Acknowledgement of Country The SRC and Education Action Group recognise that the University of Sydney occupies and operates on Aboriginal land that was never ceded. It is surrounded by the significant area of Redfern, which has birthed the Aboriginal Legal and Medical Services, and served as the home of the Aboriginal land rights movement of the 1970s. We pay our respects to the Elders past and present of the Country that we live and organise on. We acknowledge that the University of Sydney exists as an elitist, ‘sandstone’ education institution on stolen Gadigal land. The University was built using sandstone stolen from Gomorrigal and Wangal land, the timber of ancient cedar forests on Bundjalung land, and marble from the land of the Gundungarra people. As an example of this persisting colonial legacy, the University is home to the Wentworth Building, the university literary Wentworth Medal prize, and a statue dedicated to William Charles Wentworth, a key coloniser of the area who paved the way for frontier violence against First Nations people. Throughout his life and particularly as an elected representative to the Legislative Council of New South Wales, Wentworth was a firmly powerful and racist figure who defended the punitive murders of Aboriginal people, whom he regularly named as a “savage race” with the “chatterings of the ourang-outang” that wanted to “wreak their revenge on the unfortunate white man.”
While some may choose to remember him as a proponent of universal and secular education that helped build the University, he is a shameful figure in the University’s dark cloud of colonial structures that carries on today, for his idea of ‘universal’ was steadfastly limited to that of white, ‘civilised’ people. USyd’s institutional racism and discrimination persist today, as evidenced by the University’s recent attempts to change its entry requirements for First Nations applicants. We are striving towards allyship, which means to be amplifying First Nations voices, prioritising sovereignty, and centring their demands in our activism. In the colony of so-called Australia, the rates of imprisonment, deaths in custody, homelessness, life expectancy and health for First Nations peoples are utterly shameful. Racism and inequality are baked into the system of Australian governance and society. In an Education Action Group context, this looks like making the critical links between the University of Sydney's corporate partnerships and militarism, which is used to further solidify the supremacy of colonial institutions and to marginalise BIPOC people. The militaryindustrial complex has been used to control and harm First Nations peoples both in so-called Australia and abroad. This is upheld by USyd’s partnerships with companies like Thales, the French weapons manufacturer, and its US Studies Centre run by a former US Republican-bureaucrat, Michael Green, who sat in the Bush administration’s National Security Council during the early years of the Iraq War.
We join in solidarity to call for liberation, justice, sovereignty, and land back for occupied and colonised peoples all ii
over the world. Always was, always will be.
Contents & Contributors p. 2–3
Editorial from your Education Officers
Grace Street & Shovan Bhattarai p. 4–5
Student Movements Across the Globe Grace Street
p. 6–7
Thales off our Campus. Jordan Anderson
p. 8–9
The Art of Activism: A Historical Portrait of USYD's Tin Sheds Grace Mitchell
p. 10–11
Students Against Placement Poverty
p. 12–13
Anti-protest law: Defending the right to protest Ishbel Dunsmore
p. 14–15
Trade Unionism and Student Unionism: An Unholy Alliance Gerard Buttigieg
p. 16–17
Stuck in a Vice: The collapsing funding for Australian academic research Angus McGregor
p. 18–19
Bringing New Meaning to Participation Angela Wong
p. 20–21
The Housing Australia Future Fund Harrison Brennan
p. 22–23
From the river to the sea, always was always will be:
on First Nations Palestinian solidarity
Ethan Floyd
Doodles by Grace Street and many cartoons and photos from the Honi Soit and USyd archives. Many thanks to Ishbel Dunsmore, Ethan Floyd, and the Publications Managers for your extra help editing, laying up, designing, trouble-shooting, and printing.
Editorial: A note from your Education Officers Welcome to Counter Course 2024! This section of your Welcome Handbook is filled with articles written by members of the Education Action Group (EAG), an on-campus SRC activist collective. We have weekly meetings and frequent rallies with some banner painting, stunts, and educational sessions in between. In recent years we've fought the introduction of the Job Ready Graduates Package, defeated anti-protest laws in NSW, protested continuous course cuts, mobilised around other various social justice issues. Last year, we protested the Times Higher Education World Courtesy Honi Soit Issue 02, 1981 Academic Summit held at the University in August, letting delegates know our demands for free education, no cuts to FASS and music courses, weapons and fossil fuels off campus, stopping the silence against sexual violence, and access to paid placements. More recently, our attention has turned to protesting the genocide and war crimes being committed against Palestinians by Israel and its allies, which include Australia and the University of Sydney. Books, not bombs. Welfare, not warfare. In 2023, the EAG’s ‘Thales Off Campus’ campaign took off in response to the University extending their insidious deal with the weapons manufacturer Thales. The new agreement extends a pre-existing one from 2017, and will see Thales further integrated into research and education at the University. They already fund PhD research, but the University and Thales want to embed their staff in each other's research teams and expand into faculties other than engineering. Solidifying ties with the company that supplies numerous weapons to the Australian Defence Force, the chair of the Thales board, Belinda Hutchinson, is the University’s Chancellor. Every refugee attempting to reach the EU, vast numbers of whom are denied safety after fleeing war or climate-change induced natural disasters, has their details recorded in a biometric system maintained by Thales. Their work can be found in every branch of the military, from ship maintenance to electronics, and they want to use the university's research capabilities to further their project. At the end of 2023, these links between our University, militarism and imperialism were laid bare as Israel began its war on Gaza. Given USyd’s ties to Thales, our university is implicitly linked to Thales’ partnership with Israeli company Elbit Systems to produce killer surveillance drones used on the Palestinian people. More explicitly, the University has a partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem situated in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Along with campus groups like Students for Palestine and Students against War, the EAG has been protesting the Gaza genocide and demanding that the University to cut ties with Israel and allow discussion of Palestinian resistance on campus. Turn to page 7 to read more about Thales.
Get involved with us! To get involved or keep in touch you can find us on Facebook as Sydney University Education Action Group, or on Instagram @usyd.education.action 2
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Shovan Bhattarai & Grace Street Staff strikes and course cuts We have fought and will continue to fight the corporate model of the university that threatens the quality of our education, access to higher education, and the livelihoods of our staff and teachers. 2022 and 2023 were big years for the EAG supporting and building the militant strikes and pickets held by the NTEU and USyd Casuals Network. Students stood in solidarity with staff with the goal of securing important demands for USyd staff including an end to casualisation, a real pay rise above inflation, First Nations employment targets, paid transition leave and the protection of the 40-40-20 workload model. Staff have also supported our fight against waves of course cuts that now seem to ambush us multiple times a year. In 2023 alone, we saw the decision to cut discipline-specific Honours seminar units for students studying Ancient Greek, Ancient History, Anthropology, Art History, Latin, Linguistics, Political Economy, and Visual Arts, as well as an announcement of large-scale cuts to Philosophy. So far in 2024, we have ` already been told of plans to cut the majors of Writing Studies and Studies in Religion, so the fight continues!
STUDIES OF
lo phi soph
se co urnd a cuts e cuts wag ere! h
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National policy and international students At a national level, we recognise that the ALP government's proposal to fund 20,000 new university places over 2022 and 2023 has done nothing to solve the problems of students facing exponential fee hikes, a cost of living crisis and worsening quality of education. More recently, we condemn Labor’s announced crackdown on student and unskilled visas that includes a targeted increase of minimum English-language requirements that encourages xenophobia and vilifies non-Western people for wanting to start a life in Australia. This scheme will not stop students, particularly those from overseas, from being forced into extortionate housing that the university has privatised, and in expensive courses within an increasingly corporatised universities.
Scan the QR code on the right to be directed to our page!
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Student Movements Across the Globe
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA February: Students supported the Housekeeper’s rally for increased wages. They also sat outside of the South Building for 32 hours, protesting inaccessibility for disabled students in student accommodation. April: UNC Young Democrats organised a cross-campus and community rally against Mike Pence’s visit to UNC for the “Saving America from the Woke Left” event.
France Students joined protests and strikes against the reforme des retraites, the government’s plan to raise the retirement age, both in the streets and in blockading and occupying their universities.
August: Various student groups and local organisations held a protest calling for gun control following a campus shooting October, November: Students for Justice in Palestine rallies and Shut It Down for Palestine demonstration.
Lima, Peru A raid of San Marcos University in Lima, the oldest university in the Americas, in January 2023 saw students and guests violently moved around by police in the middle of the night. Police were seeking and arrested more than 200 people staying in the university who had come to Peru to take part in ongoing anti-government protests against the new president, Boluarte, in the “takeover of Lima”. Students have since protested against this anti-democratic and violent raid reminscient of the frequent ones of the 1980s, and are now turning their gaze towards deeper education reforms.
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South Africa The #FeesMustFall movement continued to call for free education in response to rising tuition fees despite persistent shrinking public budgets, mass unemployment and poverty. The campaign has been running since 2015 with mass lock-ins, drawing inspiration from the anticolonial student movement ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ at the University of Cape Town.
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GRACE StREEt puts (a handful of) local and national student movements on the map Poland, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Czech Republic, United Kingdom 22 schools and universities were shut down as part of a proposed month-long campaign of youth activists against inaction on climate change. Students engaged in occupying their universities, organising teach-outs, and even camping outside the ministry of trade and industry in the Czech Republic.
Iran Protests largely consisting of Iran’s youth have persisted but are reported to face a loss of momentum due to a crackdown on protestors and internet access in 2022 and early 2023. Thousands of demonstrators facing violence and legal repercussions, including death, has led to more discreet, quiet defiance including women not covering their hair in public, and night protests with anti-regime music, posters and graffiti. The United Youth of Iran’s network previously reached across all 35 cities of Iran.
India Students have mobilised against harsh penalties enforced at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. With a reputation for its strong student movements, the JNU administration announced in November that students may be fined up to Rs 20,000 or evicted from the university’s hostels and premises for up to two semesters for acts of protest. This follows ongoing protests of PhD scholars for increased stipends.
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Papua New Guinea In May, students protested a bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreement between PNG and the US directed against China. Contingents from multiple universities demanded more details on the pact which will allow US forces unrestricted access to PNG’s land, waters and airspace. They opposed the anti-democratic signing of a pact allowing the country to be militarised and for its sovereignty to be compromised
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THALES OFF OUR CAMPUS. Jordan Anderson unpacks USyd's normalisation of its ties to weapons. Some say that their high school impression of Universities is that they are these bustling, intellectual hubs, led foremost by the pursuit of knowledge. A couple of weeks at University of Sydney and you will begin to understand the reality of it being a corporate university that viciously underpays its staff and cuts courses. At the forefront of USyd’s outrageous profiteering: their investment in Thales, a weapons manufacturing company that is complicit in war crimes in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq. For context, in 2022, USyd and Thales extended their 2017 Memorandum of Understanding, ostensibly seeking to enhance ‘big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence’. Their partnership goes even further back with Belinda Hutchinson, USyd’s Chancellor, being appointed as the Chairperson of Thales Australia’s board in 2015. Their partnership represents attempts to not only normalise the arms industry, but also depict the industry as being some sort of social good that deserves investment, which is particularly pertinent in the age of Albanese’s AUKUS deal and the thousands of university places created to bring about AUKUS. Now more than ever, with Israel carrying out a genocide in Palestine, we should be able to appreciate the human and environmental devastation that the arms industry has, and reject the ties between our education and this devastation. On this point, Thales and Elbit, an Israeli weapons company, collaborated to create the Watchkeeper drone project, which has been used as a means to surveil the English channel for refugees.Not only is this heinous in itself, but by Thales openly collaborating with an arms company that uses its technology to surveil Gaza and thus promote Palestinian oppression, Thales is very much complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
projects, including AUKUS. This is especially important when we have seen student-led campaigns force the University’s hand, prompting them to cut ties with military companies. For example, at RMIT in Melbourne, students, Palestine activists and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Australia led a year-long campaign, eventually picketing RMIT and marching on their campus, late last year. Consequently, RMIT announced, in a public statement, that they had officially ended ties with Elbit, marking yet another triumph of Palestine and student activists. The result demonstrates that universities should not be able to covertly partner with weapon manufacturers, without scrutiny from students and staff.
Our education - which management purports to be a social good - should not be corporatised, nor should it be a platform for those complicit in Palestinian genocide, to normalise themselves. Thus, not only should we be outraged at Thales still being on our campus, but we should be continuing to demand that Thales (and indeed, all weapons manufacturers and military projects) should never be able to step foot on our campus, especially in the age of AUKUS and Israel carrying out a genocide in Palestine.
The partnership between USyd and Thales has not gone unnoticed nor unscrutinised, with the USyd SRC Education Action Group spearheading a campaign to demand that USyd immediately sever all ties with Thales, to sack Belinda Hutchinson, and to redirect funding away from all military 6
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The Art of Activism: A Historical Portrait of USYD's Tin Sheds If you have ever taken a moment to admire the many posters positioned along Eastern Avenue, it is clear that activism and visual arts – whether that be Canva flyers, calico banners, or hand-painted placards – are inseparable. Art is foundational to activism and has remained so for centuries; art helps us to transport our messages of change across time and space, remaining a powerful medium that can catalyse individuals to transform their worldview. Without art, there is no activism – at least as we know it, with its flair of bright colours and eye-catching visuals. Art has remained a vital medium used by activists within Sydney University for decades. Across our university’s radical history of protest movements, students and staff have employed visual arts to pow-
Jane Foss Russell building now stands. Although hard to imagine today, the Tin Sheds stood as a collection of literal sheds along City Road until their demolition in the early 2000s. From their initial formation, the Tin Sheds were designed to operate as an independent art space for students, academics, activists, political collectives, and established artists.
As noted in a 1979 edition of the student newspaper, Honi Soit, the Tin Sheds were “dictated by the demands of the people using the facility… NOT set up to fulfil the aims of bureaucrats, planners and so on.”
Photo courtesy University of Sydney Archives, 1019/2
erfully capture their messages and increase the traction and awareness of their political movements. One such place that has been at the epicentre of arts-based activism is the university’s Tin Sheds. Established on campus as an autonomous art space in 1969, the Tin Sheds have played an instrumental role in providing an on-campus space to collaborate, exhibit, and politically organise.
The history of the Tin Sheds reminds us of the importance of the arts to activism, and can inspire us in shaping how we conduct our modern-day activism. The brainchild of a group of artists and activists living and working around Sydney University, the Tin Sheds were originally established near where the
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In their staunch independence from university “bureaucrats and planners”, the Tin Sheds mirrored the broader political movements that were erupting around the time of their establishment. Characterised by long hair, liberty print, and floral flares, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a momentous eruption of social movements in the West that united around generating widespread social change. Previously unmatched in their global scale and mass membership, the Leftist Movements of the “Hippie Era” – most notably movements such as the Aboriginal Land Rights movement, the Moratorium on the Vietnam War, the Women’s Liberation movement, and the Gay Liberation movement – strived to generate change for marginalised groups and give voice back to “the people.” Collective action and political organising were central to these movements. So was art.
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GRACE MItCHELL paints a picture of the radical history of the Tin Sheds Indeed, the Tin Sheds played their role in these 1970s political movements by housing several poster collectives. A popular form of political activism during this decade, poster collectives used visual art to generate awareness of key social issues. Poster collectives were usually formed by groups of artists-turned-activists, using their artistic abilities to spread activist messages across different members of a political organisation and broader members of society. Some poster collectives that operated from the Tin Sheds during this radical era include the Tin Sheds Art Collective, the Lucifoil Poster Collective and the EarthWorks Poster Collective. The latter collective operated out of the Tin Sheds from 1972 to 1980, using the art space to create screenprinted posters to campaign around social issues including Aboriginal Land Rights and Women’s Liberation. Many of the collective’s vibrant and eyecatching posters can be found in archives from Sydney University, the State Library of NSW, and even the National Gallery of Australia.
The Tin Sheds proved to be a popular and successful independent art space for Sydney University students and staff alike for the remainder of this radical period, eventually incorporated into the School of Architecture, Design and Planning in 1989. Yet, despite this incorporation into “bureaucratic” institution that is Sydney University, the Tin Sheds have made their mark on our campus; the present-day Tin Sheds Gallery – defined on the gallery’s website as a “contemporary exhibition space located within the school [of Architecture, Design and Planning]” – continues to provide a space for Sydney University students to showcase their art while granting the broader public exposure to discussions and debates surrounding the power of visual arts in the present.
While the original corrugated iron aesthetic of the Tin Sheds has been lost to the Jane Foss Russell building’s post-modern glass edifice, the history of the Tin Sheds reminds us art plays a vital role in generating social change; the very art of activism is how we convey the message and what legacy this message leaves.
Photo courtesy University of Sydney Archives, 718_13
The Tin Sheds Gallery will remain open on campus in 2024.
Photo courtesy University of Sydney Archives, 772_16_2
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S TUDEN T S AG A I N S T The Australian Association of Social Workers’ (AASW) Code of Ethics states that social workers should maintain “acceptable working conditions” (7.2.6) and that professional relationships between social workers and students on placement should be “constructive and non-exploitative” (9.1.5). Despite these standards, the AASW requires that all social work students in Australia complete 1000 hours of unpaid work, often alongside study and regular employment. Beyond social work - education, nursing, and engineering students are also required to complete upwards of 500 hours of unpaid, thankless work. These are just a few of their stories, which the EAG is grateful to have had shared with us.
Daisy Twayana Charles Darwin University, Master of Social Work
From my two placement experiences, I initially was burnt-out and mentally drained while completing my first 500 hours of unpaid placement. I was working part time and doing my placement part-time (25-35 hours). I wanted to be able to pay my rent and general expenses so I kept working while completing my placement. The after-effects of it left me depressed and burnt-out for many weeks (up to 2 months) until I got busy after I started my next semester. I just compressed the mental burn-out within me. I didn't even have the time to go out with my friend for dinner and I was unable to afford even a day to rest my mind and body. I had to pay hefty fees ($16000) every semester even when I was doing just placement. In my second placement, I started to experience financial burden. I borrowed money to pay my fees as I could not save enough while on placement. By the end of my degree, I was $25000 in debt and had no money left in my bank account. Despite now having completed my degree, I still cannot live with ease because I have to pay my debt. I was behind on rent while doing my second placement, and could not cover it until I found another job. I was unable to work during my second placement as I was still burnt-out and exhausted. I knew it would financially put me behind but I had to make the hard choice of either looking after my mental health or making money and making my condition worse.
Isaac Wattenberg, UNSW, Social Work Students Against Placement Poverty spokesperson
My rent was recently raised by $160 a fortnight. This has put me in rent insecurity, financial distress and sitting well below the poverty line for my placement. This has forced me to rely on my partner’s disability pension, as well as my own youth allowance payments. Doing my placement with Unions NSW, they tried to pay me, but I could not accept the money. If I did, it would be an employment contract, not a vocational placement, and the hours would not go towards my accreditation.
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Callum Ward MQU, Master of Teaching
When I started my placement, I was looking forward to an opportunity to grow my teaching practice. Instead, throughout my placement, I found that I was often choosing between eating, or getting there - which involved travelling across Sydney. I lost sleep on placement from the stress and whilst I learnt a lot very quickly, it did feel like I was being heaped on with everything that other teachers, including my supervisor, didn’t want to do. I do love teaching and I definitely want to be a teacher but my placement experiences have been characterised by skipping meals, losing sleep and increased stress all while the time and effort I put in went uncompensated.
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PL ACEMEN T P O V ERT Y Universities Australia Graduation Rate Statistics 2005
Universities Australia Graduation Rate Statistics 2021
Design by Sam Wallman (Students Against Placement Poverty)
If you are a student undergoing placement or in a degree requiring placement, get involved with Students Against Placement Poverty! We are advocating for the fair and just remuneration of placement students. Time and time again, praise is given to the workers in these fields, claiming that they are essential, hard-working, and selfless members of society. This praise is often delivered simultaneously with remarks about long hours, high rates of burnout, and low wages. We believe the cultural standard which preaches that human service workers have willingly opted for unacceptable pay and conditions out of their generosity and commitment to their field begins with unpaid placements. Therefore, we aim not only to achieve equitable and fair outcomes for any individual attempting to enter these fields through tertiary education, but also to shift the culture of exploitation which is all too common in the human service sector towards one which fairly remunerates its workers. COUNTER COURSE
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Anti-protest law: Defending the right to protest Nearly two years ago, the Coalition government successfully passed what has subsequently been called an anti-protest bill. Under this ‘Roads and Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill (2022)’, new offences were created for “behaviour that causes damage or disruption to major roads or major facilities.” This bill was passed with support from the now governing Australian Labor Party after minimal amendments, showing that despite what the ALP may claim, they will not hesitate to pass anti-labour, anti-strike laws.
This bill was created and passed largely in response to a popular influx of direct action protests led by groups like Blockade Australia. Case in point is the March 25th, 2022 climate blockade at Port Botany, which saw activists like Maxim O’Donnell Curmi jailed for scaling a crane to block the loading of a ship such that it disrupted one part of a global supply chain.
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What few people perhaps realised was that this bill also represented an ideological crackdown on the right to dissent, as both the Coalition and the successive Labor government became (and are becoming) increasingly wary of the threat that such protests and actions pose to a) the uninterrupted functioning of global capitalism, and b) their own power as “leaders” of the so-called “ free world”. So, what did the bill actually say? The bill introduced a $22,000 fine or a maximum prison sentence of two years, or both, for disruption of a facility or road. Under the amended Roads Act, this describes a person who “enters, remains on, climbs, jumps from or otherwise trespasses on a major road” if the conduct “causes damage to the road, or seriously disrupts or obstructs vehicles or pedestrians attempting to use the road.” Under the amended Crimes Act the same disruption of “major facilities” will apply. When we talk about strike and protest action there are various forms that it can take but almost all are prosecutable under these amendments. Picket lines or static rallies may fall under “trespasses or blocks part of a major facility.” Occupations are similarly judged. Protests and rallies fall under “obstructs vehicles attempting to use a road.” For the average person, this may not seem like an infringement on their everyday lives and movements. But it is disastrous for our right to protest and strike, and damaging to an already dwindling culture of protest, industrial action, and solidarity. What happened this past November is a consequence of these laws. Amidst the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, around 400 supporters of a Free Palestine, children and the elderly included, blockaded Port Botany harbour to heed a call for a global boycott of the Israeli shipping line Zim. Zim is responsible for transporting arms and other munitions to Israel, evidenced by COUNTER COURSE
ISHBEL DUNSMORE interrogates Australia's crackdown on the right to protest Zim CEO Eli Glickman stating online last October that "...the company's ships will be directed, as a first priority, to transfer cargo from anywhere in the world to Israel according to the requirements and needs of the Ministry of Defence and the government of Israel." NSW Police kettled, brutalised and intimidated peaceful protestors, ultimately arresting 23 protestors, at least seven of which were smacked with charges relating to disruption of a major facility.
Under s214A of the Crimes Act, protestors were hit with the full force of these anti-protest laws, all for the crime of attempting to hold up just one element of the Zioni s t entity responsible for over 24,000 Palest inian murders and counting. While parts of these anti-protest laws were struck down this past December on grounds that they were ‘constitutionally invalid’, there still remains a raft of laws that prohibit the serious disruption or obstruction of people trying to use any part of a major facility, or which otherwise leads it to close completely. Strikes and protests are central to how we collectively make change beyond parliamentary channels. What remains of this bill and pre-existing anti-strike and anti-protest laws attempt to seriously inhibit our right to fight for a better world. These laws mean that pro-Palestine activists, school strikers, Indigenous anti-colonial organisers, and virtually anyone willing to dissent and question the status quo may no longer legally be able to take action - as is the case with the Zim blockade - and if so, may only do as much with prior approval by the state, along a state-sanctioned route, at an agreed upon time, for an agreed upon length of time. It means that unions and workers everywhere may be severely limited in their abil-
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ity to fight back, else risk crippling fines and jail time.
But before you, dear reader, lose all hope, the key player here is legality. What is legal or lawful is not always what is right. So while the future of these laws remains unclear, there is one thing that is certain: that if we are to advance an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist programme, if we are to advance the fight f o r a better world, then we mustn’t let these laws stop us.
That such laws illegalise what should be an inalienable right to dissent is evidence that we are doing something of impact, something that concretely challenges the current state of affairs locally, nationally and internationally, from Gadigal to Gaza and beyond.
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Trade Unionism and Student Unionism: An Un The question of student unionism and its relationship to the broader labour movement is a controversial one to say the least. Many in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) (both left and right) seem to look down upon student unionists as either careerists or hacks, from one point of view, or idealistic, activist nutjobs from the other. On the other hand, many notable figures in the ALP indeed owe their rise in both the labour movement and Party to their humble origins in the student union movement – indeed, Tanya Plibersek, Rose Jackson, Richard Marles and the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese himself, all in some form or another participated in student politics (Jackson being President of the USyd SRC itself in 2005). In the broader labour movement, one will find countless examples of prominent student unionists and activists who found the trade union movement a natural home after completing their degrees, with some even becoming union secretaries. Of course, all these individuals continue to find themselves natural enemies to the student activists who were less than lenient to the ALP or what is ignorantly termed, ‘trade union bureaucracy.’ Yet despite its controversial and polarising reputation in the broader labour movement, student unionists have consistently shown themselves to be in solidarity with the key aims and aspirations of the trade union movement – that is, the consistent and uncompromising struggle for the rights of workers, of labour and of opposition to capital. Both trade and student unionism have played a vital role in shaking the status quo of our oppressive structures.
While trade unionism owes its power to the collective strength of workers taking action and coming together for their rights, conditions and dignity, student unionism similarly owes its strength to the impassioned, collective struggle that radical student activists have historically taken to demand a more just and fairer society. 14
Each highlight exactly what it means to be a Union: solidarity. Fluency in the language of protest has been a prevalent feature of both the student and trade union movements and indeed one of the strongest elements of their organic relationship. The Vietnam War protests could not be stronger evidence for this. While the anti-war movement for Vietnam did not start with the student union movement (at least in Australia), it soon joined a rising tide of anti-war activism which was ignited by concerned mothers, Communist Party activists and, crucially, trade unionists. By the mid to late 1960s, activism opposing Australia’s enthusiastic support of America’s war against Vietnamese liberation and direct involvement began to appear – the same time Prime Minister Harold Holt declared Australia was “all the way with LBJ!”. The grassroots activism that started to form was mainly composed of baby boomers, who at the time were mostly students under the age of 20 and made up a remarkable 40% of the population. University students more broadly were strongly opposed to the war and this contributed to a growing militant left who were organising moratoriums, teach-ins, sit-ins and other actions across the country. Trade unions, in particular those more militant, were also involved in the anti-war movement from the start. The ANZUS treaty signed by Australia, New Zealand and the US in 1951 essentially symbolised Australia’s complete political, economic and military support for the US’ plan in Vietnam and it did indeed initially enjoy significant support from the broader Australian public as well as the corporate media. The only notable opposition to this geopolitical trajectory was the militant trade unions, and through them, the Labor Party which at the time was more or less led by the Left. By the time of the moratorium protests, which were then the largest and most significant protests Australia had ever seen, the anti-war movement in Australia which had been built, organised and supported by the student and trade union movements had grown to see 200,000 people protest across the country, with 70,000 march in Melbourne alone alongside Shadow Minister for Trade and Industry, and leader COUNTER COURSE
nholy Alliance
GERARD BUTTIGIEG speaks to worker-student solidarity
of Labor’s left faction, Jim Cairns. It is not just in Vietnam where the joint interests and inadvertent collaboration between trade and student unionists has seen the ebb and flow of social movements swell and grow, but in the marriage equality campaign of 2017, the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign (protests against John Howard’s anti-union reforms in the mid to late 2000s), May Day protests and more. In 2013, under the ultra-conservative government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his neoliberal Treasurer Joe Hockey which proposed severe cuts to tertiary education, student activists and associations collaborated with staff unions (i.e., the National Tertiary Education Union) to protest the reforms – a successful campaign coordinated by the National Union of Students saw thousands march and demand better conditions for both students and staff. Student unionists, furthermore, continue to show solidarity with staff whenever the NTEU takes strike action, for example in 2022 when staff at USyd took their most prolonged campaign of industrial action in a long time. Student unionists from USyd SRC continued to stand amongst staff on picket lines and blocked scabbing staff and students from entering the University and breaking the picket which would undermine the strike. It should then come as no surprise that it was a significant policy aim and direction of conservative governments in Australia, in particular that of John Howard, to weaken and attack both the trade union and student union movements. Howard’s administration oversaw numerous attacks on both the student and trade union movements, with reforms such as Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) or WorkChoices both significantly impacting membership of both and weakening the rights, conditions and power of organised labour and student activism. The natural relationship between student and trade unionism must then not be overlooked, frowned upon or belittled – for indeed without it, one could not imagine how greatly the rights and conditions of students and the working class would suffer in this country.
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Stuck in a Vice: The collapsing funding for Australian academic research funds the plurality of research, universities in Australia account for 36% of all research and development (R&D). With less funding, the National Competitive Grants system can only afford to partially fund projects, compared to the United Kingdom where a similar agency fully funds competitive grants.
Courtesy Honi Soit Issue 11 1985
On paper, the Australian research sector looks strong. While only making up 0.3% of the population, Australia is the origin of more than 4% of the world’s scientific research. Under the surface, however, the sector is under increasing pressure with an unstable and shrinking funding model causing a decline in Higher Degree Research (HDR) enrolments, and research positions, and increasing competition for grants that no longer cover the full costs of projects. A strong research sector is the bedrock of good teaching at university, and students need to better grasp the link between strong research funding and their education. The recent Australian University Accord Interim Report identified challenges in the research sector, noting that funding had to be “put on a sounder and more predictable footing.” However the report neglects to address the political issues that have caused government funding cuts in the research sector over the past twenty years. Science and Technology Australia, the peak body representing over 115,000 Australian scientists called the report an “abject failure” and noted that it falls short of Labor’s election target of recommending that government funding of research should be 3% of GDP. Government investment in academic research has dropped to its lowest level since 1978 and now only represents a mere 0.17% of GDP, far below the OECD average of 2.5%. This is particularly worrying because, unlike other countries where the private sector 16
In response to the cuts, universities are increasingly reliant on international student fees to plug this gap. Almost 25% of research costs were paid using those fees in 2021. International student funding is a terrible mechanism. Firstly, COVID and extended travel restrictions highlighted how unstable international student intake can be. Further, the xenophobic politics surrounding immigration have driven the government to forecast a slashing of international student numbers in the coming years alongside heavy new restrictions on visas.
Even if their enrolment numbers can remain high, research should not be funded by forcing international students to pay up to five times more than domestic students, all on top of our cost-of-living crisis. The Labor government report’s timid requests and its failure to respond faster is nothing new. The last time the Australian government reviewed the university sector was the 2008 Bradley Review of Higher Education which called for a direct increase in funding to match the levels of the early 1990s. Instead, in 2013, the government cut university funding by $2.3 billion to pay for the Gonski school reforms - exemplifying the fact that funding is a political issue, not an economic one. Ironically, Glyn Davis, the current secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Australia and former Melbourne University Vice Chancellor, put it well when he said in 2015, “all recent governments have cut university funding per student in real terms. There is no evidence that any paid a political price for doing so,” believing that university students do not bring them votes.
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ANGUS McGREGOR is not holding his breath for the government to start funding research It is easy to call on governments, and we should, to fully fund every NCG grant and to give universities more direct funding to expand their research departments. Still, a clear political strategy needs to accompany any demands.
Budget issues are always highly scrutinised, which means governments need to be able to market any increase in public and parliament, particularly given that universities have become a subset of the culture wars. It is easy for Conservative politicians to use the radicalism on campus as an excuse to squeeze students, just as the Morrison governments did with their Job Ready Graduates Package Countering those narratives is central to governments creating the mandate to expand funding based on the economic and social benefits of academia, and dispelling any beliefs that research is wasteful. Groundbreaking new work in solar batteries, COVID-19 virus sequencing, and the reclamation of Indigenous languages are just a small fraction of the work academics do which has a positive impact on millions of people. The interim report suggests mechanisms to measure the importance of research, but vague data points are not as crucial as a broader campaign that links research to tangible outcomes in the minds of Australian voters. Drawing from the failure of the Coalition to cut Medicare, academic research should be treated similarly and viewed as equally essential by the Australian public. Other suggestions to improve funding have included greater integration of academics with government and industry through policy think tanks and industry PhD programs. While critics rightly point out that any integration, especially with companies, risks compromising the independence of academia, proper oversight could create whole new funding sources for underpaid academics. Last year the government invested $296 million in the National Industry PhD Program. Instead of relying on grants and tiny stipends, researchers can get paid a full-time salary and have COUNTER COURSE
a larger chance of landing a job in the private sector, which would reduce pressure on finding casual academic positions. Most students do not notice the critical impact research funding has on their education in terms of courses, quality of teaching, and facilities available. The decline in funding leads to staff often being less qualified and overworked, with less time to develop courses for students. In the worst cases, many Australian academics have defected to other countries like the UK and the US which have better funding models. This flight of academics will likely lead to a decline in the reputation of Australian universities and their ability to receive competitive international grants.
The Australian government needs to act quickly to stop the suffocation of the research sector. With the Education Minister currently sitting on the final Accord report and an election year fast approaching in which funding for higher education will likely not be politically popular, I am not holding my breath.
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Bringing New Meaning to As a PhD candidate in Anthropology, I see participants as the heart of our research. We seek them out as experts of their own experiences, working with them through observation and conversation to generate data for our work. Regardless of research topic, whether and how people share their lifeworlds with us depends largely on how we engage them and our field, which brings into question the unfavourable relation between the limited parameters we work within and university corporatisation.
profit approach a participant perspective can illuminate, particularly as people whose wellbeing relies on adequately funded ethics processes and accurate academic findings.
Conditions of research, including timeframe and resource availability, are typically determined by our universities, whose continued turn toward a more corporate governance structure has led to a greater standardisation (and condensation) of course programs and cuts to permanent staff and department funds. Such changes can drastically impact field interactions, compelling some to enter their fields without adequate training and work haphazardly to collect information from participants, occasionally at the expense of ethical and academic soundness.
This would suggest that participants can benefit from collaborating with better-equipped researchers— think properly paid, appropriately skilled and lacking the pressure of unrealistic KPIs—and using their voices to challenge university claims of beneficence.
Yet, despite the far-reaching effects of university governance on participants, they tend not to be represented as a key affected group in industrial action against profits-driven university management. Slogans like “Staff working conditions are student learning conditions,” “We are the university” and “I stand with casuals” are routinely iterated at NTEU pickets, emphasising the burden of corporatisation on students, academic staff and other university personnel. All three are obviously central in the fight to preserve the university as a social rather than capitalist institution, being its primary consumers and employees. However, I ask what they and participants can stand to gain together from greater inclusion of participant voices in the movement, and what shortcomings of the university’s low cost-to-
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Participant contributions, whether in the form of lobby groups or even involvement in union activities, bring visibility to their status as university stakeholders. Not only is much research impossible without their assistance, but so too is the university’s existence as it professes to operate for the public good.
Take, for example, individuals who experience emotional distress participating in research. If the researcher had sufficient funds and more time, they may have undertaken specialist training on discussing sensitive issues and allowed the participant to disclose information at their own pace. Such systemic constraints leading to potential erroneous judgements by researchers render futile processes of research ethics boards, payment of their members and the use of their time.
This possible degradation of research ethics, together with the collection of likely invalid data that produces skewed findings, would imply that the university offers nothing more than lip service to its social responsibilities.
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Participation In co-opting participants, we should also consider potential participants or those who wish to bring more academic attention to their communities. Projects with human subjects usually recruit participants using exclusive selection criteria, creating arbitrary groups while leaving those who do not qualify to fall through the cracks. Although it is no crime to research whatever one wants to research, this choice must be seen against the backdrop of the economic and time efficient university. With highly conditional grants and, when looking at the Australian PhD, difficulties of obtaining liveable stipends for anything other than full-time study (three to four years compared to the five to six minimum of the world’s leading universities), time and some degree of certainty are essential to the struggling researcher. It comes as little surprise then that many gravitate toward more risk-averse demographics and less longitudinal studies.
ANGELA WONG ty assertions of justice and the liberal pursuit of knowledge as workers, research areas and social groups continue to be hierarchised and erased. If given the platform, participant voices can potentially disrupt dynamics of the neoliberal university. Their existence asks who validates universities’ legitimacy as knowledgeproducing institutions, who benefits from prolific research outputs in a climate of everdwindling resources and who is ultimately accountable when research goes wrong. With these in mind, welcoming their participation in the tertiary education work rights struggle may be an unexpected yet necessary step in rehumanising the academic.
Problematically, this weaponisation of financial insecurity promotes class divide amongst academics and gaps in knowledge. Firstly, only well-off researchers can afford to conduct longer, more complex studies as they are not entirely dependent on the university to live adequately. Researchers are also incentivised by accessing better funding and publicity if they pursue topics deemed desirable by university elites. Secondly, shorter, more low-risk studies may lack the social impact and rewards of longer, more trying ones, culminating in mediocre researcher profiles and knowledge vacuums that disservice underrepresented groups. This would refute universi-
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The weary student encounters a few of Sydney’s best. Adapted from Honi Soit Issue 06, 1991.
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The Housing Australia Future Fund Australia is experiencing one of the worst housing crises in its history. Rents have risen exponentially in every state and territory and more than 640,000 households are experiencing housing stress or homelessness. Urban sprawl in the furthest regions of NSW is accelerating far from workplaces and universities, and social housing waitlists have blown out with more than 55,000 in queue for a public home in NSW.
how the HAFF gambles the shelter of those most in need to volatile financial markets.
Further, the HAFF’s returns, if any, would be invested into the construction of social and affordable homes. “Social” housing is an ambiguous term that refers to both public (government-owned) housing, and “community housing”, typically owned by third-party providers, such as charity groups like Mission The Federal Labor government, attributing Australia. this crisis to inadequate supply, introduced the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) in The HAFF then allows both the state March 2023. The bill proposed creating a $10 billion investment fund whose earnings, capped and federal governments to delegate at $500 million, would fund social and affordable the housing of vulnerable people to housing projects across Australia. The ALP community housing providers, who argued that the HAFF would see the creation of 20,000 social homes and 10,00 affordable homes can charge more than 25-30% of the - specifically for frontline workers - over the next household income public housing 5 years starting in 2024-25. The ALP have touted tenants pay, and are not required to the HAFF as the solution to the ongoing crisis, deeming it as not just “good social policy, but follow the same stringent eviction good economic policy”. But does the HAFF even rules. resemble something close to a solution? The HAFF was befittingly berated by the Greens Soon after the bill was introduced, the Australian for what it neglects to include; the HAFF, and the Greens took the principled stance of blocking the ALP’s housing agenda more broadly, provides legislation. nothing for renters. There is no plan for rent controls, such as rent caps, no plan to expand The HAFF was a deeply flawed access to or substantially increase rent assistance proposal. Chief among its faults is payments, and no plan to end no-grounds evictions nationwide. Further, the Albanese the method for funding the creation Government’s 2023-24 budget refuses to repeal of these new homes. Unlike hospitals the significant tax breaks offered to landlords and and schools, whose construction property developers. Parliamentary Budget Office estimate that in 2023-24 the Federal is directly funded by the state and costings Government will lose approximately $40bn to tax territory governments, the HAFF concessions, namely negative gearing and capital leaves the funding of shelter - a gains discounts. These funds could be directly human right - to the mystical spent on the construction of more homes or rent relief provisions.
and unpredictable whims of the stock market; a force inherently antagonistic to housing for all.
In blocking the HAFF, the Greens decided to fight for one-third of the country. Finally, tenants, who had been consistently exploited Max Chandler Mather, the Greens MP and under decades of neoliberal housing policy, were housing spokesperson, repeatedly identified the having their rights platformed on a national level. futility of this approach, noting how the Future The Australian Greens drew a clear line in the Fund lost $120 million in 2022, acknowledging sand, they demanded; a two-year freeze on rent 20
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HARRISON BRENNAN recalls the biggest housing debate of 2023 increases, a 2% annual cap on rent hikes, and a $5 billion annual spend on affordable housing.
The Greens harnessed the frustration of tenants nationwide, launching an immense campaign for renters’ rights, initiating a nationwide door-knocking campaign in Labor-held electorates and a social media campaign explaining the HAFF and its failings. This pressure secured minor concessions from the ALP, namely, a $2 billion one-off payment to the social housing accelerator fund, and an amendment to the HAFF which mandates a minimum spend of $500 million a year. The Greens even forced a national cabinet meeting concerning renters’ rights, from which state and territory premiers expressed a non-binding commitment to standardize rental policy and conditions nationwide. However, on the 11th of September 2023, the Greens agreed to pass the HAFF upon its reintroduction after securing an additional $1 billion for social and affordable homes. The radical, yet reasonable, demands for a national rent freeze, rent caps and a $5 billion annual spend on affordable housing were watered-down and abandoned. Their submission brings into question the utility of the Greens in maintaining long-term fights against the Labor government.
They often market themselves as the party holding the government to account, but in yielding twice last year — first to the Safeguard Mechanism and second to the HAFF — questions remain as to whether the Greens can sustain future campaigns around the cost-of-living crises as the conditions for working people worsens. It is likely the Greens caved due to a concern for their optics given the media onslaught they received for their resistance to passing the HAFF. Despite COUNTER COURSE
Courtesy Honi Soit Issue 12, 1985
this, I do believe that the Greens are, or atleast can be, the party for renters, although they have yet to prove their mettle.
Ultimately, the HAFF debate of 2023 is a poignant reminder for student residents, renters, and public housing tenants that housing justice cannot come from the parties concerned with optics and re-election alone. Change on this scale can only be won from the streets, from a mobilized and militant force of tenants fighting for rent controls, legal protections, and a radical reworking of how Australia’s housing system operates. We have to fight for a system that does not prioritize the interests of the landlord or developer, but the people, who are all entitled to safe and affordable housing.
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From the river to the sea, always was always will be: on First Nations-Palestinian solidarity Just like Martu author Karen Wyld, I stand in support of the Palestinian people. When I write, or speakat rallies, I write with love – not to slay, not to convince, but as an expression of love – for Indigenous resilience, Indigenous joy. But, like Wyld, I also wonder; “is the pen still mightier than the sword, when the sword is an endless stream of bombs?”
mongering and cornering her political opponents into a relentless insistence on ‘condemning Hamas,’ ignoring the fact that to do so would be to ignore the full 75-year length of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) Nasser Mashni puts it best; “It is not about Hamas. Israel has a Palestinian problem, not a Hamas problem.”
In November, Marcia Langton wrote an article in The Australian. In doing so, she solidarised herself with the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza. In responding to the claim that ‘Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with the Palestinians,’ Langton responds; “This is false; it is the view of a tiny few (...) and there is very little comparable in our respective situations.” It betrays not only a misapprehension of both Palestinian history and the history of settler-colonialism here in so-called Australia. Langton misses the mark spectacularly.
Langton’s insistence perpetuates the myth that Israel’s genocide on 7 October 2023. It portrays Palestinians as irrational and antagonistic by nature, and paints a false image of Israel and Netanyahu’s government as noble and virtuous in their rhetoric and actions.
Langton also responds with hyperbolised moral outrage to the refusal of some in the Blak Sovereignty Movement to issue a condemnation of Hamas. Langton affirms, “I am aghast and embarrassed. They do not speak for me.” That’s fine, they are not trying to. What is evident in Langton’s writing is that these are the words of someone bitterly defeated. It’s clear that Langton places some of the blame of the failed Voice to Parliament referendum squarely with the Blak Sovereignty Movement, and that – in Langton’s view – the movement’s position on any issue must be dismantled and dissented from. It’s something to be lamented that, after the vitriolic racism and blatant disinformation that characterised the right-wing Fairfax and Murdoch media’s co-opting of the referendum, Marcia Langton adopts the same tactics of fear-
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Of course, this echoes the political environment which enabled the European colonisation of this continent. Aboriginal people were branded as ‘savages’ – nomadic, unintelligent, flyblown relics of a bygone age, incapable of reason. In the view of the colonial authority, they were smoothing the dying pillow of a doomed race. So too, it is the position of Israel that there is no place for the Palestinian people in modern liberal democracy. Fewer Israelis than ever now believe that an independent Palestine can exist alongside Israel. Support for a two-state solution is on the decline globally, and it mirrors the ways in which sovereignty and self-governance were dealt with during early colonial encounters in so-called Australia. But what I found most disgusting about Langton’s think piece – the position I found most untenable COUNTER COURSE
ETHAN FLOYD deconstructs an untenable position – was Langton’s extraordinary exercise in victimblaming. Langton writes “when 44 percent of Gazans voted for Hamas in 2006, they precipitated a series of crises, such as the Israeli imposition of siege conditions, and with Iranian military aid to Hamas, their status as human shields.” Putting aside the simple fact that – at the time of the article’s publishing – more than two thirds of Gaza’s population were under 35 and more than 50% were children (hence, obviously played no role in the 2006 election), Langton’s ascribing of responsibility, seemingly in perpetuity, for Israel’s current genocide to its victims simply defies belief. In 2022, Langton appeared as an interviewee in the SBS series ‘The Australian Wars’, which recounted early examples of colonial and frontier violence during colonisation. Langton spoke of Pemulwuy and Windradyne – Aboriginal military leaders who led raids against settlers and colonial military targets. It would be inconceivable that Langton would blame First Nations people for their own genocide, so what exceptionalises Palestinians? Our shared experiences living under settler-colonial oppression, the right of return and land back, the Nakba and Invasion Day – solidarity between Palestinians and First Nations people is not only a
real phenomenon, but it is a natural one. Indigenous solidarity is a global movement, in recognition of shared struggle and a desire for liberation – whatever that liberation might look like for different communities. It’s for those reasons precisely that, among the 50,000 people who marched through the streets of Sydney on 26 January 2024, there were hundreds of Palestinians. It’s for those reasons that there continues to be a strong First Nations contingent to every weekly rally for Palestine in Sydney’s Hyde Park. It’s for those reasons that both of our communities understand that none of us can achieve justice until all of us have achieved justice.
The Palestinian struggle is an Indigenous struggle, and the Indigenous struggle is a Palestinian struggle. Our movements are indivisible. We will continue to fight for each other until we see an end to Israel’s genocide, and justice for Indigenous peoples in our lifetime. From the river to the sea, always was always will be.
Ethan Floyd is a descendant of the Wiradjuri and Ngiyampaa Wailwan peoples. His traditional lands run along the southern bank of the Barwon River, from Brewarrina to Walgett. He is one of three First Nations Students’ Officers of the 96th SRC.
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