Ed Jegasothy

The dangerous allure of false equity arguments Over the past few years, something to which I have kept returning is how often equity is invoked in debates about public health and the environment – and how often those claims don’t really hold up…

Reducing hazards ≠ justice. Unless we tackle the inequalities that shape who suffers harms & who benefits, inequity persists. My new blog on false equity arguments and why “doing one without the other is the injustice”:
👉 edjegasothy.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/d...

Diagram showing the delegation accountability chain for Australian universities.

Now, Australian universities.

Councils act as principals, appointing Vice-Chancellors, who direct executives, who rely on staff to teach and research. Students and the public receive the outcomes.

But councils do not rely on knowledge. They appoint their own successors.

❌ The loop is broken.

Neither corporate nor government: Why university governance needs to be different, and better Marija Taflaga, Francis Markham and Keith Dowding. Preprint, 29 August 2025. https://doi.org/10.25911/MWW4-9781 Abstract Australian universities face a governance crisis rooted in failures of accountability. Unlike parliaments and corporate boards, university councils lack effective mechanisms for principals to discipline agents. In parliaments, voters can replace elected representatives; in corporations, shareholders can vote out directors. Both systems close the delegation–accountability loop, ensuring alignment between principals and outcomes. University councils, however, are self-perpetuating bodies dominated by external appointees, and in recent decades they are typically from corporate backgrounds. As neither producers nor consumers of universities’ core product—knowledge creation and dissemination—they have minimal intrinsic stake in academic outcomes leaving councils detached from the university’s core mission. This misalignment fosters mission drift, weakens oversight, and contributes to repeated scandals. Because councils largely appoint their own successors, they remain insulated from meaningful scrutiny, unlike boards or parliaments where underperformance is sanctioned externally. Restoring accountability requires giving academic staff and students a renewed oversight role, alongside clear safeguards for the public interest. Because academics and students are both producers and consumers of knowledge, they have a direct and enduring stake in its quality. We recommend two mechanisms to do this are: 1. Academic Senates empowered to appoint and review council members, ensuring councils reflect the university’s purpose. 2. Robust Committee Systems that embed staff and student voices in decision-making, reduce information asymmetries, and align incentives with academic purposes.

Australian universities are in a governance crisis. VC pay blowouts, scandals, mission drift — these aren’t random, they’re structural.

This new working paper with @marijataflaga.bsky.social & Keith Dowding digs into why the system is broken, and how to fix it.

doi.org/10.25911/MWW...

A thread:

Bell's departure is overdue, but this crisis is not all her fault. Here's why It's a symptom arising at many of Australia's universities.

Unless the structures of university governance are fixed, we will see the same failures repeated but with different personnel.

Incisive op-ed from @jack-thrower.bsky.social

I think there is a puritan streak in public health. Where these ideas that seem logical are popular even if there is no peer reviewed basis for them. The other one that frustrates me is you hear clinicians insist that only water counts towards people’s consumption of liquid

folks are really obsessed with trying to find evidence artificial sweeteners are bad. to date it's basically been a failed exercise, but that hasn't stopped spurious conclusions getting significant overage.

universal Medicare safety net - problem solved

Tapestry also reportedly near disintegration

the implication of this is there is only one method for improving low-middle incomes that is reliable, rigorous and evidence-based: redistribution. everything else is just talk.

everyone loves to quote Krugman on productivity growth being almost anything. strangely they never mention his view that productivity is a great mystery, one that is unresponsive to sweeping changes in government policy and ideology, and something that no one knows how to sustainably increase

My contribution to the welfare state debate: Pre-transfers, the Child Poverty Rate is 100%
[Link below]

Help USyd Palestine advocates defeat Israel Lobby legal attack! Dr Nick Riemer and Professor John Keane are academics at the University of Sydney and long-time advocates of freedom and justice for Palestinians. Since October 7, in articles, on social media and at ...

Two Sydney Uni staff members are being sued in Australia's Federal Court by complainants who claim that statements opposing genocide and Zionist oppression of Palestinians are racist hate speech. Please give what you can to help @nickriemer.bsky.social & @professorjkeane.bsky.social's legal defence

If AI takes most of our jobs, money as we know it will be over. What then? AI’s evangelists are promising a future of almost unimaginable prosperity. There’s good reason to be sceptical.

Just out in @aunz.theconversation.com: #AI #Abundance and money. My reflections on #BasicIncome #BasicServices and why we need more than technical solutions to the political challenges of #poverty and #inequality
theconversation.com/if-ai-takes-...

The curve of this building in Darling Harbour is like an archimedes’ death ray

Exclusive: Government warned over ‘legal basis’ of welfare system Despite being warned in 2018 that jobseekers were being exposed to unfair and excessive decisions, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations ‘chose to continue with the status quo’.

Commonwealth Ombudsman already smashed them and now not even govt's chosen auditing firm can say if the house of cards system of punitive mutual obligations is legal. Quite literally, they say, it is indefensible. Yet it persists. Even after Robodebt. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politic...

Good on you Francis. Principled as always. What a shame for ANU

Hey @sydney.edu.au - Palestinians are starving in a systematic genocide being carried out by the state of Israel. Your pulling this flag down is very clearly partisan and also very clearly not a good look.

Marching through Macquarie

Ben with Damien

Mehreen Faruqi speaks to rally

Proud to stand with my Sociology colleagues, joined by @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social @damiencahill.bsky.social and the mighty @nteunion.bsky.social against the devastating cuts proposed at Macquarie University

Have the police commended the discipline of the protestors anywhere? Incredible to see 100k people come together, little notice, unpleasant conditions and have no problems, despite the existential urgency of the cause

Israeli rights groups accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza Reports from B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel add to growing domestic criticism of war conduct

“B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released separate reports on Monday saying they had reached the conclusion after documenting 21 months of Israeli military activity and public statements from political leaders.”

www.ft.com/content/dc1f...

Many Iberal persons defend levies like the tobacco tax on the curious grounds that tobacco is not a necessity-that poor people may or can avoid the burden by not consuming the commodity This position invites two comments. First, it is hardly accurate to say that no burden is involved in getting along without the commodity Second, it seems a little absurd to go around arguing that poor people could or ought to do without tobacco, especially if it is taxed, in the tace of the facts that they simply do not do anything of the kind, that the commodity was selected for taxation because they are not expected to do so, and that the government would not get much revenue if they did The plain fact, to one not confused by moralistic distinctions between necessities and luxuries, is simply that taxes like the tobacco taxes are the most effective means available for draining government revenues out from the very bottom of the income scale The usual textbook discussions on these points hardly deserve less lampooning than their implied definition of luxuries (and semi-luxuries) as commodities which poor people ought to do without and won't.

This incisive excerpt from Henry Simons in 1938 is as relevant now as it ever was

The first page of the Conclusion chapter of the book "The Foreign Gaze" which opens with a quote from Palestinian journalist writing from Gaza in April 2024, about hunger, malnutrition, and starvation.

"We prefer to die by airstrike. But not to watch our families die slowly from hunger."

The conclusion to The Foreign Gaze started and ended in Gaza; with hunger, malnutrition, and starvation on my mind; with famine on my mind.

It's very painful to watch my fears of Israel and its allies fulfilled.

Roy Morgan has now restored this data and analysis in full, almost three weeks after it was taken down

Which is the villain song in frozen? Let it Go or Love is an Open Door?

4-panel comic. (1) [Person 1 with ponytail flanked by person with short hair and another person speaking into microphone at podium] PERSON 1: In the early 2010s, researchers found that many major scientific results couldn’t be reproduced. (2) PERSON 1: Over a decade into the replication crisis, we wanted to see if today’s studies have become more robust. (3) PERSON 1: Unfortunately, our replication analysis has found exactly the same problems that those 2010s researchers did. (4) [newspaper with image of speakers from previous panels] Headline: Replication Crisis Solved

Replication Crisis

xkcd.com/3117/

Water privatisation has been a complete & utter failure.

It is absurd that the government's report into the water industry didn't even consider public ownership.

That's not a report. That's a political broadcast for the private sector.

Put water back into public hands, now.

Survey of Income and Housing results will not be released

This is pretty bad. The survey of income and housing is one of the ABS's most important economic data collections. And the previous wave was cancelled due to Covid, so we're stuck with very old data until 2027.

Big questions to ask about how this happened.

Exclusive: Smoking data taken down after link to vape ban A report showing increased smoking and vaping among young Australians was pulled after it embarrassed the government and led to complaints from other researchers.

The curious case of the disappearing smoking data. The Roy Morgan release was unequivocal: smoking rates among young adults are up after vaping ban which had "demonstrably failed". And then it disappeared and was replaced with something more amenable. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/...

Exclusive: Smoking data taken down after link to vape ban A report showing increased smoking and vaping among young Australians was pulled after it embarrassed the government and led to complaints from other researchers.

Great reporting from @squigglyrick.bsky.social.

Australia’s approach to nicotine regulation is clearly failing. We need greater transparency and accountability in public health policy and advocacy.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/... via @thesaturdaypaper.com.au