HONI SOIT
The Slims
Acknowledgement of Country
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
Online Interviews
Imitating
Smokies
Bathroom
SRC
Puzzles
Comedy
If you’re like me (or any student journalist), vices are a form of life support. And no, I don’t mean simply smoking a ciggie or having a bevvy at The Rose. Vices come in all forms: your favourite song, spending time with your friends, indulging in a daily sweet treat, an orgasm, and sometimes hardcore drugs. Endorphins become addictive. Dopamine hits become a goal to strive for. And we find ourselves craving any quick hit we can find. This edition’s theme covers all of my favourite topics: sex, drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
We’re cu rrently in a political and social hell hole. In recent years, we have seen a huge increase in fascism, racist anti-immigration movements, political violence, and the targeting of people with disabilities, people of colour, women, and the LGBTQIA+ communities. Now more than ever, we need to be fighting and taking action against our university management and their complacency on these issues, the Albanese government who consistently, not only allows, but endorses these behaviours, and the groups of people promoting these beliefs. The feature of this edition intertwines the political impacts of the rise in the far right with the cultural relationship between Rock and escapism. Head to page 7 to check it out.
Purny Ahmed, Mehnaaz Hossain, Ondine Karpinellison, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Will Winter, Victor Zhang
Front Cover
Ellie Robertson
Calista Burrowes analyses the IranContra affair and its significance and reflection of global powers. Taking us through the history of the affair, the piece emphasises the necessity of calling out our governments who consistently work against the people’s interests. Have a read of page 10.
On page 12, Mahtab Hassanzadeh’s piece, In the Arena of Diplomacy, takes us through an analysis of the idea of recognising Palestine. Delving into what it means to want a ‘two state solution’ and the shame in the only action to stop a genocide by recognising a place on a map, Hassanzadeh logically calls out the Albanese government for being complicit in the genocide in Palestine.
Bibi O’Loghlin discusses the desire for male approval in a patriarchal society and its pressure to have our cultural tastes validated by men in her contemplative perspective piece, I Like Good Music, Please Let Me Be One of You. Get your experience of internalised misogyny validated by someone who isn’t a man for once on page 14. Ananya Thirumalai invites us to take a drag of her ciggie and invent our identities with her. The exploration of being who our younger versions always wanted to be. Take a journey through identity, queerhood, and transformation on page 16.
Of course, a creative piece must get a shout out. Sophie Bagster transports us to a dingy pub bathroom, overhearing a conversation about counterculture between Sexx, Drugz, and Rocksy. Flip over to page 18 to find yourself eavesdropping (you’re so nosy, I know it!).
The front cover of this edition embodies the theme with its 1970s magazine style, while also promoting local Sydney/Eora-based bands. Here’s who we featured on the front cover this week:
@civicvideoband
@grxcetheband
@slims.band
@_ivysroom_
@deadroutesband
@kittyofthevalley_
Check out all of their instagram pages and spotify channels!
In love and rage, Ellie Robertson <3
Gracie Allen, Sophie Bagster, Calista Burrowes, Mehar Chugh, Avin Dabiri, Anastasia Dale, Felicity Errington, Mahtab Hassanzadeh, Audrey Hawkins, Cormac Herron, Bibi O’Loghlin, Jenna Rees, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Faye Tang, Sahiba Tasnia Tanushree, Ananya Thirumalai, Dongchen Yue, Victor Zhang
Artists
Avin Dabiri, Mehnaaz Hossain, Charlotte Saker, Will Winter
Featured on the Cover Civic Video, Dead Routes, Grxce, Ivy’s Room, Kitty of the Valley, The Slims
Letters to the Editor
Dear Remy and Victor and Michael,
This is so beautiful and moving. Thank you so much for sharing your write up in the Honi Soit
It’s an honour that you covered it. I am back in Oxford with such glowing memories of my time with you all in Sydney. The warmth is reflected in your piece.
My very best to all of you, Alpa
Dear Victor,
Thank you for your generous words about my article Fluent in Honi. It means a great deal to know that the piece resonated, and I’m grateful for the thought and care you put into your response. My intention was exactly this, to open a conversation about how international students experience Honi and how the paper might move forward more inclusively.
I also want to thank you for carrying this conversation forward in print. Dialogue of this kind is precisely what keeps Honi alive as more than just a publication: as a space where our ideas can be sharpened, challenged, and expanded.
That said, I did want to clarify one point. Your letter suggested that I was arguing for less stupol in the paper. That was never my intention. My concern is not with the presence of stupol, but with its presentation. Student politics is inseparable from Honi — it is the backbone of our activism, the record of our collective struggles, and one of the most important tools we have to hold power to account. To remove or reduce stupol coverage would be to strip away a core part of the paper’s identity.
What I was pointing to is accessibility. For students unfamiliar with SRC motions, acronyms, or factional shorthand, coverage can feel closed-off, even alienating. International students in particular often enter these pages as outsiders, left translating lingo rather than engaging with the important politics itself. The problem is that stupol isn’t always written in a way that brings new readers in.
This is not a new tension, and Honi has already shown how it can be done well. Articles
like In defence of stupol: Why elections are underrated demonstrate why stupol matters: it is where ideals are tested and sharpened. Who is Who: Your introduction to stupol and scandal at USyd shows that explaining the terrain in accessible terms can draw new students in, rather than keep them at the margins. Pieces like NATC1002: Intermediate Stupol Strategies prove that the content of student politics is frequently tied to material issues, such as First Nations justice. And pieces like On waning participation in elections remind us why students stay away.
Taken together, these pieces highlight that stupol is not just necessary but vital to Honi’s project. My call was not for silence, but for clarity. For coverage that is as rigorous and unapologetic as ever, but which also extends an open door to readers who may not yet be fluent. That was, and remains, the heart of my argument.
Warmly, Ananya Thirumalai
Dear Mehnaaz,
Your article “This House would Discuss Debating” was a fascinating read and I found myself reflecting back on times I’ve heard these white debater types you describe who hold that ‘veneer of leftism.’ Those who believe that filling their rhetoric with the word “intersectionality” is akin to an immunity from an ingrained colonial, white, and paternalistic view of BIPOC people.
Far from a commitment to “sit their white ass down and learn” so to speak, a calculus on how to best appear and frankly “bullshit” as an ‘ally’ tends to outrank all other priorities. Your article illuminated some tendencies I’ve both observed myself, and also heard about.
To many white people, being a self proclaimed ‘ally’ is itself a quirk of university; the only place most of them will ever be in where being a socialist (or ‘progressive’ if they’re afraid of that label) is not a blight on your social capital. It’s a phase.
But this phase is an important step for these white private schooled people to prepare for the predominantly performative liberal world they will find themselves in after their studies. With no
actual commitment to our liberation from capitalism, and colonial structures, they learn to speak wokenese, work for Lockheed Martin, or some random bullshit NGO, and all the same reflect on the great times they attended activism n were ‘radical’ like our old mate Albanese.
A clear elitism is embedded and is almost synonymous with the institution of USyd, and so too with its (often well intentioned) white leftists. But no such white saviours are even effective even if we wanted them. With neonazis roaming our streets, we find ourselves in a situation where many white ‘allies’ are more afraid of the shahada and arabic writing than people proclaiming the need to protect a “white nation.” This is why spaces such as the Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) are so important. We need to get organised. I admire Mehnaaz standing amongst the sea of privilege and what a fantastic thought stimulating article.
If you’re BIPOC, get involved and join ACAR @usydacar
Anonymous, Mop4Honi Editor
Dear Honi editors
We read your story ‘USyd’s Erasure of Aboriginal Anthropology: Distractions of Global Studies’ (Week 5, Semester 2).
If we’d been approached for comment prior to publishing we’d have explained that in 2021, like many universities in the context of the pandemic, we needed to respond to the projected impacts of COVID-19 on our budget and student numbers and this included stopping some units of study with small or no enrolments and merging others, including a number of Anthropology units.
We understand this caused some concern, however the discipline has not wavered in continuing to teach Indigenous affairs and content on Indigenous societies, both Australian and international.
Our Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences also continues to build First Nations knowledge across disciplines, including the School of Education and Social Work undergraduate Indigenous Studies unit that spans art, anthropology, history, politics, social sciences, linguistics and health.
Creative Industries in our School of Art, Communication and English to lead Indigenous-led teaching and research and strengthen community partnerships, and we’re excited to see how that role develops.
Professor Lisa Adkins Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
You can put articles in the news paper and any other media outlets you have.You can interview us.All fridges and freezers will release a spell every night.The spell will find people in their home.To get rid of the spell,cut off all the plugs off the appliances.Me( Louise ferguson) and Jared lote the lead singer get of 30 seconds to mars and actor.We would have married and had a family.Our family are the real royal family (mine,Louise ferguson)The whole of the world will have no electricity for 60 days.Im the real president the united of america ( Louise ferguson). Both these things will happen to people and animals.A spell in the heart ready to come on.Listen inside both of my ears.Louise ferguson name on this email.Its a part of the spell in the heart.The spell in my heart is active.Darkness in front of the eye sight every night and in the morning.Then it goes.This has happened to me.Use a pendulum made of metal to get the truth.On the 1.1.26 hidden secrets from the media, will be revealed. By using a pendulum made of metal to get the truth.Write or phone me as there is a problem with the wi fi.
Louise ferguson
We don’t edit your letters. Send us your letters to editors@honisoit.com.
Science Revue 2025
Manning Bar 17th–18th of September
Queer Revue Fringe 2025: Camp Rock Factory Theatre 17th–21st of September
Med Revue 2025 18th–20th of September
Seymour Centre
Interuni Pyschsoc Games Night The Hideout at UTS 19th of September
Madonna Disco Fundraiser for Slot 9 SUDS Show Stucco 19th of September
Gig for Gaza 20th of September Goodspace Gallery
Stop the Genocide Rally Hyde Park 21st of September
Dance Party with Dora Honi Soit Office Todos Dias!
“Kill the Australian in your head”: thousands march down Broadway for Indigenous and anti-racist solidarity
Jenna Rees and Faye Tang report.
Content warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names of people who have died.
Thousands of people marched through Sydney on Saturday 13th September, as part of a nationwide Day of Action organised by The Blak Caucus. The Sydney rally, beginning at Belmore Park and ending in Victoria Park, brought together First Nations leaders, activists and groups calling for justice, solidarity and an end to racism. This protest was directly countering the anti-immigration protests held in Hyde Park the same day.
Lizzie Jarrett, proud member of the Blak Caucus and a woman from Gumbaynggirr, Bundjalung, and Dunghutti emceed the rally. She introduced herself loudly and defiantly, saying “If you don’t know me, you fucking should.”
Jarrett then introduced Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor, a Gadigal/Bidigigal/Yuin Elder, who delivered a Welcome to Country. “My people have been living on this Country for over 60,000 years,” Grovenor said, and then declared that “migrants are welcome here” to fervent applause.
“We say NO to racism, we say NO to white supremacy. We stand here together for all mankind; for all the animals; for mother
earth in solidarity together. We stand, one earth, one people.”
After traditional mimetic dance performances from Nadeena Dixon and Rayma Johnson, Indigenous poet and renowned activist Uncle Lionel Fogarty made a stirring call for solidarity and declared “the Constitution of Australia a white constitution” which did not fight for the rights of multicultural peoples. He identified the British monarchy as an institution that upholds racism, and called for a break from Britain: “What we need is proper justice and proper justice from our [Indigenous] culture.”
During Fogarty’s speech, Jarrett called for medics to come to the front for a medical emergency. Following the medics arrival, police came too. Jarrett said that “we said paramedics, not police!”
Jarett added that the “genocide of our people is not done.” Later during the March, we would chant the name of Kumanjayi White, who was murdered by police in the Northern Territory earlier this year. Jarrett emphasised the hypocrisy of March for Australia, telling “Nazi racists [to] go back on the boat you came on.”
She staunchly denounced the “putrid racism” on display on 31st August, “calling out they are anti-immigrants – where the fuck did they from come?”
The Illawarra Indigenous Medical Service, a cornerstone of the local and First Nations
In Case You Missed It
The results are in! The National Student Referendum on Palestine took place online and on 20 campuses across so-called Australia. 5,295 total votes were cast, with 4,651 of them cast in person and 594 online.
Motion one, censuring the Australian government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza and calling for an end to the arms trade and sanctions on Israel saw 5,229 students voting for and 65 voting again. Motion two, calling on Australian universities to end their complicity with genocide by ceasing weapons company partnerships saw 5,218 students voting for and 76 voting against.
Meanjin, one of the longest standing literary journals in Australia, has announced its shutdown on “purely financial grounds”, leading to the redundancy of two of its editors. In response, an open letter addressed to Emma Johnston, vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne suggested that the VC take a 10 per cent pay cut resulting in “$150,000, an ample amount to keep a literature journal running and publishing” leaving Johnston with a “handsome payrate of $1,350,000 per annum; and with all accommodation and other expense perks intact.”
Labor candidate Katelin McInerney won the by-election of Kiama after convicted sex pest Gareth Ward’s resignation.
community, emphasised the need for “healing through culture” and initiated a communal dance. They encouraged everyone to rise and move, to take off their shoes and take up their instruments for a “corroboree against the colony”. Mob women emerged from the crowd to join the emu dance on the stage of sand.
Ethan Lyons was then introduced by Jarrett. As a Wiradjuri Yiramurrun man, Lyons is known to the community for being integral in the School Strike for Climate protests in 2019. Lyons pointed out that while “we dance and we share songs, there are racists and white supremists holding signs that are filthy, over at Hyde Park.”
Prior to being held at Belmore Park, the Blak Caucus rally and march was originally supposed to be held at Hyde Park, only changing to Belmore Park one week before, to avoid coinciding with the anti-immigration marches that Lyons spoke of.
Lyons questioned “how can you talk about who is welcome when you yourself are illegal in this country?” He then said that “Australia is built and keeps existing on the premise of the colony; on the existence of the Anzac Myth; on the existence of continued land theft and children being stolen.” He argued that “if you’re really about black liberation, you cannot identify with the white
supremist, military-identity that is Australia.”
After Lyons, Shawna Pope, a proud woman from Wakka Wakka and Wulli Wulli in Queensland spoke. She said that we all come from “different places but come together.” She called on attendees to question the irony and contradiction that those who are marching in Hyde Park are deliberating. She questioned whether the March for Australia protestors realised that colonisation equates to mass immigration. She said that “they did the math but couldn’t figure out the equation.” She urged that “if we stand together, we can go against white supremacy.”
Next, the band African Beat took to the stage, led by Ghana-born drummer Tuza. They got everyone up on their feet, teaching them traditional African dances. African Beat got the whole crowd involved, and Jarrett said after: “That’s how we beat racism! We celebrate culture! We dance! We share!”
Paul Silva, a proud Dunghutti man from Kempsey, was the final speaker. He spoke on and called for the abolition of the Australian government. Silva explained that the system cannot be fixed and it cannot deliver justice: “Aboriginal people sit at the top of the list of government oppression”. He explained that he was marching because “Aboriginal people are dying in custody”, which is a “failure not
by accident, [but] by design.” Silva also paid respects to Camp Sovereignty in Naarm, which was stormed by neo-Nazis following the March for Australia protests on 31st August, saying it is a sacred site of truth, resistance, and identity which was brutally attacked.
Jarrett concluded the gathering with a call to the collective power of the protestors, saying that the impressive turnout signalled the solidarity of peoples who fought for Indigenous rights and against racism. “If you fuck with us,” she said proudly, “you get burnt.”
Jarrett then roused the crowd, calling for those from the mob to grab a flag or banner, and to start the march towards Victoria Park. Police guided the crowd on either side as we walked from Belmore Park, through Broadway, and down to Victoria Park.
In the middle of Railway Square, a circle was formed, with Jarrett leading the chants, two of which were: “Too many coppers, never any justice” and “March for Australia, you can’t hide! You’ve got Nazis on your side.”
Jarrett also highlighted the importance of solidarity for Indigenous peoples across the world, especially with those of Palestine. “From the river to the sea,” she led, to which the crowd, clad in keffiyehs and waving Palestinian and Aboriginal flags, responded zealously, “Palestine will be free.”
“Bye Bye Bell”: ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell calls it quits Imogen Sabey reports.
Australian National University (ANU) Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell has resigned from her post, following a tumultuous term and intense media scrutiny.
ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop announced at a public meeting with staff on Thursday 11th that Bell was stepping down as Vice-Chancellor. The announcement was met with cheers and applause.
Bell will be taking an unspecified period of leave before returning to ANU’s School of Cybernetics.
Bell had become increasingly unpopular with staff and students since the announcement of the ‘Renew ANU’ program, where the university administration proposed cuts to recover from a $140 million deficit in 2024.
The program aims to save $250 million in expenditure, including $100 million in salaries. It has led to a swath of protests involving staff,
students and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
Bell has also been involved in other controversies, including her high-end Golden Goose shoes and her discreet decision to remain on the payroll of tech company Intel whilst receiving a $1.1 million salary.
Bell released a public letter of resignation which did not refer explicitly to Renew ANU or the varied controversies that caused her to face scrutiny. She only mentioned that “this has been a very hard time for our community”.
ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop has also faced pressure to step down. On Thursday she stated “I intend to remain as chancellor of this university for the rest of my term.”
Bishop faced criticism for a $790,000 expense report released earlier this year, and her publicfacing executive role in an administration implementing severe cuts.
Academic Liz Allen alleged at a Senate inquiry in August that Bishop had bullied her “into near-suicide” and that her behaviour caused Allen to miscarry a baby.
Bishop said at a press conference on Thursday that “There are no grounds for me to stand aside.”
She added “I reject the allegations… that I have treated any staff at ANU with anything other than the greatest respect and civility.”
On 6th September, The Saturday Paper leaked that six deans at ANU told Chancellor Julie Bishop that they had lost confidence in Bell. The Saturday Paper also reported that Bell was negotiating her payout.
The Vice-Chancellor role will be temporarily filled by Provost Rebekah Brown, who was the most senior officer at ANU after Bishop and Bell.
Injustice on Stolen Land:
Blak Caucus Calls to Sanction the CLP
Pro-Zionist protesters jeer at proPalestinian gathering in Bondi Anastasia Dale reports. Dongchen Yue reports.
Content warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names of people who have died.
At 6pm on the 2nd of September, watched closely by four horses and an inordinate number of cops in silly hats denoting their rank, the Blak Caucus rally began on the doorstep of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office in Marrickville.
This rally called on the Government to sanction the Northern Territory (NT) Country Liberal Party (CLP), to take action on Blak incarceration and deaths in custody, to achieve justice for Kumanjayi White, and abolish OC Spray (more commonly known as Pepper Spray).
The state of Aboriginal human rights in the NT has reached a crisis under the CLP. They have lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10, recently legalised the sale of OC Spray for “personal protection”, expanded offences and age groups that will have presumption against bail, expanded police powers on public transport and in schools, and other ‘tough on crime’ policies. The CLP also plans to deploy “Police Public Safety Officers” on public transport and in public housing. These officers will be armed, wear Police uniforms, and operate under Police command. The CLP has been warned against these policies by lawyers, human rights groups, and Aboriginal community groups, but these warnings have gone unheeded.
Out the front of Albanese’s office there were smoking ceremonies, music, and dancing. It was a protest full of rhythm and life. As one of the speakers, Wiradjuri activist Ethan Lyons, noted on Instagram: “Blakfulla rallies are so solid. We got rhythm. We got spirit. We got story. We got ancestors. Our spirit has to be calm to fight this fight.”
Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman and Commissioner For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People, Vanessa TurnbullRoberts, delivered a powerful address to the crowd. She spoke about her time in the NT, where she frequently saw Aboriginal children wearing ankle monitors. She continued, “the biggest investment in this country is an Aboriginal child. The privatisation of prisons, the electronic monitoring systems, the investment into policing
across the road, is all on the backs of Aboriginal children and young people.” She went on to speak about combatting white supremacy, and called on the Government to recognise and investigate the recent ‘March for Australia’ as an act of terrorism.
Dunghutti activist Paul Silva spoke movingly about how he did not wake up one day, deciding to make a change — his position in the activist sphere was brought on by the death of his uncle, David Dungay Jr. He was killed in Long Bay Correctional Centre in 2015. He refused to comply with orders to stop eating biscuits and crackers in his cell, and in response guards restrained him and injected him with a sedative. They continued to restrain him after administering the sedative, despite him stating “I can’t breathe” multiple times. Dungay’s death led to a coronial inquest in 2018 which attributed his death to “systemic deficiencies in training” and did not pursue disciplinary or legal action against any correctional officers involved. As a result of this injustice, Silva began to fight for an end to Blak deaths in custody.
This was echoed by Lizzie Jarrett, a Gumbaynggir, Bundjalung, and Dunghutti activist. She spoke about successive generations having to fight for their most basic human rights, for their voices to even be heard at all. She stated she has seen grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandsons, all fighting for the same thing “with nothing from the Government but Intervention and racist cops still ruling the NT.” Any progress won is rolled back, and then must be fought to be won again, and this cycle repeats.
Jarrett wore a keffiyehpatterned hat, and spoke to how all Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and against colonial violence are linked: “the colonisers came and called this place Australia, the colonisers came and called that place Israel.” The power structures, violence, and white supremacy exist in the same way. She emphasised how it is the responsibility of non-Indigenous people living on stolen land to stand against colonial violence and stand with Indigenous fights for justice.
Gloria Duffin highlighted the aspect language plays in the injustice of the silencing and repressing of voices from the NT, with a lack of representation and language interpreters. She spoke about how, for many Aboriginal
people in the NT, English could be their third, fourth, or fifth language. She called on the crowd to “imagine trying to deal with a racist cop in your fifth language.”
Ethan Lyons stated that for this rally he wished to amend the chant “Too many coppers, not enough justice” to “Too many coppers, never any justice.” This chant reflects more clearly the reality of individual cases, NT & federal policy, and how the crime of colonisation and the theft of land has not yet been brought to justice. Reading from a statement by NT Community Leaders, Lyons stated, “our demands are clear:
• Sanction the racist CLP
• End Blak incarceration and deaths in custody
• Justice for Kumanjayi White
• Abolish OC or pepper spray
• Ban guns on public transport and in public housing
• Implement national minimum standards for prisons and youth justice aligned with UNDRIP, OPCAT, CPRD, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other human rights instruments
• Urgently bring together NT Community Leaders with the NT Chief Minister, Prime Minister, and Senator McCarthy to address the human rights crisis caused by the CLP”
“Now,” Jarrett said, “We’re going to take a little walk.” The crowd began marching down Marrickville Road, chanting “Always was, always will be: Aboriginal land,” “Too many coppers, never any justice,” “Say his name: Kumanjayi White.”
Mounted police followed at a distance for a few minutes and then left well before the march ended, their presence, as always, a failed and costly attempt at intimidation. When we returned to Albanese’s office, police pushed us off the road and onto the pavement.
I end this piece asking readers to read the demands again, and consider the last time you heard directly from an NT Community Leader. Was it months or years ago? Is this the first time? The silencing and repression of NT Aboriginal communities must end. Right now, there is a human rights crisis within the country you live. This must end, the CLP must be sanctioned, and the NT Community Leaders’ demands must be met.
On Sunday 7th August, a few hundred people gathered on Bondi Beach for a pro-Palestinian demonstration under the name “Solidarity with the ‘Sumud’ flotilla”. Announced by the anti-Zionist group Jews Against the Occupation ‘48 (JAO48), the demonstration featured speeches, a display of miniature origami boats on the sand, and a “paddle-out” by surfers holding Palestinian flags. Pro-Zionist protestors jeered throughout the demonstration, at times resulting in heated exchanges when people from the two groups came into close range.
Announced in late August, the demonstration was promoted with endorsement from the groups Eastern Suburbs for Palestine, and Coalition of Women for Justice and Peace. In response, StandWithUs Australia called a protest under the name “No, Not in Our Backyard”. It was endorsed and promoted by the Australian Jewish Association and Lions of Zion, a Naarm-based group whose members have regularly engaged in counterprotests against pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
When Honi arrived shortly after 10am, hundreds of pro-Zionist protestors were on the beach promenade, waving mostly Israeli and Australian flags. Police officers lined the promenade steps, a dozen metres from the pro-Palestinian crowd. The chants “Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi” and “bring them home now” were heard. In response, the pro-Palestinian crowd chanted “always was, always will be Aboriginal land” and “long live Gaza, long live Palestine”.
“We are not here to yell. We are here to show our solidarity with the Sumud flotilla. ‘Sumud’ is our watchword. We’re now taking our origami boats, making our river and joining our river down to the sea, in solidarity with people who are on the other edge of this sea, thousands of miles away, waiting for the Sumud flotilla to bring them food, to bring them medical aid, and to bring them the message from the world that we stand with Gaza and we stand with Palestine.”
Standing on a giant watermelonthemed banner on the sand, JAO48 activist Michelle Berkon called on the crowd to move toward the sea in a “peaceful, quiet” way. “Do not be antagonised, do not react to these people. We are doing our
thing, they’re doing their thing. Let the world see the difference.”
“What’s our message today? Our message is ‘end the genocide and peace’. That’s our message today.” Greens senator David Shoebridge gesticulated with an origami boat in hand. “There will be people who want to provoke a confrontation because that’s the way their politics works. That’s not how our politics works. Our politics is basic peace and love and togetherness.”
The two crowds had been in closer proximity earlier in the morning. According to bystander videos, there was a brawl between several people. At a press conference the following day, NSW Premier Chris Minns condemned “anyone that brings political violence to Australian streets”. On Tuesday, NSW Police published pictures of three people at the brawl, and wrote that they wished to contact them.
Among the swarm of Palestinian flags was a banner from the Sydney-based anti-Zionist activism group Tzedek Collective, reading “Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20) in English and Hebrew and “Jews for a free Palestine”.
At 11:30am, the crowd moved southward along the beach after being directed by organisers to avoid contact with the pro-Zionist crowd, which cheered at the sight and moved along the promenade, toward the stairs through which the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were exiting.
As the two groups came into closer range, there were heated exchanges. “Terrorists, go home” was repeatedly yelled. A few people jeered at a veiled woman, “Where’s your bikini? She doesn’t want to show her body, she’s too big. Too much halal snackpacks.” Two organisers nudged her away from the confrontation.
Other exchanges included a person holding an Australian flag, standing behind two people holding an Israeli flag and a flag with the Lions of Zion logo, yelling “don’t bring this shit to our beach, go home. Go back to Lakemba”.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators responded with the chant, “always was, always will be Aboriginal land”.
Honi gets the chance to do some incredible interviews which are so full of life they won’t fit in print. Below is a selection of interviews we’ve published online, check them out in full on our website!
Euan Hart and Betty: “I’d
say the actual process of writing together is the most harmonious our relalationship ever is.”
Felicity Errington interviews.
Felicity Errington talks with Euan Hart and Betty through their lyricism, the Sydney music scene, and their influences as musicians.
The Grogans Are Ready to Hit the Road Again After ‘Stagger’ Release
Natasha Ball interviews.
Back on home turf, Quin confirms that the band is “keen” to be reunited with not only their favourite crew, but also their favourite audiences, to have that “special moment to share [Stagger] with everyone”.
An Interview with Shapednoise
Will Winter interviews.
“Provoking a reaction, that’s the most important thing for me. Provocating something the listener wouldn’t expect in a certain moment of time.”
Ditching Shrooms, Weed, and Alcohol for Sound Vibrations (it’s free!): In Conversation with Radhika Das
Matilda Cheshire interviews.
Radhika is not your typical spiritual teacher.
Harry Ried Discusses Fewer Emergencies at the Old Fitz
Cormac Herron interviews.
“This play is ours and that’s another wonderful thing about this kind of work, because there’s nothing given to you, everything that you read informs the play.”
Mark Gowing waxes lyrical on aesthetics, time, language, and his new exhibition ‘This one is a song’
Sebastian Tuzilovic interviews.
“There’s always that dichotomy in that combination of the book and the reader, the immortal book and the mortal person. And then you chop it up and you ruin it.”
The Way the Gods Intended
Ellie Robertson escapes.
where all of the censorship, political messaging, and gender fluidity has been overridden to simply be music and fashion? And why the fuck has it become a space for red-pilled ‘alpha males’ to exclude women and gender diverse people (again)?
How do we get back to understanding Rock ‘n’ Roll?
The birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll was in the 1950s, with artists like Chuck Berry introducing a boundary-pushing style of music. With an upbeat blend of blues and country, Berry introduced a new sound that created the backbone foundations of Rock guitar solos and had more emphasis on stage presence. Many were aligned with and were influenced by him, leading to the rise of Rock bands in the 1960s and ‘70s.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Rock became one of the most prevalent genres of the time, spouting out some of the world’s most well-renowned bands, such as , The Beatles, and Rolling . The classic Rock aesthetic and performance style led Rock to become a lifestyle, rather than simply a genre of music. Classic Rock really
said “take Chuck Berry and make it heavy”. Though this style of Rock was initially taken as heavy music, this later became known as soft Rock due the introduction of metal Rock in the 1980s. Before metal Rock, subgenres of Rock started opening up, such as the prominent genre Psychedelic Rock (Psych-Rock). Through experimental guitar riffs, distorted sound features, and drug-induced lyricism, bands, and artists like Funkadelic, Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Hendrix paved the way for the iconic relationship between Rock and drugs.
Hard Rock came into the mix in the 1970’s with bands like Black Sabbath and Mötley Crüe began the heavy metal movement. The sub genre is distinct with its loud and thickly layered sound, paired with the rebellious thematics that often look into political issues of the time, such as working-class alienation, anti-war sentiments, and economic collapse. This also ended up curating another set of subgenres: hair metal, thrash metal, glam metal, and many others. When punk Rock came around, the rebellious nature of rock took a new turn, with clear political lyricism and anti-establishment themes. Punk became possibly the most well-renowned form of defiant music, characterised with its fast paced instrumentals, stripped down production, and more grunge style. Punk bands like Sex Pistols, The Stooges, and Rage Against the Machine continue to flood our Spotify playlists.
The political relationship with the Rock ‘n’ Roll genre has been a complex one to say the least, and the direction it takes is very much based on the artists you watch and listen to. Some artists and bands have
played into more conservative ideals, whereas many others have led the way and influenced many with their leftist values. While there have been various Rock artists who have outwardly taken patriotic and conservative stances on political and humanity issues, Rock as a genre is typically seen as a rebellious, progressive section of music. Many of the main ideologies people think of when they hear the term ‘Rock’ are anti-establishment, anti-war, and typically revolutionary. I would like to argue, or at least assume, in this piece that Rock is just generally that way as a whole — let’s ignore the patriots and conservative minority for this one.
Music in general has been a power of change for decades. From pushing social and political boundaries to directly calling out specific corruption, it is unsurprising that Rock received the reputation it did. Not only did it become tied to the rebellious reputation, it became a space where authorities actively tried to censor and shut down discourse against them. Censorship in rock music has been an issue that has traversed from the beginning through to the current music scene. This kind of repression began as early as the 1960s, with some of the most prominently known censorship scandals involving bands as big as the Rolling Stones, The Kingsmen’, The Kinks, and The Doors. In 1967, the Ed Sullivan Show featured a live performance from the Rolling Stones, however the band were asked to change the title of their hit ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ to ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together’. While having changed the lyrics, Mick Jagger made sure to clearly roll his eyes at the repression of a song that was ‘too raunchy’ for mainstream media of the time. The disobedient nature of these artists created a shift
in social attitudes towards people in authoritarian positions, defying the trust in governmental bodies and escalating nonconformist attitudes.
Many of the earlier incidents of censorship were based around obscenities and moral issues with sexual notes. This later shifted to more political issues like the discussion of queer rights and anti-war sentiments. In the current day, much of the censorship we are witnessing is in regards to any sentiment against government bodies. In August 2025, Bob Vylan, a Punk-Rap duo from the United Kingdom, chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Death to the IDF” during a live show. The duo received backlash from the BBC, calling the chants “antisemitic hate speech”, leading to the cancellation of their future tours and visa revocations.
In addition to the main attitudes associated with Rock ‘n’ Roll, drugs became an emblem of the culture. The relationship between drugs and the Rock genre is broad and complex, with drugs being a factor in the aesthetic: the drugs used to amplify creativity, influencing lyrics and melodies, the physical lifestyle of the stereotypical ‘rockstar’, and the fans who would join in. This became particularly prevalent in the 1960s and 70s when Psycho-Rock was introduced and becoming more popular. Many artists were inspired by the hallucinogenic experiences they endured when taking drugs like LSD, mushrooms, and marijuana. This later went as far as whole albums being written on and about Class A drugs like heroin.
When looking at drug use in relation to music, it is important to note that a common denominator is the feeling of escapism. ‘Escapism’ as a term is used to describe distracting oneself from negative feelings and reality through certain types of entertainment. These forms of escapism can range from doom-scrolling on TikTok, to seeing live music, or substance abuse. The addiction to dopamine can become a tragic downfall. Drugs and escapism have a very cyclical link: people take substances to escape from negative feelings in life, but this can then lead to addiction, and back to substance abuse to escape the devastation of addiction. The
use of substances as a coping mechanism has been around longer than we can remember.
In times of turmoil, many turn to substances and music to escape from the realities around them. Particularly with the political notes in the Rock genre, it is no surprise that people turn to music and lifestyle as a way to relieve or cope with the struggles of the world as it stands. This was just as prevalent in the 1960s-80s as it is now. Over the past few years, the far-right movement has risen across the world. We’ve seen an increase in extremism, political violence, fascist rallies, genocide, and general apathy for others. Wrapped in our social media algorithms, we continuously see people like Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and Andrew Tate spreading far-right, conservative rhetoric shrouded in racism, homophobia, misogyny, and violence. Within the same doomscroll session, we see graphic videos of the plethora of horrific genocides that are occurring in Palestine and Congo, bombings in the Middle East, police brutality in Indonesia and Nepal, and mass anti-immigration movements in the US, UK, and Australia.
There
are practically only
two options to cope with these terrifying narratives: desensitisation and escapism.
Filtered within the red pill, right wing content splurge is the content pushed specifically towards women: the traditional gender roles repackaged in trad-wife, homestead, clean girl aesthetics. Focusing on whole foods and family values, modesty has become a new trend. The values that both young women and men have been subjected to in recent years have been shrouded in right wing values. But in recent months, my feed has been overflowing with ‘being the Type B friend’ or ‘messy girl’ or ‘rockstar girlfriend’. Short skirts and barely-there tops are back in our algorithms once again. This is the beginning of society healing.
The question is, is society reverting back to escapist tendencies? Are we reverting back to Rock and substances to do so?
It’s a simple question with a complex answer. Between August 2023 and August 2024, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) released results from their annual wastewater report.
It showed that there was a 34 per cent increase in consumption of illicit drugs across Australia, totalling at 22.2 tonnes.
The drugs in question were methylamphetamine (21 per cent), cocaine (69 per cent), MDMA (49 per cent), and heroin (14 per cent). The ACIC have reported that they predict these increases to continue for the next few years. There are many reasons drug use in Australia could be increasing and it’s very difficult to pinpoint certain reasons without delving into Australia’s political landscape.
Honi Soit distributed a survey looking into the relationships between Rock, drugs, and politics in the current day to unpack what might be the cause of increased drug use. The majority of participants were between 18–25 years old, and listen to Rock and Punk music in some capacity. When asked whether participants believed that music should push social and political boundaries, 73 per cent said ‘Yes’ and 18.9 per cent said ‘Sometimes’. Many attributed the reason for this to politics being inherently weaved through all areas in our lives, music not being the exception. Some mentioned the history and significance of music and art as a form of protest and resistance. Music is interweaved in people’s lives whether intentionally or not.
One thing that is apparent for 51.3 per cent of participants is the increase in Rock and Punk music
in mainstream media: Amyl and the Sniffers, Kneecap, Speed, Fontaines D.C., and YUNGBLUD were specifically mentioned. With bands like Amyl and the Sniffers and Kneecap gaining international attention and news coverage for their anti-colonial sentiments and actions, we are seeing a real appreciation towards punk that honours the ethos of traditional Punk-Rock movements. A member of Kneecap, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaudh, appeared in court after allegedly displaying a flag associated with Hezbollah at a live show in 2024. After outwardly being in support of Palestine in the midst of a genocide, he was charged under the Terrorist Act in the United Kingdom. At his court appearance, he was greeted by hundreds of fans, flying Palestine and Irish flags. The testament of hundreds of people (and thousands more online) supporting the political cause that these artists put forth is the epitome of Punk Rock. The nonconformity of the authoritarian government and major establishments, such as Thales and Lockheed Martin, demonstrates the exact political climate of traditional Punk Rock.
Moving on to the drugs section of the survey, 67.6 per cent of participants said that they had taken drugs recreationally. While the majority of these respondents mentioned that they were driven by curiosity and fun, there were a few people who mentioned social pressure. The two top types of drugs used recreationally were cannabis (67.6 per cent) and hallucinogenics (27 per cent). 37.8 per cent said they have noticed the increase in drug use in Australia, with 56.8 per cent noticing an increase in romanticisation of drug use in the age range of 18–25 years old.
When inquiring about the political state of the world and asked whether the rise of the far-right impacts their everyday life, 54.1 per cent said ‘Yes’ while 35.1 per cent said ‘To an extent’. The study had a voluntary section where participants were able to elaborate on how this impacts the way they cope with various situations in their daily life. The main issues that stood out in this section were the constant stress and anxiety surrounding the safety of human rights and the increased selectiveness
in who people are associating with. Interestingly, 40.5 per cent of participants noted that they see links between substance abuse and politics in their experience, with 29.7 per cent being more undecided.
While there were many comments on the link between left-leaning people and openness to drugs, there was discussion of how the political sphere has always been intertwined with substance abuse; issues that lead to a lack of stability and community often lead to a higher likelihood of falling into drug use. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Australia, drugrelated behaviour is influenced by a multitude of socio-economic issues, however the central cases are poor living conditions, inaccessible education, and the housing crisis. It is crucial to link these with the corresponding issue: the cost of living crisis.
With over 120,000 people facing homelessness across Australia in 2024, the underfunding for resources in public schooling, and the refusal of rental caps from the Albanese government, it is unsurprising that many turn to substances to relieve themselves of the current state of living.
As a society, it is clear we are beginning to fall, or have already fallen, into a cycle of repeated quick hits of dopamine, which people are often finding through music and substances. An article in Magazine shows that between September 2024 and 2025, Australians have chosen to prioritise live gigs over general living costs. In younger generations, over 60 per cent of participants emphasize the need for connection to live music
and festival experiences. Many are prioritising these short-lived yet intense experiences, and are more willing to spend more money on their favourite artists. Rock and Punk have made their way back into the mainstream, and are only getting increasingly prevalent. Even though there has been a rise in fascist movements, we are seeing a slow but sure reversal of conservative aesthetics, and an increase in rebellion through fashion, action, and discussion.
Rock is back. It’s back not only in music, but in lifestyle, fashion, and political movements. We have seen a major increase in Punk and Rock in mainstream media, and they are truly causing riffs in the political sphere. People are staunchly supporting and acting on political and humanitarian issues, despite extreme levels of fearmongering repression and censorship. Artists are using their platforms to spread the word on injustices and atrocities across the world, drawing people into progressive, left-wing movements.
Analysis
Girls Forgotten By Time
Audrey Hawkins is crate-digging.
In the spring of 2022, I created a playlist called “Girls Forgotten By Time.” A curated selection born from the laborious impulse to gather quieted women’s voices from the 1950s-1970s. Connie Converse, Vashti Bunyan, and Sibylle Baier are three such artists: met with indifference in their own time, only to have been galvanised and raised to a cultlike status by an era populated with digital streaming and crate-digging. Their work is woven into the veins of folk lineage, informing a counter-canon to the Bob Dylan’s, Leonard Cohen’s, and Nick Drake’s of the world. A reminder of all the women’s voices that have slipped from collective memory.
Track One: Connie Converse
In upstate New York in 1954, nestled into one of illustrator Gene Deitch’s house gatherings, a tape recorder was being used to document the songs of a plethora of guests including Connie Converse. The track ‘I Have Considered the Lilies’ from How Sad, How Lovely (2009) captures the intimacy of these moments: the soft clatterings of the lively room punctuates finger pluckings, and an off-mic voice coaxing Converse through her artistic uncertainty: “Why don’t you just sing it, and we won’t record it?”
Connie, born Elizabeth Eaton Converse, never found commercial success during her time. Her sound was stripped and poetic in an era permeated by rock and loud rebellion. Ahead of the zeitgeist, a folk singer-songwriter before they were commonplace, she was crafting melodies born from pervasive loneliness, promiscuity, and deep introspections, all in her tiny Greenwich Village studio, a place on the cusp of the folk revival.
In 1956 she recorded Musicks (2023) for her brother Phil, but her inability to find a place within the industry left her disillusioned. Five years later, Converse left for Ann Arbour, Michigan. She took a secretorial job before working as a writer and managing editor for the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1963. She let music recede into the background.
In the summer of 1974, at 50, she packed her life into the backseat of her Volkswagen Beetle, leaving behind letters for loved ones and a filing cabinet full of rejection letters. She drove away, and hasn’t been seen since.
Although she hasn’t been found, three decades later, her music was. Dan Dzula and David Herman tracked down her tapes and in 2009, released How Sad, How Lovely The reception was overwhelmingly positive, a plethora of critical receptors remarking on the haunting intimacy of her honest lyrics. What survives of Connie today is a body of work dripping with the hiss of tape as she sings of veiled emotional depths, returning decades after she gave up, haunting and whole.
Track Two: Vashti Bunyan
In the late 80s, forgotten in a back drawer of the Bunyan’s family home, Vashti’s kids found an old cassette recording of her first album, Just Another Diamond Day (1970). They had no idea that she had been a musician, and that was by purposeful design: she had completely shut away music for 30 years, refusing to pick up her guitar again. If the music world shut her out, then she would do the same.
When she first entered the London music scene, Jennifer Vashti Bunyan was signed by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. She’d been dreaming of a pop career, while Oldham sought to shape her to be a folk icon. All of her singles were commercial failures or shelved.
Bunyan felt as though her music wasn’t going anywhere, so she turned her back on London as a whole. In 1967, with the company of her boyfriend, she fled by horsedrawn-cart toward Donovan’s planned commune in the Western Isles of Scotland.
The two-year odyssey yielded the lyrical attentions of Just Another Diamond Day, a collection of delicate, pastoral sounds. It was released with only a few hundred presses and spotlighted lukewarm reviews, dismissed as songs for children. Pregnant with her first child and burdened by disappointment, Bunyan completely withdrew from the music.
In 1997, she discovered the online crate-digging cult that was devoted to her album. In response, she tracked down her master copies and reissued them in 2000. Instead of disinterest, this time, Bunyan was met with warm reviews, strong sales, and was revered as the Godmother of Freak Folk (a title which she doesn’t agree with).
Following her renewal, she threw herself back into music and the following year released Lookaftering (2005). Her discography has filled out further over the years, along with a published memoir. She was no longer lost to time, and finally got to experience the musical dreams she didn’t get to as a young girl.
Track Three: Sibylle Baier
In 1970s Germany, as a hush fell over the Baier family home, Sibylle Baier, then in her 20s, sat with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and the low string plucking buzz of a guitar. Her music was an unadorned capsule of melancholy, the quiet comfort of self-therapy. Her emotional outlet became Colour Green (2006): a collection of 14 folk songs that saved her life.
Baier, a multi-disciplinary artist, had her first lyrical push on a trip from the Alps to Genoa which culminated in Remember The Day, an aching travelogue of the soul from recollections of fog, beaches, and a run in with German police who mistook flowers for marijuana. The songs embodied her exhaustion, domestic frustrations, and everyday longings with the backing of familiar chord progressions.
She had a brief singing appearance in Wim Wenders’ film Alice in the Cities (1974), but didn’t care for the small pieces of attention she was garnering, fulfilled with her life as it was and out of touch with the demands of the industry. She declined offers to meet with Virgin Records, packed her tapes away, and chose to move to the United States to raise her family instead.
Three decades later, her son Robby found the master reels in their attic. A professional music producer, he was “electrified” by their honesty, an intrusion into her arrestingly intimate internal world. For her 60th birthday, Robby had the music compiled on CDs for friends and family. One copy had managed to reach Andrew Rieger at Orange Twin Records. In February 2006, Colour Green was released to the public for the first time, received warmly as a sister to the intimate folk of Leonard Cohen.
In her only interview, Baier calls being heard “a sacred space” and keeps her distance from the noise around it. Now, her voice is no longer lost. Without ever intentionally chasing it her unreserved lyrical essence has reached out and carried far further than a quiet family living room.
“Sometimes you have to go above the written law”:
40 years ago, the United States, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, began sending arms to Iran. No one, except a tight circle of people, knew about this as the US had an embargo on Iran. But, if it wasn’t the US shipping them missiles and weapons, then it could be the Soviet Union or any other communist nation, and the hawkish anti-communist Reagan could not have that. On the other side of the globe, not too far from the US, in Nicaragua, a collection of right-wing militias, the Contras, were receiving funding from the Reagan administration. For three years prior, this had been done illegally and secretively, but now it was Congress-approved (although, the private funds sent to the Contras did not stop). A year later, the US was caught with their pants down by the Lebanese newspaper Ash-Shiraa who exposed the illegal and secretive supplying of weapons to the Islamic Republic.
The Iran-Contra Scandal is much more complex than this abridged version of the twisted story we are dealing with. Even though these events transpired four decades ago, there is something sinister about the way they keep rearing their heads throughout successive administrations.
In the World Policy Journal, Peter Kornbluh said that
“the crimes of the Reagan administration derived from an imperial president who “created or at least tolerated” an environment where “disdain for the law” and “pervasive dishonesty” became routine bureaucratic procedure.”
This characterisation has not changed since the 80s. Even before Iran-Contra, this description could fit a president like Nixon. However, what has changed is the sense of shame and the tangible, material impacts that could be felt upon the perpetrator of such a scandal. Where Nixon resigned in disgrace, Reagan continued his reign. The same goes for Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who were both impeached for their various crimes, yet received little more than a slap on the wrist for their transgressions. The role of the president has always been suspiciously monarchical, and this has become more apparent with the way leaders of the so-called free world can retain power despite their complete betrayal of their allegedly ‘democratic’ values.
America, ever the front of peace and freedom, seems to entangle itself in many conflicts and wars. The Orwellian phrase “War is Peace” seems to adorn each American foreign ‘operation’. The Iran-Contra Affair was no different and to this day, this is the norm of American militarism. Even a president who proclaims to care about war, like
Trump, seems to be very heavily involved, whether through ‘peace deals’ or approving bombing campaigns like that of Yemen and Iran. How can imperialism and democracy co-exist when one advocates for freedom, and the other advocates for domination?
Iran-Contra is one of the most significant moments where the mask slips: where the attempt to portray this balance is inauthentic. The goals of freedom and the goals of domination are inherently conflicting. This was illuminated through the funding of both Iran and the Contras, where America’s zealous desire for influence and power completely overstepped democratic principles of informing the public, respecting the rule of law, and working towards a global mission of peace.
It is all quite ironic, right? Not just in America’s militaristic aims coupled with its so-called advocacy of freedom, but in the fact that at the same time that Reagan was fighting the ‘war on drugs’, he was funding the very enemies of this war. The Contras were notorious not just for their human rights abuses but for their participation in the trafficking of cocaine through the American continent. The hypocrisy is loud not just in drug trafficking but in the corruption of the American system that – I can guarantee — would be
Anonymous has a bad taste in their mouth.
Too Many Government Fingers in University Pies
Leading up to the last federal election, Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson’s calls for the higher education regulator to monitor university curricula for ‘woke’ content set off alarm bells about government overreach into higher education. This wasn’t an isolated policy thought bubble. Calls for government intervention in universities are fashionable. Look at the fuss NSW Liberals have kicked up about the University of Sydney ‘Indigenising’ its curriculum and Macquarie University including Acknowledgements of Country in an assessment task. And not a minor fuss — a big enough issue in the minds of Liberal Members of the NSW Legislative Council (MLCs) Susan Carter and Rachel Merton, that it was worth questioning university executives about at Budget Estimates last month. Even that is less dramatic than the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism’s proposal to confiscate funding from institutions that ‘facilitate, enable or fail to act against’ antisemitism, which would set a dangerous precedent that risks freedom of political speech.
These examples are characteristic of a right wing that does not value universities. Universities are caricatured as centres of indoctrination and maligned as failing to make their graduates ‘job-ready’. These philistinic conservatives don’t admire higher education ‘for its own sake’. They have little patience for indulgences such as academic freedom, since they have limited respect for academia.
Yet the sense that government should mould higher education to will is popular across politics. In the same NSW Budget Estimates session where their Liberal colleagues were pushing for a crackdown on pro-Palestine sentiment at universities, Greens MLCs were lamenting the confines of the state government’s legislated powers. These provide the minister with no authority to compel universities to accommodate student protest nor abandon austerity measures. A couple of ministerially appointed university council members prove ineffectual at shaping university governance. In the wake of the Universities Accord process, the Albanese Government has reached for new powers, such as via the National Student Ombudsman and need-based funding, to influence who universities enrol and how they operate.
Of course, these impositions seem pretty sympathetic; they are in service of fixing working conditions, protecting the right to protest, increasing access to university for priority cohorts, and improving student safety. Still, it’s worth asking whether these are powers best afforded to governments whose higher education agendas can range from inept to outright sinister. Giving politicians the tools to stack university boards, dictate course content, control student numbers and so on provides them with a great deal of leverage over the sector. With fiascos like Tony Abbott’s attempts to deregulate university fees and Scott Morrison’s odious Job-ready Graduates Scheme still visible in the rearview mirror, there’s plenty of reason for caution.
Even well-intentioned efforts to make universities work for the public good risk unacceptably undermining their independence. Viewing universities as means to a public end can easily bleed into prescriptiveness about the courses they offer and a reductionism about their social roles. The idea that universities should primarily be equipping young people to fill national skills shortages is an appealing line of reasoning extending from the belief that universities should serve the public, but it can quickly weaken student choice and diminish the value of less vocational subjects.
almost entirely lost the confidence of the ANU community at large, is case in point.
University leaders have rightly critiqued proposed overreaches across various submissions and responses to reports. Absent is a recognition that this is fundamentally a problem of their own making: their operations are out of step with community expectations, and people feel that universities can’t be trusted with administrative autonomy.
Universities must recognise that they have obligations to the public and act accordingly. Approaching university stakeholders and the wider community in good faith should not be so difficult. Vice-chancellors and other senior executives opting to take a pay cut would be a good start. Being transparent about spending on consultants and, better still, declining to waste money on them, would be another low-hanging fruit. More ambitiously, universities should approach tough financial decisions by giving staff real agency rather than springing restructures on them and engaging in consultation as a boxticking exercise.
Still, it’s worth asking whether these are powers best afforded to governments whose higher education agendas can range from inept to outright sinister.
The role of the government should not be to claim control of universities, but to redirect power towards the staff, students and community who are most intimately connected with the workings of their university.
Still, these demands for greater government powers over universities are motivated by real concerns about how our universities operate. A cascade of grim revelations about wage theft, ludicrous vice-chancellor salaries, course cuts upon course cuts — it’s a wonder universities have any reputation left to burn. Universities receive billions of dollars of public funding, so their social licence to operate matters. When they totally fail their duty to the public, it’s no wonder politicians feel pressure to force them to correct course. The recent spectacle of Australian National University’s (ANU) senior leadership being called to resign by Independent ACT Senator David Pocock, having
Naturally, that requires fixing university funding settings to keep pace with inflation, recognising that many of the indignities of our universities stem from resources spread too thin. Beyond funding, it means governance reform should focus on increasing staff and student representation in university governance and ensuring staff and students have the iron-clad right to speak freely on campus.
The Iran-Contra Scandal 40 Years Later
Calista Burrowes revists Iran-Contra.
Forty years later, the threads of Iran-Contra continue unravelling. Trump has followed in the footsteps of Reagan, taking the wounds of America exposed by the scandal to the extreme. Above all, transparency and honesty within governments is a necessity. We must know what our elected leaders are doing for the sake of them keeping their jobs and for the sake of knowing where our money and our votes are going. In the case of Iran-Contra, at the end of the winding road, it was everyday people who were dragged into this affair, if not through their taxes then through their votes for the Reagan administration. Reagan, the advocate for ‘small government’, like his spiritual successor Trump, seemed to implement the sweeping near-monarchical powers of the White House quite grandly in this situation, without the knowledge of those who would bear the consequences, the American people, if something bad were to happen as a result of arming another country — let us not forget that his administration also enabled the formation of al-Qaeda in the name of anti-communism. Transparency is still crucial in a time of rising fear and fascism. Calling out governments that work against our interests is necessary for our future.
In the Arena of Diplomacy
Hassanzadeh questions performative recognition.
Under the downpour of torrential rain, nearly 300,000 people gathered on 3rd August across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the ‘March for Humanity’ to protest Israel’s strategic starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and the Albanese government’s diplomatic and military involvement in this genocide. Shoulder to shoulder we marched as a collective of people, all from different walks of life but with our shared humanity in mind. It was one of the largest antiwar demonstrations to take place on Australian soil, calling to mind the 2003 Iraq War protests. Both young and old, we shouted our demands and our beliefs — sanction Israel, end arms supply, cut diplomatic ties now!
Nearly a week after the Harbour Bridge march, the Australian government announced a pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood by September. This came after similar moves were made by the UK, France, and Canada. The act of formally recognising a Palestinian State has been a contentious notion deliberated upon for more than a decade, but what does recognition do and who actually benefits? What does a Western nation’s recognition provide to the material reality of the Palestinian people? In contrast to states like Iran and Bangladesh who do not recognise Israel, is Australia’s move a strategic play by Albanese and Wong to further normalise the partition of historic Palestine as part of the idealised ‘twostate’ solution?
A Palestinian State alongside the State of Israel is an oxymoron, and is a solution that is fundamentally obscurist in nature.
Recognising a Palestinian State insinuates that Palestinians are an ethnic group wanting to separate from the nation they are in. A two-state solution does not address the illegal occupation of Palestine and, in turn, offers an image of grace to Israel for allowing the establishment of a Palestinian State.
In a media statement released on 11th August, Albanese reminded us that Australia was the “first country to raise its hand…to create the State of Israel — and a Palestinian state” in 1947. More than 77 years later, Albanese’s recognition of Palestine is a stark reminder of Australia’s historic support for land theft and Apartheid. Australia’s recognition of Palestine does not hold much value when it was, in fact, first in line to support uprooting a nation and its peoples in favour of establishing another.
So-called ‘Australia’ itself is a nation of smoke and mirrors, an arena of historic failures and injustices.
17 years on from what the media describes as Kevin Rudd’s ‘historic’ apology, Albanese reaffirms the ineptitude of Australian politics. Speaking in February at the Stolen Generations Breakfast hosted at Federal Parliament House, Albanese described Rudd’s Apology as the “day in which I remain the proudest”. In announcing the “beginning of a new chapter”, Albanese intended to “put behind us the old chapter” — a chapter with a forced start, and one that has had no end.
In the grand scheme of things, there really is no difference between forgetting and ‘closing’ a chapter. An Indigenous person never forgets nor closes the chapter of their stolen sovereignty, when they have been obstructed from the right to choose the trajectory of their own life and national aspirations. Rudd’s apology, Indigenous Arrernte man William Tilmouth says, is a yearly reminder of “failed policies and actions resulting in more of our children than ever before being ‘taken into care’”. From Darug to Gaza, the Colony is never going to be the one to free us. Its hazy recognition is nothing more than an already used band aid, too small to cover even the most miniscule of crimes.
For us in the belly of the Beast, we must not succumb to the pleasures of quick and momentary success.
At its core, any Western state’s recognition of a Palestinian State is performative and not at all concerned with the true liberation of Palestine. Palestine has long existed as a sovereign nation; the Palestinian people precede that and have always existed. Regardless of if we recognise nation-states through a contemporary lens, Palestine and its people will continue to exist. What really needs to be recognised is Occupation, Annexation, and Genocide. We must not allow our collective action to be scapegoated for cheap recognition, or we too risk becoming people who stand for smoke and fall for mirrors.
As reports of a ceasefire conditional on demilitarising Hamas emerge, and a similar ceasefire contingent on Lebanon’s Hezbollah come into view, it is crucial to interrogate the intention behind state-making. State-making has always been an act of consequence and nationalistic ambition, lending power to those who are solely focused on boundaries, borders, and installing regulatory systems over the balkanised territories they create. It is no longer enough to simply march. We have a responsibility to organise our collective action in a way that cannot be instrumentalised by governments who require a social guise to continue their destructive policies.
“If, amid a genocide, the highest political ask is ‘please recognise us,’ how can you later return to demand sanctions or justice?”
Diana Buttu
In light of Australia’s recent expulsion of the Iranian Ambassador on the claims that the Iranian government coordinated two arson attacks on Australian soil, we stand at a poignant crossroads that displays the naked hypocrisy of Australian diplomacy. If it is possible to expel a representative diplomat on vague claims, and without offering the public any tangible evidence, why has Albanese not expelled the Israeli ambassador? As early as March 2024, UN Rights experts described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide. In the arena of diplomacy, the Australian governments ‘red line’ overlooks genocide but draws the line at being criticised for supplying Israel with lethal F-35 parts.
If we look back to when the project of ‘recognition’ began, we should be able to call this what it is : a continuation of the colonial project. Recognition provides the disgraced Palestinian Authority with optics to cling to, and the West with the gratification of having seemingly done the right thing. It leaves the Palestinian people with no justice and a fragmentation of historic Palestine into Balkanised enclaves. If recognising a Palestinian State is dependent on demilitarising the region and, essentially, capitulating its defence capability — a right afforded to occupied peoples by International Law — the result of recognition can potentially be catastrophic.
The language of recognition makes no mention of oppressor and oppressed; the aggressor and they who are under aggression. The language of recognition is the language of partition, a reckoning that people in this region, my region, know all too well. In our region, stretching from Khorasan to the Subcontinent, and from the plains of the Fertile Crescent through to Bilad alSham, we have known partition as the venom on the tip of the sword. Partition has been distance, separation, and fear — colonial symptoms that can not be healed by recognition. By only recognising appearances on a map but not the wound in the soul, the Australian government avoids the responsibility of ending this genocide. Albanese will put this chapter behind him too, and much like ‘Apology’ day, the day recognition is passed will be crystalised in our political hall of fame. Those will be the days we trade fantasies for our sovereignty.
Mahtab
Echoes of Adjustment: Is Imitation Really the Best Form of Flattery?
Mehar Chugh is done copying you.
My first day at university felt like a performance. My accent shifted, sharpening its ‘r’s that had always been softer. At a cafe, with people I hope will become my friends, I order a latte, despite longing for the lingering, uncompromising bitterness of a long black. Later, when someone asks my favourite song, I hesitate. Two worlds collide in my head: the one I have always known, and a new one where I feel unanchored, fragile. If I say Raabta — a Hindi song with lyrics that carry the weight of connection and fate — will they hear me? Or will it slip past them as unfamiliar syllables, too foreign to bridge the gap between us? Instead, I choose shared familiarity, River Flows in You, a wordless piano piece that everyone seems to know. It is easier to be understood through something universal than to risk exposing a part of me that might not translate.
That night, sitting alone with my long black and the flicker of my mind, I replay the day almost like a film reel. Was I playing a character today?Was this a new version of me or just a careful echo of the people I had met?
We hear it often: ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’
But for anyone starting afresh, whether you’ve crossed oceans or just suburbs, imitation is a silent negotiator, a quiet bargain between belonging and self-erasure.
Why do we do it? The answer, according to neuroscientists, is mirror neurons. These are brain cells that fire not only when we perform an action ourselves, but also when we watch others do the same. They explain why yawns ripple through a room, or why a stranger softens into familiarity when we mirror them. On a biological level, imitation is empathy in motion — a quiet, universal language that says, I see you, and I want to belong beside you. This is why accents slip, why taste buds learn to crave what our friends order, and why our playlists expand to absorb theirs. Imitation is an invisible glue, subtle but powerful, stitching us into one another’s worlds.
Harvard’s 80-year Study of Adult Development, the longest study of happiness ever conducted, confirms what we know instinctively: strong relationships are the greatest predictors of a good life. Often, those relationships begin with something as small as imitation: laughing at the same jokes, ordering the same coffee, humming the same songs.
But imitation isn’t always born of admiration. Sometimes, it’s survival. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reminds us that before we can reach for authenticity, we crave safety and belonging. Maybe that’s the paradox? Imitation often starts low on Maslow’s ladder, as a way to blend in, but sometimes it climbs higher, reshaping us. The disguise becomes reality. Sometimes we keep the latte. Sometimes the songs stop feeling borrowed and start sounding like a choice.
“I don’t think we ever really change,” a friend once told me. “Every time we act differently in a new situation, we’re just uncovering another part of ourselves. That’s growth.” I find this truth manifests in the quiet fitting rooms of our daily lives. Some selves are awkward and quickly discarded, others settle comfortably, stitching themselves into the fabric of who we are. What begins as imitation may, with time, blossom into genuine growth.
So if you’ve ever softened your accent, ordered something you didn’t love, or laughed at a joke you didn’t get, you have participated in this delicate negotiation.
I remember nervously echoing someone’s laugh, cheeks burning, yet feeling a fragile bridge form — a fleeting connection that, for a moment, made me feel less alone. Growth comes from these moments,
Split Hems and Faded Knees: The Politics of Denim
Let me tell you the story of cotton.
Dyed in indigo, held fast by rivets, clinging stubbornly to the hips of farmhands. Later carried through the streets of Alabama, loud and unyielding on the bodies we too often leave unnamed.
Denim, for me, finds its form in split hems and faded knees trudging downhill from the Chemistry building to the Old Teacher’s College thrice a week.
My jeans tell one story. At the same time, in a dusty cotton mill on the other side of the world, another story unfolds: a girl bent over her loom, racing to finish her last pair of jeans before silicosis steals her breath, stitch by stitch.
Her story threads through yours, too. You, sitting in comfort, your new pair soft against your skin, unaware of the distress woven into its fibres or the hardship carried by the hands that made it.
Let me take you back to where it started. To trace denim’s path, we return to the sweltering fields and mines of 19thcentury America. It’s where a Bavarian immigrant saw an opening in the Gold Rush, an urgent need for a garment that could survive hard labour. A garment built to withstand the grind of the mines
and the toil of the fields.
Denim was created as durable workwear. It used cotton grown on plantations in the American South and India, where enslaved and indentured people were forced into labour. Indigo, the dye, was also produced under these systems. In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented jeans with rivets to make them last longer under heavy use. That strength was made possible by cheap, often coercive labour, while the profits went to industrialists and traders rather than the people who produced the raw materials.
After World War II, denim’s story turned political. Veterans brought them back into civilian life. In occupied Europe, jeans became contraband cool, a symbol of American rebellion, smuggled into countries where conformity was enforced. By the 1950s, Hollywood rebels like James Dean and Marlon Brando rebranded denim as a fabric of youthful insubordination, and by the 1960s, it was a global shorthand for resistance.
uniform of labour to the uniform of dissent. Denim shouted defiance. In a society polished by starched collars and pressed skirts, denim embodied a rejection of middle-class polish, undivided by race or gender. It became the skin of struggle itself: hard, stubborn, unbending.
Cut to the present: denim is sold back to us through Sydney Sweeney in the name of all-American sex appeal. The ad’s visual politics are as bleak as they come: slim, blonde, blueeyed. A eugenics dreamland. The same old marketing trick of selling whiteness as aspirational and, more importantly, a bitter, sardonic laugh at denim’s own history: made by the very skin it now excludes.
Denim marched, too, in the 1960s. It clothed young activists in sit-ins and Freedom Rides, transforming from the
What rarely makes it into the ads is that in Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest producer of denim, garment worker’s pay falls far short of a living wage: benchmark studies put the gap at nearly half of what is needed to survive in Dhaka. Of the 65 apparel giants surveyed, a pitiful 11 per cent admitted to even beginning the work of paying a living wage — the rest keep their boots clean while the risk of forced labour seeps quietly through their supply chains.
where we hold our new and old selves in careful balance. We stretch into unfamiliar ways of being, without losing the core of who we are.
So, is imitation truly the greatest form of flattery?
Perhaps if it stems from admiration. When I play Yiruma’s River Flows In You because I love the melody, that is flattery. When I hide Pritam’s Raabta out of fear, that is loss.
The truth is that imitation can draw us closer to one another, but it might also draw us away from ourselves. The art lies in balance: to belong without vanishing, to expand without erasing, to exist with full knowledge and confidence in who you are. In the end, the sincerest form of flattery is not copying someone else, but letting them be themselves completely
In other words, our story comes to a full circle: the fabric of rebellion is still underwritten by starvation wages and corporate indifference. If the girl I left weaving in the first paragraph was dropped into the past, she’d hardly know she had time-travelled.
Denim has travelled from coal mines to campuses, from factories to festivals, and in every space it absorbs new meanings, carrying anti-war slogans in its back pockets and flaring bell-bottoms in psychedelic self-expression. It continues to tell the stories of the lives it touches. Its makers’ names were never stitched on the label, but their fingerprints leave a mark in every crease.
At Carslaw, under lights that never sleep, I sit in my pair of jeans — half a world away, still damp from rain. The hub rattles with construction behind the partitions and
Sahiba Tasnia Tanushree threads the history of denim.
The Magic Pills Won’t Fix You
Anonymous gets medicated.
As human beings, we are susceptible to taking shortcuts. We are drawn to what eases our pain.The need for escapism is one that is deeply ingrained in human nature. Nobody enjoys rawdogging life.
In this modern day and age, medications are glamourised as go-to drugs that can fix us. This transcends beyond medication for physical health, as today’s psychiatry industry actively promotes Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) that many individuals perceive to be a quick fix when it comes to mental health. SSRIs are a class of antidepressants that serve to treat a wide range of mood disorders. But are they really magic pills, or is modernity’s clinical gaze seeping too far into our individualistic paths towards healing?
SSRIs function in a way that inhibits the reuptake of serotonin in the brain, which helps to increase and maintain serotonin levels. This works to gradually tweak brain chemistry and enhance stability. Like any other medical process that involves chemicals, SSRIs have sparked a substantial amount of controversy in both medical and public spheres. Many debate on the effectiveness of these pills, whether side effects can potentially harm the human body in the long term, and if the capitalist marketability of medication has overrode the humanitarian side of treating psychological disorders.
Some common side effects of SSRIs include sweating, shakiness, nausea, weight gain, reduced libido… the list goes on. Many even report that their mental state deteriorated or that the side effects wore them out before the tablets came into full effect and improved their condition over time. Why then, are they still regarded as beneficial, and sometimes even necessary, in the medical world? Well, from an epistemological standpoint, SSRIs just make sense. This is backed up by modern research, to the point where these pills are seen as a vital intervention with regards to mental health. The promise of being fixed by an external force is tempting to many because of the way we have been collectively wired to believe in science. Yet one can also argue that not all academic research encompasses the individuality of experiences with medication. Many on online forums believe that SSRIs have a placebo effect — in offering a sense of hope to individuals, their mindsets towards healing are rewired to become more optimistic, which can smoothen the process of getting better. A singular 100mg tablet does not just carry chemicals in it, it harbours the promise of being fixed.
With that being said, the real question is: between escapism and true healing, where do SSRIs really lie? SSRIs act to stabilise the mind and body, yet a stability that is rooted in chemical effects contradicts the true essence of our mental plights, rooted in intrinsic human emotions after all. What I find most ironic is the emotional blunting that many experience when on these pills. Many find that they operate through a state of numbness and suppression of their emotions, rather than truly processing their underlying issues and progressing past them.
Personally, I never had any staunch belief in medicine, nor have I ever been entirely opposed to it. Nonetheless, I was no stranger to horror stories about antidepressants, particularly SSRIs. I knew that what presented itself as a shortcut was also a potentially detrimental risk. As such, I was torn between the former and latter for ages. I feared that the side effects would deplete my physical health in the long term and I also clung on to an ingrained notion that resorting to medication was tantamount to giving up.
I was resolute in my belief that I was capable of eventually finding the light, but I was tired. When trauma is embedded in every fibre of your being and family genetics are an inherited curse, it’s hard to find a loophole.
I wouldn’t say my eventual willingness to give SSRIs another shot came from a place of weakness. Rather, it was a logical choice. I knew that incessantly fluctuating between choices would only continue to gnaw at me. I had to give this a shot so that I could weigh out the pros and cons with my own judgement. My body and mind deserved a chance to heal. I decided that experimenting with medication would be a part of that journey. Finally, I got started on Sertraline.
Nevertheless, I am not immune to the emotional paralysation that online discourses lament about. Though Sertraline has helped to curb my frequent nightmares and have reduced my obsessive-compulsive tendencies so I don’t spiral into a distraught mess, my thoughts sometimes feel spaced out and one-dimensional. It’s as if they’re just floating around in my head without much depth to them. I get restless easily because my emotions, including joy, feel flatter and often cannot scratch the relentless itch that exists beyond the surface. Freedom, or the promise of it, never comes in unfettered form. It’s give and take, especially when you are still unhealed at the very core.
While SSRIs can offer a conceptualised idea of stability backed up by modern day research, the chemical changes that they provide cannot alter who and what a person is at the core. Ultimately, our emotions, perceptions, and thoughts are formed through lived experiences, not chemicals. If our suffering comes from a position of rawness that no human is ever immune to, real healing has to be from a place of working through that vulnerability. That vulnerability is never meant to be one that comes with ease. The road to recovery is a turbulent one, but to be freely human is to feel every emotion in its proper capacity.
The desire to seek happiness is innate. Yet there is also a need to go through our painful moments thoroughly, and sometimes even make meaning out of them. Suppression doesn’t work to fully heal a person. Even this article is an attempt to dig deeper into the intricacies of my lived experience so that my thoughts don’t dissipate into the silence that SSRIs instigate. These pills are a temporary shortcut that can offer some hope, but they are not the solution.
I Like Good
Music, Please Let Me Be One of You
Bibi O’Loghlin is picking the music.
There’s a guy sitting at the bar, about my age, dressed in that checkered shirt and baggy jeans combo that has become ubiquitous amongst guys under thirty. He’s drinking the negroni I made him and I’m scrolling through the iPod that controls the music. What should I choose? Radiohead? The Smiths? Nirvana? Definitely something pre 2000s so he knows I’m not a slave to the top 50. I don’t know why, but I need this stranger to think I have good taste. Specifically,
I need him to think that I like the music that men like.
It’s a phenomenon that pervades every kind of relationship – men I’m involved with platonically or romantically, male relatives, total strangers. It matters that they think the music I listen to is good. ‘Good’ means that it stays away from the feminine whimsy of Chappell Roan and Addison Rae and embraces alt-y masculinity. I actually do listen to Radiohead and The Smiths – but if you’re a man and we’re talking about it, I’ll emphasise that fact, and I certainly won’t mention the Katseye tracks in my liked songs.
I’m a feminist, and a pretty good one most of the time. The desire to have my cultural tastes validated by the male gaze is antithetical to everything I believe in. But my values fade slowly into obscurity when it’s my turn on the AUX in male company. The panic hits. I have to pick something niche, but familiar enough that a male friend might say, “I’ve never met a girl who likes this stuff! Congratulations, you’re one of the guys.”
And that’s what it’s about, in the end. I will acknowledge that when it’s my turn to pick the music, the ‘pick me
girl’ rears her ugly head and I become desperate to prove I’m special by virtue of my superior taste. I think the ‘pick me girl’ deserves a little destigmatisation for the very reason that there is one, I believe, living inside most women. Most of the time, we don’t even know she’s there. But sometimes, she claws to the surface. It becomes important that men see us as the most beautiful, the most intelligent, with interests that make us more valuable than other women. And then when we wake up, we realise that we’ve allowed patriarchy to infect our gaze, and we shove that ‘pick me’ attitude back into the depths. Sometimes it’s about wanting to be chosen romantically, but often not.
Often it’s simply that on a subconscious level we want our male friends to treat us like they treat their own male friends. We want to be elevated above the state of femaleness.
We want male strangers to hold for us the same respect they would another male stranger.
And one way to do that is to prove that your taste in music could qualify you to be one of them.
I’m not trying to imply that this is a onesided phenomenon. The performative male epidemic, the hordes of Clairolistening, matcha-drinking, carabiner-wearing guys is proof that there is a trend of men embracing music that is socially construed with
femininity. But the result is different. When I emphasise the fact that I listen to Nirvana in a conversation with a man it’s because I want him to think I’m on his level. When women encounter men who listen to Laufey and beabadoobee they’re shocked to find a man taking music considered feminine seriously. Haven’t we all met a guy who listens to ‘girl’ music and as a result considered him a beacon of feminism? Dipping his toe in the pool of low
A Cartography of Dreams
If I am nothing else, I am an escapist.
Every element of my existence has been carefully constructed to allow fleeting moments where I can break free from the reality which I am forced to inhabit. To separate myself from circling anxieties or heavy emotions. I lose myself in the adventures of the heroines in my books, become absorbed in my writing, and carefully deconstruct every lyric of the music that rings through my ears on a bus ride home. Best of all, each day I wait impatiently until night falls so I can sleep; so I can dream.
For most, the universal experience of ‘sleep’ is a promise of rest. Hours of suspended consciousness that allow a soft release from the turmoils of the day. But for me, this escape of sleep has always been more. On average I experience four or five dreams a night; vivid and cinematic stories where I become submerged in worlds that often feel more real than waking life.
It sounds childish, but every night I wait in anticipation to fly above fields with magical creatures or embark on adventures for lost treasure. When I wake up in the mornings, I find myself disoriented, unable to identify the lines that blurs the stories of my imagination with my lived reality. For years, these dreams have felt like portales, a kind of secret gift that has allowed me an escape into adventure, joy, and connection to imagined characters on a completely distant plane of reality.
Avin Dabiri drifts between imagination and reality.
But in recent months I’ve found that my own mind is betraying me. Even in unconsciousness, my attempt at escapism has been plagued.
These imagined realities, that I often yearn for at the end of a long day, have contorted to mirror the emotions I carry in my daily life. Warping from fantastical experiences into manifestations of my anxieties where I walk alone across a deserted land, looking out to the deep eternal sea that surrounds me. Or where I stand beside departed loved ones I never got the chance to say goodbye to, but suddenly I find myself invisible and unable to speak.
I sometimes find it hard to remember my dreams. Not the bad ones of course, those remain engrained in my mind
for days. But the good ones are a bit different. They’ll come back to me in flashes; sometimes a few minutes after I wake up, other times hours into my day. I close my eyes for a second and remember what it felt like to be in that fantastical distant place. When I open my eyes again I feel my heart grow heavy. I’m back in the real world, standing where I was yesterday and where I’ll be tomorrow. And I feel terrible. The consequence of experiencing different, experiencing better, in the best of dreams, is that coming back to reality becomes so, so much worse.
I am an escapist. I yearn for distraction, for any way out. But being who I am, living how I live, I know that this idea of escapism is a complete scam. Our portals away from reality may offer fleeting refuge but this is all but temporary. Escapism never erases emotion, it only reshapes it. Dreams, the most alluring portal of all, may be the greatest escapist fraud. Even in rest, in our unconscious state, we are bound to be confronted by what we long for or fear.
I used to wait for sleep every night, searching for freedom. And every morning I would wake up haunted by the fact that I was exactly where I was the day before. Now, even though my dreams have turned dark and my mind has betrayed me, I still wait for sleep. Night after night I chase the fragile promise of a dream I might not remember, knowing it may lift me or betray me; an effort for escape plagues me as both a gift and curse bound together. Still, I wait for it, hoping that tonight I’ll dream.
Art by Avin Dabiri
WATCH ME SMOKE
The lighter clicks. A small, defiant flame. The first drag tastes sharp, artificial. I don’t like the nicotine. That’s not why I’m here.
I’m here to be watched.
A stroller squeaks past, wheels catching on the cracks in the pavement, the childkid pointing at the cigarette between my fingers with wide-eyed fascination before their parent tugs them along a little faster. The child’s curiosity is open, unfiltered, but the parent’s avoidance is rehearsed: no eye contact, jaw tight, body angled just enough to make their disapproval clear. I can almost hear the conversation later: “Some people make bad choices, don’t stare, don’t copy.” I feel the shame of it, hot in my throat. And then, strangely, the thrill. For a moment I revel in it — being cast as the villain, the stranger their kid will be told not to grow into — because at least I’m worth noticing. Their judgment gives me a role, and I play it willingly. I imagine their thoughts (Why would she smoke? What a waste, what a shame.) and I take another drag anyway, slower this time, leaning into the character they’ve assigned me.
A man in leather pulls up at the lights, engine growling beneath him, a sound that demands attention. He flips up his visor and his eyes land on me, just for a beat. There’s a nod, almost imperceptible, as if we’re in on the same unspoken pact, smoke as shorthand for rebellion. For him, maybe it’s grit, toughness, belonging to some lineage of outlaws. For me, it’s visibility, a chance to be read as someone worth watching, maybe even worth remembering. I hold his gaze as long as I can, but the light shifts green and he’s gone before I can finish my drag, his departure leaving me standing in the smoke of his exhaust, performing to no one.
My name is Cormac, and I have a confession: I don’t like the Beatles. I tell people I don’t like them, and they always give me a funny look, like I’m missing something that they see. I just can’t find myself liking their music. And don’t even get me started on their fans. Why are they all so obsessed with them? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I’d do anything for a cure. Please help me…
Hi Cormac, sorry to hear that. I am not surprised you feel this way. You are among many to think, ‘Why?’ Why are the Beatles so adored and highly rated over the rest? Why are there so many documentaries about them? As a long-standing Beatles fan, I am here to cure your Beatles-phobia.
The traffic moves on and I’m left with the quiet company of a terrier that stops at my feet, nose twitching as its owner fumbles with the leash. Its curiosity cuts through me more honestly than the biker’s nod or the parent’s disapproval. To the dog I don’t look cool or queer or mysterious, I just smell like fire, something unfamiliar and not entirely safe. Yet even that feels like a kind of recognition, a reminder that presence doesn’t always need the gaze of people to be real. The dog sniffs once more, uninterested in my little theatre, then trots away, leaving me exhaling into empty air, wondering if the smoke disperses faster when no one is there to see it.
Every drag becomes a stage cue. The cigarette is a prop, and I am both actor and audience, watching myself perform through the eyes of strangers. Someone glances and I script their judgment before they’ve even looked away. Someone frowns and I imagine them pulled back into memory, a grandmother coughing herself into silence, the lingering smell of tar on old curtains. Someone stares too long, and I convince myself they’re not seeing a smoker at all, but a girl, flagging in signals of smoke and posture, queerness literally exhaled into the air. It’s a signifier I can hold between my fingers, fragile and burning down.
alleyways, leather jackets slipping off their shoulders, chipped nail polish glinting under fluorescent streetlights. They laughed with their whole bodies, sound curling upward into the night air, and I wanted to be near them, to be folded into that kind of belonging. A cigarette was part of their uniform, a small accessory that carried so much weight. The first time I held one to my lips it was about proximity to that feeling. If I smoked, maybe I could join that scene. Maybe I could look like someone who already belonged.
And sometimes, when I catch myself in a reflection — shop window, car mirror, puddle — I almost believe it worked. The smoke clouds my face, softens me, lends me that careless edge I’ve always wanted. It’s ridiculous, I know. But for a few seconds, it’s enough.
I convince myself they’re not seeing a smoker at all, but a girl, flagging in signals of smoke and posture, queerness literally exhaled into the air. It’s a signifier I can hold between my fingers, fragile and burning down.
When I smoke, I believe I look like the girls I once watched from a distance. They leaned against brick walls in
My prescription for the Beatles cynics of their early work is to listen to: ‘All My Loving’ from ‘With The Beatles’ and ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ from ‘Please Please’.
I tried listening to ‘All My Loving’ and ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’. I’m just not sure I get what’s to like about ‘All My Loving’. I suppose it was an okay song, but I just once again couldn’t find myself getting behind it. I’ve heard vocal layering much more well done in other songs than ‘All My Loving’! But as much as I hate to say it… I actually liked ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’.
But what about Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones? If I wanted that teen
I think of Goffman’s front stage and back stage, how we are always moving between performances, tailoring ourselves for whoever might be watching. Out on the street, cigarette in hand, I am unmistakably front stage: curated cool, queerness sharpened into an aesthetic, detachment rehearsed until it feels almost natural. I angle my body just so, practice the lazy exhale, and imagine the smoke curling around me like stage lighting. But the backstage always arrives eventually: alone in my room, I cough until my throat burns, gag on the aftertaste, wonder if my lungs already resent me for the theatre I’ve enlisted them in. It feels ridiculous, this gap between appearance and reality, yet the next
angst and emotional punch, why wouldn’t I just go to them? They sing about their feelings, and they’ve got some real rock and roll behind them.
Firstly, the Beatles wrote The Rolling Stones’ first hit, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’. So, before you simp after Mick Jagger, don’t forget who helped him get there. Not to mention the Beatles’ version is miles better. Without John and Paul, Mick Jagger would have become an economist or a failed soul singer; there is no in between.
They made movies too, right? So was it for the money or was it because they were full of themselves? Before you say it, yes I like movies and yes I don’t just watch
day I slip the lighter back into my purse as though it were part of a costume I can’t walk on without. Because somewhere out there, I tell myself, the audience is already waiting.
I invent what others think of me: reckless, mysterious, trying too hard, queer, (obviously). I don’t know if any of these thoughts are real, if they even flicker across anyone’s mind, but the power is in imagining them, in stacking their possibilities like tarot cards until they reveal a pattern I can live inside.
Cool is curated, deliberate, something that always costs more than it gives back.
The cigarette becomes a prop, no different from kajal drawn bold or the bangles I stack on my wrists so they catch the light. I buy them for the look, for the performance they let me step into. And sometimes, in those fleeting moments when a stranger’s eyes land on me, I feel briefly suspended in their gaze, existing as someone worth looking at.
The cigarette burns down to its stub, ash crumbling against the pavement like a curtain call. The audience has already dispersed, their glances dissolved into the night, and I’m left with the bitter taste of smoke on my tongue, the faint fire clinging to my fingers. No one is watching anymore, but the performance lingers, stitched into me. Tomorrow, or the day after, I’ll step outside again, lighter in hand, searching for the next fleeting gaze to catch, the next moment of being seen.
Until then, I carry the smoke inside me — an ember, a signal, a promise.
Watch me smoke.
the boring stuff. But the Magical Mystery tour was a bit all over the place, wasn’t it
I can’t lie, the Magical Mystery tour was a bit of a shit show, but at least it was whimsical. Where’s your whimsy? They had wizards and white suits and absolute bangers such as ‘I am the Walrus’ and ‘Your Mother Should Know’. Maybe the LSD and drugs went a bit far, but to be fair they were crashing out post-Brian Epstein death.
If you wanted lyricism in that period, shouldn’t you just go to Bob Dylan? Dylan had a great range from songs like ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ in ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ in his folk days to ‘Just Like A Woman’ in ‘Blonde on Blonde’ after
Ananya Thirumalai takes a drag.
GIVE ME BELGIAN POP OR GIVE ME DEATH
I have the privilege of knowing that the chances of there being any other fans of Belgian music at USyd are slim to none — save, perhaps, for some students in the French and Francophone Studies faculty. The thing about Belgian music is that unless you’re Belgian, it’s basically invisible. Belgium is a tiny country sandwiched between many larger European countries, and its capital city Brussels has a population the same size as Adelaide, which isn’t exactly bustling.
Nonetheless, I’m obsessed with it. Each of the Honi editors can attest to this, as they frequently come into the office to find me blasting Angèle or Stromae at a dubious volume. It isn’t immediately obvious why I would listen to it. Even if I liked music in French, why not French music? Firstly, Belgian music is inherently better than French music. Secondly, there’s some innate quality to it that I find incredibly appealing. Somewhere between the playful irony of lyrics, the bouncing between languages, and the conscious promotion of a thumb-sized European country, it makes for an immersive musical experience. Often when I listen to English music for a while, I find myself drifting back to where I feel most at home: Belgian pop.
Stromae is a really interesting case study because he’s substantially broken through the immense cultural barrier of music lovers who are more interested in listening to English-language music. Performing in French, Stromae’s mix of hip-hop and electronic music has permeated the club
scene in large part thanks to his sick beats and inventive music videos.
However, those who speak French or dabble in Google Translate will notice that his lyrics are also immensely clever, and often ironic. One of his most famous songs, Alors On Danse, is played constantly at nightclubs. It’s about people who are exhausted with life, who are pursued by studies and work and debts and misery, who can do nothing but resign themselves to dancing. The ironic lyrics are often overlooked in favour of the high-energy beat and the song is constantly played in nightclubs, clocking over a billion streams on Spotify.
Of all the songs on charts like the Spotify Top 100, very few aren’t in English. It’s obvious that people on large music platforms aren’t all or even mostly living in English-speaking countries, so there’s a linguistic imbalance that plays into the way that our music becomes popular. This is how we end up with world-famous bands like ABBA being famous specifically because they sing in English, rather than their native Swedish. Let’s be real, if Dancing Queen was only recorded in Swedish it never would’ve topped global charts. Can you think of a single worldfamous Swedish song that was actually in Swedish?
Within Belgium, the most famous singer — other than Stromae — is probably Angèle, who’s become a feminist icon and fierce source of Belgian patriotism.
One of the coolest things about Angèle is how she sings in three languages: French, English, and Flemish. Musical lyrics aren’t something that you can easily translate, but tracks such as Fever, which she worked on with English-Albanian singer Dua Lipa, have verses switching between English and French without missing a beat.
Angèle’s most well-known French track is pop song Balance Ton Quoi (2018), which became hugely popular in France as part of the French #MeToo movement (known as ‘Balance Ton Porc’); check out the YouTube video and you’ll instantly see why. The title is difficult to translate but loosely means ‘Denounce Your Thing’. One of my favourite scenes in the video is watching a couple dozen middle-aged men running while wearing strap-on breasts, as a crowd of women cheer them on enthusiastically from the sidelines.
And then there’s that other language that most people forget comes from Belgian: Flemish. (There are a few dialects like Brabantian and Ripuarian, but I’ve never come across music in these.) Granted, there’s not a lot of Flemish music, but there is some! I’d argue this is even cooler; if you can make French music popular, that’s one thing, but to popularise music in a minority language like Flemish, which only a fraction of Belgians speak, is about more than appealing to a local audience. It’s about contributing to a linguistic and cultural legacy, and creating a sound that appeals across borders. A good one to dip your toes into is Atlas by Pommelien
Imogen Sabey danse.
Thijs, who sounds a bit like a Belgian Gracie Abrams if you squint. Angèle’s song Bruxelles, je t’aime is another great track which has a mix of French and Flemish, reflecting on the cultural identity of Brussels and its linguistic barriers.
Loving Belgian pop doesn’t just mean loving Belgian pop. It’s about exposure to a different culture and language, to finding meaning in a tongue that you didn’t grow up with, and sometimes in humming along semi-awkwardly because you don’t know how to say any of the words. Sure, it inhibits you from picking up on every scrap of wordplay and double entendre, but I think there’s a thrill in that. Listening to music in a language that isn’t your own means surrendering the safety net of your mother tongue, and allowing your body to react purely to the sound.
Scan the QR code to listen to Imogen’s curated Belgian Pop playlist.
TO-BEATLE OR NOT TO-BEATLES: THAT IS OUR QUESTION.
Felicity
and Cormac Herron are Beatles fans... maybe.
he went electric.
They sort of did slightly rip off Bob Dylan, but really that folk sound is drowned out by the Beatles’ magic and sitars.
Speaking of drowning out, it seems like Rubber Soul is a record that’s just there, and I don’t know how I feel about George Martin’s making the drums that loud… and then why did they make ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’? If they were so good why were they pretending to be another band all together?
Rubber Soul is the reason why we have the best record of all time, ‘Pet Sounds’. Brian Wilson said it himself. Competition creates innovation; the Economics Roundtable
should take note of this example. I love Pet Sounds with my entire body and soul.
In response, Paul brought Sgt Pepper’s to the Beatles’ table. I love their 19th-century band cosplay. It’s awesome and ridiculous. They pretended because they were sick of their initial image that the press had created.
To be honest, not bad recommendations. I think it’s a good thing for any bad to have competition. But could the Beatles have done this well without weed and LSD? Seems like a bit of a crutch to me, like they really needed it to get by in the industry. And then after this, they made the White Album, allegedly their best work, a chaotic mess with “tracks” like
‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’... they can’t have been serious…
In terms of the White Album, some might say that it’s messy; I’d say it’s eclectic. Who needs a general vibe when you can venture to every corner of the word genre? It’s a good type of insane. IAvant-garde can also just be flat out trash: loud does not equal good. Oh, and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is on this record… so it’s undeniable that the Beatles are pretty good.
I don’t think eclectic is bad, but sometimes it can get out of hand. I think whimsy is around, maybe you’re just not looking in the right places…
In any case, in the end they broke up, badly. These mystical titans of the music industry did so much. It seems just a tad immature if you ask me, what, with Lennon and Ono…
You know what, not to throw Rolling Stones under the bus, but I think sometimes I do think bands need to break up. It was bound to happen. Sometimes retirement is good. Give your legacy peace, don’t screw it up with meh records and clear inter-band beef.
Agreed. Meet in the middle? Maybe…
Herron
XXX RATED
(Did I see you at the house party?)
It’s in the entrails of a house party I’m not drunk enough for that I discover something utterly remarkable. We are not modern anymore. We are not even post-modern. Nearing a very palpable condition of the exmodern, of exmodernity. Hurtling towards it, actually. Yes — that’s it. This structure; this rhizomatic architecture of an event birthed from the loins of a Facebook post and a plus ones allowed mandate is, I come to realise, an exmodern architecture, only solidified by the guy behind the laptop’s Spotify skipping all of the LCD Soundsystem I have queued —
“I am so sorry!”
I don’t know who says it, face half-concealed by some attempt at a costume, but I discover I am covered in a concoction. Dark liquid seeping into my dress, my stockings, my skin; fusing the three together to make one kind of flesh. Party-flesh. Oh my. Human need takes over. I need to piss and I need to piss bad.
Instead of searching for it myself, the bathroom, rather, finds its way to me. Beckons, opens. Looking for me, darling? Inside there are three girls or characters, rather — for they are more caricature than girl. Party-store wigs. Bikinis. Glitter, bambi eyes. Girls with these strange, other worldly names that reveal themselves to me one by one: this is Sexx, this is Drugz, and the one touching up her lipstick in the corner is Rocksy. I relieve myself in the bathroom with a palpable counterculture.
“I don’t think they exist anymore,” it’s Rocksy who says, “the Aftertimes are here.”
“This is the condition: to be countercultural, truly in a time of Big Tech hierarchy, you would have to cheat the platform… which in itself would be to cheat or to divest from your publicly announced online self.”
walled-gardens of subculture where we can find community and aesthetic but we rebel against nothing. An i-den-ti-ty. Hah! Can it even be called that? Identity? It’s a commodity—”
“Has he texted you back?” says Sexx. She’s anxious.
“No, has he messaged you?”
“Not yet, I thought he was in contact with Drugz—”
A knock at the door. Occupied!
Rocksys scrolling her phone, “they think the right wing is counterculture and that the left is somehow victorious.”
“Who?”
“He… them,” Rocksy says “we still have capitalism, no? Systematic supremacy and autocratic rule… the left hasn’t won — so why does the right get to play the underdog? Have they ever really had a new idea? I mean — do you think it’s something we really need, a counterculture?”
talking about the same guy I realise, this ubiquitous Man. The Man. The Big Guy we all answer to.
There is nothing.
And then all at once: “He doesn’t want us
“Aftertimes” Sexx announces. There is a hum of agreement. She’s sitting on the counter by the sink swinging her legs like a school girl.
Drugz cradles a bottle of Peach Schnapps. “It’s just like he said, isn’t it?”
Silence.
I heed my turn. “Well I believe that we are actually living in a time of ex—”
“Of course, if one were to arise, it would need to have the political teeth to tackle it head on, no? To threaten the dominant paradigm? But it couldn’t exist digitally… albeit something like Tumblr. How do we distribute ideas, art without the market to kill it? I mean — is a counterculture really what we need in a time like this? A space so suffocated with the zeitgeist of digital Gods who tell us what to wear, what to listen to, who to listen to, which infographic we should post on our stories. Have we forgotten the meaning of that word? Story?
Maybe it’s just—”
A phone buzzes. I’m not sure if it belongs to Rocksy or Sexx or Drugz, but it’s one of them. They huddle around it. There’s a beat, and in that beat I feel like I could swallow the air in the room whole and leave nothing but the tension between a matching bikini and an eavesdropper. They’re all
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Says we are not profitable anymore.”
“Okay.”
“So now what?”
A beat. All things move toward
“Maybe we try our luck with pornography.”
handle with care
Gracie Allen remembers.
i smell of stale ash, all acid tongue and rotting teeth god, if she could see me now ten year plans in gel pen on pink lined paper. medicine, a husband, boy on my hip with another running riot gone are the wide eyes the gel pens were thrown out years ago filthy windowsill ledges with a girl in my lap, eyelids fluttering shut as the smoke curls. would she be proud?
there’s confidence in my recklessness confidence she had, then lost, then had again she doesn’t know that though, does she? all she sees is the lighter in my practised hand the girl in my practised embrace.
i’m better at faking smiles than she was. twisting truths with a grin i draw a flower on the flaking white paint with the blackened end of my cigarette i think she would like that
Sophie Bagster gets nosy.
VOTE!
Voting will be open on 23, 24, & 25 September
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
Polling Booth Times and Locations
President
Angus Fisher
I hope the coloured t-shirts on Eastern Avenue are lifting your spirits. Have a read of my report.
Last semester, I spent a significant amount of time consulting with the university about changes to assessments to accommodate the increasing prevalence of AI. It was important to have a student voice at the table to ensure the new assessment types don’t leave any students behind (and also to stop them from cutting simple extensions). Last week, the SRC was involved in talks to change to honours assessments to include an oral exam on top of the written thesis. A few of my important recommendations were taken on. Firstly, to ensure that students have the opportunity to have the questions asked by examiners written down as to help non-native speakers and disabled students. Secondly, to allow students to practice the format before the assessment, particularly given it’s a new assessment type, there is a lot of anxiety. Thirdly, students who do experience anxiety or something similar aren’t punished for pausing to think about their response to questions. I will continue to be involved in this development.
Vice President
Shovan Bhattarai, Ethan Cao
I hope everyone’s semester is going well as we move into Week 7! Wishing you all the best with your upcoming mid-semester assessments.
In the past two weeks, we kicked off the semester with two exciting events: our first Welcome Night, which brought together more than 40 students for games, food, and prizes, and our inaugural City Walk, where we explored the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Chinatown while making new friends along the way.
Beyond events, I’ve been working with our SRC Caseworker and Publications Managers on a Mandarin-language video about contract cheating, aimed at making academic integrity information more accessible. This will be released soon—so please keep an eye out.
On the advocacy side, I’ve continued to represent students at various university advisory groups, raising issues that directly affect international students. These include calls for better accommodation options (such as reopening International House), affordable and reliable food services like Food Hub, and more flexible
Good news! In this same meeting, I found out that some of our recommendations from last semester’s consultations have turned into reality. It is now easier to be awarded special considerations and simple extensions. This is a huge win for students, particularly as day-to-day life becomes increasingly complex.
The SRC is collaborating with SUPRA to prepare a University Executive (UE) presentation about the importance of our casework service. Any student or staff member who is familiar with the service knows how valuable it is. It stops students from dropping out of university and decreases the administrative work for both students and the university. Unfortunately, there is still a significant population of tutors and lecturers who aren’t aware of the SRC and SUPRA casework services and hence don’t forward students in need toward us. We are hoping that by presenting at UE, the deans of each school will be prompted to better educate their staff about our services.
In solidarity, Angus
tuition payment systems. These are small but important changes the University could implement to make student life more manageable.
Looking ahead, I’ll keep speaking up for international students while also building more opportunities for connection and support across campus. And as the semester gets busier, don’t forget to take a breath and enjoy the season—spring is here in the Southern Hemisphere (while the Northern Hemisphere gets autumn leaves and pumpkin spice, we get jacarandas and picnic weather!).
Finally, with the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, I’d like to wish everyone a joyful celebration. May the moon be bright, the mooncakes sweet, and wherever you are, may you feel a little closer to home.
为学生发声，与大家同行！
顺祝春安,
曹鸿宇泽(Ethan)
Education Officers
Jasmine Al Rawi, Luke Mešterović
It’s been a busy few weeks for your Education Officers! Radical Education Week in Week 5 was a success and we met many new faces. We had former SRC VP Tom Raue lead a safe protesting workshop; a screening of the film Voices for the Valley, which documents the community fight against coal mining in the Wollar and Mudgee region; a zinemaking workshop from the activists at Genderbility; a session on community organising and a lecture on the history of
youth radicalism from the sixties to today by historian Tim Briedis of the People’s History podcast. On Saturday September 13th, we marched alongside the Blak Caucus to stand against fascism and the attacks on Camp Sovereignty. We have more events coming up soon so follow the @usyd.education.action page to stay updated!
Women’s Officers
We’ve been hard at work preparing for Women’s Honi, with our first pitch meeting happening this week!
Internally, we have been strategising how to put pressure on the uni to increase visibility of the sexual misconduct reporting system. However, visibility is not enough; the results of recent annual report into sexual misconduct show that of the over 230 complaints made, only 2 resulted in disciplinary action. This is not good enough, and shows that when students do make complaints, they are routinely failed by the investigation system.
This week we were disgusted to hear news of a man on campus taking photos over the stalls in the women’s bathrooms.
Martha Barlow, Ellie Robertson
We urge everyone to stay vigilant, look out for each other and report this behaviour where you can.
As always, and now more than ever, we stand in solidarity with Palestinian people facing genocide, starvation and displacement. It is essential that pressure doesn’t let up - don’t stop showing up, don’t stop posting and give to mutual aid where you can.
In solidarity, Martha and Ellie
Global Solidarity Officers
Emma
Mass youth-led protests have erupted across Indonesia, triggered by the death of a delivery driver at the hands of the cops. The demonstrations are calling out government corruption and the economic inequality in Indonesia — we echo the 17+8 demands called by the Indonesian protestors and activists, and mourn the 10 martyrs killed at the hands of Indonesian police. In West Papua, occupied by the Indonesian state, four people were taken as political prisoners, with protests happening in so-called Australia calling for their freedom. We stand with the people of West Papua and call for its freedom, and in solidarity with protestors in Indonesia.
In Nepal, similar youth uprisings are happening after governemnt corruption sparked by a social media ban, in response to ongoing corruption and class divide. These protests and riots are a direct result of the systemic oppression people face at the hands of capitalism and government. We echo the demands of systemic reform and stand against the censorship that
the Nepalese people are facing, and that all protestors face while calling out this oppression.
Revolution is not a singular entity — it is happening now, around the world, and it is an ongoing process. From Indonesia, to Nepal, to West Papua, to so-called Australia, we stand in solidarity with these liberation movements.
In Palestine, over a thousand people are being held as political prisoners and detained in Tulkarem. The ‘israeli’ government has also announced an evacuation order for the entirety of Gaza. This is ethnic cleansing in action. Settler colonial projects are in full force, with genocide as the only synonym.
Free Palestine. Free West Papua. Free all oppressed people around the globe. Attend a rally in your local area, and please follow @usyd.global.solidarity for story information on rallies happening in response to these movements.
Interfaith Officers
This semester, I had the privilege of helping to organise a Chaldean Catholic Mass on campus in partnership with the University of Sydney Catholic Society and the Chaldean Catholic Youth. For many students, it was the first time witnessing the ancient Mesopotamian liturgy, prayed in Sureth (Neo-Aramaic), the language of Christ Himself. The Mass gave Chaldean students a space to celebrate their living tradition and invited the broader campus community into dialogue with one of Christianity’s oldest and most persecuted communities.
To bring this liturgy into the heart of campus is no small thing. The Chaldean and Assyrian Churches have endured displacement, martyrdom, and exile. That their liturgy still resounds here at the University of Sydney; is a powerful act of witness. It is a reminder that faith does not vanish under persecution, but endures, strengthens, and even flourishes.
As Interfaith Officer, I understand my role as more than simply arranging meetings between faith groups.It is a calling to bear witness to the truth that every tradition carries an imprint of the divine, and that dialogue is strongest when it begins from fidelity to one’s own faith and tradition. The Chaldean Mass, supported by our Chaldean Catholic Youth, was not just an event. It was a proclamation that the Church is alive and enduring, even after centuries of trial. In moments like this, the words of Christ ring true: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Mt 5:14). In the weeks ahead, I will continue working with student faith communities so that each can let its light shine, building bonds of understanding while keeping Christ at the heart of our witness on campus.
Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.
Searle, Dana Kafina, Jessica Heap
Kefan (Coco) Yu, Rose Zoori
The correct supporting documentation is required when applying for Special Consideration, DC or Show
Cause
What documents will I need for special consideration, a discontinue not fail (DC) application, or showing good cause?
When you apply for special consideration, a discontinue not fail (DC) grade, or show good cause, you need to provide documentation that supports your claim. There are many different types of documents you can provide, depending on your situation.
Professional Practitioner’s Certificate (PPC)
A PPC is the Uni’s version of a medical certificate and is a very useful form of supporting documentation. It shows the date you met with the medical practitioner, the dates that you were affected, and how severely you were affected. It asks what your illness was, however, it can also say that your illness is confidential. The Uni is more interested in the impact of your illness on your study, rather than the illness itself. For example, you were not able to attend classes, complete written assignments, or sleep, which made you unable to concentrate. Also, for DC applications, if you were able to complete some subjects, your PPC should state why you could complete some but not others.
Your medical practitioner must be a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist who is registered to practice in Australia. It is preferable that they consult you in person rather than online or over the phone.
Student
and Statutory Declaration
This is a document of truth that you, a family member, a friend, or another relevant person can write on a downloadable government form. It is a statement where you or another person provides the details of the misadventure you experienced, written based on what was observed or experienced. Statutory
SRC Caseworker Help Q&A Domestic Violence Support
Hi Abe,
I’ve been noticing some stuff in my friend’s relationship recently. Her partner is always putting her down in front of other people, and she recently told me she’s “not allowed” to go to our friend’s party. The other day we were meant to catch up for coffee and her partner randomly showed up and they left abruptly. What should I do?
Sincerely, Worried
Dear Worried,
What you’re describing sounds like it could be coercive control, a subtle
form of domestic violence.
The next time you see your friend you can ask how things are going. Avoid intervening in a way that escalates the situation or causes your friend to isolate herself. She needs you to be her friend in a non-judgemental way. If she wants immediate support, call 1800 Respect (1800 737 732). For more information on how to support a friend in this situation check out the resources on the Dept of Community Justice website: dcj.nsw.gov.au
Sincerely, Abe
Declarations are not as meaningful as other documents, so only use them in conjunction with other documents, e.g., a death certificate, or as a last resort. A Statutory Declaration will need to be witnessed and signed by an authority or witness, such as a Justice of the Peace. Similarly, student declarations are not particularly strong pieces of evidence, so only use them for simple extension applications.
Police Report
If you experienced a misadventure that involved the Police, you may be able to provide a Police Report as your supporting document. However, Police Reports are relatively difficult to get, especially within a few days of the incident. Instead, you could mention the Police Event Number in a statutory declaration (see above), together with the name of the officer you dealt with and the station they were from.
False Documents
While it may be tempting to buy or create false documents, the University will likely discover this fraud, which could lead to you being suspended from the university. If you are in such a difficult position that you are considering doing this, you should talk to an SRC Caseworker about other options available to you. Failing a subject is significantly better than being suspended from your studies. Some students who previously bought false documents online found that the people they bought them from started blackmailing them, threatening to tell the University, their families, and their future employers about their deceit. If you are experiencing this, talk to an SRC Caseworker. The SRC is independent of the Uni and caseworkers can offer you free, confidential advice.
Department of Community Justice website: Help someone experiencing domestic violence
COPY PASTE SUBMIT
The Crossword
1 Sister of Kate Middleton (5) 6 Reddit and Twitch admins (4)
Up to the task (4)
Broadcasting (2,3)
Signature finishing moves from wrestler Randy Orton (4)
Connections (4) 17 Part of the infamous “27 club” (4,6)
Omelet ingredients (4)
Coup d’__ (4)
Unruly head of hair (3)
23 What one needs to claim the Medicare levy exemption (3) 24 Part of the infamous “27 club” (5,6)
27 Deep and rich, as a speaking voice (7)
1 Pikachu’s franchise (7)
2 Not yet born (2,5)
3 Shade provider (7)
4 Actor Brad (4)
5 UNSW’s USU equivalent (3)
6 007 (2,4)
7 Giraffe’s cousin (5)
8 Typically included in a reference list (3)
Spilling Sounds
29 Prompt (3)
30 Mixed martial arts org. (3)
31 “Oppenheimer” director Christopher (5)
32 Down in the dumps (3)
33 Peg Leg ____, arch-nemesis of Mickey Mouse (4)
34 Genre loosely associated with 17A, 24A, 50A, and 58A (4,1,4)
38 2021 unsuccessful ticket for Honi Soit (4)
41 Most common tree in the video game ‘Minecraft’ (3)
42 Swiss mathematician (5)
46 Resistance unit (3)
47 Demon of Japanese folklore (3)
48 Sense of completeness (7)
50 Part of the infamous “27 club”
9 U.S nine-digit ID (3)
10 Devoured (3,2)
11 Commercially successful French film about champion divers (3,4)
12 Core exercise done lying down (3,4)
13 True nature (7)
18 Neighbor of Yemen (4)
22 Fish eggs (3)
24 Sabrina Carpenter song: “Have
(4,7)
53 Weed (3)
54 Mercury, in alchemy (5)
55 State of Origin captain Isaah (3)
56 Broad (4)
57 Center (4)
58 Part of the infamous “27 club” (5,5)
61 Lebanese political party associated with Shia Islam (4)
62 Family member (4)
63 Major Australian cinema brand (5)
64 Spill the beans (4)
65 ‘Big ____’, Australian soccer manager (4)
66 Exams (5)
you ever tried this one?” (4)
25 “The Lion King” villain (4)
26 Olympic martial art (4)
28 Waterproof cover (4)
32 Japanese video game company, known for ‘King of Fighters’ (3)
33 + (4)
35 Australian alternative to a ‘bowl’ (4)
Kitty of the valley
Kitty of the Valley are a Sydney/Eorabased band known for raw intensity, cathartic live energy, and a genremerging sound. Inspired by the postpunk revival movement of the early2000s, our music sits somewhere between chaos and euphoria - crafted to make people dance, cry, sweat, and let loose. They’ve fostered a diverse, growing fanbase drawn to both their sonic edge and emotionally immersive performances.
They released their first single in August 2024 and two singles in February 2025, before releasing 6 new songs that make up the Second Nature EP. They played their first show in March 2024 and have been building a strong following ever since, playing some of Sydney’s biggest and best underground venues. They’ve opened for the likes of Esha Tewari, dust. and the Lazy Eyes, and will be
touring across the east coast of Australia in support of their EP from August-October.
Check out the band on Spotify here!
36 Cloth, in Indonesia (4)
37 Pope who excommunicated Martin Luther (3,1)
38 “Paint the Town Red” artist (4,3)
39 Rootlike stem (7)
40 Unethical (7)
43 Legume family plants (7)
44 Tending to wear away (7)
45 66A, again (2-5)
Semester 2 Week 6 Crossword Answers
47 “I get it now!” (3)
48 Invent (6)
49 Pride member (4)
51 “What did ___ you?” (1,4)
52 Running out of battery (5)
56 Used a loom (4)
58 Sheep sound (3)
59 Sprint (3)
60 Fast plane (3)
Across (by individual row): Balsa, KeyWiki, Et Cetera, Ahh, Ltd, Tio, ero, Scimitar, Acetone, Lenin
Down (by individual column): By Choice, Awe, Lit, Skeleton, Keats, Ethical, Adore, Men, It I
Puzzle by Cassidy Newman
Photo by f1shforward
Former Honi Editor
Caught promoting rampant antiScottishism to university students.
Bad. Same. Special Buys
Rock & Roll CD
Mehnaaz has too many and she needs to offload some before the feds catch on.
