their support throughout the year.

No one – least of all Rachel – imagined this chatty, generous and otherwise innocuous post would attract a band of ill-mannered (and inarticulate) trolls.

‘OMG!! What the hell happened to her. Wow!! She has aged really bad.’ ‘I wish I never saw her like this!’ ‘She looks ravaged.’ And worse.

Her daughter, Matilda Brown, also an actor and food producer (at The Good Farm Shop), was incensed. She jumped to her mum’s defence and reposted the comments, calling out the idiocy of criticising a 68-year-old woman for, essentially, looking 68. “Warning!! Naturally aging woman. Proceed with caution,” she wrote and posted a series of exquisite photographs of Rachel with her grandkids, and at work on the farm.

The resulting pile-on of love is what Rachel has focused on, she says, sitting in her kitchen, enjoying a morning cuppa as she chats with The Weekly.

“Why are we giving ourselves these expectations to maintain youth, and what is perceived as attractive? It’s so great to not weigh into that anymore. Maybe if I was 40, I would mind the comments, but now I’ve so left any kind of attachment to youth and beauty behind … It doesn’t touch me because it’s not important anymore.”

Rachel let her hair colour grow out last year, against Bryan’s advice. It was a conscious decision.

“I’d been wanting to do it for a while,” she explains. “It was Bryan who was very resistant. I was just, ‘Well, you’re grey, why does it matter?’ And he was like, ‘You don’t need to go grey yet.’

“I had no idea it was going to be this white, but I like it, and my daughter cut it, so it’s her haircut. My kids like it, the grandkids don’t have a problem. and even Bryan seems to have come around to it, so there we go.”

Source: “It doesn’t touch me”, Rachel Ward is unbothered by online trolls – The Australian Women’s Weekly

Nuclear protestors not tolerated

But wait, there’s more, much more

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

What health issues might DES grandchildren have?

How can people find out if they took DES during pregnancy or were exposed to DES in utero?

Share this:

Share this: