My name is Larry Foster, and I'm filling in for Mark's Claw for this episode of Law Across the Sea. Today, we're going out into the Pacific Islands. My guest is Manara Mordecai, who is the director of special projects at the University of Hawaii's William S. Richardson School of Law. One of her special projects is to coordinate a legal training program the law school puts on for Pacific Island judges. The trainers are lawyers and law professors and judges from Hawaii. The law school first started training programs for Pacific Island judges from the federated states of Micronesia some 30 years ago. That earlier program was funded by the federal judiciary in the federated states, then headed by Judge Ed King. The coordinator of that program was Addison Bowman, professor of law at the law school. At that time, most if not all of the state court judges were not law trained. The goal of that program was to bring those judges to the level of a second year law student. So, Manara, Aloha, welcome to ThinkDec. Aloha, Larry. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about this program with you today. So, what Pacific Island jurisdictions are included in this program? So the jurisdictions include American Samoa, federated states of Micronesia, which includes the states of Koshra, Yap, Juke, and Ponope, and Republican Marshall Islands, and Palau. Those are the four jurisdictions. That's a pretty broad swath of jurisdictions. What kind of legal systems do those nations have? So, most of—actually, all of the jurisdictions are based on U.S. constitution. So they have some form of Western court system, but they also have traditional court systems as well. So, we have a lot of judges who are actually set on traditional courts, and they hear cases related to customs traditions and land cases as well. So you have—the judges are lay judges, as you mentioned, they're non-law trained. And they have—FSN, for example, has part of their constitution that gives authority to traditional common law. So they are elders in their communities. Some of them have been in the legislature, elected officials, and now they've become appointed as judges. As I recall, the Chief Justice in the Federated States of Micronesia is a U.S. law graduate. Is that correct? Yes, it is. Dennis Yamase is a 1982 graduate of Richardson Law School. Last time—our last session was actually in Ponope, and he hosted us. His courtroom was in Ponope, so he hosted us on the islands. It was very welcoming. We had a reception with Sakao, which is their word for Ava. So there's a lot of— Did you try the Sakao, the Ava? I did. I did. It was quite something. We also got to see how it's made. So there's a lot of connections between the islands that we got to see and experience. So where does the funding for this particular program come from? So it's actually really interesting. The funding is coming from the federal government, but there are different sources of the funding. The U.S. federal government? The U.S. federal government. Yes, that's correct. Specifically, the Office of Insular Affairs under the Department of Interior, but different jurisdictions receive funding from different places. So for example, Republic of Marshall Islands and FSM are part of the compact of free associations. So that's where the funding is coming from that. And for Palau and American Samoa, there are different grants that sponsor those as well. The program itself is administered. The funding and the program is administered by the Ninth Circuit Pacific Islands Committee. And actually, Judge Clifton sits on that committee as well. He's a Ninth Circuit judge here in Hawaii. So we, the law school, we submitted a proposal to become the body that provides the actual training. And I collaborate closely with the Ninth Circuit Education Specialist, Russ Matheson. So we work closely together and putting together this program. Excellent. What is the purpose of the program? I think I mentioned earlier the original program some 30 years ago was to sort of raise the level of these late judges to that roughly of a second year lost in, is it? What's the purpose of the current program? So as I mentioned, they have no legal training. So our goal is to provide substantive and procedural legal skills, such as courtroom management, decision making, and the role of customary law. We also teach communication in being able to advocate for—not advocate, but become neutral arbiters in their courtrooms and being able to communicate and explain their decision making, why the decision had come out a certain way. So some of the sessions that we focus on are very practical for those purposes. So this particular institute, this iteration of the institute, we're teaching courses in decision making, judicial ethics, evidence, criminal law, and property rights. How long is a program typically run, a week or a few days? Yeah, so the way we structure the program and our original proposal was to have two years of sessions that are spread out over a two-year period. There'd be five sessions, and each session would last four or five days, about six hours each day. So it's pretty intense, and because they have to—they cannot take extensive amount of time from their work, their concentrate, their training within a one-week period. So Monday through Friday, they're in a classroom for six hours, and it's one week, and we have about two sessions per year that we try to schedule. And they take place in different locations around the Pacific? Yes, that's correct. It varies. One of the reasons why we were selected actually for this—to administer this program is because of our proximity, geographic proximity to the island, so it makes it convenient for judges to come and be in Honolulu, and we also take some of the sessions to the islands as well. So it changes between Micronesian region. So in the past, we've had sessions in Palau, in the Marshall Islands. We also held a session in Hilo, in Pontepe, and this— So why was Hilo chosen? It's an interesting location. It was time for us to host it here in Hawaii, and we decided to try a different island. And it was actually worked out really well. The session was on criminal law, and we—as part of the training, as I mentioned, they do a lot of practical hands-on training as well that are relevant for their courtroom specifically. So we were able to use a courthouse in Hilo, and Judge Marshall, who is a federal judge based out of Los Angeles, she was visiting, and she was the chair of the Committee of the Pacific Islands Committee for the Ninth Circuit. So she was in Hilo with us, and she was actually able to preside over this mock trial that we conducted. Did she bring a robe? Yes, we had the robe. This is a picture from the mock trial. You see the judges sitting here. It was quite exciting actually to see the proceedings, and she definitely was in full judicial mode. And being in Hilo and knowing some of the judges who actually have the courtrooms there, and they were very cooperative and very helpful for us to be able to reserve a courtroom and use it for a mock trial. How were the participants for the program selected? So they are lay judges, but we are looking at experience and geographic background. So for example, if people who have a little prior training will get preference. Do they apply for this? Yes. Okay. So what happens is we send out an invitation and save the date for a particular session with an explanation what the session will teach. And then participants can submit a registration form. The other decision part of actually is based on, not on us, but on their jurisdiction. So each jurisdiction has a chief justice that decides which judges would benefit the most from this particular training. Okay. So it may not be the same participants for each session. Exactly. But for the most part, within that two-year period where we have the sessions, I've seen the same judges that have been able to attend. So they're building on their previous learned skills, which has been really helpful. So I've definitely seen the trajectory with particular judges. So they come from a wide variety of jurisdictions and cultures and languages. So I assume the medium of instruction for the program is English. Yes. But I assume, do you know offhand, particularly if they're doing customary law cases, what would be the language, for example, in YAP that they would use? Do you know YAPIs? I don't know the name of the language, but they do conduct most of, in traditional courts, they would conduct it in the native language. But almost everyone is fluent in English. We've had some barriers with language with some judges, but they haven't been, it's something that we adapt to as faculty and administrators as well. So there are some things that we may take for granted, some words that we take for granted or concepts that we take for granted. And because our population in Hawaii is so unique and there's such a large population of Micronesians who are living in Hawaii, there's familiarity with different cultural norms and traditions. So our faculty are able to adapt and explain certain concepts. And then what's been really beneficial actually in what I've seen grow over the period of time that I've been doing this program is how much they're learning from each other. So for example, in the classroom, if there's a concept that someone doesn't understand, the judge sitting next to them is able to explain to them in the native language. And I've been out to the Pacific a couple of times, but you mentioned Hawaii was selected as a good venue for the organization part because of its close geographic proximity. These nations are thousands of miles apart themselves. And I think even FSM, YAP, is a thousand miles from Pompeii or something like that. Transportation must be one of your largest costs for the program. It is. It can be a barrier, but prior to having it hosted by Richardson Law School, the judges would be sent to Reno, Nevada, which has been more expensive in further travel. It actually works out really well for our partnership with the Ninth Circuit, where when we host the sessions in the Pacific Islands, the costs associated with travel is actually minimal because it would be faculty who is flying into the islands. And then we're bringing in, for example, flying from YAP to Ponipay is cheaper than flying from YAP to Hawaii or to Reno. But it is expensive and it is a challenge, but it's something that we're dealing with and the best we can. There's one airline that flies there, United Airlines. So we... Yeah, the old company on the... Yeah, exactly. So it's an island hopper plane, actually. So when we flew to Ponipay, you have to make three or four stops, which makes for a fun adventure. But we're all on the plane together, actually. We pick up people on different islands and then fly with them. So it works out and for right now, this is the best case scenario, I believe, because the islands, if in the future, for example, we decide to do some of the sessions online, the bandwidth doesn't allow for it to be as effective. And also, I believe in person, small group discussions are really valuable, which is worth that time and effort that goes into it. Yeah, it was face-to-face small group. Exactly. Okay, I think we're rapidly approaching the halftime for the program. Oh, that was fast. Very fast. So let's... When we come back, we'll continue talking about the program and get some of your insights as to how well the program is working. So see you after the break. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dave Stevens, the host of Cyber Underground every Friday here at 1 p.m. on ThinkTechHawaii.com. And then every episode is uploaded to the Cyber Underground. That library of shows that you can see of mine on YouTube.com. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could scare the absolute bejesus out of you. If you just try to watch my show all the way through. Hope to see you next time on Cyber Underground. Stay safe. Hey, Stan Energyman here on ThinkTechHawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff. But I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place.  Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Aloha. We're back from break. And my guest today is Manora Mordechai, who runs a very exciting program put on by the William S. Richardson School of Law, right here in Manoa Valley, at the William S. Richardson School of Law Training Program for Pacific Island judges. So the trainers, can you talk a little bit about the trainers, who they are, and how they are selected? Definitely. So I work with the Dean of the Law School, Avi Soyfer, and you know him well as your colleague. So we kind of go through the expertise, what specifically would be needed for a particular session and think about experts in Hawaii, who are not only experts in that particular field, but also have familiarity with the Pacific Island jurisdictions. So for example, we were lucky to have Julian Agon, who is a graduate of UH Law School. And he's a prominent attorney in Guam. He recently argued a case in front of NYCIRCUT actually. So our law school has a number of students in from the island. Yes, we do. So there's a close connection between the law school and the Pacific Island. So Julian actually taught a session on territorial sovereignty and insular cases, which was very relevant and to particular, like for example, for American Samoa to learn about the territorial jurisdictions and limitations. We also had Judge Clifton, who sits on the NYCIRCUT Pacific Island's committee, and he's a NYCIRCUT judge as well. I think he also served as an associate chief justice over some cases in American Samoa. So he has experience with that as well. Judge Clifton is also an experienced teacher. Yes. He taught at the law school for many years. Yes. As an adjunct professor. Yes. So that's one of the advantages of actually holding in Hawaii to have the legal experts who also have experience working in the Pacific Island jurisdiction. Sherri Broder is another one. She's a faculty at the law school and also a well-known attorney here in Hawaii as well. As you probably know, she's her and her late husband, Professor John Wendike, that a lot of cases related to Pacific Island jurisdiction. So I think they actually even drafted some of the rule of law and looked at some of the cases in the Marshall Islands. My recollection of one of your trainers, trainers is probably too low of a word to describe these excellent people, but Judge Milks, Marina Milks. Yes, Judge Milks. She's been outstanding. She taught the last session in Ponipay on judicial ethics and professional responsibility. The participants loved her. The judges loved her so much, they asked her to come back. So she's teaching our next session here in Honolulu, which will take place in January on decision-making. So again, her perspective on how the rules in the courtroom and issuing opinions, drafting opinions, all of that, she takes it from a perspective not just taken in a vacuum, but specifically how it's related to having cases and hearing cases in the Pacific Island jurisdiction. So for example, with judicial ethics, in some of these jurisdictions, it's impossible to recuse yourself from every case because you will know somehow someone related to either friends or family related to people who are in front of you in the courtroom. So she discussed how to approach judicial ethics from that perspective, where you know most of the people that are coming in front of you and how do you handle it professionally. One more question about trainers. Yes. I understand another popular trainer is Ken Lawson from the UH Law School. He is, and he's popular with the news here as well. You see him as a criminal law expert here. So he taught criminal law, and again, he was so popular, they asked him to come back for criminal procedure. He taught twice. And Ken is a good example of how not only are we building an existing relationship between Pacific Islands and Hawaii, but also we're creating future relationships. So Ken, he's never taught in the Pacific Islands before, but he's an expert in criminal law.  And he's a very gifted teacher as well. He is. He's been back to speak as a conference in the Pacific Islands and Guam and other places. So he is now a regular in the Pacific Island. So you've been doing yourself, organizing this program for about a year and a half now, roughly, would have been the biggest obstacles to sort of organizing this program with a lot of moving parts. Judges have been difficult at times, mainly places to stay, making sure that everyone will have appropriate accommodations. But for the most part, it's been going pretty smoothly. We do also find that some judges have more experience than others, so being able to accommodate different levels of expertise. And with each session, we learn how to do it better the next time. And we've been getting amazing evaluations, and there's definitely a feedback that we get back from the judges that tells us how to improve it for next times. And it pays off because every time we submit a new registration form for a new session, we have the classes at capacity. So our upcoming session in January is at capacity already. Excellent. Hey, has there been any—well, have you been out to the Pacific, well, other than Hawaii? Have you been out beyond Hawaii in the Pacific before this program? Not before this program. So it really opened up opportunities for me to be able to learn about the cultures and being able to actually visit their courtrooms in the specific jurisdictions. Was there anything that surprised you over the last 18 months in running this program? You mentioned that they're spread out thousands of miles. The surprising part is how—the commonalities that I've seen across different islands. And as you know, Hawaii—some of the cultural traditions here have been revived through some of the knowledge that was still existing in YAP and other— Right, the Great Navigator. Exactly. Yeah. So to see—so, for example, I weave Lao Hala, and to see some of the Lao Hala weavers in Ponapé and Marshall Islands, and to see—to witness that cultural connection has been very special. And then to see how the judges interact with each other and learn from each other, a lot of the issues they deal with, even though they're spread out thousands of miles, the cases are very similar, whether it's land cases or customary and traditional rights cases. So they teach each other just as much as they learn from our faculty. So how do you gauge the success of a program like this? Are they taking examination at the end, or how does that work? The success, for me, lies in evaluations to see the feedback, because a lot of that learning is voluntary. It's not forced. There's no grades assigned. So the judges are eager and willing to learn. And then to see them discuss some of the issues that they learn during lunch, during dinner, that shows to me that there's a level of engagement that whatever we attempted to do is staying there, it's sticking there. So that's how I define success. There's no examination, and then return, you know, people who return for more, to me, that says a lot as well. One of my recollections of the program is run by Ed King and Addison Bowman. And this is a role that Addie Bowman played. Some of the Pacific Island nations like Beetle Nut, and he would take the judges down to Chinatown and buy Beetle Nut, so that they would not be too homesick there. I know you brought some photographs with you. Maybe we can go through some of the photographs and sort of explain what's going on in the photo. Yes, so this is actually one of the sessions here. In Honolulu, we had a private tour arranged for them in the Hamilton Library, and they got to see some of the original documents. For example, the first Bible that was written in Samoan in our library has it. So it was really interesting to see that for me, and definitely for the judges who participated. And then next picture, this is one of the sessions that we have. I do enjoy having the diversity of perspective, not just simply from different jurisdictions, but also from women judges as well. Not a majority, but a number of women judges who come back to attend these sessions. So let's talk about diversity in Pacific Island judges. Any sense of the percentage of women judges versus male judges? This predominantly male profession, as it stands, but from what I've heard from judges talking about it, and they brought it up several times and it's changing. There are more women who are on the court in the FSM and other places as well. As I recall, out in the Pacific 30 years ago, I don't recall a female judge. So progress is being made out there. Let's go back to the photos. So this is actually Dean Soyfer. That's at the law school during one of our certificate ceremonies. So they receive a certificate of completion after attending each session. And a female judge. Yes, exactly. Excellent. So that's Professor Linda Krieger. This was in the Marshall Islands. Another certificate ceremony that we held. And actually another connection, Professor Calvin Pang at the law school, knew Judge Nick Johnny that you see on the picture here from his days as a clerk in FSM. So Judge Calvin, I mean, Professor Calvin Pang was a clerk in FSM. He knew Judge Johnny from back then. Excellent. I know. Excellent, yeah. So this was at the law library here at UH Manoa. We actually host a reception for them every year that they come to Hawaii. And this year we will host one of the law libraries as well. And I'm really excited about what we're going to do this year. The law library will bring out some of the papers by John Van Dyke and other original documents. And we wanted to record and have an oral history of how the Constitution of some of the jurisdictions has evolved and the original construction of Constitution and how it remains relevant now. So we ran out of photos. Oh, okay. So let me ask you another question. When you call a presenter to please come and be a presenter or a trainer. Yes. Are people happy to do it, bothered to do it? They love it, especially the ones who have taught already. So, for example, Ken Lawson, he's taught criminal law and was happy to come back to teach criminal procedure. Judge Milks, the same way. I think there's just something special about the bond that you create over that five-day period because they're not just students. They're practitioners. They're elders in their communities. I feel like the faculty, our faculty, learn from them as well. And they learn to become better teachers as well. So our presenters, we had, who was it? Dean Soiffer actually did a session on constitutional law and he was able to learn from them and how the Constitution here in the United States has been adapted into the various jurisdictions. So we're running out of time very quickly. I still have another page of questions. So we'll have to do this again sometime. Definitely. I'd love to. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck on the future of the program. Thank you. Aloha. Aloha.


Hello everyone, my name is Mr. Sandesh Pare, I am currently working as an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at Valtran Institute of Technology in Singapore. In this video, I am going to cover a concept called polygon filling. The main task in this is to correctly fill the polygon with the specified color. To add the very first, we will check the learning outcome. What happened at the end of this session is to, a student will be able to implement the program for filling the polygon with a particular color using the different techniques. Means the task is same, but there are various techniques to fill the polygon. So we will start the concept of the polygon filling. The basic method or we can say the simplest method to fill the polygon is to just check every pixel on the display that whether it is residing inside the polygon or not. If it is inside the polygon, we will mark it with the polygon color and if it is not, then we will color it with the background color. So it is the one simple method to fill the polygon. What happened? Suppose the polygon is very short, it is residing only within a short area of the display. And for that, we have to examine each and every pixel on the display. So it is not an efficient one. So this amount of work can be reduced by computing the bounding box. What is bounding box? So it is the smallest rectangle on the display which contains the polygon inside it. Means it is the smallest rectangle and within that box, there is a polygon. The polygon does not exceed the boundary of the bounding box. And that's why we need to examine the pixels within the bounding box only. And in this way, we can reduce the amount of work. And it can be found, the bounding box can be found by using the min-max test. Means minimum and maximum value of the x coordinate and minimum and maximum value of the y coordinate using the endpoints of the polygon. We can found the bounding box so that the number of pixels can be reduced. See, in this diagram, we can see the bounding box. You can see the whole square is the display. But inside that, the polygon is residing only within the short area. And for that, if we scan each and every line in each and every pixel on the display, then it will be not efficient. So for that, we have calculated the bounding box which is shown in the dashed line. And within that dashed box line, the polygon resets within that. So the pixels need to be examined as reduced and thus the computing time will be reduced. So we will start with the topic that is scan converting polygons. What I want that there are two concepts. This is the spatial currents and the scanline currents. What is spatial currents? It means except the boundary edges. All the adjacent pixels, if there is one image, what happens that the area, the certain area is having the same color. Each and every pixel residing within the certain area of that image is having the same color. So instead of saving the color value for each and every pixel, we can store it combined. And that concept we have already covered in the image compression type. So that in one more than scanline currents, means for raster scan graph, if the adjacent pixels on the scanline holds the same property, otherwise we can say the same color. At that time, the simplest method is to instead of marking it the pixel, we can directly draw the line from the starting point to the end point. And using that line function, we can reduce our work. So this is the two concept that is spatial currents and scanline currents are the two major concepts in this scan converting polygons. Let us see at this diagram. What is there? There is one polygon and we have to fill it. And suppose that x and y coordinate is the display, total display. And using the scanline conversion, what happens that suppose for the scanline 4, just look at the scanline 4. If we started the scanning from the value of the x is equal to 0 up to the maximum x value. And at that time, you can see there are two intersections at the p5 and p3. The polygon is having the 5 end points that is p1 to p5. And the scanline 4 is going through or passing through the polygon. Just take it into consideration, we will discuss in the next slide. The properties of the pixels of scanline change at every age intersect. As I have told earlier that there are two intersections at the very first intersection. After this intersection, we will change the color means at the very first we are marking the pixels with the background color. And whenever the first intersection is there after that we are going to color it with the every pixel with the polygon color until we reach to the second intersection. This algorithm will work to fill the polygon. And the next is the intersection divides the scanline into regions. Means what happened? There are on the scanline 4 as we have seen earlier, there are three regions up to the 0 to 2 value, 0 to 2 it is a means before any intersection and 2 to 6. That means the second region after first intersection and before second intersection. And the third region is the after second intersection. So in this way the area is divided into the regions. See that point is the same that is the scanline 4 in the figure intersect the polygon at the x is equal to 2 and 6. Because it is intersecting at the x is equal to 2 and 6 value. On that basis the region are founded that is the first one is the outside the polygon means within we reach to the first intersection that is the value of x is less than 2. And after the first intersection and up to the second intersection whatever the value of the x it is the x is equal to less than equal to 6 and greater than equal to 2. And it is marked as the inside the polygon between the pair of intersection whatever the region is there the that area is called as the inside the polygon. And we have to mark that pixels by the polygon color. And the third region is the x is greater than 6 it is means after the second intersection whatever until we get the next intersection that are the end of the scanline whatever the region is there that is outside the polygon. There is one question for you guys that is what is the difference between the spatial corons and the scanline corons see the difference is the adjacent pixels holding the same value in the particular image ok which except the boundary edges whatever the values are there it may be the multiple pixels and they are not belonging to the same row or the same column ok means but they are connected to each other. But they holding the same properties at that time it is called as the spatial corons. But in the raster scan device we are going to scan it by line by line ok at that time that whatever adjacent pixels on that scanline are ok that with the same value they are referred as the scanline corons. So, scanline converting polygons have some certain rules ok means whatever the intersection we are getting on the scanline ok we have to always sort them in the ascending order means the intersection of these suppose at the second sixth fourth and ninth position. But they should be first sort into the ascending order that is two four six and nine ok and after the sorting ok they have to make pairs ok means first and second third and fourth fifth and sixth in this way whatever the intersection values are there they should be merged into the pairs ok and after that whatever the interval between that end points ok means that end points of the pair ok and they belonging to the inside the polygon ok and the values which are not in their pairs ok means along sorry beyond that pairs ok that are the background pixels and for interval between the pairs of intersections ok background color will set because they are not belonging the area inside the polygon ok they are belonging to the outside the polygon. So, that is why background color will set and they will be marked by the background color and the pixel ok and before and before the first intersection and after the last intersection ok there is no any intersection before first and after last ok so that will be considered as the outside the polygon and so that they also may mark by the background color. And if suppose certain scan line value is having the three intersections of the polygon or the five it means odd values of the intersections are there then it is sure that particular intersection is one of the end point of the polygon ok means among that all odd values of the intersections there is one end point of the polygon so we have to ignore it. So, these are some references I used to make this video. Thank you.


In automated blood cell counting, there is no such thing as an artifact. Because everything the counter measures, one ought to be able to explain. In chronic lymphocytic leukemia, there is a maturation defect or abnormality in cell cycle growth. So, small lymphocytes do not mature past a certain point. And they multiply and therefore you don't expect to see the normal distribution curve again. Because the cells get arrested, there is an arrest of maturation. So, the lymphocytes all look the same. They are the same size and they are the same stage of maturation.  The mature lymphocytes are about the same size as the red blood cells. And remember that the quality that the counter picks up is based on size and cellular content. So, the counter picks up cells of similar size as RBC and plots them. So, you ought to remember that in arrest of maturation, that is neoplastic maturation of lymphocytes, if the arrest occurs at a point where they are similar in size to RBCs, then they would interfere with your red blood cell indices. They will interfere on the right side of it because their sizes will be like a large RBC. So, you will see a plateau of the tail end, the right tail end of your curve. Always pay attention to the curve and not the numbers. However, in this case, a glance at your WBC total count will tell you that you would have a leukocytosis and that will be the answer to that tale.


Can you choose your height? Yes, I can choose my height. Were you taller, shorter, or the same height before you lost your legs? As I am right now? Yeah, I was the same height. For Halloween last year, as a joke, became six foot three, but it was really awkward because it's not proportional. So like, I can be six foot three, but I'd be really tall and then like, I couldn't reach anything. So there's definitely a recommended proportional height. Fair. But I can change it if I want to. So when I first started walking on them, they didn't have the height and everything. We were just kind of trying. So I was like, I feel taller. How tall am I? And I was like five seven, and I'm normally five two. That makes a lot of sense though. Like you know, you could choose your height in theory. That's not always the best thing, like mechanically for your body. Right. And it is just the height I'm comfortable with. Like, I don't know. Being short has always been part of my personality. Yeah, that's also, I like that. I'll just remain not being able to reach things.


Choosing a business school can be daunting, but if we just look at the hard metrics, whether it's accreditation or University of Rankings, University of Auckland is New Zealand's leading university and our business school is among the top 1% globally. Even more important is the deep engagement that we have with New Zealand business community. It's not just the things that we think are important that we are teaching, we have consulted New Zealand businesses to figure out what are the skills that they need and what is the optimal way of delivering those skills. What to expect from our programmes? First, expect to be challenged. We will stimulate and challenge you intellectually. Second, you can expect to become a part of a cohort of similar, talented and ambitious executives as yourself. And third, you can expect to get skills that are applicable to your daily practice. The sooner you start, the sooner you apply, the sooner you will see the impacts on your career. Our MBA alumni have seen immediate benefits in terms of their career progression.


very interesting session on Australia's law on technology platforms and news publishers background and analysis. Let's have a round of applause while we will be welcoming our esteemed keynote speaker, the Honourable Paul Fletcher MP Australian Parliament. Ladies and gentlemen can we hear a round of applause? After that I'll be introducing him right here please. Thank you. To be here in Delhi to speak of this important conference organised by the Digital News Publishers Association of India. I've been asked to share some lessons from the work of the former Morrison government in Australia as we sought to regulate the impact of the global digital platforms Facebook and Google on the news media sector in our country. At the outset I don't want to give the impression that this was easy. We had some very rocky moments along the way. For example on the 18th of February 2021 we discovered that the Facebook pages of many Australian news organisations had been taken off the air including our major newspapers such as the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age and the Australian Financial Review. Why did this happen? Because the global management of Facebook strongly objected to the legislation that the Australian government was about to enact to establish what's now known as the news media bargaining code and Facebook's objective was that the Australian government would back down. We did not. Within days all of these Facebook pages were restored. Just a few days later the legislation successfully passed the parliament with strong support across the political spectrum and within a few months Facebook and Google had entered into commercial deals with a substantial number of Australia's news media organisations. So today I want to speak about the problem the news media bargaining code is designed to address. Namely the market power of the global digital platforms Facebook and Google and the corrosive impact this was having on the vibrancy and sustainability of our local news media businesses. Next I want to talk about what we as a government did about the problem and the results we secured and thirdly I want to talk about some reasons as to why our approach in Australia succeeded when many other countries around the world had tried and failed. So let me start then with the problem that the news media bargaining code is designed to address. The remarkable market power of Facebook and Google in the market for digital advertising in every market in which they operate these two companies capture a very large share of digital advertising and the revenue that it brings yet the content which Facebook and Google used to attract to their platforms in which they very successfully monetised with advertising revenue comes from many places including the media businesses with which they compete. So the aim of the code was to solve a serious public policy problem. Google and Facebook were using content generated and paid for by Australian news media businesses but they were not paying for it. When a video clip from a television news service appears in a Facebook feed or a Google search leads to an article on the website of a newspaper that content is helping Facebook and Google to attract people to their platforms and of course these two companies have achieved enormous success. They're two of the world's largest and most profitable companies. Google's parent company for example has a market capitalisation of over one trillion US dollars. The ACCC, our competition regulator, found that Google and Facebook are unavoidable trading partners for Australian news media businesses and this is undoubtedly true in every market around the world in which they operate but in the Australian market as in other markets until our government took action on this issue Facebook and Google simply refused to offer fair remuneration for the use of Australian news media content and whether they should be paying remuneration for that content is a very important question. First and foremost in our view it was a competition policy problem which is why as I'll discuss further we asked our competition regulator, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate this issue and recommend a solution and I want to highlight that fact because other countries which had sought to address this issue had sought to deal with it as a copyright issue and that did not have the same degree of success. Now I've said that it's first and foremost a competition policy problem but of course it's more than that. It's also a problem of media policy because you need a diverse and vigorous media sector producing high quality journalism but that costs money and that needs to be paid for. In most countries certainly including Australia privately owned media businesses which generate much of their revenue from advertising play a very important role in providing diverse sources of news which are not for example reporting only that that the government would wish to be reported. So the market power of Facebook and Google is a problem not just as a matter of competition policy but also as a matter of media policy. If incumbent news media businesses are losing eyeballs and in turn advertising revenue to Facebook and Google and then they become weaker financially, they employ fewer journalists, stories become shorter and less detailed, investigative journalism is harder to fund, media outlets start to go out of business. That creates a third and related problem. It undermines the very important role that the free and independent media sector play in a liberal democracy. The work of journalists is important in holding governments up to public scrutiny but if the commercial model which sustains the employment of journalists is fundamentally eroded due to unfair competition then that means fewer journalists, reduced scrutiny of government and a material reduction in the effective operation of the democratic system under which nations like Australia and of course India and many other democracies around the world operate. So for all of these reasons, the Australian government under former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was determined to do something about this issue. So let me turn then to what we did. The story goes back to 2017, Mr Morrison was then our treasurer, he had responsibility for our competition regulator and he assigned it with the job of investigating this issue to carry out what was called the digital platforms inquiry. We received the final report from the ACCC in mid 2019 and it examined this issue in great detail, hundreds of pages, it made many recommendations, it found and it may seem tried to make this observation but it found the digital platforms have changed our businesses and people connect. In a given month around 19.2 million people in Australia use Google search, 17.3 million years Facebook. Now these numbers I know are tiny by Indian standards but this is for a country of 25 million people. Of those 25 million people in a month 19.2 million are using Google search. So the ACCC report contained 23 recommendations across a range of issues and one of those recommendations was that there ought to be a code governing negotiations between Facebook and Google on the one hand and the news media businesses on the other. In April of 2020 we announced that we would require that this code be a mandatory obligation on the digital platforms. We asked the ACCC to get on with drafting it as quickly as possible and at the end of July 2020 a draft of the code was released allowing all stakeholders including Google and Facebook the opportunity to comment. That draft went into our parliament or the legislation was introduced into the parliament. The start of December 2020 there was a Senate committee process, our upper house of parliament giving Google and Facebook and other stakeholders another opportunity to put their views have those views considered and by late February 2022 2021 the legislation had been passed and was law. Now what were the results? Multiple commercial deals being done between each of Facebook and Google on the one hand in Australian news media businesses. By October of 2022 Google had reached agreement with 23 news organisations met with 13, a parent of Facebook. At least one of Google's agreements is with a not-for-profit organisation negotiating on behalf of 24 smaller publishers. Now as to the amounts paid by Facebook and Google under these deals there's no authoritative single figure for this. We were clear that the deals could be done on a confidential basis. But there are certainly some strong indications of quite large amounts of money being paid under the deals. One of Australia's largest news media businesses is Seven West Media. It's a listed company. Its deal for example has been reported to be worth around 30 million Australian dollars. Public reporting of the deals announced in the 12 months from February 2021 suggests their value exceeds 150 million Australian dollars. The former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission produced a report recently for a think tank. He estimated total value of around 200 million Australian dollars flowing under these deals. The agreements are typically for periods of three to five years and there have been a number of announcements by incumbent news media businesses about the way they're using this money to employ more journalists to strengthen their news rooms. I could give many examples but just to mention a couple in early 2022 News Corporation announced it was joining with Google to establish a digital news academy at Melbourne Business School to provide digital skills training for Australian journalists. The Australian Financial Review announced it would hire an additional 18 journalists. The Sydney Morning Herald and the age have been hiring trainees. After a decade or more with a steady drumbeat of redundancies and closures across the Australian media sector no different to the media sector in many other countries this has been a refreshing change. So let me turn then to why in my view we were able to be successful in achieving these outcomes particularly when similar attempts by other governments had not been successful. There were political and policy factors that were important and I want to run through four of them. The first is that there were some misjudgments in my view by Facebook and Google management. A large is a consequence of decisions being made in the US in California and not by the local management teams. It was certainly true that as these companies started to focus on what we were doing in Australia the level of seniority of the executives from these companies we were dealing with started to rise. It was very noticeable and this culminated in several video conferences where at our end the participants were our prime minister our treasurer and me and at the other end the participants included in one case Google's chief executive Sundar Pitschai in another case Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg in a third case Microsoft chief executive Sacha Nadella. I've mentioned in a number of the media interviews I've done that Facebook took this decision to shut down without notice the Facebook pages of Australian news media businesses. It was done in quite a clumsy way and they also ended up shutting down the Facebook pages of police services ambulance in one case a rape crisis center so it was not very effective as a PR move and indeed it ended up cementing some of the political support cross party support for the changes we were seeking to make. Google made in my view a similar misjudgment when they threatened to shut down the Google search service in Australia putting aside how that could actually be done that prompted Microsoft to come out and say they were interested in expanding the Bing search service in Australia and our prime minister was very happy to make himself available quite quickly for a well publicized video conference with Microsoft's global chief executive which are joined and following that Microsoft through their president Brad Smith issued a blog post expressing their support the Australian government's news media bargaining code. Once that happened Google no longer repeated its threat that it would consider shutting down the Google search service in Australia so that brings me to the next factor which was quite important the outcome we got very strong political commitment and direction right from the top of our government our prime minister and our treasurer personally very heavily involved as well as my involvement as communications minister and that was important because we did come under significant pressure from these global digital platforms and particularly when Facebook shut down a whole range of pages that caused a lot of stress to businesses including businesses where that channel where their Facebook page was their major channel of engaging with their customers so you might imagine that there were a number of businesses that were very anxious about this asking how quickly we could get this result so that kind of pressure was certainly present but we did hold our ground because we believe that the policy case for what we were doing is very strong I want to be clear we were very clear at the time the then Australian government I'm sure this is true of the current Australian government very much welcomed the involvement of Google and Facebook and other big American tech businesses in our economy just I might say as we strongly welcome the role of the big Indian tech businesses in our economy Infosys and TCS and many others have strong presence in Australia big employers doing great work and we really welcome that and I might say we are very conscious of the extraordinary achievements of digital India particularly the impressive work that is being done to make digital services available to citizens who five years ago 10 years ago did not have a bank account did not were not connected and the numbers and the achievements in India in terms of using digital technology to drive prosperity and to drive inclusion to bring so many citizens interconnectivity and and to have a bank account these are very very impressive achievements and I can assure you they are being watched closely around the world by many countries to return though to the question of what we did while we welcome businesses from around the world participating in our economy we insisted on the core principle if you want to do business in Australia you must abide by Australian law and of course the Indian government would strongly stand up for the same principle the government of Mexico the government of France whatever country it is this principle is very important that there are decisions that are appropriately decisions for the sovereign governments of individual nations they're not decisions to be made by the management of tech businesses in California or anywhere else now the third fact I want to mention was that we had a careful and methodical process and we took great care to respect property rights I mentioned we started with a very detailed piece of work by our competition regulator several hundred pages ultimately they took nearly two years to do that once we taken our decision we worked through a careful process giving the affected stakeholders including Google and Facebook ample opportunity to invent to examine the draft legislation to get their legal and economic and other advice in the domestic market and to make submissions so their views could be heard and we certainly did modify aspects of the initial draft in response to sensible feedback from the two digital global digital platforms and so that consultation was very important what was also very important was the way the code itself works making sure that affected parties have a fair opportunity to make their case to have their rights and interests properly weighed up before decisions are made and the code clearly sets out the steps that have to occur the criteria that get applied that's very important because our government valued and I know this is true of the current government we've had a change of government last year but it's a bipartisan commitment we value Australia's reputation as a place where global companies are welcome to do business and where the rules which apply are fair and transparent enforced by an efficient court system which is independent of government we emphatically did not want a code which would detract from the reputation what we also did not want was Australian government officials getting involved in detailed price setting processes what we wanted the code to do was to incent market participants that is Google and Facebook on the one hand and news media businesses on the other to do commercial deals our aim was to regulate just enough to get the parties to the table to conduct the commercial negotiations that would have happened naturally were it not for the extraordinary market power of Google and Facebook so just in the last part of my remarks I want to come then to the specific policy mechanisms used in the code which we designed very carefully and this was a key reason I believe why we had some success with our approach in Australia as distinct from the way that other countries have in a number of instances sought to tackle this problem a starting point was to use some well proven policy tools that are widely used or extensively used in competition policy in Australia one of them is this idea of a code which regulates or governs the particular commercial conduct in a particular industry and that is a tool that we've used in competition policy for many years another related tool is the so-called negotiate arbitrate model which applies in several industries in Australia certainly in the telecommunications industry that's been in the legislation for more than 20 years applied by enforced by the competition regulator now the way the code works is it establishes two key categories of business the first is a registered Australian news media business if a business meets certain criteria and that includes things like the independence of journalism so it can't be a PR agency or anything like that but if a business meets those criteria then our media regulator the Australian Competition of Media Authority can make a decision to register such a business under the code and to date 34 businesses have been registered as news media businesses second category is a designated digital platform which is the category within which Facebook, Google and potentially other businesses can be subject to the core of the code is that registered news media businesses can commence a negotiating process with a designated digital platform and if they don't get a satisfactory outcome after a specific period three months then provisions of the code can be triggered under which first there's mediation but again if that doesn't succeed there can be a compulsory arbitration process and that arbitration process can set the commercial terms under which Google and Facebook are required to pay the news media business for the use of that businesses content now we've also very consciously put into the code that a news media business and a platform can enter into a contract which sets out terms which specifically exclude the operation of the code so when you put all this together what the code does by design is to establish strong incentives for Facebook and Google to do commercial deals with news media businesses by doing this they can avoid the risk of the matter being referred to arbitration and potentially having the arbitrator set terms they do not like now I mentioned to date we've had 34 news media businesses registered and a very substantial number of deals have been done but what you may be surprised to know is that so far neither Facebook nor Google have actually been designated under the code now the code says it's the Treasurer who has the power to designate there's some criteria that the Treasurer applies one of those is whether the platform has already entered into deals and again this is all about having specifically designed this code to give Google and Facebook strong incentives to do commercial deals if they do do a commercial deal then they can avoid terms being set for them by the arbitrator and secondly they make it less like they get designated in the future if Google and Facebook had refused to come to the bargaining table there's no doubt in my mind that by now they would have been designated under the code but we very carefully designed this to get the outcome that we most wanted which was for Facebook and Google to come to the bargaining table and to do the deals that in the absence of their substantial degree of market power they would already have been doing and there are in my view very good reasons for preferring rapid commercial deals to a formal regulatory process as well as speed it's much more likely that a commercial deal negotiated by well informed executives from both businesses will deliver outcomes that are in fact commercially useful on both sides and informally that's been the feedback I've heard from both sides the negotiating process has been effective in identifying value-creating opportunities for the content generated by Australian news media businesses to be distributed more effectively across the digital platforms so let me conclude by returning to the point at which I started the problem of news media businesses under intense competitive pressure from the global digital platforms facing shrinking revenues and profits and in turn being forced to reduce the extent and quality of their journalism which of course in turn further reduces the appeal and hence the profitability of the product creating a self-reinforcing downward spiral as I've sought to explain the former Morrison Liberal National Government in Australia set out to tackle this problem in a careful way which involved just enough regulation to get the market outcome we wanted namely fair commercial agreements between Australian news media businesses and the global digital platforms there has been interest shown in our approach from a number of countries around the world I emphasise as I've already said publicly I am not here to say this is what India should do that of course is a matter for the Indian Government it's a matter for the media sector here the digital sector here these are decisions to be made through your domestic processes I'm simply here to share what our experience was and the outcomes that we've achieved which I believe have been rapid and have been practical and I close by referring you to a review that was done by our Treasury Department it reported publicly late last year which examined what had occurred this was put into the legislation there would need to be a review after a year the review was carried out and found that this has been a successful policy tool which has worked well so thank you very much for the opportunity to share with you a little bit of our experience in Australia