Honi Soit operates and publishes on Gadigal land of the Eora nation. We work and produce this publication on stolen land where sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney is a colonial institution. Honi Soit is a publication that prioritises the voices of those who challenge colonial rhetorics. We strive to continue its legacy as a radical left-wing newspaper providing students with a unique opportunity to express their diverse voices and counter the biases of mainstream media.
Editors
As we lay up this edition, neo-Nazi’s are marching all around us: the ‘March for Australia’ is congregating in Victoria Park, making their way up and down King Street, parading their bigotry shamelessly. Our officedungeon is a small, windowless haven in the midst of this deeply embarrassing and shameful display of fascism.
It’s easy to forget that these people do not just exist online, in redpill forums and dark web rabbit holes. It’s easy to ridicule and roll our eyes; this was my first instinct. But these are real people, marching proudly in person, and their ethno-nationalist agenda is a real threat to us all. We must not forget that Australia is, still, a pervasively racist and structurally broken nation. We turn back boats, we turn down visas, and we turn tax dollars into weapons parts for Israel.
Confronting reality doesn’t mean we need to lose hope. Thousands marched in Sydney’s weekly proPalestine protests today; hundreds showed up to the National Student Referendum on Palestine this week; hundreds of thousands braved the Harbour Bridge in the rain a few weeks ago. These are also realities to remember, and hold on to.
I don’t want platitudes on multiculturalism, “I don’t see colour”, or rhetoric about ‘good immigrants’. I want sanctions on Israel, a rollback of draconian anti-protest laws, and a material acknowledgement that this fast-growing country would
Purny Ahmed, Mehnaaz Hossain, Ondine Karpinellison, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Will Winter, Victor Zhang
Front Cover
Purny Ahmed
not be able to sustain itself without significant immigration.
The theme for this week is, very loosely, ‘Secrets’. I was intrigued not just by the traditional idea of something untold but also by the idea of something buried, hidden, or amorphous. In these pages, you will find not-so-secret slivers of hope and resistance.
Faye Tang, on page 10, uncovers the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Australia’s Home Affairs office and the concept of national borders. Our very own Ondine Karpinellison, on page 11, writes her first print piece as a Spill editor, exploring the complexity of being concealed and being visible with activism under a surveillance state. Calista Burrowes, on page 13, rounds off the analysis section with a lovely piece that unearths the forgotten and hidden history within Palestinian land. Jayden Nguyen reveals, on page 15, the USyd Anthropology Department’s refusal to decolonise the curricula under the guise of ‘global studies’.
One of the last pieces in this edition is a creative piece written by me, many years and many long-buried versions of me ago: on page 17, dug up from an unmarked grave, freshly edited and illustrated. The girl on the front cover is the girl in the cocoon; God bless Purny Ahmed for bringing her back to life.
As of writing this, I have not left the office in over 15 hours. It is almost,
but not quite, 3:30am. I find myself wondering how many delirious nights I have left in what has become my newfound home. Sentimentality is the biggest secret I am clutching to my chest at the moment, in an attempt to not start September counting my ‘lasts’ with Honi. In the spirit of this, my edition contains a ‘first’ too: my first solo feature piece.
My feature is about debating, which formed a large part of my high school and then university experience until this year, when I became consumed by the beautiful chaos of Honi. I felt compelled to write it because, for so many years, I could not quite articulate my love-hate, semi-codependant relationship with debating. The precise mechanisms of how to unpack this insular community and intense, fascinating activity was always slightly out of my grasp. I spoke to a range of university debaters in the course of constructing this piece; I’ve set out to distill the debating experience into a series of observations. The final work is a mix of my own musings and common (anonymously presented) sentiments, observations, and commentary.
This edition is, similarly, a mix of everyone who has pieced it together. Thank you to everyone I love. Thank you to Spill for keeping my secrets. Thank you for reading.
Love always, Mehnaaz shhh
No one keeps a secret better than a brown girl.
Sath Balasuriya, Calista Burrowes, Avin Dabiri, Felicity Errington, James Fitzgerald Sice, Emma Georgopoulis, Audrey Hawkins, Mehnaaz Hossain, Jessica Louise Smith, Ella McGrath, Ondine Karpinellison, Dr Miniature Malekpour, Jayden Nguyen, Jenna Rees, Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Faye Tang, Ananya Thirumalai, Will Winter, Victor Zhang
Artists
Purny Ahmed, Avin Dabiri, Jessica Louise-Smith, Charlotte Sakar, Jo Staas, Victor Zhang
Comedy
Companion Piece, Purny Ahmed
Letter to the Editor Letter from an Editor
Dear Jaseena Al-Helo,
The article you have written imho is a masterpiece in its own. I can’t praise you enough for your ability to see beyond what we’ve learned to see, it’s so powerful and so true and you have written it so beautifully that it’s not the usual articles we read about Gaza, it shines like a pearl on the burnt rubble. so it’s very special. Thank you so much for the courage and freedom of your thought. Would love to read your other work too.
Mahesh Haris
Editors note: The article can be found in the Semester 2, Week 4 edition of Honi Soit
In Gaza, Men Are Made Before They Are Boys
Dear Ananya Thirumalai,
Your article Fluent in Honi is a fantastic piece that I would recommend any prospective Honi editor to read. It highlights the importance of lived experience in the role of the editorship. Honi Soit’s role, that you have identified, is the medium that can capture the zeitgeist of USyd’s student population or even university students at large. It follows then, that it is deeply disappointing that Honi has, does, and will (for the foreseeable future in which we do not receive a pay rise from our paltry stipend), lock out international students.
To my knowledge, the last international student that held the editorship was the late Nguyen Khanh Tran, a very dear friend of mine and so many other student journalists. One of the topics we discussed was the exclusion of international, low SES, disabled, and other marginalised voices in Honi. There is no easy way forward.
The one point you have raised that I will push back on, is that Honi should maintain “editorial teams entirely separate from stupol factions” and the sentiment that Honi covers too much stupol. I do not foresee a world in which the editors of Honi do not cover student politics, be it the SRC, USU, or national bodies like the NUS or CAPA. Additionally, it is vitally important that we observe and record matters of importance such as the USU’s incorporation. Khanh’s investigation into the dysfunction of the Council of International Students Australia (CISA) was crucial in inspiring newer international student representative organisations to get off the ground. Additionally, Khanh’s relentless investigation and advocacy on disabilities activism on campus directly resulted in much of the progress we have today.
WHAT’S ON?
Radical Education Week 1st-5th of September
Sydney Fringe Festival 1st-30th of September
SASS Cruise 4th of September
Labyrinth by MADSOC 4th-6th of September
Seymour Centre
Disability Inclusion Festival 8th-23rd of September
Sydney Contemporary Art Fair 11th-14th of September Carriageworks
Med Revue 18th–20th of September
Write us letters. This is not a request. This a demand.
This is not to say that the uninitiated reader will not need a significantly long lexicon to decode stupol lingo. It is also true that the reader is most likely to encounter pieces relating to stupol in the front few pages, likely in the gossip column or the news section. I would suggest here that it is not the focus on stupol itself that is the barrier to entry but perhaps how it is covered.
Victor
Rumour Has It...
Seymour Centre
SRC Elections 23rd-25th of September
A national student referendum was held at the Quad Lawns at 3pm on 28th August. Over 500 USyd students voted yes to two motions concerning the genocide in Gaza.
The first motion voted to “censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
The second motion voted to “call on all Australian universities to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide”.
The referendum was led by the National Union of Students (NUS) and Students for Palestine (S4P), which took place across 13 Australian campuses. Students were only able to vote by appearing in person and scanning a QR code to receive a ballot sent to their email.
Over 500 vote yes in national student referendum on Palestine
Shovan Bhattarai from Socialist Alternative (SAlt) introduced the referendum, saying “We face a turning point in history. It’s a turning point when you see day after day, for over two years, a genocide play out in Gaza. It’s a turning point that has forced us to act against the complicity of every major institution.”
Jasmine Al Rawi (SAlt) moved the first motion. Al Rawi said “On Monday, Israel killed 20 Palestinians in a double air strike on Nasser hospital. They bombed it twice in order to kill the health workers and journalists trying to help. This is not a mistake. It is a pattern of war crimes by Israel.
“You do not make a mistake by killing 60,000 people… Australia helps manufacture the bombs that are burning children to
Prior to the referendum, over 850 students had registered to vote. On the 28th, over 500 students showed up and voted, making it one of the largest referendum sites in the country.
death…. So when we march, we get our humanity back from the cold hands of the media and the government. We are here to say Sydney Uni stands
Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, and Victor Zhang report.
with Palestine. We want the politicians to hear us. We want the people in Gaza to hear us.”
The second speaker was Luke Mesterovic (Grassroots), who said “This is a struggle that we’re involved in, and this struggle is not linear. There have been times when we’ve been on the back foot, and there have been times when the tide is with us. And I think we can all agree that right now, the tide is with us.
“Even if today Palestine is not free, one day it will be. Because we will come out, we will be heard, and we will let those who are crushing Palestine know that we will not let it happen in our name.”
The third speaker was Rex Urquhart (SAlt). Urquhart said that he was a Jewish anti-Zionist, and that “the establishment, the media, the government… don’t want you to know that I exist. There are a sizable number of Jews… that refuse to sit by while a modern Holocaust is being carried out by Israel with the support of our own government.
“It is antisemitic to claim that Jews must all be in support of a state that is built upon the dispossession and destruction of Palestinians. Us Jews know a genocide when we see it, and we won’t allow another to be carried out in our name.”
Photography by Jessica Louise Smith
Bhattarai asked the crowd to raise their hands to indicate how they were going to vote on the first motion. In an audience of 500 students, every hand went up to vote ‘Yes’. She then asked students to vote using the ballot link sent to their emails.
Bhattari moved onto the second motion, beginning with first speaker Deaglan Godwin (SAlt). Godwin said “I do not believe that a place of learning should be contributing to a genocide.
“Sydney Uni’s partnership with [weapons manufacturer] Thales involves research on the very drones that Thales sells to Israel… It is a stain on this university that it is knee-deep in weapons research. It is a stain on this university that despite the copious amounts of evidence of Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza, that this university has refused
to cut those ties.”
The final speaker was Imane Lattab. Lattab spoke about the dissonance between activists who had been continuously protesting since 2023 compared to those who had only gotten involved recently or sporadically.
“Life for the people of Gaza has reached a dire point. Sanctions and weapons sales divestments are 690 days too late. 60,000 people too late. I implore you all to remind our government today of this fact. To all of you who may be self-proclaimed pacifists, vote yes to demand an end to the weapons sales to a genocidal entity paid by your university fees and tax dollars.
“I ask you… to extend your humanity across oceans to the people of Gaza, who have asked us not to look away.”
Following the referendum, Bhattarai asked the audience to join her in a march towards Mark Scott’s office at F23. The crowd marched down Eastern Ave, chanting “Mark Scott, you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide!” and “Free, free Palestine.”
University of Melbourne violated student protesters’ privacy through Wi-Fi-tracking
Ella McGrath reports. The VIC found the university used Wi-Fi tracking, CCTV footage, student card photographs, and internal emails of ten staff members to identify protesters. It took less than a day for the university to authorise use of data in this way.
The Office of the Victorian Information Commission (OVIC) has found that the University of Melbourne (UniMelb) breached privacy laws when it used its Wi-Fi network to surveil students and staff participating in a pro-Palestine protest in May of 2024.
Several of these students received academic misconduct notices on the basis of evidence drawn from Wi-Fi location data tracing them to the site of a sit-in protest calling for university divestment from weapons companies.
Lasting 10 days, the protest led to the cancellation of 247 classes, affecting 8,300 students. Organisers maintain that while occupying the building, they did not obstruct walkways.
The protest took place in the Arts-West building, renamed “Mahmoud’s Hall” after Mahmoud al-Naouq, who was a prospective student.
Al-Naouq reportedly won a scholarship offered by the Australian Government to Palestinian nationals, and elected a Master of International Relations at the University of Melbourne as his first preference. Before al-Naouq was able to enrol, he was killed by an Israeli missile strike in his family home in Deir el-Balah on 20th October, 2023, along with 19 family members.
The OVIC investigation, which commenced in July 2024, released a report this Wednesday condemning a “serious” breach in privacy and surveillance practices “antithetical to human rights”
22 students and 10 staff were identified, of which 19 and 3 respectively received a “reprimand and caution.”
Reportedly, misconduct proceedings did not result in any suspensions, expulsions or terminations of employment, but activist group UMelb for Palestine (UM4P) claims that two students were expelled and another two suspended as OVIC was investigating the University, Wi-Fi location pings among the evidence for misconduct.
UM4P stated that the university used Wi-Fi tracking again in October of 2024, to identify students who participated in a controversial sit-in at the office of a Jewish physics professor. They were protesting the professors’ research with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in quantum technologies, which can have a military application.
Some of the protesters were also emailed CCTV images of themselves inside the Arts West Building during the sit-in; this was not flagged by the report as a contravention of information privacy principles (IPPs) in Victoria’s Data Protection Act.
However, the deputy commissioner found that Unimelb breached two IPPs over a lack of informed consent on the part of students and staff to the use of their personal data in misconduct investigations.
“The university failed to obtain a social license for the use of this technology,” the report concluded.
In April this year, the university updated its “wireless terms of use”, retroactively codifying its surveillance of students.
Among the new terms was consent to the use of Wi-Fi tracking “to assist in the detection and investigation of any actual or suspected unlawful or antisocial behaviour’ as well as potential breach of University policy. This includes a slew of what several human rights bodies have deemed “anti–protest policies.”
Because of these amendments to uni Wi-Fi policy, the VIC did not issue the university with a compliance notice due to “improvements” in “policies and practices” over the course of the investigation.
In other words, the University will continue to use Wi-Fi routers to track staff and students as they move through campus, following the digital trail that their mobile phones and devices leave behind. Now the institution will use its networks to identify and penalise students, despite previously stating otherwise.
When the University of Melbourne first introduced its contentious new Wi-Fi network in 2016, the institution countered concerns of privacy experts by affirming it would not use the network to identify students.
A spokesperson stated on the public record: “we’re not breaching privacy because we don’t know who they are.”
UM4P said this was a “lie” as the institution evidently were able to identify student and staff protesters.
The initial purpose of the Wi-Fi tracking function was to observe movement and crowd density in university buildings to plan events, improve retention rates, and overall campus experience.
The OVIC investigator has said that the university’s actions amount to “function creep” — where the stated purpose for collecting data and use of that data changed over time, without the informed consent of data subjects.
In response to the OVIC report’s findings, the University said it acknowledged “clearer active notice” could have been provided, but “we maintain that the use of Wi-Fi location data in student misconduct cases was reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances, giving the overriding need to keep our community safe.”
Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have condemned the university’s amended wireless policy, coupled with new protest policies, as exerting a “chilling effect” on campus life.
NTEU national president Alison Barnes said in a statement that the university had acted like “Big Brother,” observing a climate of fear and waning trust in the institution.
In reaction to the amended wireless policy, UM4P exhorted students to disable Wi-Fi connection and resort to VPN usage to evade tracking and potential penalty for protest.
In a new statement, UM4P said: “the University’s punitive response has been entirely political and has weaponised the privatisation of campus buildings to curtail the right of free speech and assembly
“…how can the university claim to respect privacy laws while currently pursuing punishments as severe as expulsions and suspensions underpinned by the same evidence this report has declared unauthorised and unlawful?”
Last year, Honi spoke to one of the students who had been issued with a misconduct notice by the university for his participation in the Mahmoud’s Hall protest.
He said that whilst he was not sanctioned, he felt it was “a blatant show of intimidation… I have never felt more of a sense of personal injustice than in that [misconduct] process.”
“The academic sanctioning was a big turning point for me because I never expected the university to track and in my opinion digitally stalk me.
“…it goes hand in hand with institutional complicity in genocide due to investment in weapons manufacturers, because although the university is a public institution with a good reputation, it is not above breaking the law.”
“In my opinion, my informed consent was violated. Allegedly.”
Words that, one year on, no longer need to be cloaked in the language of allegation.
City of Sydney Council stands against ‘renovictions’
Victor Zhang reports.
On 25th August, the City of Sydney Council unanimously passed a motion against ‘renovictions’: the eviction of a tenant on the grounds of significant renovation or repairs. The Council resolved to oppose the changes made by the NSW Government on 20th June removing the evidence requirements for evictions on the grounds of significant renovations or repair.
Clover Moore Independents Councillor Jess Miller moved the motion, stating “given that 65 per cent of the people in the city of Sydney rent, [this change] makes everybody incredibly vulnerable”.
Councillor Miller also noted that when Independent NSW Legislative Assembly Member for Sydney Alex Greenwich asked the NSW Minister for
Better Regulation and Fair Trading Anoulack Chanthivong the rationale for the regulation change, he did not receive a satisfactory answer.
Greens Councillor Sylvie Ellesmore seconded the motion, affirming that watching protections against no-grounds evictions be “pulled back is heartbreaking, especially given how long we had to wait for
the no grounds eviction rules to come in that people had campaigned decades”.
In addition to noting the Council’s opposition to the regulation changes, the Council also resolved to sign the joint statement calling on the NSW Government to reinstate evidence requirements. The Council also resolved that the Lord Mayor Clover Moore should write to
Minister Chanthivong with the demands of the joint statement: to reinstate the evidence requirements in the Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019, to monitor complaints and misuse of eviction grounds, and commit to a transparent consultative process for future rental law changes.
UTS staff go to Fair Work Commission over course cuts
Staff at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have taken a case to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to stop the suspension of courses.
UTS has stopped the enrolment of students in 146 out of its 615 courses, and is attempting to slash another 100 courses.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) this week applied for an interim order to halt course cuts.
Following pressure from the NTEU, UTS has released a document outlining alternatives
to job cuts prepared by KPMG, which has a contract with the university and was paid $4.8 million in May this year.
Damien Cahill, General Secretary of the NTEU, said “UTS tried to ram through mass course suspensions in breach of its own consultation policies. We’re in the Fair Work Commission to stop these damaging course suspensions and force management to undertake a proper, transparent process.”
The Australian Financial Review has found that the
number of students studying an equivalent full-time student load (EFTSL) at UTS in the affected courses has steadily risen, and the rate of student satisfaction has remained high.
In primary and secondary education courses, where enrolments have been suspended, the EFTSL rate rose from 149 in 2018 to 431 in 2025. Meanwhile, the rate of new students in the same period rose from 78 to 193.
An academic who spoke to the AFR said “If the university allowed us to grow
to full capacity in the primary [education course] — about 500 students in each course — we would have 1000, so that would mean we’d be about the same size as most other metropolitan universities.”
NTEU UTS Branch President Sara Attfield commented: “This is redundancy by stealth. Suspending courses midconsultation undermines academic integrity, destabilises student pathways, and shreds staff confidence.
“The course suspension announcement was devastating
Imogen Sabey reports.
for staff, with some feeling physically sick and having to leave work early.
“UTS belongs to its students and staff as a public institution. We will not let executive shortcuts decide the future of our courses, our jobs, and our community.”
Cahill noted “The path forward is simple: stop the suspensions, show the evidence, and do the consultation properly. If management won’t do that voluntarily, we will pursue every avenue to make sure they do.”
“Accent training” remark puts USyd on the defensive
The University of Sydney has denied claims it planned to introduce “accent training” for academics, after staff raised concerns that a new student evaluation system could amplify existing biases.
Last Wednesday, academics from the School of Social and Political Sciences met with Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) Joanne Wright to discuss the pilot program, which will ask students to evaluate teaching quality.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, one academic questioned how the University would address the risk that women and staff from different national or linguistic backgrounds are more likely to be marked down by students. The academic said Wright
responded that “accent training would be provided,” before adding that “no one is going to be sacked for having an accent.”
In a statement to news.com.au, a University spokesperson said there has “never been a plan to introduce ‘accent training’ at the University.” They said the suggestion had been raised as a “hypothetical option” in response to a question.
Sydney branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Dr Peter Chen, criticised the remark. Chen said it was “ill-considered at best, and at worst, an example of institutionalising linguistic racism”.
Chen noted that student feedback systems already carry risks for staff from visible
minority backgrounds, women, and people with disabilities, particularly through negative qualitative feedback.
Following the backpack, Wright wrote to staff: “I am sorry if anyone interpreted my words as anything other than an example of support that could be offered.”
Chen described the message as a “‘sorry if you were offended’ type of response” that “lacked accountability.” He also said it was “somewhat disingenuous,” pointing out that a consultant in Wright’s office had previously raised the idea.
Racial Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said the controversy reflected broader issues identified in the Australian
Ananya Thirumalai reports.
Human Rights Commission’s Racism@Uni consultations, which found that both interpersonal and structural racism are “pervasive and deeply entrenched” in universities.
Staff and students reported being “othered,” experiencing erasure of their identities, and encountering low “racial literacy” across institutions.
Western Sydney University academic Dr Rohini Balram also recalled facing linguistic discrimination earlier in her career. At a conference, she was told,“For an Indian, you speak very clearly and have good English.” She described the comment as offensive and erasing of her identity, saying
it reflected the unfair standards often applied to academics from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Other academics have expressed concern that even discussing “accent training” could encourage selective criticism of staff based on ethnicity, class, or neurodivergence. “Being able to be your authentic self in the workplace is fundamental to human dignity,” Chen said.
The pilot evaluation system will run this semester. Students will be asked five quantitative questions and one open-text response, with staff monitoring comments to ensure feedback is respectful and actionable.
10,000 homes and a controversial new station planned for Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs
Australia’s oldest suburban train line will welcome the longdormant Woollahra station following Premier Chris Minns’ announcement on Sunday, 24th August.
The half-built structure was abandoned by the Labour government in the 1970s following community outcry and cost-cutting strategies. The rebuilding of Woollahra Station would reduce commute time to the Central Business District to eight minutes.
The surrounding area will be rezoned from medium density (R3) to high density (R4) housing. This change will allow
the state government to build 10,000 homes in the Edgecliff and Woollahra area.
Housing Minister Rose Jackson confirmed that a “dedicated portion of affordable housing” will be included in the development. The number dedicated to social housing has not yet been specified.
Premier Chris Minns’ decision to tackle housing in Sydney’s East follows his failure to redevelop Rosehill Racecourse into apartments.
Minns acknowledged that the plan will not be met with “universal happiness” but
stressed that “the truth of the matter is, to combat Sydney’s housing crisis, everybody’s going to have to do their bit.” The NSW government highlighted that this plan will ‘rebalance’ the level of house construction in Sydney from the highly concentrated West to the East.
History is seemingly repeating itself with the Liberal Mayor of Woollahra, Sarah Dixson, demanding for a consultation with the NSW government and declaring that, “the only people getting excited about this announcement are the developers, who by the government’s own admission
will be leading this project, giving them a blank cheque to build luxury apartments in Sydney’s east.”
Liberal Vaucluse MP Kellie Sloan echoed Dixson’s concern in a statement published on Sunday, 24th August, “I am disappointed the Labor Government has shut the community out of this process.
“There has been no consultation, and as your local Member, I have not even been afforded the courtesy of a phone call from the Premier or the Minister to advise me of these significant changes.”
The NSW government has reemphasised that this development will alleviate the impending pressure of the housing crisis on young buyers. Additionally, Woollahra’s population has fallen by 11 per cent over the past 50 years in comparison to Greater Sydney’s 74 per cent increase, highlighting the importance of an increase in housing.
Construction of Woollahra Station will begin in 2027 and finish in 2029. A spokesperson for Minns’ stated that construction will not require closure of the line.
“For fuck’s sake Mehnaaz, we’re having a conversation; you don’t always have to win!”
This is a something I’ve heard countless times throughout my life. Having spent my formative years frequently competitively arguing instead of conversing, I find it difficult to explain to people the pervasive impact that debating has had on my existence. The closest analogy given to me for competitive debating is that it’s “like a Division 1 competitive sport”, particularly at the University of Sydney Union (USU) Debating Society. Debating does not have as many spatial or temporal restrictions as sport when it comes to practicing and competing. It is an activity almost entirely undertaken by those very affluent in both the time and money. It’s a private school activity, and class correlates closely with race; it’s a predominantly and often disproportionately white space. Highly competitive debaters on the Australian circuit can, and often do, spend most of their weekends at competitions, their weekday evenings sparring online, and their free time reading and researching. Competing in ‘majors’, national or international competitions, involves months of preparation fighting over variations of “This house would…” topics, and then an expensive week-long commitment, often in another city or country. You compete with people from your society, and can also be put up against them. Additionally, many university level debaters also work professionally as debating coaches. Coaching involves teaching and then often watching or adjudicating high school competitions; coaches frequently work with others from their university society or circuit.
My friends are also my coworkers, my society members, my teammates, and my opposition. The debating universe is insular and can become allconsuming. Very often, it seeps into every aspect of your life. My own musings and a few Flodge conversations have inspired this piece; I spoke to numerous debaters, when drafting, to talk through how debating permeates their lives, and articulate their observations and commentary on the circuit and activity.
An important thing to explain is that debating requires a reason for every conceivable assertion. One of my high school coaches once drilled into us, “Do not ever tell me the sky is blue.” Nothing, no matter how obvious, should be asserted. You should give three
reasons: why the sky should be blue, why it’s likely to be blue, why it’s unlikely to be any other colour. This is particularly important because debates often require you to give ‘structural reasons’ for real-world events, since they cannot be fact-checked by the adjudicator. It is not enough to claim, even with verifiable external sources, that certain political alliances will happen or that a country’s main export is crops. You need a list of mechanisms and a list of pre-emptive rebuttals at your disposal.
Additionally, debating as a game incentivises and rewards intellectual dishonesty. There is no factchecking allowed from the adjudicator, who is presumed to have the knowledge of a global ‘ordinary informed citizen’, and there is no external research allowed on the specific topic during preparation time other than pre-prepared notes. The sheer breadth of the subject matter that a topic could potentially be about — politics, economics, social norms, finance, international relations, pop culture, philosophy, and more — is not possible to engage in without some level of bullshitting. Often, the reasons one gives are backed by general evidence, or can be legitimately applied to various scenarios, but nevertheless aren’t quite real. Extracting things from ‘first principles’ is frequently the best way to come up with arguments. If it is true, generally, that “governments have an obligation to be receptive to their constituents”, then one can easily make the argument that “constituents want [insert topic here] because of [insert general reasons why topic is good] and thus governments are likely to fulfil this obligation”. There are holes in this logic, but if nobody else points this out or has a better alternative, it still stands. This has been described to me as a “fill-in-the-blank” game, on occasion — albeit more presumptuous and jargonistic.
This hits hardest, for me, in debates about international relations. There is something particularly jarring about watching people in an ivory tower speculate endlessly about the way conflict-ravaged areas should resolve their disputes (“This house believes that Czechia and Slovakia should reunite”), or whether and how the liberation of marginalised peoples should be orchestrated (“Assuming feasibility, this house would relocate Palestine”). The caveat here is that this ought not apply in a ‘good quality’ debate, a real and intellectual one, where making generalisations and taking shortcuts should be a cardinal sin. But not all debates operate on this level; most don’t.
When I attended the Australasian Debating Championships (Australs) in 2023, held in Krabi, Thailand, I was both intrigued by and skeptical of the extent to which so many people would fabricate assertions from thin air. I witnessed people give various “structural reasons” why a country was likely to have a certain population demographic, despite empirical evidence of this being false. People would construct alternate realities where they didn’t quite characterise a particular group of people as a monolith, but gave just enough mechanisms to justify why they were all likely to behave in a specific way.
Even Sally Rooney, in her 2015 debating essay Even If You Beat Me, admits to this strategy: “My teammate Adam and I made it to the quarter-finals, where the topic concerned the secession of Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I knew almost nothing about Bosnia, but Adam had brought some handwritten notes… quite a few of our audience members that day were Serbian debaters. Maybe they sat there, appalled and insulted by our ignorance, or by the composed self-assurance with which we fabricated the history of their region. More likely, they were just used to it. It wasn’t our intention to be offensive. We sailed into the semi-finals that year.”
This isn’t a moral judgement; it’s the beauty of the game. Bullshitting is an incredibly useful and genuinely difficult skill, and there is still a ceiling to the success of intellectual dishonesty, especially if you’re competing against someone with genuine knowledge or at a particularly high level about a wellresearched topic. As in life, bullshitting only gets you so far. But it does get you quite far in debating.
Mehnaaz Hossain is on affirmative.
Something being, on occasion, intellectually dishonest does not preclude it from ancillary benefits. Every single debater I spoke to when constructing this piece emphasised that debating had gotten them to research topics and concepts they would not have explored otherwise: the Sahel region; religious ethnostate hypotheticals; the South China Sea, and so on. They were able to delve into things they were intellectually curious about in an interactive way. People have spoken about how exceptionally rewarding it is to set topics about personal interests and watch debaters learn about them in real-time as they go through first principles argumentconstructing.
Debating in ‘good’ rooms, with accomplished teams and judges, or even in a room where everyone is acting in good-faith and with acknowledgement, absolutely requires a level of genuine depth and understanding of research. Even if you’ve never heard of the topic before, the process of unpacking and presenting arguments rewards a level of sustained critical thinking that is rapidly disappearing in the age of the attention economy. Despite their propensity for intellectual dishonesty in many cases, these are still people who genuinely spend their free time learning, are enormously well-read, and clearly intelligent. As someone quite aptly put to me: “I think the vast majority of debaters are deeply curious & invested people, but the nature of many debates is such that you’re incentivised to play and win the game.”
As a result of the way debating encourages a level of gamification and bullshitting, there can be genuine and interesting impacts on people's lives.
Something fascinating I’ve noticed, echoed by quite a few people I’ve spoken to, is that debating seems to develop or solidify people’s impulse to intellectualise everything. This is demonstrated most clearly in anecdotes about social circles within the activity. A frequent sentiment is that debaters think their feelings and emotions must be justified logically in order to be legitimate: “When I’m upset with my friends in debating, it seems inadequate to say they just hurt my feelings, or I don’t like what they did. I find myself dissecting the situation, coming up with multiple angles and ways in which they wronged me.”
take longer to resolve, are less likely to result in apologies, and are far more argumentative.
The fact that competitive debate gamifies disagreement is one of its biggest double-edged swords. Within the context of a debate, people who are quick to bite back, are constantly skeptical, and are forever the devil’s advocate are a benefit. When this bleeds into interpersonal relationships, particularly with nondebaters, ordinary conflict becomes gamified such that people come across condescending or combative. When apologies occur, they can be “couched in weird corporate-speak”. Another person refers to pre-emptive defensiveness and the habit of numbering your arguments in regular conversation as akin to ‘therapyspeak’ for debaters. This was best put to me as: “The game is always afoot… you never really concede.”
Unbeknownst to (younger) me, the game was indeed always afoot. I’ve had an unfortunate number of conversations where some variation of this piece’s opening phrase has been echoed at me. Conversations where I did not realise that numbering your thoughts, delivering pre-empted responses, and explaining every single link is something most people find both exhausting and irritating. When interrogating my internal monologue, I realised so many of my feelings are filtered through layers of justification until they’re not feelings anymore but five-reasons-why-Iwin. This experience seems to be not uncommon; a large number of people I spoke to reported having experienced friction in their personal lives because their friends or partners found themselves inadvertently the ‘opposition’.
A hypothesis provided to me was that this is a common mindset because, in debates, “as soon as you care, you can’t win”. Thus, people are unlikely to admit they care, or to reveal too much emotional weight, preferring to “explain things away”. Multiple people echoed this, talking about how interpersonal disagreements within their debating friend groups often
life with the same perspective. This reasoning seems to explain why such a high concentration of these traits not only exist in debaters but are exacerbated the more they engage in the activity.
Perhaps most fascinatingly, the constant pursuit of reasoning in debating compels certain people to further explain their way out of ‘bad’ behaviour. When speaking to people about this, I’d almost always immediately be met with a knowing look; “I’ve seen debaters back-justify some wild shit”. It’s a well-understood but amorphous phenomenon. The difference between an ordinary person and a debater justifying their social crimes, personal failings, or issues is that the debater is entirely convinced there is some sort of mechanism, some weird weighting, some risk calculus or fancy setup, that could intellectually rationalise their behaviour. Not emotionally. If you’ve wronged someone, it’s not justified by how they emotionally made you feel. It’s justified by actions they’ve taken or things they’ve said that can be dissected into providing a logical ‘case’ for your response. Even if others aren’t buying your reasons as much, there’s clearly a noticeable pattern of thinking where people are able to at least justify things to themselves by ‘weighing up’ (something) the ‘stakeholders’ (real living breathing people). Constant practice in separating yourself from real scenarios to discuss every potential hypothetical and counterhypothetical can embolden people’s (already poor) decision-making processes.
and suddenly produce defensive or excessively logical tendencies in people. Perhaps part of this is neuroticism or neurodivergence, traits which seem to overlap fairly heavily with debaters. These are likely people who are predisposed to this way of thinking in the first place, and clearly enjoy and value it given their commitment to the activity. However, debating seems to embolden these tendencies and provide an avenue for them to be validated. When you are rewarded for practising defensiveness or detachment, you’re more likely to approach other aspects of your
across as the “instrumentalisation of poor people” instead. Say enough buzzwords about poor women of colour and you can wrangle a win.
The result is also that debating, for some, can be an exercise in which people argue about minorities so often that they conflate their successes or knowledge with absolution. The most salient instances of this, as I spoke to debaters for this piece, were reported to me by women of colour. They touched on the barriers they faced in debating and the “lack of solidarity from white women” who would otherwise be considered progressive or advocate against sexism.
Some people spoke to me about the Australasian Women and Gender Minorities Debating Championships
I was given a few examples of this, most often circling around the same theme. Specifically, that intellectualisation allows debaters, mostly within the Australian circuit, to operate under the pretense that they are ‘above’ certain biases. When I spoke to people of colour (POC) debaters, they echoed the sentiment that white debaters could often be paternalistic or defensive about their behaviour. One described debaters as operating under a “veneer of leftism”, where people “intellectually understand concepts like systemic racism… and so they try and intellectualise their way out of complicity in them”. Another person remarked on “the vulnerable-stakeholder-ification” of debating as the primary reason POC within the circuit often feel unheard. A ‘vulnerable stakeholder’ in a debate is one that is marginalised, most often poor, of colour, women, those in developing countries, etc. Often, debaters will use vulnerable stakeholders as a shortcut to win or advance arguments in a debate. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; arguments for the advancement of vulnerable populations deserve merit. But this tendency, when combined with intellectual dishonesty or just an air of detachment, can come
discussions were held as to whether an ‘institutional cap’ should be implemented. A ‘cap’ in a competition is a limit on the number of teams from each institution that can proceed to elimination rounds, even if there were a greater number of qualifying teams than the size of the cap. Historically, this means the USU, which performs quite well and often has multiple teams which could proceed, has teams which miss out on elimination rounds and progression. A cap isn’t directly in the USU’s interests, but is a tradeoff large institutions have accepted in many other competitions to prevent essentially monopolising the circuit. Regarding this specific competition, I was told non-WOC debaters from the USU opposed the idea of a cap on behalf of women of colour (WOC) because it was systematically going to disadvantage them at the USU, as
That year, the USU contingent was functionally segregated; only nonWOC had trialled into USU teams one through six, with all the WOC in the lower ranked teams six to twelve. WOC debaters correctly pointed out that the problem was not the cap but the segregated contingent, which was clearly a USU problem. They argued that the USU should invest in internal development for WOC instead of using their low rankings as an argument in favour of rejecting a cap. This was allegedly not received well.
Having contested opinions on an idea is fine, but lots of POC during the tournament reported feeling a “keen sense of hypocrisy” that non-POC women, who would clearly be able to see the impetus for internal reform if the issue were one of gender, were unable to push for this when it came to race. This was articulated to me by someone as: “If you took the ‘of colour’ out of ‘women of colour’, they would all be on board”. The core frustration was that women of colour were being used as a negotiating tool in an argument most did not agree with. The “vulnerable-stakeholder-ification” of real women of colour in the society and in the circuit by ‘woke’ non-POC was an aspect people reported feeling immensely frustrated by. I remember being at this competition, keenly aware of a vague but unspoken divide, frustrated at the lack of desire to fix clear racial inequalities.
and have privileged constituents; for example, Sydney Girls and Sydney Boys both have Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage profiles almost identical to many private schools. Most regular public schools often do not have coaches or even entry into the kinds of weekly competitions that necessitate them. This creates a circle of privilege where only those who are privileged can access high school coaching; then, in university, only those in-the-know or with adequate social capital can access the best development opportunities. Because class closely correlates with race, this also locks out a lot of POC debaters from accessing these same networks.
Afterwards, I proposed a quota for women and non-cis men of colour in the higher teams of the USU contingent. This way, women of colour could get better trialling partners and development, and also didn’t have to worry about the institutional cap as much. A lot of people, thankfully, understood the importance of this and the general mechanism behind quotas as a useful solution. Not everyone did though; there was the sentiment that this wasn’t entirely necessary. I found it interesting because the society has a non-cis men quota, but the element of race being added in made it immediately less digestible. I’m glad there was support and that the quota was ratified; this year’s AWGMDC contingent looks a lot less segregated. Having been mostly out of the society this year, I can quite clearly observe that initial progress has been made, but retention rates for POC and WOC novices and development must improve for long-term sustainability beyond quotas.
When enquiring about the state of women of colour’s development in the USU now, I was told by current debaters that it was still difficult for POC to get access to “the same development opportunities” as nonPOC. The way you develop as a debater is through practice, often at small weekend ‘mini’ competitions; younger ‘novice’ debaters can attend these with older, more experienced ‘pros’. As a novice, this is where either being very good at the activity or having connections with pros helps. Often, pros will take the same novices they coached in high school or those familiar to them from the high school circuits. The schools that have dedicated debating coaches are most often private; these are schools that can charge up to $50,000 a year in tuition, have multimillion dollar endowments, and access to weekly debating competitions. The few public selective schools that have coaching programs are usually top-ranking
less than half of the Krabi contingent’s percentage. Gender representation at Krabi, at least, had parity with USyd’s demographics. Race and class did not.
There are earnest solutions in place: the USU holds development days for high schoolers from public schools as well as women; there are society ‘points’ for developing novices who haven’t competed in high school; there are POC, women, and gender minority quotas for majors. But gender, class, and race still remain barriers to entry and obstacles when navigating the circuit.
I briefly ran the numbers and diversity statistics for Krabi Australs 2023, where the USU sent a contingent of 10 teams, totalling 30 people. This is obviously a quite small and specific sample size; writing informed by my personal experience means looking at the most salient competition for me, and Krabi was my first international major. My (approximate) analysis of the contingent reveals that: 80 per cent had attended a private high school; of the remaining 20 per cent, 13 per cent had attended a selective school; 73 per cent were, essentially, white; almost 50 per cent were women or gender minorities. I was the only woman and person of colour on the contingent.
Class was described to me as “the most surmountable barrier in debating”. The most tangible manifestation of class as a barrier is in the expenses associated with competing. For majors, the expenses are high — flights, travel, registration — and you often have to pay out of pocket. The USU funds a portion of expenses, and while the funding model has thankfully improved to become more equitable over the years, not all teams receive funding, and the portion of money required regardless is still significant. I was lucky enough to get equity funding for Krabi Australs, and still paid over $1,000 out of pocket; this is the inevitable cost of an activity requiring international travel and event coordination. The time commitment required to dedicate multiple consecutive weekends to go to ‘mini’ competitions precludes holding down a regular retail or hospitality job. It does, however, benefit your resume and employability when it comes to getting a debating coaching job — and this is where the class surmounting happens.
Debating coaching in Sydney is a ridiculously overpaid gig. There’s high demand from private schools and coaching centres for experienced coaches, matched with a relatively small supply. This means hourly private rates can often start as high as $50 for freshly graduated high schoolers and increase up to $90 for those a few years into their degrees. Even public school competitions pay $60 to $70 for adjudicators. The money coaches receive can allow you to sustain yourself on relatively few hours a week compared to any other casual job.
bracket. As a coach, your income may allow you to also move up an actual tax bracket. Debating, and coaching, sells class mobility.
I am a sucessful buyer. I grew up and live in Western Sydney; by competing in debating at a selective high school in the East, I was then able to navigate the USU and Australian circuit fairly well. I have been able to secure coaching jobs which have significantly improved my quality of life in terms of not only securing a sense of financial stability but also securing the freedom to work less hours. I have been able to meet the kinds of successful, driven people I would, unfortunately, otherwise be more unlikely to cross paths with. Debating, along with the privileges afforded to me by USyd, has been a worthwhile ascension into a system and realm previously locked.
For all its faults and my analyses, debating has still unveiled a plethora of lovely, non-monetary, benefits for me. This is why it’s been a consistent factor in my life. I’ve spent nearly every Friday night debating for most of my six years in high school, and then coaching and adjudicating for all my four years in university. There are few situations in life that demand a structured environment where people unequivocally listen to and respond to you; learning and sharpening how to articulate myself round after round has been invaluable. The beautiful side of the double-edged sword of gamifying conflict is that I, a young, semi-shy twelve year old brown girl, was gifted with the audacity that I deserve to be listened to. Krabi Australs 2023 was such a wonderful and rare opportunity; debating has afforded me a unique and relatively affordable chance to travel overseas. It has introduced me to teammates and people who enjoy arguing just as much, often more, than I do, who do not roll their eyes when I number my thoughts, who pre-empt my responses, who are some of the most inquisitive and original thinkers I know.
This is not a fact that was particularly surprising to me, or to anyone familiar with USU debating. But this experience, combined with hearing about the low retention rates for women of colour, having my speech material ignored fairly consistently at Australs, and the experience of AWGMDC that year, had shifted my perception of the USU and the activity. USyd does not make racial diversity data publicly available, though the last published private school intake data for the university was in 2021 and indicated a mere 32 per cent —
People I spoke to reported that, if you're working class and can secure a coaching job, it “allows you to step into a different level of people and money”. It doesn’t just provide financial benefits, it can also provide access to the kinds of people that are likely to become influential in the future, such as high court justices and prominent politicians. This is part of why parents shell out enormous amounts of money to ensure their children can access the ‘elite’ activity and consistently dedicate time each week to shuttle them around various eastern suburbs and north shore private schools. As a debater, you can theoretically, in terms of networks and connections, move up a tax
Despite barely competing anymore, the debating universe is still allconsuming; my co-workers, my society members, my teammates, and opposition are all my friends.
Where Australia Begins
Faye Tang goes to Moscow.
What lies behind every Australian visa?
Hundreds of thousands of rejected ones, for every trivial purpose imaginable: you don’t seem to love your job or your country enough (suspicious), you’ve phrased your application just a little too desperately (suspicious), or, god forbid, you’re unmarried (suspicious). The home affairs office wields nothing but the hermeneutics of suspicion, the too-close reading of somebody’s life in documents, not to learn about them as an archivist or biographer might, but to pluck at any nettle untrimmed, anything that might suffice as reason to turn them away.
In early August, eight recognised researchers who were invited to present at the 20th International Bat Research Conference in Cairns were, at the last minute, denied entry visas into Australia. The researchers were reportedly from Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan, and Georgia; one of them had completed their PhD at an Australian university. It is hard to imagine, in a visa office presided over so hawkishly, that these rejections aren’t the product of intentional systemic exclusions.
In some truly appalling cases, these exclusions don’t require any imagination. In 2023, five Australian universities enforced a blanket ban on international student applications from six Indian states. Under Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil in 2024, visas granted to South Asian international students fell between 48-55 per cent in a year, with some students unable to accept their PhD offers due to slow visa processing. It is hard to take Australia’s claims to liberality and multiculturalism seriously when our Home Affairs often veer into a culture of stereotypes and exclusion.
Student visas are not the only ones affected. After COVID, visa approvals for Chinese nationals plummeted, and even four years on, they remain a spotty, lengthy process. A friend of mine is on a visitor visa — a feat in itself, for an unmarried Chinese woman of middling age, whose younger sister has previously been denied — which grants her three separate entries into Australia, each lasting up to three months. A lawyer informed her that despite this “allowance”, she should not stay for longer than six of her nine months, as doing so would
‘official’. It is part of a web of underhandedly obfuscated rules and prohibitions that the Home Affairs department uses to restrict human movement.
“But rules are rules”, one might say, “you have to limit immigration somehow”. Such platitudes ignore the sinister reasons for the impetus of reducing migration. Immigration must be limited to protect the status of firstworld workers so that they can receive firstworld wages and benefit from the low wages of the third world. It’s a system that necessitates the exclusion of a vast majority of workers in order to elevate the lifestyles of a handful of nations. These nations (shockingly) correlate directly to the former colonial nations, basking in the afterglow of Eurocentrism. The privilege to immigrate into the first world is thus doled out invariably, exploitatively, to back-end programmers over chiropterologists.
Last semester in a class on migration in literature, I came across a piece by migrant and multilingual author Yoko Tawada that dramatised the wish for freedom of human movement in a world entangled with absurd, arbitrary borders. In the story, a Japanese couple of the generation that formed the 194050s zengakuren communist student movement valorised Moscow as a kind of totemic ideal. “Going to Moscow” meant trying in vain to achieve that which is intensely desirable, but just out of reach — like working a sufferable job, or owning a house in Tokyo. The unspoken contract is that neither of them will ever truly reach Moscow, because actualising that ideal meant that there will be nothing more to live for. Their daughter, the delightfully literalist narrator who isn’t initiated into this secret, unprecedentedly took it upon herself to go, physically, to that place which cannot be reached.
The bulk of the story takes place on liminal modes of transport and narrative alike, weaving local Siberian fairytales with travel diaries which, eclectically, are written before the travel takes place, such that the chronology of the story is always ambiguous and in flux. Though this permanent state of transit might seem tedious in another context, Tawada’s
a constant challenge to Eurocentric geography (“Where is Beijing? — to the west. — and what lies beyond the sea in the east? — America”).
Aptly, its title is Wo Europa anfängt (Where Europe begins). The narrator had operated under the impression that Europe’s starting line was Moscow; a Frenchman, fellow transSiberian traveller, doesn’t believe Russia counts as Europe at all. The irreverent punchline comes when the train chortles past a rickety signpost halfway through Siberia, in the middle of some nameless snowy field, which officially marks the Eurasian border. The European borders are a purely arbitrary “scar on this earth”, she realises — you realise. Europe is a myth. Borders are drawn by fallible people, often for no good reason, and enforced almost purely for bad ones.
It is perhaps harder to understand this for a country surrounded by ocean, but we must keep in mind that coastlines are not political borders. They can be crossed freely, by boat, by plane, by people. The true, scarring borders have long been driven inside both the physical human body and the nonphysical human identity. It lies in your documents, your face, and your fingerprints. It is violent and invasive, and it demands the subjugation of your body and spirit to an arbitrary system of movement defined by exclusion. It engineers the desirable ‘Moscow’ — Australia and the so-called West — on a scarcity principle that relies on, and thus has incentive to reproduce, the undesirability, or the oppression, of the third world.
In a world that did not reproduce these latitudinal lines of exploitation, one would not have to worry about freedom of movement, of ‘illegal’ migration. One would not have to run through visa applications with such a fine-toothed comb. But as it stands, when Tawada’s narrator finally arrives in Moscow, she is faced with what is, by now, familiar news to us. An imminent deportation, on the basis of an invalid visa. It is only then that she has a finalising, totalising realisation: she is “in the middle of Europe”; she is suspicious in the eyes of Home Affairs; she is at the apex of an exclusive, exploitative system.
Visibility Is Never Neutral
Ondine Karpinellison is seen at a protest.
1 Visibility / Hypervisibility
2 The March for Humanity
3 University Surveillance
4 Campus Access Policy
5 Tensions Contents [hide]
Visibility is never neutral. To be visible is to enact the ‘right to appear’. Judith Butler considers visibility in protest to be a statement: “We are not disposable… we are still here, persisting, demanding greater justice, a release from precarity, a possibility of a livable life.” But Butler also recognises that to be seen at a protest is to expose yourself to precariousness, and for some more than others. To be seen, particularly if you are a person of colour, is to be seen through a, as Butler puts it, “racially saturated field of visibility”, in which race distorts perception and determines who is recognised as a threat. This dynamic positions certain bodies as garnering more attention and discipline. They become hypervisible
The importance of visibility in mobilising protest cannot be understated, be that livestreaming, photography, or video sharing. For mass mobilisation, people must be able to see both what showing support looks like, and what they are supporting.
Invisibility is silence, and violence. The erasure and exclusion of certain voices from the political space denies recognition before claims can be heard. There is no clearer example of this than the media and government’s response to what is happening in Palestine right now. Strategic censorship renders various groups invisible and actively silences those whose voices are arguably the most important to hear right now. To be heard is to be seen. In protest, being heard is the goal. Amongst a crowd of 300,000 people — the likes of which we saw a few weeks ago at the ‘March for Humanity’ — some people were seen more than others.
This visibility is importantly amplified by the common practice of recording protests. Protests are livestreamed to engage a wider audience in the movement, to extend the message beyond those who are physically able to show up. The act of filming insists that what happens here must be seen, archived, and reckoned with. There is also the notion that visibility equals accountability. When police attempt to stifle protests, or target individual protestors, there is a hope that recording state violence will ensure it can later be challenged, exposed, or punished. It rarely is.
The increasing surveillance of university students who engage in protest poses a disproportionate threat. In April this year, the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) and Amnesty International wrote to the University of Melbourne’s Vice-Chancellor “citing serious concerns with the ill defined restrictions on all protests at the University, including a ban on indoor protests, and amendments to its Wireless Terms of Use Policy which permits the surveillance of all users without any suspicion or wrongdoing or misuse of the network.”
Fast forward to 20th August and The Guardian reported that the “University of Melbourne breached students’ privacy by using wifi network to monitor Pro-Palestine protest.” The University allegedly breached the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act by using the wifi network to “surveil students and staff holding a pro-Palestine protest last May.” Perhaps the HRLC and Amnesty International had grounds for concern? Beyond wifi connection data, the university allegedly used “a combination of wifi location data, student card photographs and CCTV footage to identify 22 students who failed to comply with orders to leave the University’s Arts West building on 20 May.”
At our own university, there are also worrying developments. When asked for comment, current Students’ Representative Council General Secretary Grace Street stated:
“We know that USyd has been using social media posts and surveillance footage to identify people at the encampment, at rallies and for other activities that go against the [Campus Access Policy], to keep tabs on and to send disciplinary notice to students without warning. It is occurring in person too.
“Last year when security shut down a [Autonomous Collective Against Racism’s] bake sale raising funds for a family in Gaza, they demanded to see and photograph our student ID cards. As soon as I spoke up and questioned this process, security began to exaggerate
and report to their supervisor that we were all “refusing” to comply, in an attempt to intimidate and silence us.”
For marginalised students, their loss of anonymity carries disproportionate risk, including academic penalties, visa cancellation, or police targeting. Visibility, in this context, goes beyond amplifying the movement. Rather, it becomes a permanent inscription in surveillance archives, marking protestors as subjects of suspicion long after the action ends.
If visibility exposes student protestors to surveillance and discipline, anonymity holds its own violence. In the last few years, planned Victorian laws have targeted any attempts of maintaining anonymity at protests, including outlawing masks and balaclavas. These laws ignore the reality of hypervisibility and makes anonymity especially precarious: while protestors may seek concealment to protect themselves from surveillance or reprisals, their anonymity is far more likely to be read as inherently suspicious. In contrast, the far right retains the ability to use anonymity tactically. It must also be acknowledged that the far right have grown far more comfortable with visibility. The two main organisers of the extremist ‘March for Australia’ are widely known and being repeatedly shared across various media platforms. So perhaps anonymity is losing its advantage? While previously, neo-nazis and extremist groups operated on the fringes sequestered away from the public view they now move openly and comfortably in the public space.
The politics of protest are defined by this tension between invisibility, visibility, and anonymity. Each operates differently, shaping who is recognised, erased, and concealed. Right now, this tension cannot
ArtbyPurnyAhmed
The Ugly Truth About Australia’s Animal Sexual Abuse Laws
Content Warning: This article contains mentions of sexual violence, animal abuse, child abuse, and bestiality.
In Australia, we’re spoon-fed the same neat lie: animal sexual abuse laws exist to protect animals. Bullshit. That’s the government’s bedtime story, a sweet everything’s going to be alright lullaby to quiet the collective conscience while predators slip between legal cracks — while patterns of violence breed and replicate behind closed doors. This framing, this refined, bureaucratic language of bestiality or welfare doesn’t just shield perpetrators (or future perpetrators); it trivialises sexual harm and ignores the welldocumented link between animal abuse and human abuse.
And while our country brags about its koalas and kangaroos, and its sacred red soil and sunburnt landscapes, there is no National Animal Welfare Commission.
In a nation where a Prime Minister once hoarded ministerial portfolios like Gollum clutching his ‘precious,’ we’ve left a gaping wound in policy and statute, one that festers in silence while future generations are quietly set up for unimaginable harm.
The term Animal Sexual Abuse (ASA) is relatively new, but the acts themselves are not. For centuries, society used other words like bestiality, buggery, and sodomy. Between 1727 and 1930, Australian courts and newspapers deliberately suppressed archives of trials involving humans, animals, and sexual violence (check out: Unfit for Publication: NSW Supreme Court and Other Bestiality, Buggery, and Sodomy Trials).
By the 1940s, the Kinsey Report in the U.S. etched a sanitised cultural myth, the lonely farm boy ‘experimenting’ with livestock. This image softened the brutality, masking violence under rustic sepia tones. In Australia, where agriculture defines identity and rural isolation amplifies silence, we cling to similar myths. But the reality remains hidden: we don’t know how common this is and we don’t want to assume either.
But one thing we do know is that this violence has always existed.
McDonald’s Farm or Macdonald’s Triad?
For decades, researchers have known what lawmakers ignore, or simply can not, legally, act upon. This is that animal cruelty predicts broader violence. The Macdonald Triad, first introduced in 1961 in the United States linked childhood animal abuse, arson, and persistent bed-wetting to violent offending later in life. Modern studies, like Dr Melissa Bright’s work on family trauma, reveal even deeper connections. Animal cruelty spans neglect, torture, drowning, sexual abuse, poisoning, burns, and orchestrated fighting. Research also shows that children
who endure physical and sexual abuse are statistically far more likely to harm animals, and yet, our courts still silo ASA as if it exists in isolation. The criminological consensus is that animal cruelty, including sexual abuse, is a predictive marker for interpersonal violence, yet Australian laws treat bestiality and posession of animal abuse material as distinct from child sex abuse with lower penalties, different investigative units, and absence from sex offender registries.
The Hon. Emma Hurst, Member of the NSW Legislative Council (MLC) for the Animal Justice Party (AJP), an animal advocate and politician, who heavily lobbied for animal abuse reform in Australia has commented in the past: “People who sexually abuse animals are a danger to both animals and children. Research shows a clear link between animal sexual abuse and sexual abuse. This is both a human and an animal rights issue.”
If offender profiles, recidivism patterns, and digital evidence tell us ASA and child sexual abuse often intersect, why doesn’t the law treat them the same?
We pretend this is rare, fringe, deviant. It’s not. ASA content travels the same backchannels as child sexual abuse material, through encrypted Telegram groups, darknet forums, gore archives like bestgore.com, and cesspits like 4chan. ‘Crush videos’, where animals are burned, mutilated, suffocated for arousal, are sold in the same digital marketplaces. Many of these animals are drugged, restrained, conditioned into silence; their exploitation mirrors the grooming of child victims almost perfectly. And yet, the law still frames ASA as a moral hiccup, a niche obscenity, instead of treating it for what it is: an urgent, escalating marker of sexual violence.
No case lays bare Australia’s systemic rot more brutally than Adam Britton’s. The crocodile researcher and BBC collaborator filmed himself raping, torturing, and killing dozens of dogs between 2014 and 2022, circulating the footage online. In 2022, the Northern Territory increased penalties for aggravated cruelty from two to five years under the Animal Protection Act 2018, yet Britton avoided harsher sentencing because his crimes predated the reforms. In August 2024, he received a ten-year-and-five-month sentence with a six-year non-parole period. Chief Justice Michael Grant called his acts “grotesque” and “beyond ordinary human comprehension,” yet the sentence reflected legislative delay, not the true scale of harm.
Dr Mina Malekpour reveals the truth.
In the same legal ecosystem, 43-yearold Joel Jasem Kerim repeatedly raped a pony across eight months, allegedly aided by his wife, filming the assaults and curating a personal archive. He confessed, cooperated with police, and promised to testify against her. His reward was an Intensive Correction Order: no prison, just supervised community service. The law didn’t frame the crime as violence against a sentient being but as a breach of society’s moral order, ‘a biblical disgust of Leviticus’, reducing the animal to property, a commodity to be compensated rather than a living subject capable of suffering.
By 2023, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal confronted yet another collision of animal exploitation, sexual violence, and systemic failure. Alan George Chesworth, 78, pleaded guilty to bestiality, possession and dissemination of child abuse material, drug supply, and firearms offences. Police uncovered 13,000 images and 3,000 videos, including explicit recordings of Chesworth penetrating his co-offender’s dog. He appealed his three-year-and-sixmonth sentence, but the Court (Rothman, Wilson, and Yehia JJ) dismissed it, reaffirming the “objective seriousness” of bestiality and placing the offence “just below mid-range” given the animal’s vulnerability and inability to consent. While the Court acknowledged his age, psychiatric issues, and rehabilitation prospects, it prioritised general deterrence and denunciation — a stance glaringly inconsistent with Kerim’s communitybased punishment.
As the Hon. Emma Hurst, MLC, has bluntly observed, “Australia’s animal protection laws are exceptionally out of date.” In NSW, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979 still governs animal welfare over forty years later, hopelessly detached from modern science, community expectations, and the reality of systemic cruelty.
In 2020, the AJP introduced the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Amendment (Increased Penalties) Bill 2020 (NSW), calling for tougher sanctions on animal abuse. Within weeks, the NSW government dropped its own nearidentical Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Amendment 2021 (NSW), legislative plagiarism under ‘policy alignment’. The final version secured mandatory lifetime bans on anyone convicted of animal cruelty under the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), including bestiality and serious animal cruelty. It also exposed a disturbing loophole: under the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act 2010 (NSW), a conviction for serious animal cruelty under section 530 of the Crimes Act wasn’t an automatic bar to obtaining a Working With Children Check.
Since then, the AJP has scored key wins, from the Companion Animals Amendment (Rehoming Animals) Act 2022 (NSW) forcing council pounds to rehome instead
of ‘convenience kill’ to the Animal Research Amendment (Right to Release) Act 2022 (NSW), requiring labs to rehome tested animals.
However, The Crimes Amendment (Animal Sexual Abuse) Bill 2024 is truly special. Introduced by the AJP, it finally replaces the word bestiality with Animal Sexual Abuse under section 79–80 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). Its reforms are seismic:
• s 79 ASA offence: up to 14 years
• s 79A ASA company’:‘inup to 20 years
• s 79B Sale, advertisement, or procurement of animals for abuse: 5 years
• s 80 Attempted ASA: 5 years
For the first time, the law grudgingly acknowledges ASA as a serious sexual offence, no longer a quaint moral embarrassment whispered about in courtrooms. But the system remains a hollow skeleton. There is no national strategy to track predators, monitor the twisted content they churn out, or standardise enforcement across borders. A predator drifts from state to state, erasing their digital traces, slipping between jurisdictions, and reoffending in silence while the machinery of law yawns. Enforcement must be sharpened, hard and unflinching: a national animal abuse registry, lifetime bans on ownership (in all states), automatic alerts for anyone working with children or animals, and ruthless, cross-border data sharing. No more disappearing acts. No more loopholes. No more silence while the predators write their next chapter in cruelty.
The AJP’s Crimes Amendment (Animal Sexual Abuse) Bill 2024 is a tectonic shift, but it cannot be the last. To stop the next predator we must confront ASA not as an obscure taboo but as a high-risk violence marker, and predictor for potential child sex offenders.
This is not just about animal rights. It is about breaking down the interconnected systems of abuse, the ecosystems where harm to animals, children, and adults converge and are facilitated by outdated statutes and legislative silence.
We are not just failing animals.
We are failing ourselves.
Let’s Grow A ‘Spine’ and Actually Talk Genocide
Jenna Rees steps into New Zealand politics.
Up until last week, Chlöe Swarbrick was not a name I had heard before. I don’t pride myself on being up to date with New Zealand politics, nor do I go out of my way to read articles on the happenings of Kiwi parliament debate time. However, following Chlöe Swarbrick’s speech, I was hooked.
On 12th August, the New Zealand parliament held a debate on Palestine. This debate was triggered following Australia, the UK, France, and Canada’s coinciding moves to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. Despite New Zealand’s historically progressive attitude in global politics, at the time of this article, they are yet to decide whether they will formally recognise a Palestinian state. As such, many fear that New Zealand risks becoming an outlier among its allied nations.
Chlöe Swarbrick is the co-leader of the New Zealand Greens party, and during this particular debate on 12th August, she took centre stage. She plainly stated, “what is happening in Palestine, and has been happening for the last 76 years, is ethnic cleansing… It’s a genocide.” Prime Minister of New Zealand Christopher Luxon, however, refused to use the term
‘genocide’ to describe what is happening. When Swarbrick questioned Luxon, asking if he was aware that under the Genocide Convention, New Zealand has a responsibility to the international community to help serve and protect, he disagreed that what is happening in Palestine is falls under the definition of a genocide, opting rather to use the phrase “humanitarian catastrophe”. Now, even if we were to use this term, “humanitarian catastrophe”, under his premise, basic human rights is conditional on a terrorist organisation releasing hostages, as per his requirements to recognise Palestinian statehood. In Swarbrick’s speech, she retorted, saying that “we don’t get human rights because somebody else decides that we are worthy, but we get them because we are human.”
Swabrick’s main argument was that the government should adopt the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill and sanction Israel for its war crimes and acts of genocide. But the crux of her speech was when she said: “if we find six of 68 Government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history.” That was what drew controversy. Immediately, the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, a National Party representative, said: “That is
completely unacceptable to make that statement. Withdraw it and apologise.” Swabrick refused, and thus Brownlee ordered her to leave the house for the rest of the week, forbidding her return unless she apologised.
Now, supposedly, it wasn’t the phrase “spine” that the speaker found to be unacceptable, it was rather the implication that it drew: that New Zealand MPs were neither courageous nor brave. But, there are many examples of other MPs using similar language in parliament to describe opponents including: ‘get a spine’, ‘guts’, ‘spinless’, and ‘gutless’. Typically, speakers are only empowered to remove an MP for a single day, yet Brownlee called for Swarbrick to be ejected for an entire week, unless she apologised. Brownlee’s insistence that an apology is necessary before an MP can return is more retroactive, and new, a rule he made on his own accord following Swarbrick’s speech. Yet, if we compare this to Damian O’Connor who on the same day used the term “utterly gutless”, he only received the usual punishment of a oneday suspension. As such, not only was Swabrick’s punishment not aligned with other MPs’ punishment of similar action, but it also overshadowed the real heart of
A Forgotten Land Remembered
Calista Burrowes remembers history.
“Our land has a throbbing heart… It keeps the secrets of hills and wombs.”
– Fadwa Tuqan
It is a known but underrated fact that history surrounds us. It is not just in our thoughts and in the words we utter, but by the very material conditions we find ourselves in. History surrounds us even when we cannot see it. The act of seeing or not seeing is political and fundamental in knowing where we stand in our global political community. In Palestine, this could not be more true. For so often, the physical history of Palestinians has been erased through the events such as the Nakba and is currently being erased through Israel’s bombing, levelling, and destruction of land. Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson’s newest release Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials takes us through the land as it is uncovered and mourned, exploring what has been lost to time and what has been destroyed in the pursuit of domination of the narratives that persist.
The book is an intersection between geography, history, travel, and memoir
that seamlessly immerses the reader into a land that is often (intentionally) misrepresented. Funnily, there is something distinct about a work being published in 2025 that is more concerned with the physical world than the internal world. Introspection seems to be the mode of delivery in contemporary non-fiction, where much of our time is spent within the narrator’s mind. But, more importantly than ever, the land itself is the focus of the stories. In relation to stories of Palestine, affirming the presence of a place, even if it seems that it is dwindling with more settlements and occupations appearing everyday, is crucial. Palestinians still live on and hold connection to their land and it is imperative to remember that, which is why Forgotten is so special.
A section that struck me deeply is the chapter ‘No Longer a Crossroads: The Lost Connections of Palestine’ where Shehadeh and Johnson traverse thickets and thorns to find the neglected Khan al Tujjar, which once hosted travellers and visitors from everywhere in the Arab world. They note, with deep sadness, how such a significant and longstanding place could be left to be unkempt and hidden under Israeli control. It raises the question: to what end, politically, is the maintenance of a place that was once a bridge for civilisation,
that housed so many people on it? When we look at a phrase justifying Zionism, such as “a land without a people for a people without a land”, we can observe a revisionist history being formed: that Palestine was unoccupied and thus, ‘up for grabs’. We know this is not true and this is the repetition of a belief that also ‘legitimised’ the colonisation of the land we now call Australia by labelling it “terra nullius”, or “nobody’s land”. By creating a landscape that is impenetrable and hides the physical structures upon it, it affirms this idea of an empty land and unoccupied. Land is not only political in the sense of what it is called and who has a claim to it, but also in how it is treated, and to what end the abuse of the natural world is a purposeful attack. We can already see this in practical ways such as the Israeli’s army’s destroying of Palestinian-owned water supplies. But rarely do we acknowledge how cultural memory is impacted in this way, making Shahadeh and Johnson’s work all the more significant. As so much of the conflict and violence over Palestine is about who is entitled to space, and the ability to point to physical and material manifestations of this right, amplifying stories that are not only diasporic and psychological but are temporal and grounded is crucial.
the problem. The issue is not MPs saying ‘bad’ or ‘defamatory’ words in parliament, but rather New Zealand’s unwillingness to recognise the current genocide as a genocide, and wanting to draw the attention away from their own inaction.
Government’s are unwilling to utilise the word ‘genocide’, as they fear the connotations that it draws. They fear the idea that this could be a repeat Holocaust or Rwandan genocide. There is a fear that if they do nothing, like New Zealand is doing right now, that future generations would hold them liable. By completely retracting the word ‘genocide’, blame cannot be had because, in their opinion, this is not a genocide.
As such, it boils down to this: conservative parliaments not wanting to recognise genocide. They want to put conditions on human rights: who deserves them and who does not. And wanting to shift the blame and the spotlight from themselves to others. It’s pretty simple.
It is not about having a ‘spine’. It is about genocide.
What makes Forgotten special is that even though it is about Palestine, a fact that should not be forgotten, it is about all of us and our relationship to the land. We are reminded that “we humans tend to neglect the skin of the earth in our drive for dominance” and that could not be more true in our race against time to save this dying planet. The fact that Shahadeh and Johnson never use the pronouns ‘I’ or ‘me’, and instead ‘we’, cements the idea that this work is an invitation to uncover the ‘hidden places’ of our own environments, to uncover the worlds we occupy and, most importantly, connect ourselves to the humanity of Palestinians which is being systematically stripped away with every bomb dropped and every massacre.
Forgotten is a testament to those who have traversed Palestine over the years and speaks to the truths that the natural world reveals and carries through their scars and wounds. It is an invitation to be in community and unity with Palestinians at a crucial time in their unfolding story.
USyd’s Erasure of Aboriginal Anthropology: Distractions of Global Studies
Jayden Nguyen writes.
2025 marks the centenary of Australia’s first Anthropology department, founded by Alfred RadcliffeBrown at the University of Sydney. Alongside fellow Australian anthropologists Daisy Bayes and Norman Tindale, Radcliffe-Brown’s mappings of Aboriginal language groups and kinship systems form the basis of contemporary Native Title research.
Influenced by Social Darwinism and expecting the extinction of Aboriginal communities, Radcliffe-Browne produced a vast and influential portfolio of research which first transcribed kinship systems and genealogies into English scholarship. His classifications have become criteria necessary to demonstrate Aboriginal connections to Country for Native Title claims, proving the influence of Radcliffe-Brown’s research.
I was made aware, by Dr Nayeli Torres-Montenegro, of the University of Sydney’s discontinuation of Aboriginal anthropology courses from 2021 onwards. Having completed her PhD on Native Title in the Pilbara region after working on the field, she now identifies two existential problems facing the Anthropology department: not only is the department effectively erasing its influential (albeit colonial) history, but students are also deprived of the cultural knowledge required for working practically in Native Title settings. For the University of Sydney, decolonisation of curricula remains a blaring issue despite it’s unique capacity to reshape the discipline.
Dr Torres-Montenegro was denied the opportunity to propose a reinstated Aboriginal cultures course focusing on Native Title:
“I sent an email at the befginning of this year, asking if there were any plans to bring back the courses on Aboriginal Australia, and whether I could give a proposal. It was a flat no: ‘not in the foreseeable future’.”
This decision speaks to a broader issue with the direction of the department. Not only are the Anthropology scholars
specialising in Aboriginal cultures retired or passed away, but it’s current faculty specialises on topics outside of Australia.
Importantly, a revived Aboriginal cultures course would be facilitated through collaboration between First Nations academics and their non-Indigenous colleagues. ANTH3618: Indigenous Australians Today was the last offered course on Aboriginal anthropology, facilitated through a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach. Current course offerings by the department now specialise on topics of global anthropology and Papua New Guinea.
The cessation of courses on Aboriginal anthropology, alongside the archiving of historical research, effectively contributes to the erasure of colonial history rather than confronting it in an attempt to decolonise knowledge production. Dr Torres-Montenegro’s criticism of the discipline’s trajectory towards global studies emphasises this point:
“We’re focusing on global anthropology, but we all work in Australia. We need to teach young generations what brought us to the positions we’re in. All that happened in the Stolen Generation…the head of department in Anthropology at the University of Sydney was involved in that. Why don’t we acknowledge what we did in the past, and move forward collaborating with Indigenous people to actually set the record straight?”
Despite the origins of Aboriginal anthropology beginning at the University of Sydney, the faculty now provides no opportunity for students to study it through coursework. The historical manuscripts of Radcliffe-Brown’s scholarship remain physically archived in Fisher Library because its contents feature First Nations communities without their consent or welcomed collaboration. His practice also involved the imposition of African anthropology onto Aboriginal contexts, which includes the colloquial tendency to simplify language groups as tribes. But, as Dr Torres-Montenegro argues, consciously
Find a New Town, Maccas
Take a walk along King Street nowadays and you may be one of the lucky few who find somewhere to eat, drink, or chill between the generous selection of overpriced clothing stores, tobacconists, kebab shops, New Wave spiritual boutiques and empty storefronts.
The dire state of Newtown’s distinctive identity is facing its largest challenge yet, with a recent proposal currently being assessed by the City of Sydney to open a new 24/7 McDonalds on King Street.
Barely weeks after a new KFC opened in early July, the McDonald’s proposal has provoked widespread criticism, with concerns over the livelihood of independent businesses like its potential nextdoor neighbour beloved chicken store, Clems. A Change.org petition opposing the development has reached over 1400 signatures with many taking to social media to voice their concerns. The scene of the potential crime bears posters with QR codes to a Sydney of City petition in protest of the McDonalds.
Newtown has been the subject of gentrification debates for many years. A cursory search in the State Library’s Dictionary of Sydney finds a description of Newtown which reads:
“Inner-west suburb which developed along the main road south from Sydney. It became a prosperous shopping district in the late 19th century, and later a workingclass and migrant suburb, now gentrified.”
Amid rising unease following Sydney’s lockout laws, in 2015 a community meeting attended by over 150 locals, led by Greens Member for Newtown Jenny Leong and the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, spurred the creation of the Newtown Vibe Roundtable, a multi-stakeholder
initiative aimed at preserving Newtown’s queer-friendly, community focused inclusive spirit. This is by no means a comprehensive historical overview but it places the potential arrival of McDonalds on King Street within a wider context of community struggle against gentrification within one of Sydney’s progressive hubs.
The Newtown community has won this battle against McDonalds once before when in 1998 Newtown Mcdonalds (located where Kellys on King currently is) had to close its doors due to community boycotts, or as they put it, the “changing demographics of the Newtown area, particularly in King Street.”
If gentrification has already beset the suburb, one might ask: what’s so wrong with McDonald’s? It is because this proposal is not just another symptom of a changing high street; it carries important ethical and political weight in the current global climate.
The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), advocates for action against companies complicit in “Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza”. McDonalds has been identified as a target for “grassroots organic boycott campaigns” along with other brands such as Pizza Hut and Dominos.
After 7th October, McDonald’s Israel provided Israeli occupation forces with “free McDonalds meals during the ongoing genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza”. The BDS movement stated that:
“Recently, McDonald’s franchisee in Malaysia has filed a SLAPP lawsuit against solidarity activists, claiming defamation. Instead of holding the Israel franchisee
revisiting the historical scholarship to become aware of its poor research ethics and racism is a necessary measure in decolonising the department. The transmission of cultural knowledge primarily from First Nations communities is necessary to decolonising the cultural essentialism inherent in historical scholarship by researchers such as Radcliffe-Brown.
Commenting on the developments of anthropology in practice, Dr Torres-Montenegro expressed concern about graduate jobs being situated outside of First Nations communities. The practice of ethnography is essential in contexts such as Native Title, where transcribed evidence must be produced from intangible attestations for the Federal Court’s review. Reflecting on her time in the Pilbara, Dr Torress-Montenegro emphasised the centrality of knowledge coming from First Nations communities:
“You need
to
learn
about
Indigenous people from Indigenous people...because students don’t know how to talk to Indigenous people or how to address them.”
The University of Sydney’s historical and locational proximities to Aboriginal history prove to be an innovative opportunity for actual decolonisation. However, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences seems to have turned towards global studies of decolonisation rooted in discursive critique. Theoretically, the application of critical theory and intersectionality requires the movement of ideas about justice into the material conditions of people’s lives. Ironically, the University of Sydney encourages students to research global inequalities while archiving it’s own historic contributions to ongoing Aboriginal dispossession.
Opinion
James Fitzgerald Sice is boycotting.
to account for supporting genocide, we are now witnessing corporate bullying against activists. For both these reasons, we are calling to escalate the boycott of McDonald’s until the parent company takes action and ends the complicity of the brand.”
In early 2024, McDonald’s reported its first quarterly sales miss in nearly four years. This miss was widely attributed to protests and boycott campaigns against the brand over its pro-Israeli stance with comparable sales in the affected segment rising only 0.7 per cent against an estimated 5.5 per cent growth.
For Newtown, a suburb with a historically politically progressive and inclusive identity, the prospect of a 24hour McDonald’s opening fundamentally contradicts its character. How can Newtown be a safe space for its community when it hosts a corporation explicitly targeted by a global movement for complicity in genocide? This is about more than just an aesthetic shift or rising costs; it is about the erosion of Newtown’s foundational values, its political consciousness.
This McDonald’s would of course devastate Newtown’s local businesses and late-night atmosphere but is also a harbinger of the dismantling of the things that make Newtown Newtown. Local initiatives have been trying to combat gentrification and homogenisation for years now. This would be the final nail in the coffin of the mainstreaming and depoliticisation of a community that has a long history resisting such forces.
Now more than ever, boycott Newtown fucking Maccas.
Borrowed Desire: Wearing a Man’s Sexual Skin
The art of yearning is dead. Or at least it seems to be. In my free time, I’ve taken to romanticising about a kitchen with coloured tiles, matching toothbrushes, and a longterm partner who is obsessed with me. But in reality, going out and meeting a guy for multiple dates seems to only turn me off. Despite my fantasies, I seem to have taken to short flings and drunk hookups at the club, followed by a morning of dodging the follow up texts from a snapchat I regrettably gave out. This behaviour has been aptly identified by a friend as ‘dating like a man’.
“You can bang your head against the wall and try to find a relationship or you can say screw it and just go out and have sex like a man.”
These are the first words spoken by Kim Catrall’s iconic character Samantha Jones in the pilot of Sex and the City, a pilot which revolves around Carrie’s quest to discover if she, and by extension any woman, can truly ‘have sex like a man’: without feelings and without commitment. When I watched that episode for the first time, I realised how radical that idea must have been at the time, and how ordinary it feels now. But also that more than two decades later, this idea still carries so much weight. Though maybe not as accepted, women sleeping around just as much as men is hardly a scandal, and yet when
Emma Georgopoulis ponders over the dire state of dating.
To say someone is “dating like a man” carries with it a whole host of gendered assumptions. Men are detached, commitment-phobic, and conquest driven. Women are romantic, yearning, and clingy. This heterosexual cultural script is so embedded that even when women flip this, it’s an imitation rather than just someone women might also want.
“I couldn’t help but wonder…” is having sex like a man even a thing? Sex and the City thinks so, and that’s the bible for all that is single and available. Is this concept just a stereotype that we have been recycling from 90s sitcoms, or is there merit in the term? Are men biologically wired to view sex and relationships in a more casual light, or is it social conditioning? Have we affirmed this concept into reality?
It is a common sentiment amongst groups of ‘red-pillers’ online that according to evolutionary biology, men are designed to be non-nomogamous, engaging in more casual sex than women for the purpose of reproduction. While a study published in journal Frontiers of Psychology found that men were significantly more likely to participate in casual sex in a hypothetical situation, the answer isn’t as straight forward. The truth lies less in biological differences and more in cultural permission. In 2001, sexual health researcher Teri Conley gave a Ted Talk on the Need to Rethink Casual Sex in which, in 2016, she reasoned that those socialised as women avoided casual sex and flings, not for a lack of biological drive, but rather out of fear of judgement as women receive more social stigma from casual encounters than men do. Conley also discussed the pleasure gap, referring to
Voting
the idea that heterosexual women might be less inclined to partake in casual sex because they experience less pleasure than their male counterparts (shocker).
The idea then, of ‘sex like a man’ looks to be rooted in the logic that people socialised as heterosexual men are more driven and allowed to be having noncomital sex.
So then, if it seems women should be less likely to have noncommittal sex, why do myself and other women around me find themselves dating or having sex ‘like men’?
Well maybe we can turn back to our ‘Sex and the City’ pilot: the girls are disillusioned by men.
With the rise of dating apps like Hinge and Tinder, it feels even more impossible to find the love of your life, the one you yearn for. My friends are being ghosted left right and center, and the other week I was stood up on a date. 90% of the women in my social circle have engaged in a soul crushing one-sided situationship. Have we too become so disillusioned by the prospects of a serious relationship that we’ve all become Samanthas? Perhaps. Or have we just adapted, and this is the state of modern love? Maybe women aren’t ‘having sex like men’ but instead just having sex, and the question rather turns into; can any of us still date like humans searching for connection? At the end of the day, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe the only real commonality between men and women is the collective disappointment of the silent unmatch on Hinge.
Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Elections 2025
VOTE!
will
be open on September 23, 24 & 25
All Sydney University undergraduate students who are currently enrolled are eligible to vote in the upcoming 2025 SRC elections. For more info see: bit.ly/SRC-vote
Avin Dabiri waits for the countdown.
I have 22,186 photos on my phone. I’m in 7,149 of them (self-obsessed, I know). Countless versions of me: smiling softly, posing, happy. And I do love my phone camera; it’s efficient, practical, and helps me capture the world around me or photograph fleeting moments between me and my friends. But the thousands upon thousands of pixels I scroll through are foreign sometimes; curated moments that look polished but feel strangely hollow.
This is why I find comfort in photobooths. They don’t let you perform, capturing a moment swiftly and in its purest form. There’s no manipulation, no filters, no retakes. It’s just you and the box; flashes that catch you as you are, not how you want to be. And minutes later you hold a strip in your hands, reflecting that moment eternally. The ink and machinery create a memory that will never fade. Although not outwardly evident, like many things I do think that photobooths have a bit of hidden magic in them — and for years this magic has got me hooked.
So much so that around four weeks ago I spent almost $2,000 to go see a photobooth exhibition in Melbourne called “Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits.” I had no idea what I was going into; I saw a few images of the displays and there went two months worth of my savings. I didn’t expect to feel so moved by a collection of media which turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. The exhibition had a compilation of film clips, poetry, artworks, and photobooth strips that reflected on the significance of the analogue machine, but more directly celebrated the life of Alan Adler.
Alan, who passed away last year, was the oldest and longest-serving photobooth technician in the world,
maintaining a series of photobooths across Melbourne for over 50 years. The exhibition took me through Alan’s fascinating life, from his early years, to his international travels, to his experimentation with colour photobooths — although in his words “nothing will ever give the same quality photographs as the good old-fashioned black and white.”
I walked around for hours, looking over the thousands of Alan’s strips, reading excerpts from books and learning about the origins and development of the machine. I watched families, friends, and partners line up at the machine in the centre of the space, knowing that moments later they’d have a strip that reflected them exactly as they were in that moment: versions of themselves they’d never be again.
But what struck me most were the voices woven through the exhibition, fragments of testimony regarding photobooths that echoed my own feelings. I listened to Alan himself admit: “Sometimes a machine tells me that something’s wrong…
“There is a certain relationship with me and photobooths. Sometimes they do mysterious things.”
I saw declarations from scholars, like Brian Meacham who likened the photobooth to cinema itself: “four successive frames of a sequence that together tell a story.” Even though they are frozen films, these strips remain alive
The Currency of Secrets
The salacious concept of secrets, and their accompanying whispers, has long burrowed into the psyche of our still spinning world. They’re everywhere: from canards splattered onto the technicolour lines of primary school quads with games like Telephone — a verbal pass-theparcel which taught me how easily my words could be distorted and changed — to the idealised adult-world where my mum will still, at 51-years-old, tell me the tidbits of gossip that cling to her microcosm. Secrets are foundational and neverending.
The tangling network we’ve spun to bind our societies together are knotted with secret-keeping, secret-sharing, and the enjoyment of an enrapturing piece of gossip. These spindling lines of communication set the stage for cries of “Et tu, Brute?”, while iron-clad NDAs, the kind whose breach becomes Netflix binges, keep quiet influence alive and well.
Everyone has secrets. I know I do. I know you do.
The act of sharing secrets, especially those sawn from the marrow of your internal world, is a gateway into a palpable form of social currency. Mediated by trust: the relinquishment of small pieces of yourself for the recoupment of intimacy. You cash yourself — and the subterranean of others — in, buying moments where fuzzy-faced, nameless strangers briefly become bosombuddies in a graffitied bathroom (often while you’re both drunk), or for those dubious connections to gain tangibility as that sort-of-mutual-friend-of-a-friends unveils their soul to you.
Secrets are a rite of passage that bleed into every connection. They’re ritual exchanges enacted with a sense of adrenaline — shifty eyes scanning the room for
unwanted listeners, checking locked doors as you lean in closer, whispering “do you promise to not tell anyone”; and they’re received with the same lean-in widened-eyes rapture of, “duh”. As certain secrets spill out — when inside jokes are created and whispers are broadcasted — my mind lets out soft liltings of, see? I keep that piece of you all to myself. Aren’t you proud of me?
But trusting people with your most putrescent inner-self takes a great deal of vulnerability. I’ve always ebbed and flowed with my ability to do so — not in a particularly tortured way, but with an awareness of the economic nature of my words: my idiosyncraticities utilised as conversational fodder. Out there lies a collection of people who hold the intimacies of an anachronistic girl I don’t identify with anymore.
I imagine that girl exists somewhere as a passing thought. An anthologised string of external whispers, psychoanalysis, unchecked mendacities, and false memories reworked by time. That’s not me! I want to scream my throat raw. She’s not me! You’ve Frankensteined her from a collection of parts that echo with the slight taste of me but are rotted by saccharine tongues!
After so many years of being a bolted open book it’s hard to not shudder at those who have seen my viscera split outside of myself. I’m a different person to everyone who has ever known me, or known of me. Does your version of me cry on your bedroom floor, red-eyed with smudged eyeliner? Or is she detached from the tangible world, a phantasm floating in your social peripheral? Is she your friend’s friend, known through surface-level observations and brief encounters? Or is she no-one to you? Whatever your perception is, it’s a prismatic illusion of reality.
I don’t even know who she is, so how could you?
A Love Letter to Photobooths
with movement and narrative, of the people they reflect or the relationships they capture.
What stayed with me as I left the gallery wasn’t just the history or even Alan’s remarkable devotion, but the reminder that these machines hold something we’re always searching for: honesty. In a world of endless selfies and carefully-staged portraits, the photobooth in all that it is resists performance. It captures us mid-blink, halfsmile, hair-astray and somehow that makes the image more true than the thousands of curated photos stored in my phone.
To truly understand the allure of a photobooth, you have to step inside one yourself. Whether it’s the vintage 1960s machine at Manhattan Superbowl, the discreet cornerbooth at the Ace Hotel, the ever-reliable Newtown Hotel, or the retro kiosk at the Soda Factory — each offers its own kind of magic.
I love photobooths more than anything in the world, and I know they can be expensive and hard to find and not mean as much to other people, but when I step into that box, for just a moment I am completely myself — no insecurities, no performance. It’s just me and the camera. A spec of my life, a version of myself that I’ll never be again, captured and given back to me in a matter of moments as a strip in my hands like magic.
True, raw, rare. A complete original. Just like me. Just like you.
Read full article online.
Audrey Hawkins will keep your secrets.
And the longer we live, the more those kaleidoscopic versions of people become leaden with time — our pastiche of secrets gathering moral weight. Clandestine confessions, blushed cheeks, teasing gazes when certain names slip into conversation, they evolve into moonlitcovered love affairs that could decay several lives. Secrets have always been a way of giving up control, unloading the found heaviness of reality into a trusted vault. But locks can rust, and all that gets stowed away are fragmentary versions of you, nothing whole.
When I think of the council of apparitions who claim to know my inner-workings and trusted secrets, I bask in the knowledge that I was a loyal gatekeeper to their souls too. I know them as well as they know me. Their personal forms of archaic decay have been stolen and stitched together by my memories, gifted pieces of themselves, and the words of others. But it’s not just the secrets lost to the situational relevancy of my preteen mind that I harbour in an overgrown cavern of my heart. Figures can exist purely as their worst secrets, whispered into my ears as secondhand gossip. I don’t even know their last names, but I know what they did to their ex. I know how grotesque they can be, how vile, how incomplete. How ugly a thing left to decay against my hummingbird heart.
I’m both Victor Frankenstein and his creation. Secrets are subtext, and entire versions of people have been morphed out of them; they take on a life outside control and become affixed to identity. You’re split off into a series of multitudes based on who knows what — assumptions which taint the air around you, mutterings traded as social currency.
In the end, all you are is your secrets, told by socially rich unreliable narrators. When you cash in that cheque, whose decay are you gilding yourself with?
Memory-Cocoon
Mehnaaz Hossain shoots on film.
Memory
If you left a strip of film out in the sun, to the mercy of mother nature, the edges would start curling in. The sprocket holes would get dirt stuck in them and the gloss would peel off. If you took it to the darkroom, you’d develop dangerously distorted photographs. Images with light leaks and scratches, film reels that skip and fast-forward erratically, an attempted capturing of the twilight zone between physicality and perception — between memory and reality.
In this very twilight zone He resides, hovering on the edges of my iman. I can’t quite comprehend His existence, nor can I articulate His nature.
Perhaps He left the consciousness of my youth in the light too long. The line between God’s benevolence and brutality blur; an all-forgiving entity would not curse my cerebral cortex with rolls and rolls of film that snake inwards.
And yet, He does.
I take my sun-drenched early childhood memories to the darkroom, dipping them in vats of Kodak Flexicolor Bleach. Every memory is distorted, tinged, and tainted with an absurd mix of melancholy and nostalgia, and an overwhelming blast of warmth. Development is a dizzying, painful, self-propelled process of creation and recreation — much like remembering.
What would He make of my remaking?
Overexposed
These memories are the blurry, freakishly bright ones, with an unnatural emphasis on light, fire, and gold.
The sun shines directly on the canola flowers in the garden of the very first place I lived in. The flowers, small and yellow and slightly feral, look almost white in the light. A whole field of off-white petals, sitting atop a tangle of stems and weeds. I used to run amongst the fields, light and nimble enough to weave in and out of the stems. I do not think I would be able to do so now. My body is heavier, my soul is weighed down. The orna dangling across my collarbone and down to my wrists would get tangled in the weeds, the delicate georgette fabric ripping apart at the first touch of sharpness — perhaps a poetic reflection of its owner. The exposure of the photograph — set too high — almost engulfs the flowers, creating a colourless vacuum in the middle of the photo.
a classic: half a mandala cut off by the edge of my wrist, paisleys scattered across my palms, spirals dancing into my fingertips. I wept every time I had to wash my palms; the paisleys would fade, gradually weakening into pale orange imitations of themselves.
I cannot remember who drew the mehndi on me, only that the art made a home for itself in my hands.
I wonder if He will make a home for Himself in my heart the same way.
I’m not quite sure what place I occupy in this scene; it is in the vacuum I like to imagine myself.
Mehndi changes colour depending on how long it’s been marinating on your skin for. At first, it’s a light orange, and over time it ripens. In this photo, despite the slight blur, it’s a deep, dark brown colour. The photo does not capture the intricacy of the mehndi, only an impressionistic vision of the outline. The pattern is
In another photograph, I am held by my mother, hovering above the candle on my third birthday cake. My hands are curled into small fists, adorned with the traditional gold bangles. My dress is offwhite, drowning me in a sea of tulle and adorning my shoulders with short puffy sleeves reminiscent of a fairytale princess. Completing the look, and affixed to my cascading, jet-black curls, is a golden tiara gifted by my grandparents — crowned first grandchild of the family. The candle shines disproportionately bright, drowning out everyone behind it in a marvellous display of solipsism — the centre of the universe is this quiet, flickering flame atop wax shaped to make a ‘3’. The camera captures fire mid-motion, the ghost of movement faintly visible on the glossy film. Just out of frame, you can imagine me provoking that very movement. Mouth curved, lips pursed together in a perfect ‘O’, tightly closing my eyes.
I was clearly wishing for something. I’m still wishing
Does He hear my wishes?
Light Leaks
Photographers often paint with light — letting small amounts leak onto undeveloped film before the darkroom process.
Huge swathes of gold shine onto the glossy reel, leaving behind scorching marks and tracks of fire.
These memories are poisoned by
First-generation Bangladeshi immigrant dinner parties. All the opulence of ancient Dhaka with the constraints of newfound working-class status. In this photograph, my mothers jewellery catches the most brilliant light as she holds a plate of biryani. A simple gold chain necklace, with a small capsule pendant that contains a single scroll inscribed with Arabic calligraphy of Ayatul Kursi — the Throne Verse, where God introduces Himself to mankind. The calligraphy is dainty and dramatic, designed not to be read but to be admired. There is no need to read. We all know the Throne Verse by heart. It sits right at the centre of her collarbone, nestled in the dip of her skin.
The necklace has yet to be passed down to me. The centre of my collarbone is empty.
The biryani is fit for a sultan, and served on plates fit for a peasant. My mother toils over it for hours, painstakingly stirring with a bangle-laden wrist, the wooden spoon a natural extension of her hand as she sprinkles panch phoron: fennel, cumin, fenugreek,
Art by Purny Ahmed
mustard. I find myself enamoured by the more colourful, powdered spices. The plates are so flimsy and so textured that oil from the biryani pools into the corners of the plastic.
I lay a small white napkin across my lehenga. It is new, made of silk, and slippery. The napkin slides off onto the carpet. A splash of oil trickles onto the mirrored embroidery decorating the edges of my lehenga.
I hastily wipe the oil off the mirror with my forefinger, leaving a faint stain on both myself and the embroidery.
Everyone tells me to eat carefully, to clean my plate properly. They say: for every grain of rice wasted, a snake will bite you in Hell. I can feel the spice mix, leaving snake-like tracks of turmeric across my palms and scorching my nails with gold.
I finish the biryani, scrub the turmeric off my hands, and notice a few grains of rice forgotten in the hidden ridges of the plastic plate.
After dinner, the sound of the azaan echoes loudly off the walls. Everyone scrambles to prostrate.
I rehearse my prayer: Thank you, God, for this meal and for my mother and for my new lehenga. Please spare me from the snakes in Hell. I tried my best. Ameen.
I still struggle to believe in Him when everyone lines up to recite and repeat and rinse and recite and repeat.
I think I only truly believe in Him when the midafternoon sun shines directly across my golden skin — a light leak for the soul.
Cocoon
Trying to make the film reel lie flat is futile; it warps, folding in on itself, muscle memory from days spent curled up in the heat. I contort into the past, caving to the calls of childhood — muscle memory from months spent curled up in the womb, from days prostrating and praying.
Trying hopelessly to escape from the question of His existence, gently twisting in the chrysalis; trapped between caterpillar and butterfly, child and adult, heaven and hell.
Turning and turning the Kodak canister, sprocket holes stuck inside the broken camera, widening the abyss between Him and I.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Damned to the purgatory of the darkroom, He is suspended in the thick jelly of my Flexicolor memory-cocoon;
I am a falcon that cannot hear the falconer.
Savouring bite-sized vignettes of my childhood; I am a dying believer sinking her teeth into God.
The Secret to Surviving a Situationship is on the 440 Bus
The unreliability of the 440 is exhausting for the mind. I can’t quite grasp its schedule. It is a timetable of contradiction and juxtaposition — it is either perfectly on time or 20 minutes late. Do I protect my dignity and walk to Redfern, or sit and wait in the blistering cold? I repeatedly choose the latter.
Felicity Errington and Jenna Rees are waiting for the 440.
During those 20 or so minutes, I either doomscroll on TikTok or rant on my private Instagram story about the ridiculousness of this bus route. When the 440 finally arrives, the dopamine surges as my anxiety becomes temporarily dormant. It clicks with my dysregulated nervous system, triggering a high of immense relief and satisfaction.
This loop is addictive and feels infinite, intertwined with the very figment of my being. The anxious person is a classic and typical victim of the loop, often out of our own design.
The 440 experience doesn’t end once I see the tentative glow of the bus sign in the stinging rain and with the
slowly leak out of my system like a battered sieve.
The 440 is a place to ponder as your bus driver sings a heartfelt cover of ‘Golden Brown’ and shouts at nervous high school students. It is a place to religiously check your phone to see if your situationship, or not a situationship but more than friends, or just friends, or maybe not even friends, who knows, has replied. It is a place to sink into the mud of memory and decode every message and action issued. It is a place where I excavate the Pompeii of past relationships to
got all of Gen Z hooked.
We’re obsessed with the ‘maybe’, never the ‘yes’. Maybe the 440 will arrive on time. Maybe they’ll text back. Maybe they’ll commit. That grey area is a protector of vulnerability and a shield from rejection. Flashes of technicolour still grow through the grey, glinting that childish ideal of hope and fun found in mid-century musicals from ‘On the Town’ to ‘West
me) (or don’t).
A sane person would argue that this is unhealthy, that I should protect my peace by choosing from the abundance of other options out there. I mean, I could catch the train to Town Hall and then 389 home. I could catch the 470 and the 333 instead. Or I could even take the 352. My counter-argument, you ask? That sort of predictability and reliability is boring. Where’s the fun? Where’s the rush? Who wants that? Not me, that’s for sure. It is the thrill of teetering on the edge of disaster or something great which has
But it does reach a point where the loop is no longer fun. It has become a chore. The loop becomes a thorn, painful and biting. Ripping out the thorn is sore but necessary. Finally, my nervous system will be able to relax and recuperate after months of navigating through the tantalising and haunting loop that I caused.
Fine. I’ll walk to Redfern, get the train to Town Hall, and take the 389 home, for now…
Art by Charlotte Saker
Funky Socks and Freaky Secrets
Jessica Louise Smith puts a sock in it.
The Nine Levels of Fisher
Sath Balasuriya, Jenna Rees, and Felicity Errington circle down the 9 Levels of Fisher Library.
Dante, fancy seeing you here! What a pleasant surprise it is seeing you around Fisher at this hour. Let me guess, you’re after the latest edition of that Torts textbook on hold for LAWS1012, right? Well, now that you’re here, and seeing as it’s a bit quiet, why don’t I give you a tour of the library, too? Keep your arms to yourself though: Fisher during the day isn’t the same place as it is past 8 o’clock. When the lights go out, when the students who pretended to study leave, and when the guards start doing their job, Fisher Library reveals its secrets.
Level 3:
Our tour begins on the ground level. Don’t let the rows of gleaming vending machines fool you, for this is the level of the gluttonous. Walk with me and you’ll see the poor souls condemned to eat $9 chicken and mayo sandwiches, or forced to chew the ice swirling in their Flying Turtle matcha forever — which they removed from their order. But be wary, for we aren’t the only ones roaming around. Campus security is roaming around too, and the slightest suspected infraction of the Campus Access Policy will have them calling you terrorists or worse…
Level 2:
Let us take the elevator down to Level 2, where the great winds of the Fisher Library AC buffet us as we land. Here, you’ll see couples engaging in PDA and lounging around, their little hearts consumed by the fire that is a tutorial situationship. Luckily for us (and them too, perhaps), this flame will be soon extinguished by the freezing winds of the AC. When you walk past them, you’ll see that the lustful young couples are forced to sit apart from one another, with great gusts of wind blowing them apart. Let’s take the stairs down to the next level and hope we don’t encounter any couples down here.
Level 1:
Welcome to Limbo, Dante — the lowest level. This level is unique, while it lacks any unique punishments for the sinful, its liminal presence between Fisher and the Law Library is more than torment for those who are condemned to pass through. Take the ancient 6th and 7th year Law students, for example. They are cursed to purgatory, unwilling to graduate and pass on into the real world, but equally unwilling to study more than 2 units of study a semester. The toilets here suck, too. They say when you flush the waste enters the depths of Hell. That’s all there is.
Level 4:
Dear Dante, let us dare venture to the greedy in Level 4. Those who toil here aren’t greedy for riches but for space and silence. Engineering students hoard tables, their Chromebooks, and problem set papers spread without any owners. Power sockets hang onto dear life, as multiple laptop chargers cling to them like parasites. Here, the punishment is suffocating stillness, where no one dares speak. Beware, the perfect seat will never be found. You should not stay on Level 4 for long.
Level 6:
Here begins Heresy, Dante: the first of many levels, each nearly identical, all stretching on. Only the floor number differentiates them. The punishment is monotony with rows upon rows of desks. In Dante’s Inferno, heretics were entombed in flaming graves; here, the heretic wanders endlessly, unable to tell one level from another, doubting their own memory. Step carefully, once you enter these repetitious levels, you may never know where you stand.
Level 5:
Behold the cursed rooftop terrace of Level Five. Recently opened after decades of closure, many unaware have stepped out here seeking a breath of fresh air, only to find the door locked behind them. Watch them pace with wrath, cursing Mark Scott’s name and glaring down at the Quad below with impotent fury. Their MacBooks lie abandoned inside, the ‘submit’ screen for their assignment flickering weakly. The punishment for these angry souls is mockery: the freedom of the outside air is snatched away.
Level 7:
Dante, the violence of Level 7’s carpeting cannot be understated. The orange, mustard, and grey asymmetrical shapes welcome us into the awkward lounge area right next to the toilets. A Fisher staple. Students blend into their desks. Facebook declares that this is the best level of Fisher Library — a low bar to clear. It’s up to you, dear Dante. Level 7 is either an act of aesthetic violence on the eyes, or a place of peaceful and solitary study.
Level 8:
Up, up, and up we go to Level 8. The secret of this level once again lies with its fraudulent interior design. An amphitheatre bookended by the toilets and an infinite row of shelves littered with various tomes. Study demons creep near the outer edges — watching your every move — listening to your footsteps, ready to snatch your newly empty desk. While walking through, I can’t help but think about the carpeting again. Dante, don’t come back to this space, or at least avert your eyes.
Level 9:
Here we are at the final level: Level 9. Queue ‘The End’ by The Doors. Leave your friends and foes behind; this is a place for solitary study among the East Asian collection and the University Archives. The bookcases rise high like icebergs, and the air is tepid. As you reach the end of the hallway, you will see a pile of forgotten children’s toys, from doll heads to Guess Who. Go to this level at your own peril; the lighting is vertigo-inducing with narrow windows, which the fugly carpeting (again) does not help. Stick to the law library, Dante.
Art by Jo Staas
President
Angus Fisher
It’s been a month since we’ve been back at university. Time flies while you’re having fun. Here’s my report.
Last Thursday was the USyd vote in the national student referendum for Palestine. Over 500 people took part and voted to censure the government for their complicity in the ongoing genocide and for universities to cut ties with weapons companies. I had the pleasure of speaking for the second motion, where I highlighted the importance of student movements throughout history and standing on the right side of history and against injustice. We now await the aggregate data from the national referendum.
On Wednesday, 3rd September, in Seminar Room LG19, Physics Road Learning Hub, I am taking part in a roundtable discussion on the 2025 Fair Fares Concession Opal Card campaign. The event will highlight and address the persistent lack of public transport concessions for international students in New South Wales. Unlike their domestic peers, international students are excluded from key transport subsidies, despite contributing significantly to the academic, cultural, and economic life of the state. The purpose of this event is to establish a unified stance among NSW
Vice President
Shovan Bhattarai, Ethan Cao
I hope everyone’s settling into the semester and that assignments and lectures aren’t piling up too quickly.
Last week was a busy but exciting one! Together with the International Students Collective and the Student Accommodation Department, we hosted an international student community forum at the New Law Lounge. The event kicked off with a presentation on the history and legacy of International House, followed by a panel discussion on how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting international students and how we can work together on solutions.
It was fantastic to see so many students in person. Jenny Leong MP joined us to speak about fair Opal concessions and transport equity, while alumni and student representatives shared their insights on housing and student life challenges. It was a really valuable space for open conversation and community input, and I’m looking forward to keeping these discussions going.
student organisations on this issue, to promote widespread public discussion, and to rally broader community support. Join and hear me speak alongside student leaders from across NSW, both international and domestic, as well as representatives from student union peak and state bodies, industry, scholars, and government offices.
From time to time, in my role, I am asked to be interviewed by a wide array of outlets. Last week, I met with a U.S. journalist who covers higher education, working on a story for the internationally circulated Harvard journal Education Next about the state of international education. I discussed the often shifting status quo of international student policy and attempted to diagnose the reasons behind such trends. I believe it’s important that the SRC plays an active role in the political media landscape so the organisation can be reinforced and heard as the voice for USyd undergraduate students.
In solidarity,
Angus
On another note, I’ve also been working with the Student Accommodation Officers to push for progress on International House. With affordable housing becoming harder to find, it’s more important than ever to invest in goodquality and reasonably priced student accommodation. International House already exists, it just needs renovation. But since its closure in 2020, there hasn’t been any movement. Together with the Accommodation Officers, I’ve also been helping SUIHAA coordinate a roundtable with university executives to discuss the possibility of reopening.
Wishing you all a smooth and productive week ahead and don’t forget to take care of yourselves along the way!
Best, Ethan
Disability Officers
Remy Lebreton, Vince Tafea
FUCK THE NAZI DOGS.
REFUGEES ARE WELCOME HERE.
YOU RACISTS ARE NOT.
Our welcome back movie night was a great success. Thanks to all who joined us! More to come soon. If you haven’t been to the Queerspace yet, stop by, say hi, and get involved with QuAC!
We marched with a sizeable queer contingent in the Nationwide March for Palestine on the 24th. It was great to see so many new faces and be part of the hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously marching across so-called ‘Australia.’
We also took a queer contingent to the National Student Referendum on Palestine last Thursday, which saw over 500 USYD students vote unanimously in support of Palestine and against our government’s and university’s complicity in genocide. We’ll keep turning out for Palestine until all university ties with Israel are cut and Palestine is free, and we’ll ensure a visible queer presence to combat USYD management’s pinkwashing.
Queer Officers
Wendy Thompson
QuAC organised a cross-university student contingent to the anti-racist rally countering the neo-Nazi ‘March for Australia’ on the 31st, along with ACAR and collectives from UNSW and Macquarie Uni. The struggle for migrants’ rights is inextricably tied to the struggle for queer rights, and there’s no true justice for any of us without justice for all. We’re here, we’re queer, refugees are welcome here!
This week, QuAC members are heading to Naarm (Melbourne) for the biannual Queer Displacements Conference held by the Forcibly Displaced People Network. There’s so many people to connect with and so many events to attend and learn from! We’ll be back to our fortnightly meetings next week, undoubtedly with lots to report back on.
Student Accom Officers
It’s Week 5, and for many of us, housing is still the biggest headache. Whether you’re crammed into a sharehouse, paying half your income in rent, or still couch-surfing, the reality is the same: students deserve better. That’s why we’ve been fighting to make sure the University invests in real, affordable housing, not just glossy brochures.
International House: what’s at stake
On August 21st, we joined a roundtable with International House and the University. It was meant to showcase how residential colleges can build community, but for us, it highlighted something else: the University still hasn’t committed to redeveloping International House or making student housing genuinely affordable.
International House has a proud history of supporting international students through structured programs and community life. That kind of model shows what’s possible, but right now, it’s
being left to gather dust while students struggle in an overheated rental market.
What we’re fighting for
• We don’t just want “insights” from these panels. We want action:
• A clear plan and timeline for International House redevelopment.
• Affordable rents in University accommodation, not luxury apartments only a few can afford.
More support for international students who are hit hardest by Sydney’s housing crisis.
We’ll keep pushing the University to stop dragging its feet and to prioritise housing that students can actually afford.
If you’re facing housing stress, you’re not alone. Reach out to us anytime at student.housing@src.usyd.edu.au – and keep an eye out as we step up the fight for fair housing.
Social Justice Officers
Aron Khuc, Lauren Finlayson, Yoshi Leung, Leo Moore
The Social Justice Officers did not submit a report this week.
Inter-Campus Officers
Hugo Naea Ceran Jerusalemy, Jessica Louise Smith, Cassidy Newman, Sihan Zhad
The Inter-Campus Officers did not submit a report this week.
Yuxuan Wang, Luming (Jason) Xu, Misheel Galkhuu, Kai (Connie) Wong
Dealing With Fines & Penalties
Penalty notices
The most common types of fines are penalty notices, also called infringement notices, on-the-spot fines, tickets, or criminal infringement notices. They can be issued in person, attached to a vehicle, or sent to you in the mail, and contain details of the alleged offence and the amount you need to pay.
LawAccess NSW has a great flowchart on your options for dealing with your penalty notice.
LawAccess NSW also provides detailed information about your options for dealing with a penalty notice, including how to pay the fine, what to do if you disagree with it, what happens if you decide to go to court and what you can do if your driver’s licence is suspended.
If you’ve received a fine for a traffic infringement captured on camera, go to Service NSW to view the photo images.
Court fines
If you go to court and have a fine imposed by the magistrate, you’ll usually be ordered to pay it within 28 days. You’ll be sent a Notice of Penalty which tells you the amount you have to pay and the due date.
Non-payment of a toll
A toll notice requiring payment is not a fine. However, if you do not respond to it, you may be sent a penalty notice for not paying the toll which is a fine. You can use the information here to deal with this fine.
Penalty notices
If you don’t act to deal with any of these fines, Revenue NSW will add enforcement costs and you could have your licence and registration suspended. The additional costs and penalties for unlicensed driving or driving an uninsured or unregistered car are a lot higher and more severe than your original fine.
Updated address
Not knowing about a fine is not a defence, so always remember to update your address if you move, especially if you have a car. Penalty notices sent by mail and reminders will be sent to your last known address. If you haven’t updated it, you could find yourself with
large debts for fines, enforcement costs, and additional costs and penalties.
Private
fines
You may be sent a letter or given a document that looks like a fine when you breach a rule that applies to private property or organisations. This isn’t really a fine, although the private organisation might call it that. These notices commonly relate to private car parks such as those found at shopping centres, clubs, or on other private land. Private fines can’t be referred to Revenue NSW for enforcement, but the private organisation might take you to court if you don’t deal with it, so you shouldn’t ignore their letters.
Public transport
When using public transport in Sydney, you need to “tap on” when you board and “tap off” with the same card (Opal or credit card) when you arrive at your stop. If you are transferring to another service, you need to “tap on” again and “tap off” at your destination.
When you “tap on” and “tap off” correctly with sufficient balance on your Opal card:
• You’re charged the correct fare.
• You won’t be fined for travelling on an invalid ticket.
• Your trip will count towards your Weekly Travel Rewards.
• If transferring to another service within an hour of tapping off the previous trip, the trips will be combined into a single trip meaning you’ll be charged a lesser fare for your combined travel.
If you’re caught travelling without a valid ticket, not paying the correct fare, or using a concession ticket without being in possession of your proof of entitlement card (usually this will be your student card), you may be issued with a fine of $200 (Maximum $550).
SRC Legal Service
Call 02 9660 5222 and ask to be referred to our Legal Service
Disclaimer: This information is current as at July 2024 and is intended as a guide to the law as it applies to people who live in or are affected by the law as it applies in NSW. It does not constitute legal advice.
Ask Abe
SRC Caseworker
Help Q&A
Centrelink & Relationships
Dear Abe,
I’ve been seeing someone on and off for the last 14 months, but we’re mostly in an open relationship now. I’ve moved into their place this year, but we’re both still dating other people. Will this affect my payments? Will both my partners’ incomes be assessed?
Thanks, Polli Amorie
Dear Polli,
Centrelink may treat your first relationship as de-facto, because of the social ties of the relationship and because you live together. They would suggest that you would
be sharing day-to-day household expenses, and dividing housework between (or among) yourselves. You have also been involved with each other for over 12 months, and now share living arrangements. So, you may be assessed as independent and your first partner’s income may be assessed as well, affecting your Youth Allowance payments. However, your newer partner’s income will not be assessed, as Centrelink no longer recognises polyamory. Check out the SRC website information on Effect of Relationships on Payments (See link below) for more information.
Thanks, Abe
Centrelink & Relationships information: srcusyd.net.au/src-help/caseworker-help/centrelink/ centrelink-relationships/ or bit.ly/480zX5g
Across
1. Snoop could be doing this while recording? (13)
9. Man whose face is borne by dummies (3,6)
10. Craftier senior clutches invention (5)
11. Clothes washer that begins looping around disintegrating carpet (10)
12. Whisky I’ve seen around the Ukrainian capital (4)
14. Tender-hearted communist relatives (7)
15. Glimpse groups of five cycling (6)
19. Somehow not avoiding another momentary whine (6)
Semester 2 Week 4
20. Spicy photo gets a ten excited (7)
23. Temporal spell? It’s cast by Hermione on a regular basis! (4)
25. Escape Guatemala and possibly relocate near France (3,5,2)
27. Concerning prisoner’s case(5)
28. Endless desecration interfered with particular bits of knowledge (9)
29. Ref who raises a flag (13)
The Secret Crossword
1. English Nationalist hardens an adherent of Marx (6)
2. Secretly watching your first movies broadcast about an ancient city (9)
3. Dirty Englishman very awkwardly groped a dude’s head (4,6)
4. Reflect on the past six balls after duck sees opener out (4,4)
5. Ape stretches after pulling outrageous faces (4,2)
6. In that case, I finish too occasionally (2,2)
7. Ghastly jersey finally gets soiled (5)
8. Yap about drip low-key (7)
13. Conservative male giddily gets bangers and mash, perhaps (6,4)
16. Put away six gross in exchange (9)
17. Grasp an unknown variable for a puzzle (7)
18. Go public with princesses currently facing neglect (8)
21. Learn from French netting and French court (6)
22. Secret relationship identified by a very loud moan in public? (6)
24. Parrot’s beginning to mimic a crow’s sound (5)
26. Against a nutcase gaining a bit of independence (4)
Ivy’s Room is an alt-rock band based in South Sydney who have played successful shows around the area, such as at The Lord Gladstone
With their latest (and first) EP release, ‘Ivy’s Room’, the group showed off their versatility with each song having a very different energy to the last. Starting off with ‘Break Bread’, the EP begins with a beach indie rock tone, and a typical lighthearted haziness. ‘Reckless Old Me’ and ‘Find My Way’ take on a more funky energy, and whilst continuing some of those beach-indie elements, they made more room for a focus on psychedelic components, giving a similar sound to Vanilla Gorilla. ‘Wings Ain’t Real’ and ‘Noise Warning’ really draws out the classic rock sound, taking on a much more heavy and technically impressive sound.
Check out the band on Spotify here!
Sing & Explore Dora
Will Winter opiniones.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction suggests that the first significant human invention was not a weapon or physical tool, but a carrier bag. The theory, anthropologically grappling with techno-heroic narratives of struggle, violence, and triumph, suggests that the truest representation of human capacity is not our perpetual colonial tendencies, but rather our propensity for love, hope, and holding on to the belief that people can always be better
There is no better figure to represent this in popular culture than Backpack, the truest companion a Hispanic teen girl with a desire to explore could ask for. Backpack enables our protagonist to be holistically swept away in her desire for adventure. It allows a profoundly self-assured woman of colour to transcend any notion of whether her desire for exploration is ‘feminist’, existing in a state of post-modern fervour removed from societal expectation; she gets to be the altruistic, curious, whimsical soul she truly is. Dora puts it best: “She’s Backpack, she’s always got your back.”
An under-represented Latina heroine in the terminally online ‘cunty bob’ discourse, Dora the Explorer has captivated childrens’ hearts with her passion for adventure and whooping fox ass since 2000. Celebrating her 25th anniversary, the release of the Sing & Explore Dora a quarter century of inspiring fearless curiosity and courageous bilingualism in kids internationally.
As someone raised in an English/Spanish household, Dora has always had my heart, with her signature orange DVD cases, vaguely ethnic cousins, and multitude of DS and computer games. As a tangible toy, the Sing & Explore Dora reminder of all the ways we can be unabashedly inquisitive and shamelessly altruistic when detached from phones and jaded concerns.
As I ask for guidance from my newest friend, and I seek clarity and existential advice in the face of this cold, polluted world, Dora tells me “We can do anything together! Todos Juntos.”
We can, Dora. We totally can.
Puzzle by Michael Hirschhorn
Photo by Ruby Casey
All in all, the band suits all types of listeners with all types of taste in music.
Special Buys Bad. Same.
The Original Showgirl
Her twelfth studio album, he had twelve disciples... Coincidence?
I think not.
An Impartial Debate Timer
It gives the team I’m coaching an extra ten minutes and the other team lose their prepebuscent voices.
Zaddy’s Day Present
This Sunday, make sure you give big papi a big, big gift.
Be sure to slide any hot photos of your zaddy’s in our DMs and we’ll make sure they’re celebrated ;)
Probably happening at Hyde Park.
A Family Who’s Been in this Country for 139 Years
If only they’d been here one more year, they’d be “real” Australians.
