Most face-to-face events and all online events conducted by the Royal Society of NSW are recorded and made available for subsequent viewing on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/royalsocnsw. There were two events, held in June 2022, for which recordings are now available.
The first of these was the presentation by Professor Anne Twomey AO at the 1303rd Ordinary General Meeting held on 1 June 2022 at the State Library of NSW. Anne Twomey, who is a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney, delivered a stimulating and thought-provoking talk titled “Federalism, borders, and National Cabinet — What has the pandemic taught us?” in which she discussed who is responsible for matters such as State border closures, quarantine and vaccine mandates, and what the Constitution has to say about it. Her presentation is now available on YouTube.
On 10 June 2022, Distinguished Emeritus Laureate Professor John Aitken FRSE FRSN of the University of Newcastle, and winner of the Society's 2021 Clarke Medal delivered the Clarke Memorial Lecture for 2021 at the University of Newcastle Conservatorium on the “The changing tide of human populations: an infertility trap”. In this must-see talk, John Aitken alerts us to the impending steep decline in fertility rates—driven by increasing societal affluence through various social factors that include the increasing education of women, decreasing male fertility through exposure to environmental toxins, and the role of the IVF industry—that collectively herald an imminent collapse of population growth and a new era of depopulation. This talk, which was recorded subsequent to the lecture, is now available on YouTube.