Groping for the Truth

It appears that Crikey‘s Guy Rundle has now gone a step too far, or once too often, or something. Last Thursday, Rundle texted in to Patricia Karvelas’s Radio National breakfast program that “every grope is now a sexual assault”. Karvelas read out Rundle’s full text on air, expressed her shock and off we went. As reported by the Guardian‘s Amanda Meade, ABC management complained to Crikey management, which sacked Rundle. Then the Sydney Morning Herald and the Herald Sun sunk their boots in. Not one person, it appears, has been of a mind to defend Rundle. I will.

It seems to me that this is a complete beat-up, that Rundle was correct, or at least correct enough, and that Karvelas was, at best, sloppy and lazy. The entire episode seems to me a perfect illustration of the media’s current concern for crusading at the expense of simple truth.

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Before getting to the “grope” thing, it is worth providing some background and disclaimers. To begin, Rundle is a longtime shit-stirrer and is well know for skirting, and on occasion leaping over, the boundaries of good taste. In particular, many people, including Crikey‘s bosses, have had Rundle in their sights since he suggested, admittedly very clumsily, that Brittany Higgins might be less than an unimpeachable heroine. Rundle also writes with sexual imagery on occasion, which one might might find either funny or disgusting, or both. Rundle is willing to attack anyone, strongly and flamboyantly, and he has clearly made a lot of enemies.

On the personal side, I’ll declare that I know Rundle and I am a fan of his writing. Rundle can be too florid and self-indulgent, and there is plenty on which I disagree with him: I’ve hated his writing on Israel-Palestine. But when Rundle is good he is great, writing on Australian politics and society with an understanding and in a manner that no one else comes close to doing. I also know Rundle well enough to call him a friend. I’ve met him on a number of occasions, he has requested a couple articles from me for Arena (one now being pondered), and I like him.

I will also declare upfront that I cannot stand Karvelas, and not just for her pissing on Assange. I regard Karvelas as one of the most self-satisfied, ignorant, shallow and manipulative media nitwits in Australia’s vast zoo of media nitwits. She appalls me. So, if it is Karvelas versus Rundle then it’d take a lot for me to not be on Rundle’s side. If it were Karvelas versus Godzilla then it’d take a lot for me to not be on the side of Godzilla.

Disclaimers are done. On to what happened.

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On her program, Karvelas interviewed Angela Lynch, Executive Officer for the Queensland Sexual Assault Network and Chair of the Sexual Violence Working Group of the National Women’s Safety Alliance. The subject of the interview was the (presumed) increase in sexual offences in Queensland, Karvelas launching the interview with some statistics,

“… according to the Queensland Police Service data, sexual offences have risen by 42%, and rape and attempted rape crimes has risen by 226%, and I had to sort of look at that figure twice, it’s so staggering, in the State, and that’s in the past 20 years.”

Off they went, with a lengthy interview on how this “crisis” is being addressed and how it should be addressed, all framed by the looming State election. A little later in the program, Karvelas refers to text feedback on the interview:

“We received a really strong reaction to that interview you would have heard a little while ago … we’ve been talking about this big increase in sexual violence in the crime statistics and we spoke to Angela who is in the charge of the Women’s Safety Alliance about that, a couple of texts on that “Hi, PK. Great interview with Angela about the 220% increase in sexual assault, so interesting the reason is not spoken about in the public crime discussion. Where are the feminists, these days? Regards”. From Anne.

And Guy Rundle has written in to say, 

‘Soft interview, on the head of a failed strategy. It’s because every grope is now a sexual assault. And people don’t believe policy people.’

Wow. That’s quite staggering. … I have to say I’m a little shocked there.” 

Karvelas seems to stagger a lot. If only she were able to argue as well as she staggers.

Let’s look this all, Karvelas’s statements, her interview and Rundle’s response. First, “soft” doesn’t begin to describe the cosiness of Karvela’s interview of Lynch. It began,

“She’s in the studio with me, which is wonderful, because we can look at each other! How are you Angela?”

“I’m really great, PK. Thanks for having me in.”

The entire interview had that chummy air, which is not necessarily bad. If there is broad community agreement on the topic and the reasonable purpose of the interview is more description than inquisition then “soft” can be ok. Still, one could expect a little probing, and although Lynch’s responses, at least in my opinion, were in general fine, there was a line or two that a less friendly interviewer might have challenged, or at least flagged. It should also be noted that the entire interview had a questionable secondary agenda. Amanda Mead wrote that Karvelas had interviewed Lynch “because the increase [in sexual assault offences] has become an issue in the Queensland election”, but Meade got it antipodally wrong: Karvelas interviewed Lynch because sexual assault offences have not been an election issue. Karvelas opened the segment by noting that “youth crime” was a big election issue, although “the State’s youth crime rates have halved in the past fourteen years”. It is clear that Karvelas, and Lynch, considered the youth crime issue to be dogwhistle nonsense. I have little doubt that they are correct, but the entire interview had a whiny “what about us?” undertone. None of this mateship would have mattered too much unless there was something contentious of which the mateship would discourage scrutiny. Which there was, and that was Rundle’s point.

Karvelas introduced Lynch by citing statistics:

“… according to the Queensland Police Service data, sexual offences have risen by 42%, and rape and attempted rape crimes has risen by 226%, … in the past 20 years.”

This is a blatant falsehood.

I could find no pinpoint source for Karvelas’s percentages but it is very likely that she grabbed them from this ABC report, or from the reporters themselves; the percentages in turn are seemingly derived from the Queensland Crime Statistics website. I tried a little and was not able to reproduce the 42% and 226%, but the graphs are in the ballpark and are definitely scary:

So what is the issue? Well, one issue is that Karvelas appears to be quoting numbers rather than rates, rather than offences per unit of population. Given that Queensland’s population has increased about 50% in the twenty year period being considered, this is not a minor point. But the main point, as Lynch notes in a follow-up LinkedIn post, is that the 42% and 226% refers to the increase in reported offences, not to the actual increase in offences. This is a massive distinction.

Depending on the context, reports may provide an accurate reflection of reality, but they also may not. As a stark example of the latter possibility, in the last century reported UFO sightings have increased by about a billion per cent, whereas the actual sightings, the number of actual visits by little green men, is stubbornly steady at 0. Yes, sexual offences are unfortunately much more prevalent than little green men, but there is still plenty of reason to be cautious.

There are reasons to believe that (the rate of) sexual offences might have risen: the atomisation and the pornographisation and the feminisation of Australian society has created a significant number of lonely and disoriented and, on occasion, aggressive young men. There are also reasons, however, to believe that sexual offences might have fallen. And there are certainly compelling reasons to believe that the willingness to report sexual offences, which is the content of Karvelas’s percentages, may have increased dramatically in proportion to the number of actual offences.

Of course Karvelas and Lynch are aware of all this, as they discuss later in the interview:

“Let’s just break down the statistics on sexual violence in Queensland, because I shared those figures, big increases. What’s behind the increase? Is it also a case that our culture has changed and there’s more reporting?”

“That’s definitely part of the picture, but what we know from ABS statistics, Australian Bureau of Statistics and other national statistics, is that prevalence is increasing.”

Really? By how much? Why not quote those statistics?

This is way too little, way too late. It’s like the 2-point font footnote on a bottle of dangerous drugs declaring “may cause blindness or death”: now you tell me. Yes, belatedly and implicitly, Karvelas notes that her percentages concern the reporting of offences, but neither Karvelas nor Lynch displayed an ounce of concern for raising data or research on the actual increase in prevalence. If any. Much better to launch with and stick with the boogie man statistics.

What the actual change in the prevalence of sexual offences is, God only knows. I have no idea whether there is an increase amounting to a “crisis”, to use Karvelas’s term, or any increase at all. On the rise in reporting, the ABC report quotes UQ criminologist Renee Zahnow:

“However Associate Professor Zahnow said the increase in rape and domestic violence data was most likely due to increased awareness, reporting, and enforcement.”

Somehow Karvelas skipped over that bit.

This area is a maze and a minefield, and I didn’t wander far. In the past couple of days I hunted around a bit, including on the ABS site, and I could find nothing of substance on actual prevalence that was worth noting here. Which, even assuming I hunted well, is neither surprising nor damning. Social science, when it isn’t being absurd, is very difficult. To get behind appearances and claims, to obtain an accurate sense of large-scale societal reality, is very difficult. Which then makes it very tempting to stick with solid data points, the reporting of the things and to simply pretend or pray that the reports are a sufficiently accurate representation of the things. The temptation is understandable. For a journalist to blithely give into the temptation is, at best, unprofessional.

There is a final point to make, regarding Rundle’s statement that “every grope is now a sexual assault”. I have no idea whether Rundle was concerned with legal changes to the definitions of sexual offences, or to cultural changes in the willingness of victims to report offences and/or to report offences at a more serious level. There is nuance here, for which a quick grumpy text is about the worst possible medium (and God knows why Rundle was texting that ridiculous program). In any case, Karvelas, and her guest, demonstrated zero interest in such nuance. They had plenty of time to clarify these matters and they did not.

Later in the program, Karvelas addressed Rundle’s text for a second time:

“It’s not really surprising to me given how huge an issue it is in our community, sexual assault, and what’s happening. Just a couple of texts. I read one, that was quite startling, about every grope is now a sexual assault. A couple of texts responding to that, which is not surprising people, um, worried about that sentiment. This one: ‘A grope without consent is sexual assault’. Well, it certainly is, it’s in the law.”

This, once again, appears to entirely miss Rundle’s point, in which Karvelas has already exhibited zero interest. But there is also another aspect. While reading around, of the various people bashing Rundle, many made this same point, that a non-consensual grope is sexual assault. I had blithely accepted this as true, focussed on the central points, of Karvelas’s misrepresentation of the statistics and of no one giving a damn. But it is not entirely clear.

The ABS has a page on sexual violence, dated 2021. The page concerns the Personal Safety Survey and it provides a definition of sexual assault, for the purposes of the survey, and then with a pointer to the law:

“In the PSS, sexual assault is defined as an act of a sexual nature carried out against a person’s will through the use of physical force, intimidation or coercion, including any attempts to do this. This includes [a bunch of really awful stuff] indecent assault, [more really awful stuff] and attempts to force a person into sexual activity. Incidents so defined would be an offence under state and territory criminal law. Sexual assault excludes unwanted sexual touching, which for the purposes of the survey is defined as sexual harassment.” [emphases added]

Is “unwanted sexual touching”, PPS notwithstanding, a sexual assault under state laws? How gropey does a “grope” have to be in order to be legally considered, or community considered, indecent assault rather than the presumably lower level of unwanted sexual touching? Have the standards changed since 2021 when the article was written, or since 2004, the comparison year for Karvela’s statistics? I have no idea of the answers to any of this, but they seem to me important questions pointing to important issues, with which Karvelas did not concern herself.

On any level, it seems to me that Rundle was right and Karvelas was wrong. Where Karvelas was opening her chummy segment with a blatant and perverting falsehood, Rundle was flagging genuine and serious confusion regarding changing community standards and changing definitions. Then Karvelas got the staggers. Followed, seemingly, by anyone who was paying attention, including Crikey‘s brainless and ball-less management. It is madness. And of course Rundle is correct, such madness actively encourages the disbelief of policy people. And media people.

Karvelas is the one who should be shunned, not Rundle.