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Implantable technology is gaining popularity, seeing people insert microchips under their skin to unlock doors, tap on on public transport and to make contactless payment in shops.

Most chips weigh less than a gram and are about the size of a grain of rice. These tiny biopolymer enclosures contain a chip and an antenna that uses is near-field communication or NFC, similar to the contactless payment technology in a smart-phone. 

Part of a movement known as biohacking, implantable technology shows no signs of slowing down as the relationship between humans and technology grows closer.

COVID has changed dating forever. Happenstance flings in clubs and romantic nights out on the town have been rendered ancient history as the compounding loneliness of endless lockdowns has largely moved romance into the realm of online dating.


A daunting proposition to begin with, the pitfalls of the online dating scene have only been magnified by social-distancing, curfews, the vaccination status of potential partners, and of course, the risk of catching a life-threatening virus.

Many of Melbourne’s brave singles have nevertheless risen to the challenge of trying to negotiate love in this brave new world, their journeys leading them from popular dating apps like Hinge and Tinder to walking trails and parks within their government-sanctioned travel radiuses.

These experiences have led many to re-evaluate the role of dating in their lives, the changing nature of the “getting-to-know-you” process and the difference that natural lighting makes in the time-honoured dance of courtship.


“I’m the kind of person who meets people randomly at pubs or at festivals and that’s how relationships start for me,” says Nkechi, 31, who had sworn off dating apps before the pandemic.

After holding out for the first year of Melbourne’s lockdown she reluctantly joined the online dating community despite some initial scepticism.

“In the first year of lockdown, I was like ‘what’s the point?’” she said.

“All you could really do was walk around the park wearing a mask, which left me feeling pretty disheartened,

“This year, though, I was a bit sick of talking to the same people all the time and really wanted to meet somebody new, so I started back on the apps.”

For Nkechi, though, the vetting process of online dating lacks the sense of spontaneous connection that she’s looking for.

“Having to think about it a lot really changes things,” she said.

“Not to say that I’m completely reckless, but before COVID I was totally happy to go out for the night just drinking, and to hook up with somebody.

“It wasn’t about ‘do I want to be in a long-term relationship’ with this person.”

“Socialising felt quite new” after being locked down for a while, Nkechi said, and the art of small talk has suffered as a consequence.

“You quickly realise that you and the person you’re on a date with are both slightly traumatised by the COVID scenario,” she said.

“You’re trying to get to know somebody at a distance and you’re trying to have conversations to explain who you are, but for the last two years you’ve been doing what everyone else has been doing – nothing!

“All I could think about was ‘could I stand being confined in a small space with this person for a long period of time?’

“Someone asked me, ‘how are you going?’ I’m like, ‘probably the same as you, dude. I’ve just been doing fuck all. Like, I don’t know what to tell you.’

Tony, 33, is a musician and chef who has had a markedly different set of dating experiences over the pandemic. Much more comfortable with the online environment and largely unable to work in hospitality, his love life “blossomed”.

“It actually flourished for me because I’m usually working a lot, especially at night-time,” he said.

 “I live solo, so you could have a bubble – I’d meet up in a park for a wine and if things went well, we’d rendezvous at one of our places.”

When meeting people online, Tony noticed that a lot of Tinder users had recently included their vaccination status in their bios as “a sort of pickup line”.

“A lot of people put it in their Tinder bios, ‘full-vaxxed’ and the like – I’ve seen a couple of anti-vaxxers on there too, he said.

“It’s definitely a divided thing.”

Despite this, however, Tony found the venues of his dates, public parks filled with families, to be “quite a strange setting” for romance.

“I’d bring a bottle of wine and some cheese usually,” he said.

“Although I did feel quite self-conscious at times because of all the families and stuff in the park.

“It shone a light on social protocols that happen in the dating world that I wasn’t necessarily even aware of.”

Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have expressed dissatisfaction with a last-minute deal struck yesterday with major Hollywood studios to prevent an industry-wide strike over pay and working conditions.

The deal, yet to be ratified by union members, addressed long-held concerns in the industry over dangerously long working hours and guaranteed a 10-hour rest period between daily shoots, as well as 3% annual wage hikes and improvements in pay.

But many IATSE members planed to vote against ratifying the deal, saying it is still not enough.

“I guess it’s a great start but the problem is this still means they can get away with 14 hour days”, said Ben Ridgwell who has been working as a data wrangler on Mission Impossible 7, a production based in the UK.

“The industry has always been like this, there is always pressure to get the day done and we are often asked to do overtime,” he said.

“When you’re on a job you rarely have time to see friends or family. Some jobs I’ve been on, we’ve done 15-hour days, especially as you get towards the end of production.

“Actors have other jobs to go to, or they’re only contracted to a certain date. It’s often cheaper to work a week of 15-hour days than it is to get the actor for another week.”

Having also worked in the Australian film industry where productions are regulated by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Ben said many elements of the IATSE deal have existed in Australia for some time, but extreme working hours are still problematic.

“Even with 10-hour turnaround people are still working too long, it’s tiring,” he said.

“Turnaround can be broken. It’s not a hard and fast rule that you must have 10 hours between shifts, if you go into overtime and then start again within 10 hours then production can just pay the broken turnaround.

“It would be nice if it was a little more like general office hours, that way people could see their friends and family and lead a relatively normal life.”

In a recent survey conducted by the MEAA, two in three Australian screen crew workers said they had fallen asleep behind the wheel driving two or from work.

According to over 200 screen professionals surveyed, the top three contributors to this were working days over 12 hours, working back to back weeks for over a month, and long driving times beginning and ending the day.

Kelly Wood, the director of the MEAA’s entertainment, crew and sport sector told Guardian Australia that the Australian film industry’s culture of  ”extremely long working hours” had to change.

“It’s really clear from our survey, that it’s not just about the data; it’s the stories that people are telling about their experiences working on productions. It’s clear that these hours are not sustainable – they’re not healthy and they’re not safe for people,” she said.

The MEAA did not respond when asked for further comment on this story.

Director of MEAA’s entertainment, crew and sport sector Kelly Wood says the Australian film industry’s culture of “extremely long working hours” must change.

Australian aged care workers have not yet received the first installment of the $800 retention bonus promised by Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a speech at the National Press Club on February 1st.

The payment received criticism due to its status as a taxable bonus: many say that it is not enough, has been issued in lieu of a pay rise for aged care workers and that the timing of the announcement is disingenuous, coming too late and shortly before a federal election. 

The federal government’s inaction on the findings of last year’s The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has also fueled cynical sentiment around the bonus. Pay rates have not increased, career paths have not been reformed and measures to counter job insecurity and casualisation have not been taken.

The City of Yarra announced a $15,000 grant for a photo exhibition on homelessness in a council meeting at Richmond Town Hall today.

City of Yarra Councillor Stephen Jolly said the project, Experiences of Homelessness, was “useful auxiliary” to the council’s homelessness strategy.

“Something like this can have a big impact in highlighting the crisis we have at the moment.

“However, if one was to say that’s all we need to do, it would be a mistake,” he said.

The City of Yarra’s 2019 Homelessness Strategy implemented coordinated and compassionate crisis response, early intervention for those at risk, and prevention of homelessness through affordable housing.

Cr Jolly called for increased pressure on the Victorian government to build more public housing and the need to incorporate low-cost housing into new local developments.

“The state and local governments have to come in and intervene, or people will suffer as a consequence,” he said.

According to the 2016 census, the City of Yarra’s rate of homelessness is 95 per 10,000 people, more than double the rate of Victoria as a whole.

Experiences of Homelessness would be a “photo-documentary project and exhibition”, said Melbourne-based photographer Alister McKeich.

“It’s likely to be a photo book with a whole bunch of analogue black and white photography documenting experiences and places of homelessness.

“We’re also hoping to turn it into a multimedia projection using the same photographs and the audio of interviews I’ve done,” he said.

McKeich holds a master’s degree in humanitarian law and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian and Al Jazeera, as well as publishing a full-length novel, The Eyeball End.

Like Experiences of Homelessness, his previous photo exhibitions on the Rohingya and Khasi labourers have also had a humanitarian focus.

Journalist and photographer Alister McKeich, known professionally as Ali MC, has been imprisoned by the Bangladesh military, beaten to within an inch of his life in Saigon, and held at gunpoint in Jamaica.

But for Experiences of Homelessness, a multimedia exhibition focused on Melbourne’s homeless crisis, Ali has focused his lens a little closer to home.

“It started when I met a lady by the name of Cheryl who was selling the big issue outside of Melbourne Central in April, 2000.

“We just kind of got chatting, and as you may have noticed from my writing and what I do, I’m pretty curious by nature.

“I love talking to people and hearing peoples’ stories, so we ended up having a bit of a chat and I thought it would be interesting to do an article or some kind of photo essay on the experience of homelessness,” he said.

As Ali developed the project, ethical considerations around the photography of marginalised subjects were at the forefront of his mind, a lesson he learned during his photography of the oppression of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Khasi stone labourers in the northeast Indian province of Meghalaya.

“These days, as a white male Western journalist, you need to really consider what you’re doing there and how you interact with people.

“I think the paradigm has really shifted in the last 20 years, and we have to be a lot more mindful of our roles as journalists and photographers – who we’re communicating stories on behalf of and who we’re communicating to.

“Personally, I think you can always tell when a journalist is just doing something as a journalist or whether they’re doing it because they genuinely have empathy and care about the community they’re working with,” he said.

Production on Experiences of Homelessness is currently underway.

ABC journalist Russell Jackson won the Gold Quill Award tonight for his article on racism in the AFL, The Persecution of Robert Muir is the Story Football Doesn’t Want to Hear.

Director for the Centre for Advancing Journalism Andrew Dodd said Jackson’s win at the Melbourne Press Club’s yearly Quill Awards ceremony underscores changing perspectives in the Victorian media’s coverage of racism in sport.

“It has sparked long overdue apologies and contributed significantly to a wider community conversation,” Dodd said in his presentation of the Gold Quill Award.

The Persecution of Robert Muir “transformed Muir’s life”, he said.

Published by the ABC in August 2020, The Persecution of Robert Muir detailed the racist treatment experienced by Aboriginal AFL star Robert Muir during the 1970s and 1980s and the impact of decades of abuse.

Muir’s story and the opportunities taken away from him were a “metaphor for this country”, Jackson said in his acceptance speech.

“Rob’s problem as a proud Aboriginal man was racism.”

“Rob, I know we’ve got a bit of work to do to get you the things you need, but I won’t stop until you feel safe,” he said.

Muir was in the crowd during Jackson’s speech.

ABC journalist and Melbourne Press Club board member Matilda Marozzi said Jackson’s win was “part of this bigger recognition that we have had problems in sports specifically, but sport being a microcosm of the broader community”,

“It is so good to see that the journalism community has recognised this as an important story.”

“10, 20, 30 years ago, maybe it wouldn’t have even been commissioned,” she said.

The Persecution of Robert Muir prompted public statements from the AFL and Muir’s former club the St Kilda Saints, apologising for their respective roles in his abuse.

The AFL Players Association, the Saint Kilda Saints and the AFL could not be contacted for comment on this story.