Issue 90.8

SEP 202 2 90.8

riday, F o t y m. da r s e e t u T g n y i dur Ever m a 0 3 : – 10 8:30am House n o i n ,U Level 5

contents EDITORIAL 7 YOUX PRESIDENT’S REPORT 8 SRC PRESIDENT’S REPORT 10 VOX? POP! 12 LEFT RIGHT CENTRE 14 EDITORS’ RECOMMENDATIONS 16 SUSTAINABILI-DIT 18 ECON-DIT 20 ARTICLES & CREATIVE WRITING ART OF THE POSSIBLE 22 CLEANING UP THE ARTS 24 SPEED DATING FOR THE WEIRD

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LABOR SENATOR FATIMA PAYMAN REPRESENTS NOTHING 28 WHAT IS THE REAL REASON BEHIND THE INFLATION AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT IT?

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GOD CAN DO NO WRONG

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THE REVOLUTIONARY MUTUAL AID OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY 35 ‘THE SANDMAN’ REVIEW 38 ‘THREE WOMEN’ BOOK REVIEW

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UK TORY LEADERSHIP 42

contents

credits EDITORS

COVER ART

DESIGN

CONTRIBUTORS & SUB-EDITORS

credits

GRACE ATTA CHANEL TREZISE HABIBAH JAGHOORI JENNY JUNG

DANTE SILIQUINI

JENNY JUNG

OLIVIA VERONESE GEORGE YOUNG KYLE SCOTT JAZMIN VERAIN DEAN PLESA SOPHIE YELLAND NIX HERRIOT KANDERSON SINEAD THEO GOLDSWORTHYHESS LEAH BRAHAM NGOC LAN TRAN SEB ANDREW

We acknowledge and pay our respects to the Kaurna people and their elders past, present and future as the traditional custodians of the land on which the University of Adelaide stands. We acknowledge that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.

EDI T

ORIAL Dear Readers, I have an apology to make.

I realise now that On Dit has not been giving the students what they want. All these stories about the critical political happenings locally and around the world that our livelihoods depend upon, providing a platform to advocate for oppressed groups around the world, allowing students to share their insights on social issues that affect our daily lives, student affairs that directly impact our uni life… I finally realise now that you guys aren’t interested in reading these articles.

All this time, you guys have been looking for discussions on advanced topics, like cutting-edge technology, entrepreneurial milestones, space, great scientific discovery, Silicon Valley, Wall Street etc. - the real stuffs that actually run and change the world. Of course, we recognise we are unqualified to feature such content as we probably won’t be able to grasp these topics.

And what about Elon Musk??

I don’t think we have published a single article about the absolute genius, the visionary that is Elon Musk!

I ain’t really a Musk fan though…

Reader, I want you to know that we are working on it. We are determined to be more like the Financial Review than On Dit has ever been.

Because we care… because our funding allows us to source articles from experts outside of the university cohort… because we are for sure getting paid enough to invest extra hours of our time to report on the Silicon Valley alongside everything else we are being sent…

I want you to know we are wholly dedicated to this beautiful tradition that is On Dit On Deez nuts Yours, Jenny Editor of the Red Flag

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President’s Report

YouX

Ah- the favourite time for all the student politicians has finally come- it’s the student elections week! It’s like Christmas came early! It’s leg week for a lot of you in university as I know you will be running and trying to escape taking one of the “How to Votes”.

This year will certainly be different for me, normally, I will be running as a candidate, but this year, I will not be running in the student elections. However, being a sixth-year student representative, I truly value my experience in YouX and the SRC. YouX and the SRC are both important student-led bodies that aim to make your university life easier and fun! YouX compromises 10 student-elected directors to oversee the strategy, budget and management of YouX. YouX offers a range of fantastic services, including Clubs, Student Care, Events, Employment and Volunteering. The SRC, compromising 25 elected members, is supposed to represent genuine student issues to the university.

I, alongside the SRC President, are tasked to attend important meetings with the senior management of the university and sit in important committees to help make important key decisions that affect your life as a student! Student elections are the time that you get your say as to how well a job all your student representatives have done in representing you.

Not convinced to vote in the student elections yet? YouX and SRC are funded by part of the Student and Service Amenities fees (SSAF), the extra amount that you paid on top of your course fees. The fantastic achievement on my side of the column couldn’t be made without SSAF, hence, it’s very important you ensure your money is spent on representing your best interest.

On a side note, I heard your concerns regarding the Adelaide Unicare announcement that they will be charging consulting gap fees to students. This is really concerning with international students now still paying gap fees while it was promised it will be fixed. I have now followed up on this issue with the university and advocating for the fees to be removed for students. I will also 8

be working on the Sexual Misconduct Policy to ensure students involved in incidents outside the current definitions are protected.

I was also very happy with the “Connect” event series that we launched in Semester 2 and I hope you enjoyed it (I certainly loved the edible cup- it didn’t taste weird as many suggested)! Questions/suggestions about the YouX/university? You are always welcome to email me or send me a message through social media!

Oscar Zi Shao Ong YouX President

oscarzishao.ong@adelaide.edu.au Facebook/WeChat ID: oscarong1997

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President’s Report

SRC

Campus is political.

What gets taught, how it gets taught, who’s allowed on campus and why it all happens is shaped by ideas about how the world should look. Do we get democratic say over how our campus and classes are organised? Or do corporate imperatives decide who is invited to our university and where funding for teaching gets directed.

Outside of education issues, no student lives in a bubble. Few can ignore that we are living through a cost of living crisis, global pandemic and accelerating climate change.

So students have tended to play an important part in movements relating to issues both on and off campus – from free education campaigns to anti-war movements, women’s liberation to struggles over land rights.

Our universities reflect the dominant politics of today – they’re run like profit-driven corporations instead of working for the common good.

Part of this neoliberal turn on campus, and in society more generally, required smashing our student unions because they had the potential to organise fightback. This was done in collaboration between uni bosses and their goons (known as Vice Chancellors and uni management) and the government. Today, one of the politicians responsible for defunding student unions actually helps run our university council! (Google Amanda Vanstone – Education Minister under the hated John Howard) While defunding our unions was important for undermining them, another aspect was the battle for the soul of our student unions. This required a subtle but highly political argument waged about what kind of student union students need.

Should our student unions be left-wing, activist bodies, or should they be “apolitical” service providers?

Should they provide resources and an organising space for students to defend their interests, or should they train the next generation of careerists in bureaucratic politics, run career sessions and give occasional free lunches?

While the latter may seem “apolitical”, I would argue it is a right-wing perspective that seeks to undermine the power of the only institution students have to fight for their rights.

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The politics of those who run our union matters. Those who control union resources can either deepen progressive struggles, or stifle them. Right-wing student unions at Adelaide have defended staff and course cuts – progressives this year organised campaigns to fight back. Right-wingers have defended the presence of fossil fuel and military companies on campus – socialists have supported the fight to divest and kick dirty industries off campus.

Right wingers in the union have even used their positions to lobby SA politicians against abortion decriminalisation. Over the uni break, I was proud to work as SRC President with the Defend Abortion Action Group to call and chair Adelaide’s brilliant, 5000-strong solidarity with Roe v. Wade rallies.

Unions should be radical, organising forums, daring to fight for a better vision of society, and inspiring students to get involved in that struggle too.

Despite highly censorious and anti-democratic attacks from Oscar Ong, Progress and the Young Liberals, myself and progressives in the SRC have fought all year in an attempt to rebuild old traditions of militancy, decency and radicalism in our student union.

Your experience of campus, like the rest of the world, is the result of political choices and perspectives. For progressives that means it’s important that we fight student apathy, know what side we’re on, and get involved with fights to challenge the neoliberal status quo on campus, in our unions, and the wider world.

Ana Obradovic SRC President

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1. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE METHOD OF EVADING STUPOL CAMPAIGNERS? 2. WHAT IS A COURSE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER TAKEN?

?

X VO

Max (he/him)

3rd Year | B. Science (Advanced) 1. Walk with someone else and pretend to have a heated argument.

2. First year intro to programming I was so bad at I ended up dropping out past the census just to avoid the fail.

3. Either the Cranker or watching a week’s worth of lectures in bulk at home.

4. Avoid spending money on union erasure.

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Shannon (she/her)

2nd Year | B. Media (Journalism) 1. Being in a rush and a quick ‘no thank you’ never fails.

2. All the arts students unite—The Enquiring Mind! I think I heard a collective sigh when the news broke it wouldn’t be required any longer.

3. Either at a gig or at home with some choccy snacks watching comfort tv.

4. I think many of us have speculated whether or not sitting at the tip-top of the university food chain is really worth all the money it pays…

POP!

3. WHERE CAN YOU BE FOUND ON A REGULAR SATURDAY NIGHT? 4. WHAT’S A BETTER WAY FOR THE UNI TO SAVE MONEY THAN WITH MERGERS AND STAFF CUTS?

Jazz Siegertsz (he/him)

Cameron (he/him)

4th Year | B. Int. Relations/ 1. As a Stupol campaigner myself (I’m so sorry), I sadly cannot avoid the mess that is Stupol campaigns. If I have to give my advice to avoid campaigners - headphones, the bigger, the better.

2. I’m going to throw some shade here, but I would have to say International Security. I felt like the entire course was just a repeat of things I had learnt in previous International Relations courses. Would I say I wish I had never taken the course? I mean, it was okay, but I kind of want some of my time back.

3. As a spontaneous person who swaps between being an extrovert and an introvert, it really just depends on my mood. So, I would have to say I would either be in bed watching Community for the tenth time or hanging out at a pub while avoiding my assignments.

4. I’ve heard from management that staff cuts are inevitable. In that case, I say we should only sack those named Peter with a surname beginning with H and ending with J. It sounds fair and equitable.

4th Year | B. Music (Sonic Arts) 1. Since I live pretty far from uni, and I suffer from mental illness, the commute to uni is often so overwhelming and draining for me, that I don’t attend in person. I think I’ve only ever seen Stupor campaigners once in my four years. So can confirm mental illness is a very effective strategy.

2. I wish I had never enrolled in my double diploma of Business and Business Leadership and Management last year (through an online education service). I paid for it upfront after completing my Certificate IV of Business Administration with a different online educator, so I have to do it now or I lose my money.

I signed up when hypomanic, which is what I did with the first qualification. I’ve got a new rule now when I’m hypomanic: don’t enrol in qualifications. (I haven’t started working on the double diploma yet).

3. On a regular Saturday night I can be found at home procrastinating uni work and using coping mechanisms to make the panic go away. Good fun.

4. I don’t know too much about the uni financials other than that they’re not doing well and relied on international students’ money (and don’t have that income anymore due to Covid). But I’m confident in my assumption that there are a few people who are being paid way too much, and that there is a lot of misspending of money. I often see renovations occurring at the uni and I can’t help but wonder why they’re happening if the uni is ‘so broke right now’.

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LRC 90.8

1. On Saturday 6th of August, Israeli warplanes launched a 3 day missile-strike campaign against the besieged Gaza strip, killing approximately 50 civilians, 16 of whom were children and injuring over 300. How should the world respond to this genocide?

2. Former POTUS Donald Trump’s home was allegedly raided by the FBI to which the U.S Justice Department has responded with ‘no comment.’ What are your faction’s thoughts on this?

3. Aboriginal woman and Greens Senator, Lidia Thorpe has faced backlash for calling The Queen a coloniser upon being sworn into Parliament and then forced to retract statement and redo her oath of allegiance. Was it right for the senate president to condemn her statement on the queen and why was she forced to redo her oath?

Socialist Alternative | ALEXANDER BASTIRAS 1. Israel is yet again terrorising Palestinians. This is the latest episode in a genocidal project of ethnic cleansing and apartheid aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians. People all over the world should respond not just with condemnation with Israel, but unequivocal support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation. As in the fight against South African apartheid, such support could be done in several ways - by holding rallies, boycott and divestment campaigns, as well as just spreading awareness about the oppression Palestinians face. It was great to see the Melbourne University Student Union recently pass a motion committing to solidarity with Palestine and calling on the university to cut ties with Israel, in defiance of threats from Liberals, Zionists and right-wing mainstream media.

Greens Club | MICHAEL

PETRILLI

1. It must be recognised that Israel is an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid-enforcing state.

This is not a pro-Palestine stance, it is objective truth.

The UN unequivocally calls Israel’s occupation illegal and many NGOs and human rights groups use all of the terms described in the opening sentence. The unprovoked murders of innocent Palestinians, the complete control of the autonomous movement of Palestinian people, and the illegal occupation of 85% of historically Palestinian land, including east Jerusalem that has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people, is but a small testament to this fact. People talk about it being a both sides issue, however, Palestinian people have been killed at rate 23 times higher than that of Israelis. Given this, it is shameful that the Australian Government says it is committed to the development of the Palestinian people, yet votes down UN resolutions that condemn illegal Israeli settlements and recognise Palestinian self-determination.

If Australia wants to show true commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people, it would divest hugely from Israel, increase Aid to Palestine, and reverse its acknowledgement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while east Jerusalem remains illegally occupied.

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2. The reversal of abortion rights and revelations about Trump’s botched far-right putsch demonstrate the influence of anti-democratic reactionaries in America’s halls of power.

However, we don’t cheer on the FBI because the Justice Department is an oppressive institution that cannot serve the working class nor combat Trump’s influence. The radicalised Republican base is a morbid symptom of a deep political crisis.

Progressive demonstrations and class struggle are needed to protect and defend democratic rights and defeat the far-right.

3. The Senate president was wrong to condemn Thorpe’s statement. Indigenous people are right to express anger towards the state and symbols of their colonisation, including the Queen. Thorpe is right to highlight the ongoing dispossession, genocide and racism at the heart of Australian capitalism. Fighting structural oppression will mean challenging right-wing institutions like the police and parliament. Less working through the “proper channels” and more insubordination and disrespect for power. We need more people willing to disrupt the system with radical demands against prisons and policing and for land and employment rights.

2. What is more interesting than the raid on Trump’s estate is the Republican party’s response. Many Republican politicians have come out decrying this as a witch hunt, crying on camera and calling the acts of the FBI the acts of so-called communist dictatorships.

Which is funny, considering the FBI is perhaps one of the most anti-communist institutions that has ever existed. If the Republican party were truly concerned about the FBI’s power, they would change the laws that allow police to conduct violent raids on private citizens, which often target people of colour and have led to many killings by police like that of Breonna Taylor.

3. To say that the Senate President was only doing her job by asking Lidia Thorpe to redo her oath is an utter cop out, and extremely telling of how serious this government is on actually listening to an indigenous voice in Parliament. The fact is that the Queen is as much of a coloniser as King George III, and every ensuing monarch will be just as much of a coloniser as long as they are Australia’s head of state. Those who have spoken out against Thorpe’s decision have shown that they are more comfortable upholding the petty rules of a genocidal colony than they are listening to a First Nations woman, and for that they should be ashamed. Those who have used the situation as an opportunity to platform their racism and their misogyny should be ashamed. We stand fully with Lidia Thorpe in her fight against colonialism. Sovereignty was never ceded.

Labor Club | STEPH MADIGAN

1. This latest attack flows inexorably from the May 2021 attacks that killed 313 Palestinians. There is seemingly no crime blatant enough to attract condemnation from the west, who are driven by oversensitivity to the more powerful Israeli side and realpolitik concerns about the international balance of power. So, in light of Berlin banning all Palestinian demonstrations on Nakba day, countries should reject and rescind all anti-BDS legislation. Such laws attack freedom of assembly and expression, opening the doors to unlimited state repression against political dissent. Countries should cut trade ties with Israel, as arms sales by and to the regime help sustain the oppression of Palestinians. Australia is also a key supplier of imported food to the West Bank, so we should double down on promoting food security in the region. There are no “exceptional” or “feasible” apartheid regimes—Israel must safeguard the human rights of Palestinians.

2. If found guilty of interfering with classified documents, Trump could be banned from running in 2024, leaving Ron DeSantis as the forerunner. Trump was key to getting DeSantis elected governor of Florida in 2018, but bad blood is brewing between the pair as Trump’s polling plummets. DeSantis is the mastermind behind some of Florida’s recent attacks on minorities: the “Don’t say Gay Bill”; suspending a pro-choice state prosecutor; banning maths textbooks for containing “critical race theory”. If Trump isn’t prosecuted, and a two enter a leadership contest, having to pick favourites could drive a wedge between “Always Trumpers” and the anti-Trump GOP. Implications abound.

3. The post-truth assault on stable reality by the Murdoch media continues as News Corp employees churn out clickbait articles about Adam Brandt’s Aboriginal flag, ties in Parliament, and, now, the defaming of our precious Queen! Sky News went as far as to praise Queen Elizabeth II for presiding over de-colonialisation… like the abusive ex who takes credit for your glow-up. If you recall, Kate and William were recently booed out of Jamaica in recognition of the British government subjecting the region to colonial rule and slavery. In a similar vein—this is stolen land, sovereignty was never ceded, and Lidia Thorpe should do as she pleases.

Unfortunately, at time of writing, kowtowing to the Queen is a procedural requirement for senators, but hopefully this outdated and colonialist script will soon undergo revision.

Liberal | TAYLOR WESTMACOTT 1. The first response to the killing of children must always be a considered condemnation.

2. Ex-Prime Minister John Howard puts it well: “Trump’s atrocious behaviour after losing the 2020 election […] has surely made him unfit to return to the White House […] It was dumfounding to me […] that the party should have chosen him as its candidate in 2016. He lacked public grace [and] had little respect for his party organisation” (A Sense of Balance, 2022, via the Australian).

And, as Ex-President Richard Nixon once said: “Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

3. It is not undemocratic to contest the usefulness of particular features of our country’s British Parliament. We also have rights and obligations to criticise and decry colonial projects, present and historical.

The Oath of Allegiance isn’t it. Parliament stenographers shouldn’t be accounting for sarcasm. (Also, re: the phrasing of the question, Sue Lines, Labor Senator and President of the Senate, made no comment on Lidia Thorpe’s statement. She merely called a point of order and reinstated that the Oath must be spoken verbatim in order to take effect.)

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habibah’s pick

dandelions | ruth b.

Dandelions is the feel good emoshy song that makes you want to reach for the stars. The lyrics are positive affirmations and prayers. The beat is an energy booster. It’s not true that there are people that don’t like love songs.

Cute.

jenny’s pick

symphonia ix (my wait is u) | grimes Love her or hate her, Grimes is borderline genius and has the coolest song concepts.

She is so cringe that it actually makes her cool. She played this one live at KEXP a long, long time ago, which is how I discovered it (and I have to say, it is actually better live). I heard in an interview that Grimes locked herself in her room with no light, limited food and zero sleep to record Visions, and honestly I think the delirium and insanity that came from that was the secret formula for this krabby patty of an album.

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editors’ recommendations

songs

chanel’s pick

shallows | daughter

If you enjoy slow, beautiful and dark music, Daughter is the band you need to listen to.

Shallows is so dreamy and dramatic. I love listening to it when I’m sitting outside on a gloomy, rainy day.

grace’s pick

cleopatra | the lumineers This was the song that gave me the courage to pursue what I was passionate about, when choosing my university course in Year 12. The lyrics offer a beautiful story about life, regret and acceptance. In an interview about the album of the same name, the lead singer said that we change minds often not through statistics or figures, but through storytelling. It’s sentimental, but hearing that changed my life - it felt so profound.

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sustain abili-dit Words by Olivia Veronese

When was the last time that you visited a public library? What was it for? Did it surprise you?

You may have quickly stepped in to pick up a book for class, or been dragged in by a friend or family member.

You may also be wondering what all these questions about your personal use of public libraries have to do with sustainability we’ll get to that. First, I’d love to tell you a story of my own.

I’ve always been one of those nerdy kids who loved reading. So, I suppose it was only natural that my mother, who is also a bookworm, would take me to children’s storytime and let me have free reign of the entire children’s section. As a nerdy child, this place of seemingly endless picture books, cushions, and brightly-coloured mushroom stools was a dream come true.

Although the time between my visits stretched out as I grew older, the level of wonder did not.

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the opposite to be true. Around 4pm, professionals and older community members who made the most of the peace and quiet would give way to parents with school-aged children, students and tutors, and off-the-clock adults looking for their latest read or watch.

I found that the biggest use of public libraries was not the books, but the free, safe, and sheltered environment that they provide. For students, a place to study with free wifi, computer access, and onhand librarians; for professionals, a place to work with access to private meeting rooms; for families, a place to learn, play, and socialise. Throw in over 3 million books, graphic novels, magazines, DVDs, CDs, Kindles, children’s toys, board games, puzzles, and even some console games on top of this, and you have a place of intense community value.

But public libraries offer more than children’s events and a small piece of respite for parents. At 15, they also offered me my first (and best) job. Working in any area, you learn things that a casual patron or customer may never have picked up.

We’re lucky to have an excellent private library on-campus with a jaw-dropping catalogue of resources, helpful librarians, and safe study spaces. There’s no denying that private libraries offer a wealth of information and services. However, public library services will remain available to you after you graduate, and offer significant opportunities for engagement and support within your local community.

For me, this was the range of people who make use of the public library spaces, for a range of its services. Although I expected my days to be quiet, stepping around older people and dodging the odd child, I found

Public libraries are not-for-profit, allowing them to channel their funds differently and conform to different metrics than profitdriven enterprises. This allows them to place more value on providing community

The Wonders of the Public Library System events such as book clubs, technical help, community education sessions, expanding their collections to include the latest viral book-tok read, and spending time with their stakeholders - us.

The sustainability that libraries provide does not always conform to the green, tree-planting environmental sustainability that we are often used to. Instead, public libraries strive towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal of providing accessible sources of knowledge and information, in addition to supporting local communities through the provision of social infrastructure that I have preached so strongly throughout this piece.

If you’re desperately after environmental sustainability, South Australian public libraries contain battery-recycling deposits and outdoor green spaces, and some offer free seeds to add to your garden.

was enough airflow to leave him be.

If being able to bring a flask of tea and snacks into the library doesn’t appeal to you, you can borrow ebooks and films on your device, or place physical items on hold from any of the 130 public libraries in South Australia where they’ll be taken to your closest branch for a speedy pickup.

And so, I leave you with one last piece of little-known wisdom: South Australian public library checkout machines have a “pirate” language setting that you can access by tapping the skull and crossbones flag in the language options menu. It’s very entertaining, and I almost always check out my books this way.

Access more information about the SA public library network: https://onecard.network/client/en_AU/ sapubliclibraries

All of this from an institution that we commonly downgrade to being a place to grab a quick read. There is an inherent social and environmental sustainability in choosing to borrow a book rather than purchase it on the first read.

I know there are some serial book collectors out there, and if that’s you, don’t panic: I’m not asking you to do away with traipsing bookstores. But, when you’re not sure if you’ll love a book, or if the hardcover is just too expensive, do consider sourcing it from your local library before deciding whether it’s worth purchasing to add to your collection.

While I’m here, I’ll bust a commonly-held library myth: you ARE allowed to eat and drink in libraries, as long as you don’t leave a mess. I’ve watched a patron crack open a can of tuna whilst reading, and whilst I don’t suggest this particular snack if you have any respect for people nearby, there 19

econ-dit Words by George Young and Kyle Scott The Australian Nightmare Earlier in the year we wrote an article about troubles in the Australian housing market. We outlined some key issues associated with the current housing bubble, notably the restricted supply due to zoning laws/development times and overstimulated demand (encouraged by government initiatives).

This is occurring amidst an already tumultuous global market experiencing energy crises and “long-covid” economic fallout. Major bubbles in the last 20 years have been the early 2000s Dotcom boom, 2008 CDOs (causing the GFC) and Crypto. All of these demanddriven explosions came to an end and left millions in the red. The housing bubble has to burst - it is just a matter of time. What happens when it does?

Artificially Inflated Demand The federal government’s first home buyer’s scheme increases access to properties by reducing the minimum house deposit to 5%. This, coupled with up to $10,000 in grants, gives people access to the property ladder who would be unable to own a home otherwise. The scheme intends to be helpful and reduce stress on the saturated rental market.

But buying a home on a 5% deposit means the remaining 95% is borrowed from the bank (a highly “leveraged” position) and is exposed to interest rate changes. Although intended to ease housing access, the scheme introduces players into the market that otherwise wouldn’t have been at an auction, creating more competition between buyers and driving up prices. Add to this the delayed expansion of residential areas (slow government planning, low 20

supply of building development, we’ll save it for another time) and you see average house prices rise more than 240% over the last two decades.

Debt Defaults Do Damage At the time of writing the cash rate is 1.85% (the highest in 6 years) and expected to rise amidst growing inflation. 60,000 leveraged first home buyers are about to be smacked with a stiff hike in mortgage repayments, not to mention millions of home owners with pre-existing mortgages. Couple this with a cost of living crisis and wallets start to get a lot lighter. The average wage in Australia accounts for only 6.37% of the average house price.

People will have to make sacrifices: pay off my mortgage? Buy groceries? Pay for my child’s education? The recent 5.2% minimum wage rise will help to ease this pressure but eventually costs will be passed on to consumers once more.

What happens if the repayments on your new house become too expensive?

You default on your loan. Your credit score gets a black mark, affecting future borrowing capacity, and you are thrown back on the rental spiral once the bank reclaims your house. If the bubble bursts and house prices deteriorate then your property could go into negative equity, where it is worth less than what it was bought for using the loan. To default here would mean you owe the bank the difference in price on top of the loan (that you only contributed 5% to). Negative equity is not a far-fetched concept. When bubbles burst investors engage in a selling run to escape the ensuing crash in prices, cyclically

driving prices down. The last time house prices fell in Australia was after the 2008 US housing market crash (kickstarting the Global Financial Crisis), where growth fell from +10% to -5% in the space of a year.

This predicament is not exclusive to Australia. US Google searches for “sell my home fast” have increased by 2750%. It is easy to throw numbers around and scream bloody murder, but the effects of a housing market crash have very real implications for very real people. Homelessness, malnutrition, poor education, domestic violence, with a heavier impact on women/ the elderly/ minority groups. Super funds could see large losses. Decreased incomes lead to less consumption which disproportionally affects small businesses.

Some Suggestions Who is to blame for this situation? It doesn’t really matter. This has been building for 30 years and pointing fingers at either side of government doesn’t dampen any of the issues that may occur. The only way to avoid the economic effects of a market crash would be to close our borders and return to subsistence farming with a bartering system. In the absence of that, the government and banks must make sure to provide ample information to home buyers so they are sure of the consequences of taking a loan. A strong social support network needs to be in place to help those most at risk if housing prices do slump. Affordable and sustainable long-term housing initiatives would increase the supply of housing and ease prices. In the short term, there is little room for flexibility.

In the long term, both state and federal governments have the capacity to learn from their mistakes and create a sustainable housing environment that benefits all Australians.

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ART OF THE POSSIBLE 2022: THE POWER OF IMAGINATION

Words by Jazmine Verain Edited by Dean Plesa and Sophie Yelland

The Art of the Possible Festival is returning this year from October 24th-26th with grander and even more phenomenal showcases of student talent! With our theme of ‘The Power of Imagination’, we’re eager to challenge you, inspire you, and blur the lines between dreams and reality.

We’ll present the brilliant creativity of University of Adelaide students through innovative mediums: Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Sonic Arts, Music, Literature and Journalism, just to name a few. Not only that—our festival hosts global talent and we’re extremely proud to be exhibiting artists, organisations, and their creativity from around the world.

You may be familiar with events making a comeback from last year’s program, notably ‘Art of Jazz’ and ‘Art of Classical’ in Elder Hall. Also running for the second time is the highly successful ‘Silent Sessions’ in the Barr Smith Library Reading Room. Let yourself dive into the sensory ocean that is our students’ written and aural works with the push of a button— Or the scan of a QR code, to be more accurate. The ‘Silent Sessions’ is a technologically advanced, COVID-safe event!

Additionally, we’re excited to announce that Grammy Award-winning artist Laurie Anderson will be joining our program this year! Largely known as a pioneer in the electronic music world, Laurie is bringing her AI Bible into The Hub for our festival—all the way from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. We’ll also be hosting a Q&A session with Anderson herself, alongside guest speakers Anton van den Hengel—Director of the Australian Institute of Machine Learning—and our very own CEO, Thomas Hajdu.

Keep an eye out for the Art of the Possible program guide—there’s something in store for everyone. We look forward to seeing you there!

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CLEANING UP THE

ARTS Words by Nix Herriot

To perform at this year’s Darwin Festival, you must not speak out publicly about the festival’s sponsors. Contracts require artists and producers to guarantee that they will not “take any action which may disparage the festival and/or its corporate sponsors”. This gag clause was likely added after First Nations singersongwriter Leah Flanagan criticised the festival’s main sponsor, oil and gas giant Santos, at the 2018 opening concert. Her comments against fracking were met with audience applause as campaigners demanded that the festival cut ties with companies involved in fossil fuel extraction. Santos has been the target of particular anger over projects that go against the wishes of traditional owners and promise massive greenhouse gas emissions. “We will not accept arts and cultural institutions being used as a vehicle for the promotion of fossil fuels,” artists explained in an open letter to the festival organisers.

The relationship between the Darwin Festival and Santos is emblematic of the ways in which fossil fuel companies use cultural institutions to clean up their public images. In her 2015 book, Big Oil and the Arts, artist and activist Mel Evans refers to this process as “artwashing”.

Debates over artwashing have gone some way towards exposing the myth of art’s

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‘neutrality’. From the bloodsoaked sugar empire that gave its name to the Tate galleries to indigenous artefacts looted from the colonies, art has long been shackled to capital. In recent years, cultural institutions have been no strangers to political controversy. In 2018, the National Gallery of Victoria dumped its contract with Wilson Security following protests over the company’s links to offshore detention. Earlier this year, over 100 artists withdrew from the Sydney Festival in opposition to its sponsorship deal with the Israeli embassy. And just last month, hundreds of teachers condemned Adani’s patronage of London’s Science Museum. “These sponsorship deals are not altruistic acts,” the teachers wrote, “but part of a wider strategy by fossil fuel producing companies to convince the public that they are the ones solving the climate crisis, rather than the ones creating it”.

The issues raised by dirty sponsorship are almost as old as the arts itself. Artists have long relied on the patronage of the wealthy and the wealthy have long relied on artmaking to boost their social standing. Similarly, corporations have always portrayed themselves as giving back a little of the immense wealth they extract. Initially, Mel Evans explains, money was spent to undermine the power of organised labour.

Companies like Standard Oil “pledged financial support for social projects as a way to move social acceptability out of the hands of unions and into the palms of the bosses”. During the Cold War, mining giant BHP positioned itself as the standard bearer of progress and prosperity, carrying the message of free enterprise into Australian schools, universities, churches, homes and workplaces.

As unions lost power, however, boardroom strategy evolved from combatting the influence of labour to increasing spending on public relations. At a time of growing disquiet about climate change, fossil fuel companies increasingly recognised a need to manufacture a social licence to pollute.

In the early 2000s, Shell described its need for a global reputation management agenda to “build, maintain and defend Shell’s capital”. Shell and other oil majors have known the stakes of global heating for decades yet continue to wage million dollar lobbying campaigns to obstruct climate action.

With their logos emblasoned on most major galleries and museums, fossil fuels are part of the furniture of cultural life.

Neoliberalism has turbocharged the bonds between the arts and business by evaporating government funding and grants. “My hands are so filthy,” said former Art Gallery of South Australia director Ron Radford when asked about funding acquisition. For donors, arts sponsorship allows them to associate themselves with a progressive agenda when their activities are anything but.

As early as 1967, David Rockefeller described the value of arts in “providing a company with extensive publicity and advertising, a brighter public reputation and an improved company image”.

A local example of artwashing is the Art Gallery of South Australia’s annual

Tarnanthi festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Tarnanthi’s lucrative $17.5 million sponsorship deal with BHP allows the company to cast itself as a good corporate citizen, offering an enlightened smokescreen for exploitation. BHP has blasted Aboriginal sites in the Pilbara for a quick buck, operates the world’s second largest uranium mine and is promising a massive gas expansion. In 2015, the company ignored safety warnings about the risk posed by its Samarco dam - a decision that led to Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. For BHP, association with a festival of indigenous art is an effective way of cleaning up its toxic reputation for what is effectively loose change. And when BHP sponsors Tarnanthi, Tarnanthi likewise sponsors BHP. Artwashing cleanses the tailings, oil slick and coal dust from exploitative social relations. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a disaster that killed 11 rig workers and pumped some 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, major cultural institutions like Tate helped to rehabilitate BP’s brand.

“You can’t abandon your friends because they have what we consider to be a temporary difficulty,” lamented gallery director Nick Serota. Brand management is clearly important for capital. Arts sponsorship, Evans writes, “offers a pretence of corporate responsibility for the callous profiteer; and becomes an illusionary act of cultural relevance for outmoded industries”.

Dirty sponsorship has nothing to do with philanthropy. It’s a cheap form of image laundering for destructive companies.

Given that big fossil fuel giants pay zero tax on their Australian operations, despite windfall profits during the current gas crisis, they are pinching far more from the public purse than they are “giving

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back”. All the while, a culture of fossil fuel dependency and silence remains devastating for artists who are given little choice but to associate their works with extractive industries.

Fortunately, arts workers and their unions have been vocal in calls to clean up the arts.

Protesting at the Louvre in the wake of the Paris Agreement, artists and climate activists joined forces to demand a “fossil free culture”.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, Van Gogh Museum, Edinburgh Festival and other organisations have recently ditched their partnerships with companies like BP and Shell following creative protest campaigns.

The carbon majors are feeling the pressure of a broader climate movement. The head of Europe’s coal lobby complains that his industry is “hated and vilified in the same way that slavetraders were once hated and vilified”.

At its best, art has the potential to be an agent of meaningful social change. As the impact of the climate emergency intensifies, more must be done to target cultural institutions that are, as novelist Ahdaf Soueif put it in her resignation from the British Museum, “collaborating with those who are unmaking the world before our eyes”. Either the arts embrace the challenge of decarbonisation or they continue to sanction and sanitise the behaviour of those fuelling the fire.

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speed dating for the

WE I R D

When you’re weird, meeting people for the first time is much like speed dating: you know a hit or miss within the first few words. To combat this, you can try masking. Depending on how committed you are, you can a) hide behind the mask until it inevitably slips or b) drop it at the moment of best dramatic value.

I’m an example of the inevitable slip, with a sprinkle of category b) the slip usually happens at the best and worst moments. To combat this issue, I reveal my weird for all to see. Many of my conversations begin with; “Hi! How’s it going? Did you know I can fit my whole fist in my mouth?” *Proceeds to shove whole fist in mouth* or“Sorry to interrupt, but I’m a real connoisseur of smut and your conversation has caught my ear. What onomatopoeia sound do you think best describes the noises during sex? Schlop, Schlep, or Schlup? You were discussing smut, right?”

My favourite, though, is to start by saying “I’m a loser!” with all cheerfulness about the fact. The reaction is the tell of a person’s personality and tolerance. I know to stay clear of those who pull a face or deny my claim. Who are they to make me feel like a loser for being a loser?

Or, by accepting my fate, have I graduated from being a loser to a winner?

I’d rather be a loser.

It’s good to remember that there is more to life than winning, and that more includes me.

Words by Kanderson Sinead (pen name)

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The year 2022 has had many tricks up its sleeves and the election win of Western Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman, Australia’s first hijabi wearing woman in Parliament, was one of them.

Payman herself however has ever-so-bravely declared that ‘before I am an Afghan or a Muslim, I am Labor.’

Despite this comment, Payman’s entire election campaign and her win has been filled with rhetorical pride over her heritage, her headscarf and her goal to help hijabi women be who they are. This woman took identity politics, put it in a headlock and has refused to let it go.

Identity politics will harm any liberation movement as it stunts the momentum to bring genuine changes that will transform society from a restricvtive one into a liberated one. Identity politics is a tool used to deceive communities into thinking their interests are now at one with the rich and powerful. In reality, their ‘representative’ is an individual who has divorced themselves from the struggles imposed on that very community. Payman and many others have taken the tokenistic seat at the table, the very table at which systems of oppression are designed and she has extended her allegiance to the mission.

Hijabi presence in Parliament House is not a win for hijabi women and it in no way represents what being a hijabi means.

The Labor Party is a party that operates on stolen land, over which sovereignty was never ceded. Like true climate criminals, Labor’s climate bill prioritises corporate reliance on cheap gas and coal to overproduce commodities so as to satisfy not human need but the competition of the free market.

A party that told the Liberals they will support a violent religious discrimination bill without amendments.

A party that staunchly expressed support for the racist and inhumane operation sovereign borders.

A party that continuously favours the big bosses and the corporations over workers, whether it be through giving tax cuts to the rich, keeping the poverty-inducing welfare payments below the poverty line, supporting the axing of the pandemic leave disaster payments (even though 43,000 Australians test positive daily and are required to stay isolate), or being responsible for raising the pension age for the first time and the stagnation and decline of wages over the last decade.

A party that devotes $80 million to ‘beef up’ security at police stations alone while black deaths in custody and incarceration rates for Indigenous minors continue to rise.

A party that brags about imperialism, building weapons of war and promoting fanatic nationalism.

Labor Senator Fatima Payman represents Words by Habibah Jaghoori 28

nothing.

These are all small and recent examples, representing the tip of the iceberg, of Labor’s expansive bummock of criminal behaviour and continuous betrayal of the international proletariat.

Australia’s foreign policies have disseminated war, devastation and poverty onto Muslim countries. It has spread Islamophobia which has made hijabi women subject to physical and verbal abuse on the street. To make up the state in Australia, to become the political elite in Australia, you must fit into a specific mould and the ALP have fit themselves into it snugly.

Fatima Payman made a choice. Fatima Payman chose a side. She chose to stand with a worker bashing, warmongering, climate destroying, community poisoning party. She joined these people and claimed their values as her own. No one in Labor can refuse responsibility for the party’s actions.

Fatima Payman’s own father, a refugee, would have been locked up on Manus Island at the hands of her party. Fatima Payman’s late ancestors would have been abused and harassed in Afghanistan by the Australian Defence Force, an industrial complex, religiously funded by Labor.

Fatima Payman is now a solid part of a tyrannical state.

Her position in parliament is not progress in any meaningful way. It does not alleviate the state violence sanctioned on hijabi women. She is no ally to the feminist movement. Instead, her position is a slap on the face and an obstacle on the road to a world free of Islamophobia. Just as Kamala Harris, the first black woman to be America’s Vice President, supplied billions of dollars to the police force while the public were crying for Black Lives Matter, Fatima Payman is just an insulting candy given to a child so they can stop crying.

True liberation, equity and equality will be achieved from the bottom up. It will be gained by collective organising, community, mutual aid and attaining the power of revolt. It will come through educating ourselves, arming ourselves and taking back our rights.

We shouldn’t aim to have a seat at the table. Our goal is to flip the table over and set it ablaze.

She does not represent the masses living under the state. She does not represent hijabi women, feminism, Muslims or working women. Fatima Payman will declare that 10 years ago someone who looks like her would not have a seat in Parliament, but she fails to mention that 10 years ago to now, Indigenous people, refugees, migrants, Muslims and the working class are copping it worse than ever with pandemics, climate disasters and an economy that butchered and cooked the working class head served by Labor on a silver platter to the greedy capitalist.

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WHAT IS THE REAL REASON BEHIND

THE INFLATION

Words by Theo Goldsworthy-Hess Why is Australia and the rest of the world experiencing the highest levels of inflation since the 1970s? Prices of petrol, food, and rent amongst other goods have sharply risen this year which has caused global cost-of-living crisis. You have probably heard that this has been caused by the supplychain-crises during the pandemic, China’s lockdowns as well as the war in Ukraine, but how these events have actually caused prices to rise is rarely ever explained in detail. Once we look into the details, we realise that the current inflation crisis is the result of an overly efficient global supplychain system which favours profit over security.

The predominant explanation for inflation is the supply-chain-crisis, which is said to have been caused by the lockdowns during the pandemic which reduced demand dramatically, causing recessions in most industrialised countries. The government sought to reduce the damage via quantitative easing, which essentially entails injecting the economy with cash and reducing interest rates to nothing in order to increase demand. Thus, when the lockdowns ended, demand exploded, and global supply-chains were unable to supply freshout-oflockdown consumers flush with government cheques. This resulted in corporations increasing the price of goods in order to reduce demand so that supply-chains could be fixed and eventually return to normal. The crisis then worsened in February when 30

Russia is one of the world’s most important suppliers of critical commodities such as oil, gas, minerals, and grain, when the sanctions were imposed, a massive shortage in grain, oil and gas appeared. This forced supply-chains into further chaos which resulted in higher than ever petrol prices. Other events such as the lockdowns in China only saw to exacerbate the crisis. These analyses are generally correct - however, they fail to address the problem at the core.

For example, why did supply-chains collapse during the pandemic? The reason is mainly to do with overefficiency and choosing profit over security. Modern-day supply-chains are extremely efficient but are equally vulnerable to any sort of disruption.

Shipping ports are built to a capacity that can just manage the expected traffic; if ports are built with a large margin of safety, there will be excess capacity that produces zero revenue, decreasing efficiency. When the pandemic hit and billions of people across the world entered lockdown, demand halted, with ships stuck in Asian ports waiting to be filled up once demand recovered.

The problem was that eventually, demand for goods not only recovered but accelerated, owing to government stimulus cheques. Ships returning to offload goods from Asia now had nowhere to put them as the ports were already full of empty shipping containers ready to be shipped off

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT IT? AND

to Asia. Thus, this massive surge of demand that occurred at the end of lockdowns has acted to expose the vulnerability of what has been called ‘just-in-time’ supply-chains.

With the global supply chain in a mess, inflation began to arise. The situation was not great. However, if nothing else happened in 2022, then inflation would not be as bad as it is now, and the problem would be on its way to being resolved. But things took a turn for the worse when Russia invaded Ukraine in February earlier this year, causing inflation to rise 6.1% here in Australia with the US recording a 9.1% increase, and the U.K seeing a rise of 8.5%.

One of the major concerns with the current inflation crisis is that there has been minimal, if any, wage growth in the past decade. This means that inflation will hit working people the hardest as their wages will struggle to keep up with hiked prices. This coupled with the reserve bank increasing interest rates means that people will also have to pay more interest on their home loans. The reason the reserve bank increases interest rates is to reduce demand in the economy. By doing this, it will technically allow supplychains time to reorganise and decrease prices. However, this strategy runs the risk of starting a recession, and while this appears unlikely in Australia, it is looking extremely likely for the U.K. The government claims that the next year and a half will be tough for Australians but is ultimately necessary in order to get inflation under control.

The problem still remains that even when inflation is taken care of, which will likely happen at the end of 2023, real wages will likely be even lower than they were in pre-Covid times. This is because when inflation stabilises, they will still stabilise at a higher price then they were before. This would not be a problem if wages increase along with these prices increases, but the wage growth as currently forecasted is less than optimistic, predicting even lower wages with the stabilisation of inflation. This is self-evident by the fact that wages have grown a measly 2.6% during the past year, which is nowhere near the 6.1% increase in prices that Australians have endured.

It is clear then that monetary policy is not the only mechanism that can solve the inflation problem. What Australia needs is strong wage growth that will at least keep Australians in a similar position if not better than pre-Covid.

The only way to achieve this is through major industrial action. With a newly elected government that is slightly more sympathetic to workers concerns, now is the perfect time for unions across the country to demand higher wages.

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god can do no wrong.

Words by Grace Atta

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I would like to preface this article with a couple of disclaimers. I am not against religion. I believe that if religious faith, spirituality, or any belief in a divine being makes you a better person; more loving, compassionate, empathetic, courageous, forgiving (and so on), then I will be the first to encourage your pursuit of faith. I also write from a place of experience. I was raised as a Christian, I was baptised in the Coptic Orthodox Church, and have attended Anglican, Lutheran, Protestant and community churches (including evangelical megachurches) in my lifetime. I indeed was a devout Christian for most of my life - I decided of my own accord, when I was 10 years old, to be ‘confirmed’ (a practice that allows you to receive The Eucharist or Holy Communion in the Church). I even gave devotions (mini speeches / sermons) at my Lutheran primary and secondary school. For years I read my Bible nightly. So you get the point…Christianity was a big part of my identity. But there comes a point where questions and doubts are raised, key values turn into intricate theological debates reliant on technicalities and varying biblical interpretations; it is never simple. And don’t get me started on the sly digs and the one-upping on the other Christian denominations; however, I digress. At its core, in my slow 3–4-year step-back from faith (or as some would call, ‘the straying of the lost sheep’) I came to understand that my issue with the Church could be summarised by the belief that ‘God can do no wrong’. As they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

You don’t have to be attending church for long to hear the devouts’ adage response to any criticism or questioning of their controversial views. ‘Well, you can’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible you follow’. Well, I think you can.

I’ve yet to attend a Church that does not do that. Or rather, couldn’t be accused of that by another Church / believer, based on their varying interpretation.

For instance, some will say confessions to a Priest / Father are a must, and others will say we have a direct line of contact to God and that this is enough.

Some churches will have women as priests / pastors (they don’t call them Mothers, despite calling men Fathers… at least not that I’ve seen), and some will not even allow women to serve at the church altar. (They’re a Sunday school teacher at best). Some will deny and indeed persecute the Queer community, and others will marry Queer couples in the Church. Some will take a literal approach and say Noah’s Ark and ‘creation’ happened exactly as written, and some will say they’re representative stories. And then there’s the ‘music issue’; are drums allowed in church? All of these variances in interpretations are areas that Christians would point to one another as places of straying from scripture. Romans 12:2 (NIV) is an especial favourite for this scenario and if you know, you know.

(The verse is ‘Do not conform to the patterns of this world’). The sentiment is used to argue that you and Christians shouldn’t follow the secular, but instead, seek out God for a transformed way of thinking about this world. The natural implication of this for many, is the maintenance of the status quo. The refusal and indeed fear of information contrary to the established belief, and the antagonisation of progression.

Why hold on for dear life to views on women, homosexuality, abortion, and creation which aren’t reflective of science (natural or social) and the reality of individuals’ experiences? A statement which in itself reminds me of a time a ‘brother in Christ’ spent up to

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30 minutes, and paragraph texts, to convince me that my leniency on evolution, even if ‘as the process of creation’ was misinformed and wholly unbiblical. Personally, and respectfully…who gives a damn?!

There are a multitude of explanations, which I cannot explain with justice in this piece, but I argue that one is the belief that ‘God can do no wrong’.

It is my observation, that of the most conservative Christians, the view truly is that if you make even one omission, one admittance that something within the text or faith practices is debatable, or God forbid untrue of reality, then their whole faith will fall. The Bible has to be infallible and as the source of this text, so too must God be unchallengeable.

I recall in the beginning of my doubt in faith, I asked, ‘How can God be an unchanging, all-loving, all-knowing being, when his very nature is drastically different from Old to New Testament?’. Old Testament God is a big fan of revenge and punitive punishment.

You’re a sinner? Do you have doubts? Be ready to be washed away…or turned into a ‘pillar of salt’ (Genesis 19:26). And Jesus is the opposite of that. The Old Testament preaches an ‘eye for an eye’ (Exodus 21:24), and the New Testament preaches the sentiment of ‘turn the other cheek’ (Matthew 5:39). I was given no real response to my question, just a ‘because’ and the typical, that was ‘old covenant’ (old promise) and the New Testament is the ‘new covenant’ (new promise) …which again, doesn’t really solve this whole ‘all-knowing’ characteristic. Wouldn’t an all-knowing God know that a punitive, damning-todeath-and-hell would never save the children he supposedly cares about?

Wouldn’t he know a constant state of forgiveness and the now highly praised grace is the only way?

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My goal or hope is not to deny or discourage people from faith. There are days when even I can still say ‘thank you’ to the larger entity for allowing certain things to fall into place. Even though I recognise that if they hadn’t worked out, the Christian response would be that God intended it to be that way and there is meaning regardless. (A rather circular argument). Sentiments that don’t necessarily make sense can still give us humans peace, and indeed relief from the fact that there are some things we simply cannot control.

Sometimes bad things just happen and there is no reason. However, what I implore Christians to consider (as I once did with myself, in a reflective, rather dissonant state) is to allow the Bible to be wrong. To allow it to have limitations. To not enforce your source of peace, as a perpetrator of control, harm or judgement onto others. I argue that the overarching message of love and compassion, especially towards those marginalised and disenfranchised by society is at the true core of the faith, and ultimately should take precedence in all that we say and do. ‘And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.’ (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Even if you cannot admit that God can do wrong, I propose that even a message delivered by the Spirit or Son or the booming voice of God, was inscribed by human hands. And we can at least accept that humans are not perfect beings.

the revolutionary mutual aid of the Black Panther Party

(Prints and Photographs Division/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. )

Words by Chanel Trezise

The Black Panther Party, formed in 1966

by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, was a Marxist revolutionary group that, provided, assistance and direct mutual aid to the urban black communities of Oakland. Originally coined the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense, the party strived to raise the political consciousness of poor communities by meeting their needs, informing them of their realities, and subsequently helping them find the keys to their shackles.

Seale and Newton knew that they needed to address the state violence perpetuated on their communities and consequently, they began ‘policing the police’. The Panthers followed police in urban black neighbours around Oakland carrying both arms and the power of the law as they informed citizens of their rights.

However, despite later being coined as terrorists and “...the greatest threat to the internal security of the nation”

by FBI’s Chief Edgar Hoover in 1969, the BPP championed the civil rights movement and provided one of the best examples of direct mutual aid I think the western world has ever seen.

In 1966, 35% of POC families were poor compared to only 15% of white families.

Unsurprisingly, 60% of POC women were also in poverty. When the US government not only failed to provide poor black and white communities basic necessities, jobs and education, they also (and stil do)

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systematically, legislatively oppressed black people.

and

culturally

The BPP provided free services, hope and a way of being that elevated its communities to be rich in a way that the white elite never could; through connected values of collectivism, kindness, and empowerment. The BPP helped and listened to the communities that deserved better than the cycles of poverty entwined in the impossible American dream.

The Panthers understood something very important though; they understood that the US’s capitalist system benefited few and disproportionately harmed black communities.

However, they also knew that this was the intent of the system, to use itself as a perpetrator and a justifier of ingrained racism, poverty and generations of bleeding, starving communities.

As Bobby Seale stated, “Racism and ethnic differences allow the power structure to exploit the masses of workers in this country, because that’s the key by which they maintain their control.

To divide the people and conquer them is the objective of the power structure. It’s the ruling class, the very small minority, the few avaricious, demagogic hogs and rats who control and infest the government.”

In 1969, at the St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in West Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party launched one of its first ‘Survival Programs’

and called it the ‘Free Breakfast for School Children.’

The ‘Free Breakfast for School Children’ program was one of the most successful programs conducted by the BPP, in its peak, it served breakfast to 10,000 children a day. The program incidentally witnessed a rise in academic performance and liveliness within the children of the communities it served. The BPP’s ‘Free Breakfast Program for Children’ brought together communities, businesses, schools and churches to donate, assist, cook, clean, socialise and nourish the health and wellbeing of their children and their neighbour’s children. While serving its community in this way, the party acknowledged the Government’s use of hunger in perpetuating systematic oppression and white privilege, thus, they responded by politicising and feeding the hungry. The free breakfast program was not a standalone social program for the Panthers though, throughout the Party’s chapter, they implemented 36 ‘survival programs.’

In 1968 the Party opened up its first ‘People’s Free Medical Centre’ (PFMC), which provided free healthcare to Black communities who would otherwise face discrimination in mainstream medical practices. In 1970, 10 other centres were opened when PFMC’s were mandated for each chapter of the Party. Further, the BPP introduced medical research facilities for Black communities,

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(Howard L. Bingham, Black Panther Rally #7, DeFremery Park, Oakland)

particularly regarding Sickle Cell Anemia, a condition that disproportionately affects black populations. The BPP also introduced Liberation Schools, one of which, Oakland Community School, expanded its curriculum to inform children not only about math, science and writing but about class disparities and the injustices of the world not traditionally taught in schools. For instance, in some classes children practiced penning by writing letters to prison inmates.

Despite the triumphs and good that the BPP achieved, they were not without controversy. As their popularity and reputation grew, the Panther’s survival and defence falsely became synonymous with terrorism. The Party was more often than not met with police and FBI agents who shot bullets through communities desperate to survive.

For the white public and government, it became so easy to slander the Panthers as violent without considering that their rise did not come out of a vacuum. No, the Panthers and their survival was not out of a vacuum, the Panther’s actions were the just reaction to hundreds of years of slavery, mistreatments, violence and genocide which the Western world’s vicious capitalism used to keep families begging, hungry and bleeding. sources

Hilliard, D 2008, The Black Panther Party service to the people programs, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Seale, B 1970, Seize the time : the story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, Hutchinson, London.

Stein R, Kleinfelder A, Eckler R, Drury R, Taeuber C, 1966 Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports

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Don’t sleep on Gaiman’s most recent adaptation – It’s more indulgent than you think.

Words by Leah Braham It’s no secret that Neil Gaiman is one of the greatest writers to emerge out of the 20th century. Known for his works such as American Gods, Coraline and Good Omens, Gaiman’s most recent adaptation, The Sandman, may just be his finest yet.

Developed for Netflix by Gaiman, David S Goyer, and Allen Heinberg, the first season of The Sandman is made up of ten delicious episodes, each clocking in at just under an hour runtime. The first six episodes follow the titular Sandman, also known as Morpheous (played by Tom Sturridge), as he attempts to restore his realm and power after being imprisoned for one hundred years.

These early episodes introduce a delightful collection of memorable, complex characters, with an extremely talented cast of actors; Charles Dance, David Thewlis, Jenna Coleman, and Gwendoline Christie, just to name a few. The star studded cast truly bring to life characters which Gaiman uses to build an indulgently dark yet beautiful world.

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The second half of the season takes a turn, focusing the narrative on the young Rose Walker, played by Kyo Ra in her debut major role. The change in pace and flavour is sharp, and those who are fans of the original DC comic series will recognise the transition to the second book. Purists might dislike the changes made in adaptation from the source material, however I would argue that the production team have done a great job in turning a comic book into a TV series, which arguably would not have been a viable project fifteen years ago, before streaming services.

The formatting fits perfectly though, adapting a series long considered unfilmable.

While Gaiman’s comics were already leagues ahead of everyone in the 80s for their depictions of race, gender and sexuality, the show takes this to the forefront, with an extremely diverse cast, gender swapped characters, and many LGBTIQ+ characters. Again, source material purists may dislike the changes, but with Gaiman onboard writing and producing the show, it’s difficult to argue that it hurts the plot. If anything, the changes fit the flavour of the world so well that it’s hard to imagine what the story would be like without them.

Thematically, the beautiful interpretations and visual representations of biblical references that Gaiman does so well brings life and depth to the story world. The viewer is treated to haunting cinematography. A personal highlight was from episode four, as the characters walk through the gates of hell, and the entangled and rotting bodies that build the entrance, like tree roots, reach after them, skeletal arms like waves. The beauty of the show comes through in its variety – shifting from period piece to gory horror to high fantasy with ease.

The highlight of the season, and potentially of any television show ever made, is episode five, ‘24/7’. The show flexes its themes and creative muscles with a tightly written and impossibly haunting episode, which takes place entirely inside one diner. Combining dark fantasy with an exploration of the human psyche, this episode slows down the pacing and perfectly captures, on a micro and macro scale, the importance of dreams and humanity. If you aren’t going to watch the whole series, just watch this episode. It’s a masterpiece on its own.

So if you’re enjoying the fantasy genre explosion online, or have loved Gaiman’s other work, or need something new that’ll have your eyes fixed on the screen, watch The Sandman. All ten episodes are available on Netflix for streaming now.

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BOOK REVIEW: THREE THREE WOMEN WOMEN BY

BY LISA LISA TADDEO TADDEO

Words by Ngoc Lan Maggie, Lina, and Sloane all had something in common: A Tran secret. All of them had illicit affairs with men with whom

they were not supposed to be involved, and all of them had to live with the aftermath in secrecy and shame.

Stepping into the lives of these three women, Lisa Taddeo paints a complex picture of taboo and desire, shame and pleasure, secrecy and liberation. The author writes about these women but in fact is commenting on our society’s flare to quickly punish female individuals for liberating and authentically living by their passions and desires without considering the intricacies of their lives.

Even when these intricacies have come to light, we still have a tendency to strongly judge these women and label them as deviants. Reading about Maggie, an underaged high school student having anillicit affair with her teacher, some may immediately think that her relationship was too romanticised. When telling Lina’s story of getting back

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together with an old fling before falling in love too quickly, it was easy to think that she was “asking for it.” Sloane, who developed an appetite in female masochism through her husband, could be read as exploited; if it hadn’t been for her husband, Sloane wouldn’t be into BDSM. Yet, even when readers were complicit with stereotyping Maggie, Lina, and Sloane’s affairs, Taddeo is determined to make absolutely no judgement about them. She deliberately casts aside all social norms and taboos, contending that sex and desire is not necessarily exploitation and suffering.

When it comes to moments that require honesty and vulnerability, sex is all about compassion and liberation.

Taddeo’s legitimisation of sex and women’s desires could be radical, but much is to be questioned on whether it was meaningful.

As the conflict between the women’s sexual desires and social stigmatisation unfolds, the book slowly reveals its biggest challenge: managing the controversy of legitimising sex and desire in a vacuum. If women’s desires were indeed just and true, then why did these women have to be punished for them? Taddeo tries to rectify this dilemma by occasionally touching on the problems of gender inequality and social power, but in the end she does nothing with them; she attributes these social problems neither to the nature nor consequences of these women’s desires. Thus the social backdrop of Three Women becomes pitifully frivolous and reads more like novelisation of real-life accounts. This would confuse readers had they skipped Taddeo’s introduction, where the author claims that the book is a work of non-fiction.

If one takes a leap of faith to cast aside preconceptions and judgements of what a book should be, these blurred lines could be argued as genre-breaking; although it is not clear whether this was Taddeo’s intention or not. But in the slight chance that this was all planned out, the breaking of genres would not be for the purpose of creating anew genre, but rather for social critique.

The fiction and non-fiction duality draws

a perfect parallel to how society images the intimate lives of women. Taddeo lets us have a glimpse of these women’s romantic and sexual lives, granting us an attempt to understand their motivations and actions… but it will always be just that: a glimpse, an attempt; making the best way to capture it in our imagination is to novelise it. This hints at how much of a defect we have as a society, ruled by the patriarchy where there is virtually no room for women to express themselves, and run by capitalism where women are sexualised and turned into commodities for profit gain. It is only in the fictional, the fictional-adjacent, and the virtual “reality”, that our society would allow space where female sensuality is not persecuted as dirty, shameful, and perverse. Otherwise, the punishment of bringing the personal to the public for women is to be labelled as deviants, witches, whores and sluts. Does this mean that our society does not know and will never know what it is like to be women and to love and desire as women?

What is it like to be women and to love and desire as women? Some critics point out that the book also does not do well in answering this pressing question, and it has everything to do with the subjects of the book: Maggie, Lina, and Sloane are attractive white ciswomen; Taddeo has admitted in the epilogue that their stories are not representative. But to me, this is not good enough. Haven’t we gone passed the point of merely acknowledging the heterowhiteness elephant in the room and instead taking tangible effort to be inclusive and truly representative? Taddeo has full right to write about Maggie, Lina, and Sloane, but as long as society still holds the tendency to normalise hetero-whiteness as the default representive for all people including queer women and women of color, the author should not have waited until the epilogue to make this disclaimer.

Three Women is a careful study of the sex and love lives of women, but unfortunately that is its only redeeming grace. Only time can tell whether Taddeo has penned a revolutionary account of women’s sexual liberation, or just a raw conformist take on carnal pleasure for the sake of it. Until then, it will be endlessly controversial.

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UK TORY LEADER -SHIP Words by Seb Andrew

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After months of calls from the public, the press, and even members of his own party, Boris Johnson resigned. Well, sorta.

Despite stepping down as Conservative Party leader, Boris remains as caretaker Prime Minister until his successor is chosen. This move has faced criticism, both from those who feel unease at the ability for a caretaker leader to implement policy changes, and those from his party who’d rather cut him loose and move on.

The resignation came after two days where cabinet ministers, some high-profile, resigned like rats leaping from a sinking ship. Despite successes in achieving a Brexit withdrawal and an enviable vaccine rollout, Johnson’s three-year premiership will be remembered as one wrapped up in the stench of incompetence and scandal.

From a COVID strategy that was too rushed and stringent, to a plethora of scandals including undisclosed loans, breach of lockdown restrictions by staffers, and promotion of a MP embroiled in sexual misconduct allegations.

The latter was ultimately the knife in Johnson’s premiership that triggered the mass resignations, but by this point it was already very near death.

It was ‘Partygate’ – the gathering of Conservative Party members and staffers while restrictions on gathering were in effect – that left him so vulnerable.

Following reports in late 2021, the number of Conservative MPs calling for his resignation rose. The party experienced a drop in the polls from which it has still not recovered, and was thrashed in a series of local and by-elections. As he usually does when caught in a scandal or controversy, Boris offered a non-apology and believed he could charge through it like it was a rugby-playing ten-yearold. But Partygate would not let up and the damage caused left Boris ripe to be dumped. Were it not for the prolonged public anger and pressure to resign, he very well could have had his troops rally

around him through the Chris Pincher controversy. For many who had wanted his exit, this was the step too far that finally allowed them to remove him.

Within days of Boris’s resignation, many of the rats having jumped the stinking sinking ship of the Conservative Party, saw the state it was in, and still decided to scurry back on and fight to take the helm. A field of eight candidates quickly narrowed down to two – former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Party leadership contests in the UK work a bit differently compared to Australia. Candidates who achieve 30 votes from their colleagues in the first round then enter a series of runoffs, in which the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. This continues until there are two candidates – in this case, Sunak and Truss. What follows is a nationwide campaign with debates (akin to a United States presidential primary) and a vote amongst Conservative Party members.

About 0.3% of the British population, and a 0.3% who skew overwhelmingly white, male, upper-class and Brexit supporters, are about to pick the next prime minister.

To be blunt, Liz Truss will be the next Prime Minister. So far, Sunak is receiving lukewarm support from an electorate that blames him for bringing down Boris’ premiership (as Sunak’s resignation triggered the mass fleeing of ministers) and his refusal to cut personal or corporate taxes until inflation has been handled, which is estimated to be late 2023/early 2024. Fair enough – experts argue that corporate tax cuts don’t necessarily increase investment (someday, all that wealth will come trickling down… someday…) and personal tax cuts are a band-aid solution, but not very effective when, while yes some of the crunch is coming from wage stagnation, but a lot of the trouble is coming from supply issues.

However, the Tory base doesn’t want logic and sensible economic management. They 43

want tax cuts, and Truss is more than happy to provide, pledging to scrap proposed corporate tax rises and tax revenue that funds ‘green projects’. Truss remains steadfastly committed to softening the crunch of inflationary pressures on household spending and fuel in the most complicated way possible, rather than, you know, GIVING people money to spend. ‘Tax cuts not handouts’ Truss insists. Experts project that Truss’s tax proposals could cost upwards of £30bn, so naturally the knife will be taken to the public sector. Truss has already promised to slash civil servants jobs and the amount of days they can take off – she did have to abandon a poorly received policy to slash pay for public sector workers in the north.

This policy faced strong repudiation from northern Conservatives, and could have been Sunak’s big break, but opinion polls indicate little to no shift in his favour.

What about students? Sunak has vowed to cut university degrees that don’t boost a student’s ‘earning potential’ or lack a ‘social value’ – by now we should know this means…

Arts and Humanities are getting the axe. Someone tell Sunak this isn’t the way to funnel students into desperately needed nursing jobs, or other essential work – it just hinders or deprives students of the freedom to explore their interests in an academic setting. Truss, meanwhile, has positioned herself as the ‘education prime minister’ and promised a radical shakeup of how university acceptance works – promising interviews with top universities for students who receive A*s (the British equivalent of an A+ grade). Currently, universities make offers based on predicted grades.

Using actual, rather than predicted grades, would require an adjustment of the academic 44

calendar, as universities would have to wait longer to make offers. This would mean either moving A- levels (British final exams) or the start of the university year.

While Sunak has at least attempted to moderate on tax and spending (by moderate, I mean resist the Tory urge to pile on corporate tax cuts like extra chips at a buffet) it’s been a race to the Right on issues of sexuality and gender. Truss’s record as Minister for Women and Equalities is appalling.

She caved to TERF demand and refused to amend legislation to allow trans people to legally change their gender without a dysphoria diagnosis, oversaw an implementation of a half-assed conversion therapy ban that allowed conversion to continue on ‘consenting adults’ under the rationale of ‘freedom of speech’ and failed to protect trans people. Truss has throughout the campaign made remarks targeting the transgender community (particularly the Conservative bogeyman of genderaffirming surgery on minors, which is not practiced). With a resume far less ‘impressive’ than Truss, Sunak has been quick to flex his reactionary credentials. While promising to make Britain ‘the kindest, safest and most vibrant place in the world to be LGBT+’ he’s also promised war on ‘woke nonsense’, and like Truss has targeted Britain’s transgender community, taking stances against transgender women in women’s sport and bathroom use, and promising sexual education reform which some fear could see teaching of LGBTQ+ issues restricted. Such rhetoric is abhorrent, and from Sunak, pathetic, given it’s so obviously a desperate pivot to the right, but it’s comprehendable, given a majority of Conservative party members still oppose SAME-SEX MARRIAGE. By the time you’re reading this, the

next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been decided, by a homophobic, wealthy .3% of the population, and it seems all but guaranteed that it will be Truss. A woman so rabidly devoted to tax cuts that fly in the face of conventional economic wisdom, and the third female Prime Minister with an appalling record on targeting, and failing to protect women (because trans women are women!). Sunak, meanwhile, is a tale of tragedy, falling from high popularity, to disdain amongst the Tory base – blamed for his role in Boris’s downfall, and hated for putting what’s best for the country over what’s best for the base, throwing around reactionary buzzwords and targeting vulnerable Britons in a pathetic attempt to get support from his party’s homophobic members.

A sleazy, unpopular prime minister will be gone but the Conservatives’ problems will not end with the ascension of Truss. Commodity and fuel prices are expected to climb, and experts warn the British economy is racing towards recession.

People feeling the crunch of recent inflationary pressures, and who have endured cuts to social benefits, health services, public sector pay, among others, are unlikely to warm up to the Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss government that’s been running the country since 2010 just because it has a new face. Replacing the leader might give the party a temporary honeymoon bump, but the public won’t be fooled into forgetting its legacy of brutal austerity and unseemly behaviour.

SOURCES https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2015/oct/15/boris-johnsonknocks-over-10-year-old-boy-duringrugby-game-in-japan https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukpolitics-62138041.amp https://www.ft.com/content/4d9ed0eafd2c-4f84-a187-2dacabbd3943 https://thetab.com/uk/2022/08/08/ liz-truss-could-move-the-start-of-theuniversity-year-to-january-conservativeparty-leadership-contest-266827 https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/01/10/ liz-truss-prime-minister-lgbt/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/07/29/ liz-truss-trans-tory-hustings/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/07/22/ liz-truss-rishi-sunak-lgbtq-rights-toryleadership-candidates/

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