Aidan Elwig Pollock Analysis, page 13
Honi Soit publishes on the Gadigal land of the Eora nation. Sovereignty was never ceded. All our knowledge is produced on stolen Indigenous lands. The University of Sydney is principally a colonial institution, predicated on the notion that Western ways of thinking and learning are superior to the First Knowledge of Indigenous peoples.
At Honi Soit, we rebuke this claim, and maintain our commitment to platforming and empowering the experiences, perspectives and voices of First Nations students. This basis informs our practice as a paper. As a student newspaper, we have a duty to combat the mechanisms of colonisation.
As student journalists, we recognise our responsibility as a radical student newspaper to oppose the inherent racism and exclusivity of mainstream media outlets. We also uphold the struggle of other Indigenous communities worldwide and acknowledge that our resistance is intertwined.
Editor in Chief
As an editorial team of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous heritage, we are both victims and beneficiaries of colonisation. We are committed to unlearning our colonial premonitions and working to hold current institutions accountable.
We are galvanised by our commitment to Indigenous justice.
Misbah Ansari, Katarina Butler, Luke Cass, Bipasha Chakraborty, Veronica Lenard, Luke MešteroviĆ, Eamonn Murphy, Caitlin O’Keeffe-White, Andy Park
Nicola Brayan, Lachlan Buller, Maeve Hopper, Gemma Hudson, Sandra Kallarakkal, Zeina Khochaiche, Ethan Lyons, Angus McGregor, Ethan Mehta, Sandy Ou, Elizabeth Pike, Aidan Elwig Pollock, Nafeesa Rahman, Hamani Tanginoa, Khanh Tran, Danny Yazdani
Artists
Emma
Margot Roberts
Ethan Floyd Dylan Mooney
Bipasha Chakraborty, Ethan Floyd, Andy Park
The University of Sydney is an inherently colonial institution -— built on the suffering of First Nations communities, and predicated on the notion that Western ways of learning are superior to Indigenous ontologies and ways of learning.
For this edition, we wanted to make a statement on the absurdity of such an institution’s superficial commitment to reconciliation.
The “One Sydney, Many People” strategy preaches racial harmony at the University, while failing to
newspaper, nor does it endorse any of
identify or address the underlying issues which penetrate every level of the University’s strucutre and perpetuate Indigenous disadvantage. The University’s refusal to commit to targets for Indigenous employment parity belies their complicity in the ongoing erasure of Indigenous voices in academic and management roles.
The artwork we produced — rapid, instinctual and spontaneous — is inspired by the works of Richard Bell, the subject of this week’s feature article. Richard uses art as
As I write this from the Langford Office, I am reminded of the name of the mould-riddled building I spend so much of my time in — Wentworth.
As an Indigenous editor of Honi, one of the few in its history, it is (to say the least) uncomfortable for me to exist in a space named for a man who would consider me to occupy “the lowest place in the gradatory scale of the human species”; a man who once wrote that it was wrong “to attempt the perpetuation of the Aboriginal race of New South Wales by any protective means. They must give way before the arms [and] the diseases of civilised nations.”
When a nation is founded on a doctrine of terra nullius — literally “empty land” — then it becomes all too easy to ignore the people of that emptiness. We feel as though we don’t have to reckon with the treatment of Aboriginal people because they are invisible. Indigenous people become a postscript to Australian history. History becomes a hymn to whiteness.
Thus, this edition focuses on radical decolonisation.
In this edition, Nafeesa Rahman and Sandra Kallarakkal (p. 8) question the disconnect between tertiary Aboriginal education courses and secondary classrooms; Aidan Elwig Pollock (p. 7) calls for victims of the frontier wars to be memorialised;
Wiradjuri activist Ethan Lyons (p. 16) explores the intersectionality of climate justice and First Nations justice. Further, Maeve Hopper (p. 12) interrogates the historical role of museums in perpetuating colonial values and Western superiority.
I want to thank and acknowledge Yuwi, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander artist Dylan Mooney for contributing their artwork to the front cover.
This is how we decolonise — by making space for empowered Indigenous people and tearing down the colonial constructs that bind us to our history and our suffering.
Our children should be learning about First Nations cultures and histories in classrooms.
Our frontier resistance warriors deserve a place on the Wall of Remembrance in Canberra.
I should not have to work in a building named in honour of a man who would want me exterminated. This is not 1770 or 1901. This is not the First Fleet or federation. This is 2023. This is decolonisation in action. We have a voice, our lives matter. After all, we own this country.
Ethan Floyda method of radical decolonisation. Our contribution to USyd’s Graffiti Tunnel intends to uphold Richard’s legacy of art as activism, and remain a semi-permanent part of the canvas of this campus —- a reminder to students of this University that the land they occupy is stolen and unpaid for.
Part of upholding Honi Soit’s radical left-wing voice is calling out the University on their infantilising and paternalistic approach to Indigenous issues. This country is ours -- it has always belonged to us, and any
enterprise the University claims to hold over this land is a fallacy.
If they don’t like that, there’s an invitation to them in our message: YOU CAN GO NOW.
Dear Honi Soit editor,
I am an immigrant from the United States. I am 78 and familiar with the many disasters when the U.S. military involved American universities in military research. I was one of millions of students who protested the Vietnam War and the secret illegal U.S. bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Here, I protested against Australia’s participation in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Australia followed the U.S. into these futile wars we lost and it now seems to be embedding itself in another conflict.
Australian universities appear to be excepting military research and military technological development as part of AUKUS. This is a repeat of how the U.S. universities were drawn into doing military research for the Vietnam War. I was at the University of Wisconsin when the Maths building was bombed due to that Department conducting military research.
IT IS TIME FOR AUSTRALIAN STUDENTS TO TAKE ACTION AGAINST CURRENT ARRANGEMENTS. Universities, students and researchers must not get involved in AUKUS.
We need information:
Is it appropriate for Universities to be so closely aligned with the military in Australia?
Who would control the software resulting from research developments here?
Who would own the intellectual property?
How exactly does research conducted here on behalf of AUKUS relate to military actions?
Will researchers be independent?
Do Australian students really want to be part of the much-decried AUKUS commitments?
WE REALLY MUST BRING THE COUNTRY TO A STAND STILL. A TOTAL STRIKE.
Thank you, Carol Dance, BA (USA), MBA (UNSW)
Former CEO of the Australian Commercial Disputes Centre Currently producer at: www. scenetheatresydney.net.au
Aries: You shed one tear when breaking up and sculled a whole jug of beer at once. Beer burps to soak up all your sadness? Not very healthy but delicious, I guess.
Taurus: Talk it the fuck out, man! Want to bop to Olivia Rodrigo for three hours straight and masturbate 45-minutes in a row? Go for it and then rant about your silly ex after.
Gemini: Your break up patterns are weird, bro. You might have a revelation about your relationship mid crazy butt stuff and decide to take a break from things. A bit sad for the heart, still all with pleasure.
Cancer: Time to get back into the scene after years of lamenting that sexy ex of yours. Casual fucking in the bar without thinking about marrying them immediately is good for you, go shimmer in the fluorescent lights of the dance floor.
Leo: If they upset you, dump their ass! Mediocre booty calls aren’t worth it, you deserve fulfilling, passionate and rowdy orgasms.
Virgo: Are Virgos virgins? Oh HELL no. You’ve been slipping into sticky sheets all across Newtown, and it burns, baby (remember to get tested!). Keep fucking! Just because you’re in your post-breakup feels, doesn’t mean you can’t stop getting that dick.
Dear Honi Soit,
I am currently trapped in the basement of Wentworth building. I can hear you through the vents. Please stop talking about the relationship between Misbah and Eamonn, it sounds really weird and I’m getting scared. Please let me out, A ghost.
Wednesday 19 April
Luke Alessi // Manning Bar, Camperdown // 7.00pm
Cody Jon // The Vanguard, Newtown // 7.00pm
Thursday 20 April
Animals As Leaders // Metro Theatre, CBD // 9.00pm
Gena Rose Bruce // The Vanguard, Newtown // 7.00pm
Daine // The Lansdowne, Chippendate // 7.00pm
Friday 21 April
Escape the Fate // Metro Theatre, CBD // 8.00pm
Spoegwolf // Factory Theatre, Enmore // 7.00pm
Saturday 22 April
Sex on Toast // The Great Club, Marrickville // 9.00pm
Money Boys // Vic On The Park, Marrickville // 8.00pm
Sunday 23 April
The Screaming Jets // The Bridge Hotel, Rozelle // 7.00pm
Monday 24 April
Slayyyter // Manning Bar, Camperdown // 7.00pm
Eliza & The Delusionals // Selina’s, Coogee // 7.00pm
Tuesday 25 April
alt-J // Metro Theatre, CBD // 7.00pm
Libra: Kiss haaaaard. You better lock your lips with all the Birdcage hotties, and swap that spit like it’s 2012.
Scorpio: Suck some motherfucking titties! Honi Editors love boobs and you should appreciate them too. Get more into breast stimulation and forget all your ex-lovers’ stress, yummy!
Sagittarius: Bring out the chains and the whips! It’s time to stop that vanilla fucking, and spice it up with some BDSM in the Fisher bathrooms… like Rihanna said, na na na na na come on, come on, come on.
Capricorn: Ring ring bitches! It’s time to whisper sweet nothings over a Messenger voice call, and slip a hand down there… touchy touchy!
Aquarius: Winter’s coming, and so should you. Slip into a bubbly jacuzzi with that hottie from last night, and let the pleasure stream through you.
Pisces: Spoon sashimi into each other’s mouths! There’s nothing like raw fish and a raunchy makeout session after delicious sushi that your new sugar mommy is spoiling you with.
Plans for a private hospital at The University of Sydney’s St John’s College campus are in progress after the College submitted a development application to the Department of Planning and Environment late last year.
The College submitted that the hospital was needed because “Royal Prince Alfred Hospital is the only major Public Hospital in NSW without a colocated private hospital.”
The College outlined in the report key objectives, including, providing “a Catholic teaching hospital for medical student placements, with opportunities for further careers” and “professional pathway[s] and connection[s] for St John’s College residents who are studying medicine and allied courses.”
If the proposal is successful, the hospital will be built at the intersection of John Hopkins Drive and Missenden Road, part of the Johns’ campus exactly adjacent to Charles Perkins Centre.
The project will replace the current parking space used by USyd and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital visitors. The new hospital is set to have a Gross Floor Area of around 35,000 m2 with 16 levels in total.
St John’s College rector Dr Mark Schembri said in a statement, “As a doctor, I completely support more funding for our public hospitals, and our project – if it goes ahead – would function as a complement to the public system rather than a competitor. It would be a privately funded add-on to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital – freeing up valuable beds and helping train more doctors.The project is at an early stage and unfortunately, we can’t provide any more information at this time.”
Jordan Anderson, USyd Student Representative Council’s Student Accommodation Officer, called this plan “remarkably abhorrent” as “while these type of PR stunts are happening on campus, students are struggling to find themselves affordable accommodation.”
“While the importance of healthcare and establishing accessible pathways to practising medicine should not be understated, the development of a private hospital by St John’s seeks to entrench their archaic legacy insofar as the colleges’ status as architects of elitism and misogyny on campus.”
USyd Women’s Collective has organised a public forum on the abolition of college and increased University public housing on 27 April.
The candidates for this year’s University of Sydney Union (USU) Board election have been announced.
A total of twelve candidates are running to secure a spot on the Board: SRC Interfaith Officer Sargun Saluja (NLS); SRC Standing Legal Committee Chair Grace Wallman (Switch); SRC Councillor Bryson Constable (Liberal/Colleges); Hoi Pui Lam; Director of Student Publications (DSP) Victor Zhang (Engineers); Law Society (SULS) Secretary Julia Lim; Ben Moore; SRC Sexual Harassment Officer and DSP Grace Porter (Unity); Syed Ahmad Sabaat; unsuccessful 2022 candidate K. Philips (Interpol); Teng Yong Khoo; former SULS President and USU board director Benjamin Hines (Libdependent), who has broken with tradition to run for a second term. It should be noted that former
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who Hines hosted at an ill-fated SULS event last year, did the same when he attended USyd.
Honi will upload individual profiles with candidate interviews and their results in the USU candidate quiz closer to election day.
Only six candidates will earn a position on the USU’s Board of Directors, and three of those elected must identify as non-cis men in accordance with the USU’s affirmative action policy. With twelve candidates running, this means that only half the field will be elected. This is in stark contrast to last year’s election, which saw only six candidates fight for the five vacant positions on the Board.
The USU Student Board is composed of 14 directors, who are responsible for the “operational and strategic business of the USU.” This
includes having input on the USU’s corporate partnerships, deciding on initiatives (such as the recently introduced $6 pizza) and approving the USU budget, among other things. Those elected will serve a two-year term from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2025.
In addition to a salary of several thousand dollars per year, USU Board Directors also receive a daily $11 allowance to spend on food at USU outlets. Those who serve on the board’s executive earn higher salaries and daily allowances. It (literally) pays to be a Board Director.
This is the first election since 2020 to feature candidates from the Labor factions — Student Unity (Labor Right) and National Labor Students (NLS, Labor Left) — who previously dominated the USU board.
Disclaimer: Luke Mesterovic is a former member of Student Unity.
Students and activists gathered with Palestinian communities at Sydney Town Hall on Saturday, rallying against the recent attacks by Israeli occupying forces on Palestinian worshippers inside the Al Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.
Chaired by USYD SRC Ethnocultural Officer Rand Khatib and Palestinian Action Group member Jay Ma, the pair demanded that the Australian and all international governments get “their hands of Al Aqsa” and established the rally as a commemoration of the 75 years of occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Before the rally kicked off, Awabakal man Jeremy Heathcote linked the struggle of First Nations Australians and Palestinians together, calling on everyone to listen to the voices of people fighting against dispossession and settler-colonialism.
USyd NTEU Branch President Nick Riemer spoke on the need to rally against the Israeli apartheid state and highlighted the extreme violence Palestinians were met with during the raid despite the deeply calm and personal nature of worship at Al Aqsa.
“These attacks that were seen are part of Israel’s rolling, ongoing genocidal Nakba against Palestinian lives. And as these attacks are made more deadly and vicious, we need to intensify our solidarity with Palestinians.”
Riemer emphasised the role of unions in this solidarity, with the NTEU nationally committing to active solidarity with Palestine. The National Union of Students (NUS) and Sydney University SRC also passed solidarity motions.
Jasmine Al Rawi, USYD SRC Global Solidarity Officer and Student of Palestine member criticised how despite ongoing genocide and apartheid, where homes are demolished and lives are cut short by bans on medical supplies, Israel’s impunity remains the same.
Al Rawi was critical of the Labor government’s ongoing support of the Israeli state, saying, “there is no consequence for such outright brutality, no whisper from our government to condemn the violence.”
Khatib was also critical of the United Nations’ relationship with Israel, criticising a statement that said the UN only condemns extreme violence, “as though everyday violence is not that bad.” Khatib demanded complete resistance to all occupation and all settler colonisation.
Assaka Sayar, a Palestinian activist, counsellor and storyteller mentioned how resistance has been passed down from generation to generation and how young people are at the forefront of anti-colonial resistance like the First Nations’ struggle for Land in Australia.
A moment of silence was observed for all Palestinian lives taken at the hands of Israeli occupation.
“Israel has already killed five times as many Palestinians in 2023 as it has by this time last year. Israel is an apartheid state, it’s been planned as an illegal state, breaking international law and not facing any consequences,” said Sayar.
Once the speeches concluded, protestors marched through Pitt Street holding a large Palestinian flag.
On Tuesday 18 April, a vigil is being held outside of Randwick Town Hall to demand that the Israeli flag is not displayed around the Randwick Council in celebration of 75 years of Israeli Independence.
On Saturday 13 May, a rally is planned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Al-Nakba at 1pm outside of Sydney Town Hall.
Have a tip for us?
If you have been mistreated by University management, or wish to advise Honi of a story, email us at editors@ honisoit.com or submit an anonymous tip on our website.
The School of Psychology has told staff that it will repay them for wages stolen as part of an exploitative scheme for calculating marking hours of casual staff.
Under the system, casual tutors were not paid for 15 minutes of the “noncontemporaneous marking claimed for each tutorial” they taught, said an email from the School to staff.
This is to say, casual staff were paid for 45 minutes per hour of tutorial preparation work they were meant to undertake. This was on the basis that the other 15 minutes was spent marking. However, casual tutors were not able to mark in their preparation time, resulting in them being unpaid for time spent marking.
Even if staff were able to spend that time marking, an affected tutor told Honi “that’s squeezing us to an inhumane and unsafe level… Both unsafe for staff and students.”
After staff and members of the
National Tertiary Education Union raised concerns about the exploitative nature of this system, the University elected to review this procedure. It subsequently determined that “the School [of Psychology]’s approach was not consistent with practice elsewhere in the University with respect to tutorial payment for casual staff and that it resulted in casual staff being paid less than they should have paid.”
The University will compensate casual tutors who had their wages stolen, with remediation payments to be made “once calculations … have been finalised.” The University also apologised to staff for its theft.
Despite this admission, the University maintains that “the School [of Psychology] was not aware” that this practice resulted in wage theft.
It has been almost a year between this decision and the announcement that stolen wages would be paid back, with the University stopping the exploitative practice at the end of Semester One 2022.
An affected tutor within the School of
Psychology told Honi that in 2021 they were told to only claim eleven hours of pay for marking almost 50, 2,500-word, 3rd-year, analytical philosophical essays. The tutor was required to provide substantial feedback on those essays, which was checked by the unit’s lecturer for quality.
The tutor was effectively required to mark 11,000 words an hour. Typical University policies require casual markers to mark at a piece rate of 40006000 words per hour. Even these piece rates, the University of Sydney Casuals Network argues, result in markers not being paid for all their time worked.
The University of Melbourne was taken to Federal Court by the Fair Work Ombudsman earlier this year for their 4,000 word-an-hour piece rate for essay marking, which is alleged to have resulted in the systematic underpayment of casual staff. Piece rates for marking were the cause of wage theft at Deakin University and are a cause of ‘systemic’ wage theft in the university sector according to Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker.
The University of Sydney has previously admitted to stealing $12.75 million from casual staff.
In a statement, the University of Sydney said, “We are absolutely committed to ensuring all our staff receive their full entitlements and have a process to ensure any claims of underpayment are carefully investigated and resolved appropriately. ”
“We hoped to complete a detailed qualitative review of casual academic practices across the University and then make remediation payments. However, we have decided to progress remediation payments for this particular practice prior to completion of this review.
“The remediation process takes some time to complete to make sure we are as thorough as possible, including investigating how many staff are impacted, checking payroll data and timesheets over several years, reviewing processes, identifying entitlements owed and making payments.”
Staff at the University of Melbourne (UniMelb) began industrial action on Friday after University management failed to meet key demands of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in ongoing enterprise bargaining.
Staff will begin an indefinite ban on applying penalties for late submission of student work and “commence making statements while working explaining why members of the union are taking industrial action” as part of the industrial action.
The decision to take industrial action followed a unanimous vote by attendees of a members meeting of the
UniMelb NTEU Branch earlier in the week.
The Union is aiming to further its demand to increase the amount of secure jobs at the University. While the NTEU is seeking that 80% of all jobs at the University should be ongoing, Branch President David Gonzalez told staff that the University has done nothing to address this demand.
Casual staff at the University have previously had $45 million of their wages stolen by the University. Casualisation at Australian universities is detrimental to staff’s wellbeing and the quality of education provided to students; it has led to systemic wage theft in the sector.
The NTEU is also seeking a pay
rise of 15% or CPI +1.5% whereas the University has only offered staff a 4% pay rise. Gonzalez told Union members that the NTEU’s claim is “the only plan that will help many of our workmates make ends meet amid high inflation.” The University’s current offer would represent a real wage cut, with inflation still at 7.8%.
Enterprise bargaining between the NTEU and University management has been ongoing for eight months.
In a statement to Honi, Gonzalez said “Workers at the University of Melbourne have taken the hit for too long and our members are really sensing that now is our time to win real gains at the bargaining table including ensuring that no less than 80% of positions are ongoing, that workloads
are manageable and sustainable and that our pay outpaces inflation.
“Our struggle for a fair agreement with management at the University of Melbourne is important to all universities in Australia including the University of Sydney, because we need better wages, better job security and more jobs, something only unions can consistently deliver, and as the wealthiest universities in the country, they can more than afford it.
“If we want better universities in Australia, we simply must invest in the people who work in them.”
The University of Melbourne did not respond to Honi’s request for comment before our print deadline.
Katarina Butler
Deakin University management put a non-union ballot to staff members on Friday in a move opposed by the National Tertiary Union (NTEU), who is encouraging its members to vote against the proposal in order to continue negotiations.
In the most recent round of negotiations, management had proposed a 2.85% salary increase per year, representing a real pay cut with inflation at 7.8%. They have not proposed a meaningful solution to
reduce casual employment, nor to reduce academic workloads.
The Union is demanding a 15% salary increase over the life of the enterprise agreement or CPI+1.5% to keep up with inflation and the cost of living crisis facing workers across Australia.
The Union is also demanding Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander employment rate be in parity with the population and a First Nations employment committee established alongside a First Nations Network. Workloads are also a key issue,
with the Union seeking to establish workload committees at each Faculty and School, alongside minimising workload increases due to organisational change.
The NTEU will oppose this agreement, with NTEU Branch President Piper Rodd addressing Union members in a video to urge them to vote against the proposed changes.
“Let me be very clear: The EA, the agreement they are presenting, does nothing to improve workloads and working conditions across the
university. It offers a grossly inadequate pay increase and it effectively diminishes all Deakin staff’s right to meaningfully input into our working conditions and improve job security,” Rodd said.
“What we want as the union is to keep negotiating for a better agreement for all workers across the university. Voting no to what Deakin is offering is the only way we can meaningfully improve working conditions and pay for all workers.”
In 2019, the University of Sydney first partnered with 2U, the parent company of private online education provider EdX. They renewed, and expanded, this agreement in early 2022. Upon doing so, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott said that the partnership with 2U provided the required “flexibility” for the University to be “partners in lifelong learning with the community.” The result of this relationship has been an increasingly corporatised educational product: high prices, aggressive recruiting tactics, and a deep lack of clarity as to the true involvement of the University in the teaching and development of courses — the defining characteristics of the student experience.
The first courses offered by EdX, in collaboration with USyd, were short courses billed as bootcamps. These were initially in coding and cybersecurity, with the parties adding a fintech (financial technology) bootcamp in 2021.
These courses cost over $13,000 for part-time study over 24 weeks (the advertised price is $12,250, excluding GST). The courses justify this by making claims as to “preparing [students] for the in-demand industries of web development, cybersecurity, or fintech.” The professional value of the courses is the main selling point of the programs, with students promised career help and access to corporate partners.
The price of these courses alone is concerning. The split between the University of Sydney and 2U is not publicly available, but the fact that operating the course is in both parties’ financial interest indicates that the price is significantly higher than the cost of delivery. That 2U can operate the program, pay USyd for using its branding, and record a profit (it is a private, profit-oriented enterprise) suggests that students are unnecessarily reaching into their pockets for educational experiences. This fundamentally conflicts with any vision of education which doesn’t solely view knowledge as a tradable commodity.
Beyond this, students signing up for the bootcamps are subject to aggressive marketing tactics. The only way in which you can sign up for these courses is to provide your personal contact information to EdX. One prospective student who spoke to Honi said that upon filling out this expression of interest, they were called within three minutes. EdX then called them again five more times in an attempt to sell them on the course. This form of advertising seems built into this University teaching model: in exchange for the University providing its branding to legitimise the course for
EdX, EdX aggressively advertises the courses to provide revenue for itself, and by extension the University.
Perhaps this would all make more sense if this was a product, designed and taught by USyd academics, and that EdX was merely the means by which the University could, as it claims, “expand access to these indemand careers.” But USyd has a dubious level of involvement in the bootcamps beyond lending its name, and thus legitimacy as an institution, to the program.
The short-courses
role in running these programs, excluding “vetting” educators and stamping students’ certificates. That the University offers its label to such courses is a blatant commodification of its reputation as a reputable educational institution.
The extent to which USyd is involved in the collaboration should be made clear to prospective students, given the exorbitant fees they pay to obtain a “Certificate of Completion” with USyd’s name on it.
Art by Misbah AnsariThere are broader problems regarding the way the University teaches these masters degrees. Academics who design these Masters courses have very limited control over the materials they produce and how they are used by the University after they are produced. USyd possesses intellectual property rights over most content produced by staff in the course of their employment. Worse, the University did not explicitly confirm to The Guardian that staff teaching these degrees had PhDs in the field they taught. (The University of Sydney did not respond to
development and upkeep.” The University merely “review[s], edit[s], and approve[s] the curriculum.” If only that was made clear on the USyd bootcamp website…
Looking at EdX’s courses more generally indicates the concerning way that the programs are billed as collaborations with individual universities. EdX offers online coding bootcamps at four Australian universities. Honi could not discern a difference in the way EdX described each coding bootcamp on its website, beyond USyd being called “the coding bootcamp” and the others called “coding bootcamp.” It appears from this that EdX runs one common coding bootcamp — perhaps with minor university-specific alterations — assigning a different university’s label to each, depending on the way that course was sold to students. This is not made clear on the universities’ various websites.
Moreover, EdX sells its bootcamps as offering “online classes led by trainers who are fully vetted by the university.” These are not USyd academics. They are certainly not academics with 40:40:20 tenure. If not development, nor teaching, USyd has almost no
The University stresses that they “retain full academic control of the … programs, determining the curriculum content and admissions standards, with all unit development and teaching undertaken by the University’s academic staff.” For these degrees, “2U … provide[s] the technology platform, educational design and production, student and faculty support, and marketing and recruitment services,” according to the University.
This means that these degrees appear to actually be designed and taught by USyd academics. However, earlier this year, Guardian Australia exposed the negative experiences of University staff who teach these programs. An anonymous academic at USyd told that outlet that the outsourcing arrangements at the University were almost “universally hated” by academics. The academic justified this by saying the University does not treat work designing courses as part of an academics’ teaching load, despite the work that goes into designing the courses beyond. The overwork of academics because of high teaching loads has been a key reason for the National Tertiary Education Union’s ongoing industrial action campaign at
Like the bootcamps, 2U’s involvement in these degrees is obscured by the University. In no part of the University’s slick website selling the postgrad online programs, nor in course descriptions, is EdXs’s involvement made clear. This is true even where such a disclosure would be natural. For example, in a section about the online learning experience, the University brags that its “Master of Data Science translates seamlessly to an online setting,” but it neglects to mention that this experience is entirely the domain of EdX. Rather, the University includes an illusion to its project partner, U2, at the footer of its webpage; it is sandwiched in between the “Contact Us’’ and “Privacy Policy” links. This contributes to a broader portrait of the less than transparent way the University advertises its EdX run programs.
The University of Sydney’s collaboration with 2U and EdX is one of the most blatant manifestations of the increasingly corporatised state of higher education in this country. It strips teaching from research and builds in aggressive marketing and recruitment as necessary features of the system. Students become “course participants”, and academics become “trainers” in this corporate world — the pursuit of knowledge is replaced by the pursuit for a “certificate of completion.” Universities are no longer agents in the democratisation of knowledge, but corporate partners, service providers, and curriculum manufacturers.
Students, paying tens of thousands of dollars for a nebulous product, and teachers, stripped away from the research that is normally the lifeblood of an academic career and in increasingly precarious work, inevitably suffer in this. Evidently, this is of little significance for the University of Sydney.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are represented ten times more in Australia’s prison population than the general population (32% of prisoners are Indigenous, but only 3.2% of Australians are). This can be attributed, in part, to the overpolicing of Indigenous communities. However, once someone is arrested, Indigenous people, alongside other people of colour, face further systemic disadvantages when navigating the justice system. These disadvantages are linguistic, cultural, and invisible to those who make up the cultural hegemony. Without tearing down these barriers, our justice system cannot serve true justice.
Language is not a neutral mechanism for describing the state of the world. The tools that exist in languages are in a symbiotic relationship with reality: they at once shape and are shaped by the cultures and perspective of the people speaking them. This is especially evident when we look at the politeness resources that languages afford us. In some languages, for example, there are different second-person pronouns for different levels of formality, like how in Italian, you might refer to a friend as “tu” but an older stranger as “Lei”. In English, we only have “you”. Other languages like Japanese have honorific systems which are affixed to the end of names — like “-san” or “-chan” — to indicate levels of respect and social distance. Again, we don’t have similar resources in English. Beyond different linguistic tools, there are also different definitions of politeness across cultures. In Arabic cultures, for instance, it is polite to decline an offer initially before taking someone up on it, whereas that isn’t true in Anglo cultures. Politeness is a social construct, and, as such, it varies across cultures.
Typically, misunderstanding different cultural definitions of politeness is only problematic insofar as it creates some awkwardness when people aren’t on the same page. More insidious problems arise, however, when we impose hegemonic linguistic and cultural standards of politeness onto structures which govern broader society.
The justice system is a particularly impactful example of this. We use the same arbitrary, Anglicised standards to determine whether all people, regardless of their culture, are criminal or not. This only compounds the disadvantage that people from marginalised backgrounds, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, face in legal settings. There are several ways these linguistic and cultural standards are imposed.
Firstly, we rely heavily on semantics when assessing witness evidence, and these semantics are deeply culturespecific. In a common assault case, for example, a defendant may be examined on whether they “hit” or “tapped” a complainant. Although the difference between these verbs may sound intuitive to a native English speaker, it may be less clear if it is not your first language. The former constitutes an
offence, but the latter may just be a means of getting someone’s attention. They are not interchangeable, and they are often the best gauge a courtroom has for determining the severity of an offence. For non-native speakers, this makes them more susceptible to accepting untrue or incriminating versions of events from prosecutors due to semantic ambiguity. This exists even when the defendant speaks English fluently; there are many dialects of English which ascribe different semantic meaning to words. A clear example is how “deadly” can mean “great” in Aboriginal English, but “fatal” in Standard Australian English. A judge may be lenient to a witness or defendant who they can tell isn’t fluent in English, but that same leniency may not exist for a speaker who is speaking a different dialect than they are, for the simple reason that a lot of us just don’t know that there are other dialects of English to begin with. Relying on semantics to gauge the severity of an offence disadvantages those who use language differently to you.
Standards of politeness also factor into the way witnesses and defendants are treated in examinations in court and prior questioning. There are many examples of differences between various Indigenous cultures and white Australian standards of politeness. Politeness could inform the way a witness answers a question. Gratuitous concurrence, for instance, is a politeness strategy used by many Indigenous people which involves agreeing with a statement as a show of respect. To disagree can be seen as presumptuous and rude. If a cross-examiner puts a scenario to an Aboriginal witness, then, it is possible they will say that they agree to it even if it doesn’t match their own recollection. It should be clear how dangerous that could be.
Differences also arise in the way people from different linguistic backgrounds describe events. Tense systems in English (past, present, future) differ substantially from tense systems in many Indigenous Australian languages, which have less rigid distinctions between periods of time. Even if a witness is fluent in English, or speaks English monolingually, they may describe passages of time differently to an Anglo Australian speaker. As such, an Indigenous witness might be unable to give a specific time when an incident took place, or use loose terms like “before dinner”, which could lead a cross-examiner or judge to assume their recollection is faulty or that they are being purposefully deceptive. Part of a judge’s role is to assess the credibility of witnesses or defendants. If they deem them poor sources of evidence, their testimony can be neglected or given less weight than a “more credible” witness.
This issue of credibility also arises when considering the body language and conversational conventions deemed polite in many Indigenous communities. Direct eye contact can be seen as disrespectful by some Aboriginal people, but avoiding eye contact can be considered deceitful by Anglo
Nicola Brayan spells out the racist undertones of politeness.
people. Saying the name of deceased people is taboo for many Indigenous people, but refusing to speak a name or equivocating around it may be treated as hostile by a white court. While direct questioning is conventional in courtrooms, it is impolite in many Indigenous communities, which may lead Indigenous defendants to react uncomfortably in interviews or examination. All of these factors may weigh into a judge’s assessment of witness or defendant credibility. Imposing white standards of politeness onto Indigenous people in order for them to be treated as credible or trustworthy is a tool of colonialism that further disadvantages BIPOC experiences. Trusting white voices over voices of colour stacks the judicial process against marginalised people.
Beyond witness credibility, these assessments also factor into sentencing. Judges take remorse into account when deciding how long of a sentence is appropriate. These assessments of remorse are entirely arbitrary. The act of apologising differs greatly crossculturally. In Korean, for example, the apologetic term “mianhada” carries a component of responsibility; it would be redundant for a Korean speaker to say “I’m sorry, that was my bad”, but the same isn’t true for English. Admitting responsibility is a major part of expressing remorse in a courtroom, which is why courts treat early pleas of guilty as counting towards remorse. If a non-native speaker apologises for an act in a way that doesn’t seem sincere to a native-English-speaking judge, that can contribute to a higher sentence. Prior character evaluations about a defendant, including misreading their expressions of politeness as standoffish, can also contribute to
being overly punitive when evaluating how remorseful they are. This can be the difference between a community corrections order and a prison sentence, or bump time served up by months or even years.
Our justice system is deeply colonial in the standards it imposes upon those it governs. This disadvantages BIPOC in one of the most impactful contexts they could find themselves in. Our prison system is underfunded and dangerous, time away from families and communities can be traumatic, and a criminal record can complicate finding meaningful employment in a life-ruining way. In states like the USA, a felony charge can strip you of your right to vote or condemn you to death. A justice system that favours those who know the unwritten rules of white society and condemns those who do not is not just at all.
How can we decolonise our justice system? Unfortunately, this is a tricky question — one I am not qualified to answer. On a surface level, we can introduce more cultural sensitivity to our courts, training judges and lawyers in the ways that people unlike them may respond to the high stress situations they will encounter them in. More BIPOC at the bench and the bar table would also help challenge the Anglo cultural hegemony. More radically, we could deconstruct our justice system, have different courts for different people and cultural contexts, and remove the capacity for a judge to evaluate witness or defendant sincerity. It is not easy to decolonise systems that we rely on to function as a society, but it is necessary if we care about justice in any capacity.
Art by Evelyn Redfern
At a particular point in any degree, certain phrases start to become a commonplace “in-joke” of sorts within the cohort. For Secondary Education students, this comes in the form of Standard 1 in the Professional Standards for Teachers: “know your students and how they learn”. We’ve continually heard this mantra in many iterations across a multitude of Education units. Of course, its importance is not unfounded. A wholly inclusive learning environment can only be created when students feel that all facets of their identities are understood. The teachers that leave the most impact on their students are indeed the ones who go above and beyond to show that they care.
In the case of Aboriginal education, however, things start to unravel a little. While national and state curricula attempt to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories, and experiences are embedded into classrooms, and government policy pushes for school outcomes for Indigenous students that match or better that of their non-Indigenous peers, the implementation is left almost wholly in the hands of teachers. As preservice teachers, we want to ensure our classrooms are culturally responsive and nourishing spaces which meaningfully incorporate all facets of all our students’ identities. So for our Indigenous students, our concern as nonIndigenous educators looking to embed Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and learning into our classrooms relates to the how – how do we incorporate such knowledges authentically, and nontokenistically into our teaching? How do we include such knowledges into syllabi that, at points, excludes them? How do we ensure students engage with these knowledges respectfully?
From the outset of study, we’ve had many a lecture within core Education
units focused on sociology, psychology, and ethics exploring the systemic disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes of First Nations students. For those of us training to teach English or History, there have also been a few assessments which have asked us to incorporate Indigenous texts into our unit programming. But it has only been this year — our fourth year — that we’ve had a unit (EDSE4052) that focuses exclusively on Aboriginal Education.
This feels a little too late. At this point, we’ve already completed our first practicum and have an understanding of the drawbacks in implementing Aboriginal knowledges in a real school setting. Accordingly, the unit itself feels superficial, recycling knowledge around the “diversity and importance of Aboriginal histories, cultures and identities” rather than focusing on how to implement Indigenous ways of learning into the classroom. As we have another placement this semester, the unit is also slightly condensed, running across a timeframe of nine weeks rather than the usual thirteen. This does not leave much scope to really go into depth with meaningfully adapting Indigenous knowledges into personal teaching pedagogy.
Of course, even if we attempt to embed such learning into our pedagogy, there are several cultural challenges that emerge within specific subject areas. In English, for example, teachers face the challenge of selecting texts that are culturally sensitive and engaging for students. Teachers need to be wary of metaphors and symbols that oversimplify and romanticise atrocities against Indigenous peoples. I still recall a time when a student asked me in response to the song “This Land is Mine” by Paul Kelly and Kevin Carmody, “Isn’t it racist for the Aboriginal man to claim that it is ‘his long black land’ when it is now the property of the white guy?”.
The awkward moment caught me off guard, and I mumbled an unsatisfactory answer. Coming from very sanitised university classroom settings where there is little to no protest, preservice teachers are often not prepared for confrontation. I later kicked myself for not coming up with a better response.
Comparatively, the History curriculum has somewhat less freedom in choice, as Indigenous histories are only really studied within Australian History units, and most prominently in the mandatory Stage 5 ‘Rights and Freedoms’ topic. On my last placement, I observed a Year 10 History class going over the Freedom Rides in Australia. The class teacher told me after that while students enjoy learning about US Civil Rights, Aboriginal history tends to be met with groans of “why are we doing this again? We do this every year!” Perhaps it’s a reflection of the need to rework History content taught in school but also of the very colonial and Western vantage point from which the discipline is constructed.
So what can university courses, as the most hands-on intensive teacher training program, do for the next batch of nervous pre-service teachers? The most obvious solution is to be more candid about the confrontations and roadblocks that teachers may face when incorporating Aboriginal knowledges and texts into a real classroom setting. Simulating real classroom environments within university tutorials is a start. We’ve heard a lot about reaching out to local Aboriginal community members and the AECG to enrich our students’ learning in school. Bridging that gap in university by inviting Aboriginal Elders, community representatives, and LALC members into lectures and tutorials can give students the opportunity to learn from those with authentic, firsthand experiences. Allowing preservice teachers, like high school
students, to have a chance to ask the difficult questions to a representative of the Indigenous community, will demonstrate to us how best to tackle uncomfortable situations ourselves.
We need educators to talk to educators. As preservice teachers, we breathe a sigh of relief when we have the opportunity to listen to current teachers speak about the dynamics of the school system. Most of the time, this occurs in our Curriculum units, where teachers representing a certain discipline area are invited to the university. This must happen more intentionally for Aboriginal Education courses. Learning must feel relevant. The current realities of staffroom bureaucracy, constant policy changes, and administrative overloads need to be clearly communicated now so we can start thinking about how we manage them in the future. Concrete points of support should also be shared. A phone number, an email address, or a specific professional development link can go a long way when we have been told countless times to just ‘seek support online and from the community’ more generally.
These strategies are a few among many options. A teacher’s contribution to raising the next generation of active and informed Australians is uncontested. This starts from acknowledging the Aboriginal students in the classroom, and informing non-Indigenous students that their histories, cultures, languages, and texts are equally as important as the next. However, it is only when teachers feel cared for that they can create inclusive learning environments that considers all students and how they learn.
They say there are only two constants of life: Death and Taxes.
Taxation is the bedrock of all modern societies. Not only does it fund everything we take for granted, but it is the best mechanism we have to redistribute wealth and power. While few personally like being taxed, there is a broad acceptance of its necessity and value. Of course, as most voters would know, the tax system is far from fair. From the tax breaks multinational companies get all the way to negative gearing and super concessions, the model is awfully skewed.
While corporate vested interests and
the Murdoch media monopoly heavily impact how those policies are depicted, preventing voters from having a completely informed perspective, at least they are widely discussed. Braver Labor politicians, and in more recent years Independents and the Greens, have made that discussion mainstream.
The media keeps tabs and tracks corporate tax avoidance, and when a particular company is caught operating outside the law to avoid tax, like Uber until 2016, there is a large outcry, audit, and at least some regulatory changes. Corporations get
away with a lot in this country, but there seems to be at least some desire to fight back.
What’s infuriating is that the second largest owner of property and assets in Australia, behind only the State, pays no tax at all, and is not mentioned by any political party let alone part of any reform package.
The Catholic Church owns about $30 billion worth of property in Australia. The total wealth of the Sydney Catholic Archdiocese is $1.3 billion. Another powerful church, the Sydney Anglican Church, owns almost
half of Glebe, some of which it bought when the land was first up for sale in the early colonial period.
The Church’s defence is predictable. They claim charity and non-profit status, arguing they provide a massive amount of services to the community. While likely true in many ways, especially in education and health, the law is clear that they don’t need to. The “pursuit of religion” is in itself considered a charitable purpose under the Charities Act which means, unlike other charities, they don’t have to prove they deserve tax exempt status and what they do is “for the public
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have inhabited this land for tens of thousands of years, passing down cultural knowledges from generation to generation. Yet, for many years, Indigenous voices and perspectives have been silenced or excluded from mainstream education. Since 2018, I have been advocating the need for compulsory Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education within the HSIE Syllabus for K-10. The incoming NSW Labor government has made a number of commitments to Indigenous issues such as a Treaty – should we also be asking them to legislate reforms to the Education Act 1900 (NSW) to include Aboriginal Studies as a compulsory subject in all schools?
Currently, Years 7-10 are provided with a standardised Aboriginal
Studies syllabus, but students in Year K-6 have no such provisions. To ensure Aboriginal Studies is taught to primary school students would be to ensure these students enter high school with at least a basic knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories. Armed with this background knowledge, Indigenous students can feel more comfortable in their identity and sense of cultural belonging, and non-Indigenous students would be equipped to handle questions of race and cultural identity with sensitivity and understanding. In short, making Aboriginal Studies a compulsory subject would be an important step towards reconciliation.
While — as with many aspects of the NSW curriculum — the precise form and mode of delivery for mandatory
Aboriginal Studies will differ, it is undeniable that it will benefit the cultural wellbeing of Indigenous students, and the cultural competency of non-Indigenous students.
Mandating Aboriginal Studies would contribute to alleviating the crippling workforce shortage in NSW, inviting First Nations educators and knowledge-holders to the education sector in roles providing cultural and pedagogical guidance to teachers. First Nations educators and knowledgeholders are broadly unique in their teaching style — in that they approach teaching from both a Western perspective of standardised education, and from an Indigenous perspective of collaborative and reciprocal learning. First Nations educators and knowledge-holders have a deep and valuable understanding
The University of Sydney recently introduced OLES2155: Experience Israel, an in-country study unit “[introducing] students to the Hebrew language and culture through an intensive program at a partner university in Israel.” As a Palestinian citizen of Israel with lived experience in the country, I have experienced Israel. I’ve experienced firsthand its apartheid practices, discriminatory laws, and systemic racism — and that is exactly why this unit should be cut immediately.
The unit of study normalises Israel. This contentious, and frankly unnecessarily risky move by the University of Sydney attempts to whitewash the crimes of the state of Israel and normalise its existence.
benefit.”
This is indefensible. It incentivises prospective charities to proselytise and take an active faith-based stance, which is likely why The Paul Ramsay Foundation is the only non-university secular nonprofit with over a billion dollars of assets. Further, it assumes the Catholic Church and others deserve a base level of trust they don’t. Even after the historical child sex abuse scandal where 46% of parishes and around five per cent of priests had open allegations laid against them, the Church was either able to settle their way out of it or just deny with only public relations damage.
When these laws were written, it could have been argued that churches
This is not a state we should normalise.
As an Australian university, it need not be said that the University of Sydney should uphold fundamental and universal values of equality, freedom, and the protection of human rights. Instead, USyd has chosen to align itself with an apartheid state accused by countless human rights organisations, including the United Nations, of committing crimes against humanity in their treatment of Indigenous Palestinians. The act of offering this subject is incredibly divisive, as it signals USyd chooses complicity with Israel’s settler-colonial Zionist project. As Palestinians commemorate the 75th year since al Nakba — the invasion of our homeland and the start of occupation,
played such an active role in the public and private life that for the vast majority of Australians, special treatment made sense — but if so, that ended long ago. In the 2021 census, there were more people who chose the option “No Religion” than “Catholic.”
Atheists and agnostics, in total, make up almost 40% of the population and are only growing. The Catholic Church openly campaigning against marriage equality and abortion further calls into question the disproportionate treatment they get. They are no longer representative of Australian society.
Why then is there no political will for change? The Liberals, whose base
land theft, and colonial subjugation — it is wounding to see the University align themselves with our oppressor. The University of Sydney should not, and cannot, normalise relations with states which commit apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and occupation.
Students and staff of the University have expressed clear objections to normalisation of Israel. Many organisations — including Staff for BDS, Students for BDS, Students for Palestine, the NTEU USyd branch, the Student Representative Council, and the Autonomous Collective Against Racism — have called for the University of Sydney to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. Most of these organisations also advocate for the University to cut ties with apartheid Israel and to engage in
is increasingly socially conservative, have never had a desire to change this issue, but Labor’s situation is even more concerning given its claim to being a left-wing party.
Even since Irish Catholic immigrants became a large Labor voting bloc, the Catholic lobby has been entrenched in the party. The ALP split in 1955, led by arch-Catholic B. A. Santamaria, is the starkest example. The new Democratic Labor Party caused state and federal electoral disaster until the early 1970s. More recently, however, that influence showed during the Gillard government where it was Catholic pressure, internal and external, that ultimately forced the PM to drop the most important parts of the Gonski education reforms.
of both Indigenous ontologies and Euro-centric ideals of hierarchical education, and are often highly competent in marrying the two in the way they approach teaching. Making space for First Nations educators and knowledge-holders in the NSW education system is an effective way to radically decolonise and Indigenise the way in which we teach children about First Nations cultures and histories.
While mandating Aboriginal Studies is just a small step in the larger journey of reconciliation and decolonisation within the NSW education system, it would serve as a vital catalyst for real change in other areas of Australian society, and largely benefit Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and the community more broadly.
the thriving global antiracist BDS campaign to pressure Israel to comply with international law. USyd campus observed Israeli Apartheid Week last month as collectives, students, staff and academics shed light on the Palestinian plight. In the past six months, the Student Representative Council, the National Union of Students, and the NTEU have taken positions against the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which dangerously conflates criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitism. It does this by its examples, whereby “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour,” is an outlined example of antisemitism under the IHRA working definition.
The recent Hillsong scandal is another reminder this behaviour is ubiquitous and not going anywhere.
We can only hope the Albanese government will be brave enough to take on what past governments would not. Since he and his ministers, however, often connect their religious upbringing to social justice in an effort to win votes, I won’t hold my breath.
There is growing political will in this country to take on big oil and gas, gambling, and horse racing. The excessive power of religious institutions should be no different. They either have to prove every cent they spend is towards the public good, like every other charity, or start paying up.
Back in February 2019, I was preparing to start my first year at The University of Sydney. Like every student starting their time at university, I was psyching myself up to be thrown into unknown and unfamiliar situations. Making friends was my priority even though it brought me an undeniable sense of anxiety. Coming into a university with such a large and diverse student population, I was eager to make friends with all sorts of people who came my way.
Growing up in Western Sydney, my life had been far removed from the areas of Sydney that surround USyd. I had grown up with students from migrant backgrounds both different and similar to mine, as an Asian Australian, so being in a university with more than 70,000 other students from around or abroad was a tangible opportunity to diversify my social circles.
Now in fifth year, it appears to me that, just as the University’s official forms and applications ask whether you’re a domestic or international student, the social scene does too, even if you’re a Sydney local. Everyone ends up looking for people who are like them.
I don’t think that there is a single student who doesn’t dread that first tutorial or lecture of the semester. The strategic selection of figuring out where to sit in the hopes that we end up next to someone who might tolerate our presence. Those awkward but required icebreakers, where we struggle to think of an interesting fact about ourselves whilst our minds are suddenly blank. But even in the short moments of choosing who we sit next to and who we want to get to know beyond the surface level icebreaker questions, we’ve already subconsciously made up our minds, perhaps without even realising. Who we gravitate towards has lots to do with our perceptions of which crowd we belong in. Often, this is who looks like us.
Sandy Ou thinks about why we become friends with who we do.
me. Even this year, I have had similar experiences and it almost doesn’t faze me anymore.
University is already a tough place to socialise. It’s such a big step up from the support or coddling of school that we’ve experienced for the last 13 years of our lives. All of a sudden we’re thrown into the deep end with at least 70,000 other students, all from different backgrounds with their own personalities.
Chances are that many of us have come in alone, not knowing many of the students who we will end up studying alongside. What makes it harder is that unlike our previous 13 years of school, we only get to see the same group of classmates once or twice a week for a few months, before we start to drift from each other. Our relationships become reduced to swiping through their Instagram stories and the occasional like on their posts.
can outwardly perceive and, with or without ill intent, sees us gravitating towards those we’re familiar with, or those who look like us.
In my case, I have felt multiple times that my Asian exterior is what people see and then they act based on this. To domestic Australian students who aren’t Asian, I might be initially presumed to be an international student. An outsider or “the other”. I find myself innately preparing myself to prove that I am Australian once we get the chance to talk to each other. Once that happens, I might seem different to the international students even though on the outside I look like them. I’m somehow breaking away from one group and yet not quite fitting in with the other.
Once in first year, in one of my tutorials, we were given time to walk around and find people to group up with for our assigned presentation. After being shunned from one group, I only managed to find a spot in a group with people who looked similar to
I’m a mature-aged student, something I’m very conscious of. I’m currently doing my second degree, so having studied before I’m very aware of how fucking annoying some left-field, “personal experience” caveat from a person who read the required text but didn’t really get it can be. I allow myself very little room to be sentimental.
I had a hell of a commute for my first degree; three buses out from the boondocks. One semester I had a tutorial that started at 9am, which meant I had to be out of bed before 6am. Due to the frequency of buses, I could get on the early one and get to uni an hour early, or get on the late one and be half an hour late, so early it was. Once a week, I would head into the old Badham Ag library, now a post-grad learning hub, to catch up on some reading, and then take a shit before class.
I would head downstairs to a toilet that was my own beautiful haven. There was never a soul around, except for the occasional Ag student in from college or an old Anthropology professor who was always reading obscure texts on algal growth, so the bathroom was all mine. It was tiled like an old public pool, with sandy square tiles the size of 10c pieces from floor to ceiling. Up to the right as you walked in was a shower, again not dissimilar
to one you’d see at a public pool, and in front of you were the two cubicles.
The whole space was big and roomy, and you could tell that the toilet was obscure because there wasn’t a single scrawl of graffiti, not even the old “art degrees” standard under the very traditional loo roll holder. The seat was black and solid. It was molded and curvy and felt like it was made out of bakelite. The best part though was the frosted window, which covered the whole back wall of the two cubicles. The sun in the morning would give the whole room a faint golden glow, like holy light flowing like honey through a stained glass window in a church. This was amplified by the sandy tiles. I can only imagine, as it faced west, the way it would have lit up with a flaming hue of umber and tangerine on a sunny afternoon. Those days in the morning, it was my throne.
I don’t think that toilet exists anymore with the refurbishments to Badham. I’m holding onto the hope that it might be there, bringing joy to some other lonely wayfarer.
I want to take some time, now I’m in my second degree, to explore campus and find similar toilets. It’s a new adventure, so why not find a new throne? A place to sit and think, or a place to shit and stink.
The nature of uni is so fleeting that it is hard for us to form a solid enough connection with someone. Every six months, our classmates change. In this kind of environment, where we know so little about each other, our judgements may fall to what we
With my time at uni being almost up, I have learned to let go of those flowery ideals I had at the start of first year that making friends with everyone was possible and have had to settle for finding my own way.
University is already a tough place to socialise.Lachlan Buller is on a quest to find a quiet spot to do some paperwork.
As a perpetually single gal with a penchant for daydreaming, I consider myself a well-versed purveyor of the ancient art of hottie spotting. For the uninitiated, hottie spotting is the practice of moving through the world with a keen eye for the gorgeous people among us. The activity also involves texting your friends that you just saw a total ten out of ten, and imagining how nice your two year anniversary trip to Europe will be.
As the premier location on campus to grab a meal between classes, the snacks served at Courtyard are not just of the food variety. With a high volume of babes passing through over the course of the day, you’re sure to find someone who takes your fancy as you spy them over your cup of coffee.
Gemma Hudson might be watching you.
will be too busy with clerkship season to pay attention to you.
3/10. Like blue cheese, an acquired taste.
It is a total miracle, if when you walk into your class, you discover, delicately placed among the rows of chairs, a breathtaking babe. The hottie in your tutorial is perhaps the only thing that can ensure perfect attendance, with the highlight of your week being the chance that they will also decide it’s worth coming to the class they pay exorbitant amounts of money for.
A seasoned spotter of stunners, I — as a community minded individual — have decided to share with you a comprehensive guide of where to go (and where not to go) if you’re going to be spotting hotties at USyd.
The thing about Fisher is that it is a fundamentally basic choice. As the most obvious choice of library on campus, it doesn’t have the dangerously ambitious yet irritatingly arrogant charm of the Law Library, nor the discerning vibes and underground atmosphere of Schaffer, and the patrons reflect that.
Those who frequent Fisher may be hot, but the hottie with personality chooses another location for their study grind. The key benefit of Fisher, though, is the volume.
Even though it is near impossible to find a decent spot anymore, the fact that there is not an empty seat means that, if you are dedicated to your cause, and willing to walk up and down stairs, you will be able to find a hottie.
5/10. For the committed hottie spotter only.
I have on good notice that if you take a couple extra steps into the Bevery Room, you’re sure to catch the SUDS hotties before rehearsals. They may be theatre kids, but every A-List Hollywood knockout once started in the same place…
9/10. A meal and a hottie show.
Unlike almost every other option on this list, the unique benefit of the in class cutie is that you don’t have to play the game from afar. Unlike the intimidating task of going up to a total
Under no circumstances should you sit in the ABS to spot your next hottie. “But there’s so many people there!” I hear you cry “Surely the volume is worth it!”. Well, in this author’s (correct) opinion, the heightened risk that your new soulmate will be a commerce student is not worth any potential reward.
Furthermore, the ABS is on the other side of campus from, functionally, everything else. Is it worth having to go on a hottie hike? For the possible reward of having the stock market mansplained to you? If you believe so, I ask you to engage in some deep, personal reflection.
1/10. Beware of the Comm Bros.
Not for the faint of heart, deciding to spot hotties in the epicentre of Law-Student-Land is a Choice, with a capital C. This Choice is only for the unfortunate members of society who have realised that despite their best efforts, their type is an overcommitted, vexatious, law student.
Given our law-studying buddies are captured by the grindset, they are always on campus, meaning if you frequent their haunts, such as the new law building, you will be sure to find someone. Beware however, that even if you do find the ill-advised love of your life, it is entirely possible they
from the Honi editors trying to (s)lay-up Sunday,
councillors fighting the good fight.
If you’re into the public humiliation that is having to change your facebook profile
picture twice a year, wandering down Eastern avenue in brightly coloured shirts, and having your name kept on a colour coded spreadsheet, you might be one of the strongest members of all locations across campus, but is the only location for hottie spotting with a one hundred percent hit rate. Dear readers, that place is wherever on campus your author decides to reside. As the premier hottie on campus, wherever I am, is hottie central. 10/10. Hotties, hit me up.
For the uninitiated, hottie spotting is the practice of moving through the world with a keen eye for the gorgeous people among us.Art by Veronica Lenard
On the University of Sydney’s Camperdown campus, at the intersection between the Wallace Lecture Theatre and Ross Street gate, lies an unassuming stone figure deep in meditation. An inscription, etched in dark grey granite, reads:
“In memory of Sue Harlen, Inaugural Director of the University of Sydney Foundation Program.”
Before USIPP, international students at Sydney University were few and far between in part, due to the University’s extremely stringent entry requirements.
Indeed, it was not until 2012 that the University recognised China’s infamously difficult gaokao for admission. For students whose high school qualifications were not recognised, Australian secondary schools or a university foundation program like that of the USFP were the only means of entry into Sydney University. In 1999, international students represented just under ten per cent of all students at USyd. Fast forward to 2021 and they now make up 44% of the students.
— on Bourke Street in Waterloo for a sum of $36 million.
“One of the things that fascinated us has been the work we’ve been doing on intercultural studies with the students, and the intercultural issues with the students related to teaching and learning which have come up for them,” Harlen told University News.
many institutions, reacted swiftly to ensure that students received a quality education. Like hundreds of institutions, it opened a Remote Learning Centre in Shanghai to deliver online classes in a physical setting in early 2021, mirroring USyd’s own temporary arrangements at the Centre in China located at Suzhou.
The statue celebrates one of USyd’s less well-known figures, the late Sue Harlen, who founded the University of Sydney Foundation Program (USFP, known prior to 2001 as USIPP), the university’s preparation course for international students.
According to an edition of the University of Sydney News, the course began in December 1996 when the Senate approved $700,000 in seed funding. Sue Harlen, as the key figure behind the foundation program, became USIPP’s inaugural Director. The program’s first cohort attracted 45 students.
Soon, history turned a page for the USIPP when the University and Study Group Australia (SGA) opened a dedicated building for the program in 2001 — called Taylors College Sydney
Life at the USFP — once it moved to Bourke Street — was, and remains, largely independent of the larger university. At one point, the Bourke Street premises hosted its own student accommodation on the uppermost floor for around 125 students. The vast majority of USFP students are enrolled on a packaged visa with a conditional offer to USyd: upon successful completion of the program, students could go on to the University.
Taylors has not been without challenges over the years. When Australia and China’s bilateral relationship hit a low in 2019, Taylors and other university foundation programs were accused of lowering English language standards by conservative Australian think tanks.
In a different vein, when strict COVID-19 lockdown measures were imposed in 2020, Taylors, like
Some 25 years on, the core structure of the Program remains largely intact. Unlike the small pilot program that commenced in late 1996, the USFP now educates over a thousand students.
Alumni of the USFP are varied, with many going on to make an indelible footprint on student politics, playing an instrumental role in the former international student faction Panda. Many others have gone on to successful careers in Sydney, elsewhere in the country and other nations.
Without Harlen’s vision and leadership, the University of Sydney Foundation Program may have never come to be. Had that happened, the international student community at USyd, in 2023, would not be as strong as it is today.
Disclaimer: Khanh Tran is an alum of Taylors College Sydney, and a recipient of the Sue Harlen Memorial Scholarship.
Whether it be the sounds of school drop offs or national broadcast platforms, Australian radio seems to only have one colour. White. More specifically, old, white and male. Despite advancements on other platforms, this still rings true for radio today.
Surfing between AM and FM, you’d be lucky to find a radio host or team deviating from the euro-centric mould. The broadcasting medium has not progressed at the same rate as many other forms. Though offering stations in community languages and installing segments for ethno-cultural voices is a step worth acknowledgment, these steps are limited to non-commercial broadcasts, relegated to off-peak time slots. Established and commercial stations still remain particularly white spaces.
over the coveted national position. When interviewed about his vision for the nation’s radio industry, the British tech mogul vowed to “achieve its potential with both listeners and brands.” Recognised for his relationships with global brands and strides towards digitisation, Ennal has his eyes set on expansion.
And yet to no surprise, there seems to be no vision for cultural, ethnic or gender representation in our radio programmes. Put simply, Ennal’s angle is about expansion and brand growth and, despite emigrating to Sydney, he cannot be the voice for change that Australia’s radio industry needs.
remaining bastion of middle-aged white men? It is clear that nation’s top radio station hosts are overwhelmingly white. Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands, Rhys Holleran, Brendan “Jonesy” Jones — the list goes on. Every station is led by the same voices, producing an outdated representation of Australia’s listener culture.
These most listened to platforms perpetuate a mould that only men can lead or uphold radio broadcasting. What message does this send to the children in the backseat on the way to school? When they’ll never hear a name, ethnicity or identity like theirs?
other mediums. There hasn’t been a revolution of hosting culture and there doesn’t seem to be one coming. The lack of diversity in Australian radio is institutional and will require a lot of work to instigate true gender, ethno-cultural and aesthetic change.
Why haven’t we heard an ethnic voice that Australians can connect to?
A voice truly reflective of the stories and art of contemporary Australia?
The problem of ethno-cultural diversity starts at the very top.
In April 2022, Commercial Radio Australia appointed Ford Ennal, the founding CEO of Digital UK, to take
Before we even address the institutional white dominance, the gender imbalance comes into play. Of the top 15 radio stations in Australia, almost every host is white middle aged men. And even then these women are often paired with a male or only present off-peak segments. The leading voices of Australia’s commercial radio industry lack diversity, across gender, race and culture.
So this leads to the main question. Why is commercial radio the last
Despite this, other corners of the broadcasting sphere have made moderate advancements. Triple J has recently platformed “Blak Out”, a 5-6pm segment every Sunday hosted by an Aboriginal artist, Nooky, a proud Yuin and Thungutti man. This segment showcases Australia’s vibrant First Nation’s talent. Nooky is a fresh voice in Australian radio, providing an authentic shade of Australian sound. But although Triple J is providing valuable exposure, one hour on a Sunday is not enough. Sunday is an off-peak period which tends to receive the least listeners of the week on a single radio station. It is a start, but still not good enough.
But what’s next for Commercial Radio Australia’s listening repertoire? It’s not meeting its competitors in
On a community level, a more dynamic image and culture is displayed. If you’re looking for Indigenous radio platforms to support, consider NIRS, First Nations Radio, 3KND, Noongar Radio or 2CUZ. If you’re looking for community radio stations that platform local Eora artists or have a broader breadth of both ethnocultural and identity spectrums then consider FBi Radio, Radio Skidrow or 2RDJ. The University of Sydney has SURG, a fusion student led radio station which showcases local student musicians, collectives and critics.
So, tune in. When you turn on your radio, listen to the blinding reality of Australia’s broadcasting industry. And demand change. We want to listen to diverse voices and perspectives. Let’s make sure they are heard.
There seems to be no vision for cultural, ethnic or gender representation in our radio programmes.Photograph courtesy of the University of Sydney Archives.
Every city, town, and locale in Australia shares a role on the frontlines of the genocidal Frontier Wars. Between 1788 and as recently as 1928 onwards, colonial violence followed the leading edge of white settler colonisation. As Europeans continued to invade further into Australia, first in the southeast and later in the tropical north, they fought a genocidal war over land and resources with First Nations People across the continent.
However, although the landmark SBS docuseries Australian Wars has recently labelled this as “our most important war”, the Frontier Wars do not appear to be front-and-centre in conceptions of our shared history for many nonIndigenous Australians.
The efforts of historians like Henry Reynolds and Marcia Langton, who continue to attempt to commit the conflict to popular memory, have produced some progress in this area.
Lyndall Ryan’s University of Newcastle team, who continue to add new data to their shocking yet important massacre map project, is also a key part of this truth-telling. These efforts, alongside countless other First Nations and settler-descended activists and educators working in the field, have produced some level of popular acknowledgement that such extreme violence took place in Australia. However, there is clearly a long way to go in recognising the place of the Frontier Wars in Australia’s history within our national imagination.
Aidan Elwig Pollock argues for improved memorials for the Frontier Wars.
northern suburb of Brisbane, but historically a small town in its own right. In August 1862, a detachment of Queensland Native Police murdered at least seven Buyibara people by the banks of the Caboolture River.
Caboolture has numerous memorials to the ANZACs — not only is there a memorial in the traditional style just adjacent to Moreton Bay Council, but there is a large ANZAC-related artwork draped across a water tower on Caboolture’s King Street. However,
Horatio Wills and were resting in the early afternoon when the tribe moved into camp and killed the ten men, two women and seven children.
The gravestones themselves tell a similar story in archaic and frankly sickening racist terminology. What is missing is any reference whatsoever to the possibly 400 local Kairi people who were indiscriminately murdered by white settlers and Native Police in one of the largest reprisal campaigns in Australian history, or more fundamentally, that history.
Accompanying a broken boomerang, the Aboriginal Flag and iconography representing Mitakoodi and Kalkadoon warriors, is a poem, dedicated to First Nations resistance to white settler incursion during the Kalkadoon Wars — a prolonged local conflict that ran from 1870-1890.
Unfortunately, the memorial suffers from poor maintenance. The lettering on the plaques is hard to read, and shotgun pellet-holes litter the images of the warriors. In fact, the memorial had to be entirely reconstructed in 1992 after it was destroyed by explosives in a disgusting act of vandalism.
This is not to say that adequate local memorials to the Frontier Wars don’t exist. The Myall Creek Massacre memorial in northern NSW to the Wirrayaraay people who were murdered at the site on 10 June 1838 is one such example. Despite incidents of racist vandalism in 2005 and 2021, the memorial remains in good condition, and is managed by Gwydir Shire Council along with the Myall Creek Memorial Committee. However, Myall Creek is also unique in being the only extrajudicial massacre of First Nations Australians during the entire Frontier Wars to result in a successful criminal prosecution of perpetrators. This shouldn’t be what it takes to have a memorial to the violence of our past.
Indicative of this fact is the almost total lack of adequate local memorialisation of the Frontier Wars across Australia. This is not to say that we should not remember those who died in Australia’s name on foreign soil — but it is clear that the current physical recognition of First Nations People who died on First Nations soil is horrendously lacklustre.
In many places where incidents in Australia’s longest conflict can be specifically identified, there remains a total lack of a memorial. Every Australian town has a memorial to those Australians who endured the horrors of war overseas — from the World Wars to Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and even the Boer War — yet similar physical memorialisation of the war that took place in and around these towns is almost entirely absent.Take Caboolture, for instance – now essentially an outer
Massacre Map that I learned this act of colonial brutality had occurred in a place I have visited regularly since birth.
This is not to say that there are no memorial sites anywhere in Australia aimed at the frontier wars. The CullinLa-Ringo massacre site, near Springsure in Central Queensland, does actually commemorate the violence that occurred there in 1861. It was in Cull-LaRingo in October 1861, that 19 colonists, including political figure Horatio Wills, were killed by Kairi people. This represented one of the largest single massacres of white settlers by First Nations Australians, and the event is marked by a brown sign and grave sites at the location.
The sign reads: This is the site of the massacre of 19 people by a local Aboriginal tribe on 17th October 1861. The people killed were in a party led by
Even memorials that more appropriately recognise the Frontier Wars are often in dire need of maintenance or updating. Driving for the first time between Mt Isa and Cloncurry in Far North-Western Queensland, through the savannah country of the tropical outback, I was surprised to find a prominent memorial to Mitakoodi and Kalkadoon warriors at a rest stop by the side of the road.
The memorial was unveiled in 1988 by then Queensland “Minister for Ethnic Affairs” Bob Katter — at the time a state MP in the Bjelke-Peterson government — and was built in consultation with the Mitakoodi Aboriginal Corporation. The memorial reads: “You who pass by are now entering the ancient tribal lands of the Mitakoodi dispossessed by the European[.] Honour their name[,] be brother and sister to their descendants.”
Ultimately, it is shocking that the most important conflict in Australian history is locally remembered — or rather forgotten — in such a way. How are we to build a general consciousness of the violence of colonisation in Australia if physical reminders of our bloody past are either neglected, incomplete or simply non-existent? “Lest We Forget” is a refrain etched into the Australian consciousness — through constant repetition at school assemblies, ANZAC Day ceremonies and on plagues and cenotaphs peppered all across Australia. It is time that these three words are extended to include the First Nations People who fell in Australia’s longest, most brutal and most consequential war.
In many places where incidents in Australia’s longest conflict can be specifically identified, there remains a total lack of a memorial.
are we to build a general consciousness of the violence of colonisation in Australia if physical reminders of our bloody past are either neglected, incomplete or simply non-existent?
EF: How has your process changed over time?
instead, we should be trying to develop strategies and take stock of where we’re at.
“Gangster as fuck,” says Eualayai Gamilaraay filmmaker Larissa Behrendt, the storyteller behind You Can Go Now – a scorching documentary ostensibly about the activism of the internationallyrecognised artist, told through archival footage of the ongoing struggle for First Nations people, particularly land rights, over the course of the last fifty years.
I sat down with Richard Bell to discuss the film, his art, and his activism.
RB: I have refined my process. Ten to fifteen years ago, I used to draw the great ugly grid lines across the canvas to put text and graphics into my paintings. Now I use a projector, which makes the process easier and more efficient.
Behrendt’s method of storytelling explores the timeline of Indigenous activism in Australia through the works of Richard Bell. Blending archival footage with talkinghead interviews of Bell’s closest friends and colleagues, Behrendt traces a songline through the history of Indigenous protest — from the Tent Embassy to the Black Lives Matter movement. If the film does diverge from Bell’s life at times, it’s only because Bell’s story is so intrinsically woven into the fabric of First Nations activism in the late 20th century.
EF: I’ve been curious about the title of the film. I know it comes from your 2017 work Immigration Policy, but how did you land on that message; “you can go now”?
RB: It’s a saying of mine. When somebody announces that they’re going, as they start to get away I’ll call their name, and they’ll turn around, and I’ll say, “you can go now.”
EF: Do you think it’s possible to read more deeply into that
RB: That’s not my problem [laughs]. My job was to make the work and give a title to the work that challenges the legality and the legitimacy of the colonial government that we have here. I believe that this land always was, and always will be Aboriginal land. Now, if people don’t like that, well, there’s an invitation in that title.
provocative and uncompromisingly brilliant of today’s crop of contemporary indigenous artists”. In 2003, Bell published a blistering essay titled Bell’s Theorem, dissecting the problematic and harmful way in which the Aboriginal art market had been hijacked by Western art dealers.
EF: Bell’s Theorem has become a bit of a touchstone for contemporary First Nations artists. Can you tell me more about how you came to develop it?
EF: Can you describe your approach to artmaking? Do you generally start with an idea, or is it more material practice-oriented?
RB: It’s a mixture of all of those – idea, concept, issue, material and/or processes –and a lot of the time it’s multiple at once. For example, materially, I like exploring lines in my paintings, specifically the gap between the lines. On the other hand, sometimes I go into my studio with an idea or concept. This is my most used approach. I imagine a rough visualisation of what I want to do and then work directly onto the canvas.
Behrendt and Bell guide the audience through the unjust administration of missions and town camps, as Bell recounts seeing his home demolished by the government shortly after the 1967 referendum. They explore the role of Redfern and Chippendale as lightning rod places for displaced rural Indigenous people, and the relentless work of early Aboriginal activists in creating selfsustaining sovereign communities within the dominant settler-state.
EF: This film documents your life and career over the last thirty years. Over those thirty years, your work has remained overtly political and activism runs throughout it. Do you find that you’re talking about the same issues, or has it changed with time?
RB: Of course, I’m talking about the same things! I’m talking about colonisation here, it’s something ever-present. And the resolutions to our problems are not overnight fixes. They’re things that have to be worked on for long periods of time – generations, in fact. I’ve got no sense of urgency with our movement, and I don’t think we’ve moved very far in my time. But then, I think that’s a result of global circumstances leaning towards fascism around the world. That hasn’t missed us here. These are not ideal times for us;
Bell talks in the film about his experience as a displaced Indigenous person from rural Queensland, settling in 70s Redfern and falling into the Aboriginal rights movement.
EF: How did you find your calling in art? Why was visual expression so important for your role in the Aboriginal rights movement?
RB: I found out that I could say just about whatever the fuck I wanted to in art – and not get arrested [laughs].
EF: How did you get started with artmaking?
RB: I had a very different art education to most people; I found people that I thought knew about art and I interrogated them – very often in league with beers and barbecues and that sort of thing – and, from what I saw of it, all the discourses were around white people and started by white men. Now, I didn’t want to participate in any of that, so I wrote my own fuckin’ discourse [laughs]. I wrote an essay that I called Bell’s Theorem [laughs]. It essentially allowed me to position myself in contemporary art.
Legendary activist Gary Foley described Bell as “one of the most
RB: I did a bit of research and, as far as I could see, Aboriginal art was outselling Australian art by a massive margin. It was five-to-ten times bigger than the Australian art market in measurable terms, and there’s just no contest in cultural terms. The first thing visiting tourists want to see in art museums in Australia is Aboriginal art, because they’ve seen examples of colonial art in other European countries already. Basically, Australian art doesn’t exist outside of the minds of Australians and I thought, “Fuck it, I’ll put that statement out there.”
EF:
Your art strikes me as more of a commentary on the politics and social issues of the time, and a way to influence decisions and people’s perceptions. Is that something you’ve found during your career?
RB: I believe that, yes. Why else would I do it?
If the film does diverge from Bell’s life at times, it’s only because Bell’s story is so intrinsically woven into the fabric of First Nations activism in the late 20th century.
Here he is –suspended between the Black and white world, hurling bolts of paint in all directions as he ascends the international pantheon of Aboriginal artists.
seriously, I don’t see myself as part of Western art. How my work fits into the West’s construct of art and beauty isn’t my problem. I just do what I do. It’s up to the collectors and the curators – they choose where your work sits in the art world. I’m more interested in igniting interesting conversations between artists and audiences.
In the film, Bell rails against Western classifications of art. In Bell’s view, Aboriginal art transcends Eurocentric notions of art styles and periods.
EF: Some works of yours, like Prelude to a Trial, have been described as “postmodernist”. Do you agree with the classification of your work through Western notions of art and art styles?
RB: No, I would not call my work postmodern. I’ve moved past that
every three-to-four decades. That’s the cyclical nature of what is popular, from model making to photography to digital art.
EF: How would you personally classify your work?
RB: It’s really, really good in a Zoolander kind of way. Really, really good-looking paintings. My work is classified as painting and installation –the tent, video and signs. The audience fulfils and completes the installation or the artwork by interpreting it or giving it
RB: They were activists y’know, they didn’t sit back waitin’ around. They ended up giving me a job in the Aboriginal Legal Service. They taught us about Aboriginal history; they taught us about the law; public speaking; bail applications – all those experiences for people within the Aboriginal rights movement (...) formed the basis for my art practice.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, Bell has become increasingly involved in broader activism. Bell speaks at length in the film about his friendship with graphic artist and former Black Panther Emory Douglas.
EF: How has broader activism evolved over the course of your career?
RB: Admittedly there is a lot less activism these days. That’s for young people to sort out –you get out on the streets and challenge things. I’ll join you as often as I can [laughs].
are informed.
EF: Is it government change or system change that’s going to fix this?
RB: Rather than changing the politicians, we need to actually change the system that we have. We need a reset. One of the projects I’ve been working on is a draft constitution for a new republic. We take some of these decisions out of their [politicians] hands; put them back into the hands of the people. We, the Aboriginal people, in order to seek justice, are referred to as a structure, which is built and populated by the coloniser. How the fuck can there be any justice in that kind of conflict resolution?
As the interview drew to a close, Richard farewelled me in typical cheeky fashion.
EF: Thank you for yarning up with me.
RB: Thanks for taking the time. You can go now.
Bell inhabits Behrendt’s film like a ringmaster, explaining himself with elaborate flourishes, slogans, and pointed questions for his audience. It’s clearly Bell’s version of himself, with Behrendt sharpening and facilitating; in fact, Behrendt addresses this herself. Even so, this is a powerful piece of work, reflecting all the anger, recrimination, and hurt that is displayed in his art. Bell is a provocateur, a poet, a pisstaker, maybe even a prophet.
EF: I think what makes your work unique is the fact that it is very direct. Your messages are clear and there’s no room for confusion from your audience.
RB: There are enough people out there making subtle works. My art has always been quite direct. That reflects me as a person as well. There’s an authenticity to it; what you see is what you get.
Protest is in Bell’s DNA, having spent his childhood in Joh BjelkePetersen’s Queensland and receiving an activist education in the Redfern and Chippendale communities.
EF: The film shows some of your activism around the world – in the US and Italy particularly. How do you describe the experience of bringing Indigenous issues to the world stage?
RB: There’s a whole lot of conditioning happening around the world as we speak, and more so within Australia. I challenge some of that conditioning and offer alternatives. Challenging some of the things that are presented as fact. A lot of it is fake news.
EF: Are people surprised by Australia’s treatment of First Nations people?
RB: People generally have a mature understanding of Indigenous issues. When I go to the United States, there’s a similar dynamic with Native Americans and the Black community. The specifics are different, but Indigenous people are oppressed the world over.
EF: What are some activist causes you’re working on right now?
nonsense; I’ve moved past postmodernism and the Western classification system. I was always interested in the dynamics and discussions between artists and about what’s happening now.
EF: Postmodernist theory includes irony, parody, appropriation and intertextuality? Don’t your works interact with those ideas quite intimately?
RB: Sure, we were all informed by postmodernism theory; but I just didn’t buy into it. There’s always a new theory
EF: In a lot of ways, your art is inseparable from your activism. How do you see the relationship between creative expression and political expression?
RB: I see myself as an artist masquerading as an activist [laughs]. Beyond that, I’ve never spoken at a rally or protest – I think there are other people who are much better at that than I am. I’ve always been happy to defer to those people.
EF: What was it like to be around those leading activists at that time?
RB: It borders on treason for politicians to wilfully take us down this path of continued carbon-based fuels, with no money whatsoever for renewable energy. That is actually treason, I believe; that is a treasonous act. We had a Prime Minister who actually brought a lump of fucking coal into Parliament House, like what the fuck was that? There needs to be a reckoning. There’s a question about renewables or carbon, for example. Let the people vote. Let there be discussions about it and make sure that people
Bell inhabits Behrendt’s film like a ringmaster, explaining himself with elaborate flourishes, slogans, and pointed questions for his audience.
The fight for climate action is one of the largest movements in Australian history, a movement that saw 80,000 people strike in Sydney in 2019, and millions more across the globe. The aim of the movement is to secure a safe and liveable climate and to demand accountability and action from governments and institutions on climate change. As a part of demanding accountability and action, you will often hear that “climate justice cannot be achieved without First Nations justice.” Activists and campaigners are gradually understanding there can be no safe, liveable future, whilst First Nations people experience the same colonial violence, discrimination, and exploitation that allows for coal, oil, and gas to control the nation.
It goes without saying that First Nations led-solutions should be at the forefront of the climate movement. However, this requires that the fundamental issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities — widespread sickness, death, incarceration, and discrimination — are actually addressed and met with real change.
“Climate justice cannot be achieved without First Nations justice” can be best described as an intersectional view of environmentalism, first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in
1989, as she describes the oppression faced by African American women as an intersectional experience where the impacts are “greater than the sum of racism and sexism alone.”
With this understanding, and in the context of the Australian climate movement, it is essential that First Nations issues are addressed concurrently with climate issues. After all, the destruction of climate — and subsequent fight to protect it — is taking place on stolen, unceded First Nations land. An environmental movement cannot organise whilst the very custodians of the environment being fought for are suffering. There needs to be liberation for mob to see liberation for the climate. Regardless of this concept, how will stopping black deaths in custody, ending the high incarceration rates of Indigenous youth, and overall First Nations justice, actually secure a safe and liveable climate?
It begins with radical decolonisation. By viewing the climate and environmental movement as one that is solely based on a Western understanding like needing to recycle and using less plastic — casts the scope of responsibility on to the individual and doesn’t address two basic things. First, that marginalised communities like Indigenous people, globally, are
disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis; and second, that the very institutions and systems creating the climate crisis are ones that require marginalised bodies to be continually policed, discriminated against, and oppressed. If one sees the fight for climate justice in a lens that addresses these two things, and challenges systems of oppression that are perpetuating the climate crisis, there is going to be a more holistic and efficacious answer to the climate crisis.
I always return to the Audre Lorde concept of the master’s house. The master’s house is built by the master’s tools — colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism — and one cannot dismantle the master house with any of the master’s tools in hand. So, to address climate change, something created by a capital desire to exploit the land (as a commodity for wealth), it is important that colonial contrivances like the killing or incarceration of Indigenous people is corrected — so that the very oppressive system of capitalism, that is responsible for climate inaction, is corrected accordingly.
We cannot have ambitious and meaningful climate action if First Nations people are not met with the same ambitious and meaningful action. When this nation is seeing close to
600 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991, how can there be climate justice in any form if the people who have cared for this land for millenia are being discriminated against?
If this nation wants to see climate action, they have to tear down these systems. They have to rapidly and radically decolonise. Because if scientists warn of incoming, irreversible climate disaster, western environmentalism that is safe and palatable will not work. Only by dismantling the master’s house, by intersectionally taking down colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, will true climate justice be realised.
We cannot rely on a system that profits off climate change — it’s paradoxical. Hence, the act of decolonisation and revolution is the only way to see a safe, liveable future. “Climate justice cannot be achieved without First Nations justice” means that, as a people, we resist the colony, we give back the power to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and we demolish the oppressive system which propagates injustice against both the climate and First Nations communities. As long as we have institutions and governments in power that make billions of dollars out of the prison, policing and fossil fuel industries, there will be no climate justice or First Nations justice.
I first crossed paths with the Conservative Club (ConClub) during the 2020 Welcome Fest. Despite not being a conservative myself, I have had a long term interest in conversations with people I disagree with, and so I approached the stall, adorned with its infamous Liberal Party campaign placards and quotes from Reagan and Thatcher. I began to chat with a curlyhaired member who sang praises of the free market, only to be quickly replaced as my interlocutor by the young man sitting next to her, eagerly listening in. But when I asked him about his views, I was met with an unexpected reluctance. Eventually, I moved the conversation forward by promising that I would hear him out — not push back on his views whatsoever. With this, I extracted the phrase — “It’s just that every successful nation in history has been ethnically and religiously homogeneous.”
While I would like to have further engaged with the ideas he expressed, the only way to reach the point I did was to lock myself out of the conversation. This exchange clashed with my expectations of a political club, and even seemed to contradict a video released last year by the current executive team. In a video posted to Facebook on “why YOU should join ConClub”, the President states that “as President, I most enjoy being able to facilitate the contest of ideas on campus. That occurs through our events, and it involves engaging with
people who I may not necessarily agree with, but using their ideas to refine my own.” Despite this claim, I found myself in a position where I could not contest ideas. This was the first in a series of increasingly flaccid interactions with the society’s execs, and even the President, that led me to conclude that the conduct of ConClub stands in stark contrast to their stated ideals.
I faced the conservative club again; the encounter was similarly disappointing. Another Welcome Week, I asked what ConClub stood for and the Exec I was speaking with said they stood to support “fundamental institutions such as “the Church” and “the Family.” When I enquired further, I was told they just want to support churches, mosques, and synagogues to have their freedom to practise. This still wasn’t enlightening, and I mentioned that this seemed so vague that far left groups on campus may say much of the same thing. And in fact, the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) website states “In particular we reject racism towards Muslims, whose right to religious and political freedom is routinely attacked on the spurious grounds of “fighting terrorism.” But the ConClub Exec I spoke to rejected this idea, saying that SAlt would want to “burn down” places of worship. Given SAlt’s own statements, I found this unconvincing. Since I doubt SAlt and ConClub converge on much, I assume ConClub’s mere mild support may be
stronger than they let on. If so, they were hardly open about this. We moved onto what is meant by “the Family”. She put forward her support for what amounted to the nuclear family. To this I responded that “I think a monogamous relationship where you only have one sexual partner for your entire life can work great for some people, but maybe not everybody.” Surprisingly, she agreed with me, stating: “that’s why we’re for a small government who stays out of people’s lives, and we’d never want to legislate this.” So her other point was so tepid that SAlt would agree with it, and this point amounted to a general support of personal freedoms without any suggestion of political action to underpin it? When I pressed her on this I had the fascinating experience of her turning away from me, and as I stood patiently waiting for our conversation to resume, she pretended that I did not exist.
The most disappointing case of this refusal to engage was during this year’s Welcome Fest. This time, I sat back and watched as ConClub marched down Eastern Avenue, waving a placard of Dominic Perrottet. They elicited some boos, and then left. Only later, they came back with a different sign. To be fair, perhaps the first few times I approached ConClub, while it may go against what they supposedly stand for, they weren’t at an obligation to engage with me. But
on this occasion, they had come with a question. This new placard, held by the President of the club, read “Socialism killed a million people. Can you justify this?” I asked the President if he knew that the 100 million figure includes deaths in the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany. However, uncharacteristically of someone who supposedly wants to “facilitate the contest of ideas on campus”, he said “I’ve already had this conversation”, shrugged me off, and walked away. This behaviour — asking a question without any genuine interest in discussing it, really only to rile their political opponents — is reminiscent of sealioning; it epitomises ConClub’s intellectual dishonesty.
While there may be some worth in having a conservative club at the University of Sydney (single-handedly keeping the polo shirt industry afloat maybe), the ConClub’s members fundamentally fail to live up to their own standards. They have a pretence of being a political, intellectual club, but their only sincere goal seems to be to disrupt and seek attention. If the ranks of ConClub are confident enough to walk down Eastern Avenue waving a sign of Dominic Perrottet, met with boos and glares, they should be confident enough to publicly support their ideas with reasoned argument.
In the midst of recent changes to the skyline of the Sydney CBD — a city built upon stolen Gadigal land — is the Barangaroo redevelopment. While the site is now famous for a scandal and the Crown Casino, its Indigenous history is less known.
For tens of thousands of years, the area known as “Barangaroo” today was a sacred fishing site for local Eora women. This was a place for women to gather and learn
providing for their communities and caring for the waterways. During the early years of British invasion, a Cammeraygal woman from North Sydney joined these Eora women through marriage. Renowned as a skilled fisherwomen, powerful leader, and matriarch in the local Aboriginal community, Barangaroo lived with her husband Bennelong on nearby Mel-Mel (“the eye”), known commonly today as Goat Island.
By 1789, the British had invaded Barangaroo’s lands, her community, and her marriage to Bennelong following his abduction by British soldiers. However, Barangaroo continually resisted this
Barangaroo was a Cammeraygal woman, part of the clan from Lower North Sydney who were revered and respected as powerful warriors. Barangaroo was a military strategist for and part of a group of women who would lure British soldiers to shore to be attacked. Stories of her continued defiance are celebrated by Aboriginal community leaders. Barangaroo fought against her husband’s visits to Government House, refused to let him go on colonial expeditions or to share local Aboriginal knowledge and customs due to her position as a lore woman.
Reflecting on Barangaroo’s life and story leads us to ask the necessary questions we should be pursuing in regard to the
place she is named after today. This place — once a sacred site of custodianship, community and livelihood for Indigenous communities — has become an economic powerhouse which Gadigal communities do not benefit from.
A place now the heartland of Australia’s gambling, fine-dining and entertainment industries for the one per cent, clearly does not position people to reflect on local Aboriginal histories and cultures — particularly the woman who refused to cede her life, lands and body to British invasion.
The recent opening of the Marrinawi Cove, promoted as a trendy new ocean bath for the ideal corporate work break, still remains part of sacred Eora fishing grounds. What is the value of bestowing or returning Aboriginal site names if this is as far as it goes? The Gadigal communities that once swam, fished and lived around the Cove are not the same people the area has been designed for, 300 years on. Co-opting a namesake in the spirit of inclusion, reconciliation and acknowledgement becomes empty when its culture and people are left out.
However, this sidelining and surfacelevelling of Aboriginal culture is a typical trend for the region’s long history of development and redevelopment. The Crown Casino was built on the back of promises to redevelop “public land for public good” as part of a “historic opportunity to return…Sydney’s
foreshore back to the people.” Today, the casino’s physical domination of the reserve is a fitting testimony to the greed and gluttony that has ruled its redevelopment — its towering heights a further testament to how far Barangaroo has been taken from its origins.
Opposition by some traditional custodians over naming the site “Barangaroo” were disregarded during this time, with their concerns that naming a site after a woman who fought ardently against European development, largely disregarded.
Walking along the foreshore today is sobering, realising that this remarkable woman has been largely forgotten amidst the high-flyers and risers. More sobering still is the thought that her name has been bestowed to what she would have fought against.
Therefore, naming the area Barangaroo without active acknowledgement of this woman renders any opportunity to honour her empty, appropriating the name and doubly disrespecting the history. Barangaroo was an incredible leader, warrior, provider, matriarch and force of defiance. Her story must be remembered alongside her name to keep everything she fought for alive, and to ensure that no matter how much colonialcreated change the region endures, it still remains a testament to the resistance and resilience of Aboriginal people.
As cultural institutions return, it is hard to shake the infiltrating presence of colonial agendas.
Emerging from the pandemic, galleries and theatres are intent on making up for lost time. Years spent inside meant years spent away from the intangible strength of learning from tangible cultural works. The ability to walk through an exhibition, to be on-site and spend undistracted time in the presence of artefacts and performances, is an experience that significantly differs from the virtual events that were offered during lockdown.
However, the current discussions around the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and the cultural policy Revive have ignited an increased political consciousness about the presence of First Nations people and experiences in our cultural institutions. Both officials and the public are demanding more. More workshops. More events. More chances for learning.
Hayden Walsh, a Wiradjuri man and First Nations Advisor at Sydney Living Museum, spoke to this development of demand.
“Everywhere is wanting to do something… it’s on budgets, it’s on meeting agendas and people are talking about it. Most places are starting to realise that they need to make some changes to their ways of working.”
This ignited interest is beneficial and needed.
However, in the effort to begin to decolonise the enormity of injustice that is embedded in these institutions, First
Nations perspectives and concerns are being ignored. Institutions are favouring meeting the demand quantitatively, rather than qualitatively.
This is not to say that more exhibitions and programs focusing on Indigenous perspectives are unnecessary. Nevertheless, there is a real danger of this becoming tokenistic, inauthentic, and burdensome for the First Nations individuals contributing to them.
Walsh recalls his attendance at events that are essentially “wannabe Easter shows.”
“I’d say nine times out of ten, you’ve got non-Indigenous people running [the events], like some council person, and they’re just sort of putting something on.”
These organisers, driven by commercial and political interests, fulfil what they are trained to do: maximise turnout and publicity.
“And so, they’ll usually partner with companies to have a tent. So you get these things like a Westpac tent with a goodie bag. What does that have to do with NAIDOC?”
Superficial efforts claiming to “decolonise” Australian institutions, while holding the hand of wealthy corporations, is hardly a new sensation. What Walsh feels needs particular attention, instead, is the individual burden being placed on First Nations individuals to produce these events.
However, the traditional model of demand and supply for labour is alarmingly poorly fit for this situation.
The qualifications, experience, and knowledge that these roles require is not something that can be formally taught. As of June 2021, 3.8% of the Australian population identified as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent; further, education in Australia on First Nations history remains in a woefully inadequate state.
Earlier this month, the National Gallery of Australia commissioned a review into an upcoming Indigenous exhibition, after allegations of interference by white workers in the creation of the work. The review is to be conducted into the APY Art Collective, which also contributes artwork to major galleries across the country. This issue reflects the consequences of overdemand, as artists struggle to keep up with the expectations of production. This is not a championing of Indigenous art — it is an offence.
To highlight the difference between his work and other roles, Walsh used the example of an accountant. If an accountant is underappreciated and undervalued, it is unlikely that the assessment of their work carries enormous weight. Budgets and financing are unlikely to be a full reflection of who they are.
Reflecting on his position, Walsh speaks to the nuances of cultural awareness. “Culture roles are different because it’s your identity…. Instead of spreadsheets and Excel and all of that, I’m bringing my relationships. My connection with community and country. Some people are bringing their language. Some people are bringing their family traditions and stories.
“If you’re not feeling appreciated, it’s like ten times the pain.”
This threat of underappreciation is a prevalent reality. Walsh uses the example of the “bare minimum” of Acknowledgements of Country. While absolutely necessary, it signifies a “tick the box” approach to the demand that fails to comprehensively include First Nations presence.
The solution, Walsh believes, lies in putting First Peoples first.
“For so long our side of the story and our involvement in things has been so last minute.”
By placing the First Nations perspective at the forefront, an experience currently ignored in favour of showy sponsorship and corporate pats on the back, events become not about First Nations, but instead with them.
It is not enough to simply hold these events. It is not enough to have roles designated for First Nations perspectives. Without thorough involvement with First Nations people, sensitively recognising the higher stakes and enormity of their contribution, events become inauthentic and harmful.
Too often, loud calls for decolonisation ultimately conclude in perpetuating colonial values. We must stop disenfranchising and exhausting Indigenous contributions, we must stop ignoring radical opportunities for dismantling systems of oppression, and we must actually listen.
The laboratory is a strange place. Even after all the burners have been turned off and benchtops wiped clean, the scientists and technicians have left for the night, reactions are often left to proceed overnight and cells are left to divide in their dishes.
In many labs, you will find vials marked with the four-letter code “HeLa”. This cell line has been used to further medical research in countless ways — it was even used in vaccine development during the COVID-19 pandemic. These cells were taken from Henrietta Lacks 72 years ago, without her permission.
Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who grew up on a tobacco farm in Clover, Virginia, under the care of her grandfather, Tommy Lacks. When she was twenty, she married her cousin, David ‘Day’ Lacks, in her preacher’s house. They moved to Baltimore when the steel industry boomed as the United States entered the Second World War, in pursuit of an easier life.
Henrietta Lacks continued to visit the tobacco plantation in Clover after the move, and her house was the centre of the Lacks extended family. She loved cooking, and would prepare enough food for anyone who walked through her door. She enjoyed going out dancing, and painting her nails red.
Remembering Henrietta Lacks, and locating her within the wider system of medical and structural inequality in America, is essential.
While bacterial cells are hardy and often have multiple mechanisms to ensure they can grow in adverse conditions, human cells are much less enduring. Cell biologists attempted to grow them outside the human body for years, but once isolated from the human organism samples would die off and fail to reproduce.
Cell growth must be carefully regulated to ensure that there are no errors in the genetic code. Humans have regulation built into every cellular process: every single product, from a protein to a new cell, must be made only under strict conditions. The unregulated division and mutation of cells is what we call cancer.
Beyond regulatory mechanisms that oversee all cellular processes,
tumour-suppression genes exist as sentinels. They detect excess growth and subsequently induce death in the offending cell. Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, can transform cells. It produces proteins that disable these sentinel mechanisms, leading to cervical cancer.
Henrietta Lacks was experiencing discomfort after the birth of her fifth child. Upon examining herself, she discovered a sore near the opening of her cervix, within her vaginal canal. The local doctor thought it was a syphilis sore, but when she tested negative for Syphilis he suggested she visit the hospital.
Johns Hopkins Hospital, established in Baltimore from a charitable donation and aimed at treating the sick and poor, was the only hospital for miles that would treat Black patients. In 1951, when Henrietta Lacks first visited the hospital gynaecologist, Black patients were treated in segregated wards, and had to use separate bathrooms and water fountains.
Two samples were collected from Henrietta Lacks during her treatment: one from the growth near her cervix, and one from neighbouring regular tissue. These samples were passed on to Hopkin’s cell biologist, George Gey, who had a lab set up to attempt to grow human cells in vitro – outside of their tissue.
Once incubated in the lab, the cells from Henrietta’s tumour began to grow at an unprecedented rate. While the normal cells died after a few days, the cancerous cells persisted, and continued dividing exponentially. They became immortal — meaning that they weren’t subject to the typical processes that limit the number of times a cell can divide.
Cell biology labs have continued to use HeLa cells for decades. Henrietta Lacks’ unwitting donation has furthered science: once scientists could grow and visualise cells outside of the human body, they learnt a lot about cancer, polio, vaccines and even IVF. She has advanced medicine in so many fields — but she was never once consulted about it.
Henrietta Lacks did not consent to
the collection of her tissue. She did not consent to the distribution of these cells among scientists across the globe. She did not consent to the release of her name, nor her medical records, nor the publication of her genome. Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, and her family did not know about the collection and use of her cells until 1975, when a journalist, Rebecca Skloot, contacted them for a story.
Despite birthing a wealth of scientific resources — notably the development of for-profit biotech companies —
compensation for the harvest and continued use of her cervical cancer cells.
Despite the uncountable contributions of a Black woman, Black communities had some of the worst health outcomes in the crisis. Understanding Henrietta Lacks’ story requires a deeper analysis of the structural inequalities that underlie healthcare in America and beyond: she received substandard care in a segregated hospital for the poor, had her tissue harvested without consent, tissue which continues to be exploited to further the research of institutions that uphold structural
Not so many moons ago, with the final weeks of high school wrapping up, and old friendships fraying at the edges, I sat by my English Extension 2 teacher’s desk and spoke of the future: USyd. Little Baulkham Hills boy from a working-class family had his sights set on the Harry Potter university. At first, it was simply a degree-related choice, but after scavenging my way through university websites, online reviews, Facebook posts and the trusty advice of my English teacher, I knew that USyd was the place for me.
The nine-storey social sciences library and the active dramatic society were definitely in the equation. But they barely had a hold over me, not until I had arrived and really settled in at least. Before then, Honi Soit — the very newspaper you hold in your hand — was my be-all and end-all. A university newspaper printed weekly, engaged with its community and free of censorship or centrist politics. Head held high and ambition beaming out from my chest, this backpack wearing bozo was desperate to become a W R I T E R. A dreamer, an achiever, but most of all, a writer.
That is, until he was rejected. Until his fickle heart and his feeble quill were snapped in two, thrown into the compost bin, taken out again, planted as saplings in a forest, burned down via kitchen torch, and stomped on by the collective boot of Them. The Editorial Team. You may be thinking of the
impotence in my character, in my quill, in my backpack, but rejection is a dish best served on repeat. I was no impotent writer, Dear Reader. Nay, I was a pretty pony, mane kept tidy with bow ties, hooves trimmed in regulation, ready to gallop over as many obstacles as I had to become published. And become a W R I T E R.
But I was rejected. Again. A second time.
And a third.
And a fourth.
And a fifth.
And a sixth.
And a seventh.
And an eight.
And a ninth.
And they say nine is supposed to be a holy number, Dear Reader. But nine was nothing but a demon in numerical form. It appeared to me on buildings, on bus stops, and on price tags. Like NINE-ty dollars wasn’t bad enough for a cardigan, the number became a mark of failure. No matter what topic I wrote about, no matter what section I pitched for, 2021 W R I T E R Danny was W R I T E R no more.
It is pointless to consider the present. Or the future, from a past perspective. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been published since. How many times
I’ve won competitions or found writing avenues elsewhere. No. The point is that my first year of university was made nothing but hell by The Editorial Team. And I’m sure you aren’t exempt from this, Dear Reader. I’m sure at some point in your university years, Honi Soit has published something that has made you flip your lid or worse, rejected you from the refuge of its 35-5 GSM wood pulp paper.
That is why I am writing this article. I am here to start a revolution. I am here to liberate those who have had their dreams crushed and their writing pads soaked by the maniacally joyful tears that have sprung from the eyes of The Editorial Team. I demand justice from these “champagne socialists” of past and present, and I caution those who may consider themselves ‘emerging’. Us rejected simpletons are more than just simpletons. We are W R I T E R S, despite what you label us as.
On the anniversary of my 11th piece published in Honi Soit, after the countless rejections and ten (not nine)
victories I have had from 2022 to now, I call for reparations to be paid to rejected contributors. These include:
• All-inclusive access to the Honi Soit office (wherever that may be)
• The promise of 3 articles minimum for the times contributors have been rejected
• 6/5 of your annual stipend be divided equally between all rejects who come forward
• The use of the Honi Soit office, wherever it may be, for weekly Honi Soit Reject Meetings, plus paying for a therapist with an English or MECO background to be present
I have shared my tale in hopes of others coming forward too. Remember, you are not alone. And remember, the number nine is just a number. But you, Dear Reader, you are a bloody W R I T E R.
Namoi River
You’re home to me
I’ll sit with you ‘neath the pretty bird tree
Namoi Mud is the second album from Kamilaroi singer-songwriter L.J. Hill, but the only one that is readily available on streaming platforms. In a 2020 interview, Hill mentioned that he is working on a third album, but so far nothing has been put out. Released, according to various sources, in either 2004, 2007, or 2008, there is so far no vinyl pressing of Namoi Mud
Namoi Mud is a beautiful album. Hill has the careworn, weary voice of a late-career Johnny Cash, and it’s fitting that most of the songs land firmly in territory of country music. The first track, 18th Day of May, deals with the memories Hill has of his late sister, and the album only evolves from there into explorations of loss, substance abuse, and the intergenerational trauma that has been passed down as a result of the Stolen Generations. All the while, everything is anchored and framed by an inalienable connection to land; the streets of Armidale, the Namoi River
flowing through Kamilaroi country, and the mud of its banks.
Hill doesn’t always nail the lyrics and they’re a bit clunky in parts. On the titular track, “Namoi Mud”, he sings, “And a twinkle in your eyes/ how I miss that Namoi mud between my toes,” and even the best Bob Dylan syllable bending doesn’t quite make the couplet work. That’s not the point though. Hill writes, sings, and plays with an unvarnished sincerity that, when it all comes together, is haunting and profound.
“Pretty Bird Tree” is where Hill gets it all right. Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen cover the song on their album Death’s Dateless Night, a collection of funeral songs. In that sense, “Pretty Bird Tree” is a dirge, a requiem to a life misspent. Hill’s original starts with disjointed slide guitar and lyrics that sound like free verse poetry, and progresses to deal with the many ghosts of his past. There is indeed a spectral quality to the arrangement, and more than any other time on the album we get a sense of the unplumbed depth of Hill’s connection with the Namoi river, as if
swimming in the ocean and no longer being able to see the bottom. Despite the hangovers and the sickness, despite the trauma and the innumerable losses, the banks of the Namoi river are his home and where he is connected to his ancestry.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the idea of “Impossible Vinyl” wasn’t at some level a hipster attempt at having the most esoteric album collection as a form of cultural capital. That of
course would be nice, but it’s much more than that. It’s a lament that such an aching, beautiful album as Namoi Mud, with such a jewel in its crown as “Pretty Bird Tree”, does not exist in any lasting physical medium. Being so obscure and released in the age of CDs, just before the vinyl revival, it will likely never get pressed onto vinyl. That means that if it gets removed from Spotify for whatever reason, it is more or less gone forever.
LIA PERKINS
Hello! I hope you had a fantastic mid sem break.
In the week before midsem, the SRC participated in the NTEU’s strike and picket. It was great to be on the picket lines with so many staff and students, and I enjoyed giving a speech on behalf of the SRC at the end of the pickets.
Last week, the CEO of Universities Australia was in the United States,
We’ve had a busy last few weeks! Week 6 and 7 saw more days of strike action on campus, with staff mobilising to oppose a pay offer which falls well below inflation, demand that Indigenous employment targets
attending meetings to discuss involvement of the Universities in the AUKUS deal. Students held a snap speakout outside F23 opposing the involvement of Universities in AUKUS – universities should not be getting involved in a deal that jeopardises our future.
In committee news, I have seen more of the outcomes of ‘Future FASS’ and how they are affecting honours programs. Instead of discipline specific honours units, students have to complete schoolbased honours units, with the exact proportion determined by the school. The Education Action Group
is preparing to fight back against this.
In SRC news, we have hired a social media intern. We held an SRC Faculty Society Committee meeting to hear from student Faculty Societies about issues facing students in their faculties, and to update them on the campaigns of the SRC – such as in support of the NTEU strikes. The SRC’s caseworkers prepared a submission to the Universities Accord, assisted by myself and Tiger, and I thank them for their time on this. The submission identified the need for Free Education, to overturn JobReady, for expanded student economic support and for safety
on campus. While we are under no illusions about the intention of the Accord, the submission puts together the direct experience caseworkers have with students.
I’ve changed my consultation hours to be only Wednesday 3pm to 5pm because Monday was unpopular. Drop by the office on Wednesdays or email me anytime presiden@src. usyd.edu.au
Check out our social media on Monday morning to see the upcoming events at the SRC this week.
be met, casual rights be enforced, and the 40-40-20 teaching-research-admin workload split be protected without being contingent on the creation of Education-Focussed Roles, which see staff massively overworked. Management are maintaining that their profits come above all else, and have refused to meet the demands of the NTEU for a better workplace and university. We hope to join staff on the picket lines again in Week 10 for at least 3 days to fight for a better
working and learning environment.
We’re also gearing up to continue our campaign against war and militarism - both on campus and more broadly. Recent weeks have seen the ALP government pledge $368 billion for nuclear submarines, as part of an expansion of Australian militarism. This money could fund massive improvements in healthcare, welfare, public housing and so on for ordinary people. Instead, it’s
being used to aggressively build up Australia’s capacity to play a role in a potential devastating war between the US alliance and China. We’ll be joining the Enviro Collective outside the Quad at 12pm on April 27 at the rally - No to War and Fossil Fuels: Thales and Santos Off Campus. We’ll also be attending the Port Kembla May Day rally on May 6 to oppose the AUKUS deal and nuclear submarines.
The Women’s Officers have been working hard on finalising speakers and details for our Public Forum on the Colleges on April 27th from 5pm-7pm. We do not believe that the Colleges provide housing for those
who need it, rather they are wildly expensive housing for the privileged in society, the communities of which breed a violent culture of sexual assault and bigotry. Particularly in this current housing crisis that we’re living through, the land and architecture of the Colleges could be used instead to provide safe and affordable housing for students who need it, such as Indigenous students, low SES students and students who
are survivors. Often these groups of students overlap, and we hope that the Forum can contribute a valuable discussion on this topic which we can use as a stepping stone to finally achieve real change and real action on this very real issue on our campus. We hope to see you there.
We’ve also been giving support everywhere we can to the NTEU’s continued EBA negotiations as we understand that students can play a
RAND KHATIB
The Ethnocultural Office Bearer did not submit a Report this week.
valuable role in helping staff in this campaign. Staff working conditions are student learning conditions and the gendered bias of casualised labour that forces women to work long hours for insufficient pay is unacceptable. Indeed, all poor working conditions are unacceptable and we think that’s as good a reason as any for students to stand alongside staff here, as we will continue to do into Week 10 and beyond.
JASMINE AL-RAWI DEAGLAN GODWIN
SKYE DANNAHER
COOPER GANNON SATVIK SHARMA
The Global Solidarity Office Bearers did not submit a Report this week.
JOSH NORENA SARGUN SALUJA SIWAN XU THOMAS THORPE
The Interfaith Office Bearers did not submit a Report this week.
These pages belong to the Office Bearers of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council (SRC).
They are not altered, influenced or otherwise changed in any way by the Editors of Honi Soit
Abe,
What is the deal with being sick? Do I need to tell my lecturers / tutors if I can’t come to a class?
Sick Not Tired
Many students need to work while they study to pay their living costs or to get work experience. In Australia, all workers have rights, even if they are citizens of another country, e.g., international students. Trade unions support workers to protect workers’ rights and together with the Fair Work Ombudsman, makes sure workers are treated fairly. Each job has an agreement or an award that outlines the pay and conditions you should expect. Make sure you read it carefully before signing up as an employee. Some students accept being paid less that their award or being treated unfairly as they are afraid to lose their job. No matter what conditions you agree to or how you get paid, your boss cannot arrange for you to be deported, just because you did not do something they wanted you to do at work, or just because you have been working outside of the law while studying.
If you are a casual worker (not permanent) check your agreement to know how much notice you are entitled to before getting a shift or having one cancelled. Even if you are casual and do not get paid sick leave, if you are too unwell to attend work, you are entitled to have that time off. Most employers will require you to give them a doctor’s certificate. Some employees are paid a penalty loading (extra money) if they work on weekends, after normal hours, or public holidays. Check your agreement to see if this applies to you. Keep a record of all the hours you work and check them against your payslip to ensure you have received the correct pay.
Employers pay tax on any money you earn, which is then assessed at the end of the financial year (30th June). You will need to complete a tax return to have that assessed so you can receive a refund of excess taxes paid, or repay any that you owe. If you earn more
than $450 (before tax) in a month you are also entitled to at lease 10% superannuation. It seems like a very long time away but planning for your retirement now is a good idea. Some international students can get a refund of superannuation when they have permanently left Australia.
Dear Sick Not Tired, Most subjects have a rule that if you miss 20% or more of your classes you might be given an Absent Fail grade, regardless of what your marks are for any assessments. If you are going to miss a class get a Professional
Practitioner’s Certificate (the University’s format for a doctor’s certificate) from your doctor or if they are unavailable get a home visit doctor. Check online for details or if you have OSHC check who they recommend. It is good manners to email your tutor to explain that you will not be in class. You could take that opportunity to ask what you missed out on, and how you can catch up. If you are sick for an assessment apply for Special Consideration within 3 working days. Late applications are unlikely to be considered.
Abe
Some employers avoid their responsibilities by “hiring” people as “contractors”; e.g., delivery riders, ride share operators, tutors; for roles in the “gig economy”. There are many difficulties for people working within these roles, including no sick leave, no insurance or workers compensation, and complex tax requirements. Consider these conditions before engaging one of these roles.
The best protection you have as a worker is through your trade union. They protect you as an individual and as part of a group of workers. They have in the past fought for conditions such as fair pay, lunch breaks, penalty rates, and protected workers from unfair dismissal. The small joining fee is tax deductable and gives you protection while you are working. Different jobs have different trade unions, so start by joining the Australian Council of Trade Unions, then they will let you know which specific Union you will move to for the following month.
Many students need to work while they study to pay their living costs or to get work experience. In Australia, all workers have rights, even if they are citizens of another country, including international students.
Across
1. Impermanent (9)
6. Adult male gorillas with distinctive colouring (11)
12. About (13)
13. British celebrity chef, Nigella (7)
14. Tree dwelling nut-collectors (9)
15. Small bomb intended to be thrown (4,7)
17. Magic sticks (5)
18. Aboriginal dance ceremony (10)
20. Human genus (4)
22. Village People hit (4)
24. Make stronger (10)
26. Actor in Picture F, Cary (5)
27. Urged on, supported (10)
29. Cigar-shaped Chinese starter (6,4)
32. Enchantment, hex (5)
33. Very upset or angry (10)
34. Cher’s catchphrase in Clueless (2,2)
36. In addtion (4)
37. Ability to do something well (10)
39. Hybrid feline (5)
42. The largest city, but not the capital, of South Carolina (11)
43. French Emperor Napoleon (9)
45. Actor in Picture A, Sidney (7)
47. Method of execution (8,5)
48. Shadows, outlines (11)
49. Leave hurriedly (9)
1. What kind of electromagnetic radiation has the shortest wavelength and is emitted dutring nuclear explosions?
2. What word refers to the triangular mass of sediment that gathers at a river’s mouth?
3. What word meaning a small amount is origin of the word ‘jot’?
Down
1. Important tests (5)
2. Actor in Picture B, Katharine (7)
3. Wes Anderson film, ... Kingdom (8)
4. Poured with precipitation (metaphorically) (6,4,3,4)
5. People who tell mistruths (5)
6. Transparent (3-7)
7. Heavily attack someone (3,4)
8. James Bond production company (3)
9. Famous London clock (3,3)
10. People who work together (13)
11. Innocent receiver of others’ blame (9)
16. GMT in full (9,4,4)
17. Actor in Picture C, John (5)
19. Joints, doobies (7)
21. Open-mouthed in shock (4)
23. Small dog breed with silky coat (6,7)
25. Actor in Picture D, Audrey (7)
28. Not attractive (4)
30. Someone imprisoned until they day (5)
31. Rock band who sang I’ll Stand By You, The ... (10)
32. Views of the ocean (9)
35. Hair loss (8)
38. Channel 10 talk show, The ... (7)
40. Actor in Picture E, Judy (7)
41. Suburb Broadway is in (6)
43. Sinks one’s teeth into (5)
44. Creepy (5)
46. Type of brown bread (3)
4. According to incels, what sort of grindset is possessed by successful but highly independent men?
5. In the Book of Revelation, what two symbols does God use to express that he is ‘the Beginning and End’ (Rev. 21:6)?
6. What links the answers to the five previous questions?
Address: http://misinformation.com.au
“Mums for whorescopes”: New Honi ticket forms
Mark Scott and Cole Scott-Curwood (no relation) seen … [more on page 25]
Offered as an alternative to Professional Engagement Program 1B (PEP1B), a new unit entitled CHNG2911: Introduction to E-Cigarette Production will be introduced in the second semester of 2023.
PEP was introduced in 2018 to provide undergraduate students skills essential towards the engineering environment, including soft skills and resume writing. Students complete 600 hours of engineering-specific, non-engineering and engineering internship work, and write reflections on such experiences via the digital Sonia platform.
Although the program has good intentions, many students feel as though the content is oddly taught and inconsistent. One PNR resident called the program “unnecessary” and “ill-equipped to teach students about the workforce.”
The alternate unit CHNG2911 first focuses on the electronic properties of vapes, then its
mass production, and lastly, how to distribute it among their underage friends. Other students have muttered about selling their home-brew beers alongside the handmade vapes at popular engineering events including ‘Beer n Bangers’ - a main attraction for engineers to get pissdrunk and makeout with each other.
Similar to the PEP program, students are required to submit and write claims on 20 smoking-focused hours to the Sonia platform, in addition to writing a 2000 word essay on the importance of actually paying attention in PEP workshops.
A tutor for the program claims, “I’m so grateful for this new bloody program. Now I don’t need to learn about writing resumes and learn something useful. Between vapes and nuclear weapons, there isn’t really anything else left for us Chemical Engineers to work in.”
Two weeks after contact with the tutor, she mentioned having difficulties breathing from her e-cigarette usage. More to come…
Moo with Max: Agriculture students run USU candidate
“We only have sex for Procreate”: Meet the confused Christian artists
Nick Riemer drops bucket hat collection
Amateur turns up at wrong Camperdown Park
Here’s why I’ve started going to Courtyard in glasses and a large moustache
Giant cat gobbles all the Courtyard cheese
Mixed race friend group takes out injunction against USU photographer
Sue Harlen Shake trend fails to catch on (see p. 12)
