Week 7, Semester 2, 2026
4: NEWS
10–11: FEATURE
USyd signs multi-year To Read or Not To Read partnership with OpenAI Firdevs Sinik Sebastien Tuzilovic and Victor Zhang
The University of Sydney has signed a multi-year partnership with OpenAI which will see the introduction of AI agents at all levels of learning, weeks after thousands of USyd staff walked off over AI encroachment into their jobs.
First Printed 1929
Your Weekly Student Newspaper
Reading is the foundation of society. It sustains students’ academic growth, their intellectual development, and their capacity to participate meaningfully in the world around them. And yet, reading engagement is in decline, replaced by avoidance, disinterest, and increasingly screens.
14–15: FEATURE
We Are Will Yang
Alastair Panzarino
A recent article in the Daily Mail publicly decried a joke made by one Will Yang on what the article itself concedes is a “parody account” on Instagram called ‘Australian Child Labor’. Subsequently, Yang was suspended from his job, and further suspended as a member of the NSW Labor Party.
Acknowledgment of Country EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Firdevs Sinik
EDITORS Madison Burland Anastasia Dale James Fitzgerald Sice
Honi Soit publishes on stolen Gadigal land. Sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney is a colonial institution that upholds Western knowledge as superior to First Nations knowledge systems. We reject this hierarchy. As student journalists, we recognise that mainstream media has been complicit in silencing and misrepresenting
Indigenous voices since invasion. We commit to centring First Nations perspectives in our reporting, to challenging the colonial structures embedded in journalism, and to amplifying the voices of those resisting ongoing dispossession. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to all First Nations students and contributors. Always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
Kuyili Karthik Alastair Panzarino Firdevs Sinik Sebastien Tuzilovic Sophie Wishart Victor Zhang
WRITERS Harper Boon Eve Carlin James Fitzgerald Sice Indigo Grey Kuyili Karthik Liset Campos Manrique Alastair Panzarino Joely Scott Firdevs Sinik Vince Tafea Sebastien Tuzilovic Simone Wong Victor Zhang
FRONT COVER Vieve Carnsew
In This Edition: 4–5 USyd signs multi-year partnership with Open AI 6 Palestine activists rally as Federal Government lags behind UK sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements 8–9 FEATURE To Read or Not To Read: That is the Societal Foundation 10 Mind Over Mandate 2: The Id, the Ego, and the $15k Invoice 11 Where did all the climate coverage go? 12 Extreme heat is killing First Nations people. $4 billion housing is a culprit. 15 We Are Will Yang: In Defence of Satire
BACK COVER Sophie Wishart
16–17 The Anatomy of a Sell-Off 19 Minns plays politics with endangered species 20–23 SRC Reports/Puzzles/Comedy
Contribute
Do you have a deep-rooted longing to be a contributor but have no idea how to get involved? Apply to be a reporter or artist via the link in our Instagram bio: @honi.soit Or if you have a one-off pitch, tip for a story, complaint, letter to the editors, or more, email us at editors@honisoit.com. Scan the QR code if you'd rather send an anonymous tip. Send mail to Honi Soit at PO Box 974 Broadway NSW 2007. ISSN: 2207-5593. This edition was published on Tuesday 15 September 2026. Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications (DSP): Dongchen Yue, Sholto Mirrlees-Black, Lucy Sullivan, Ying Huang, Damien Lee, Hamish Evans. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. Please direct all advertising inquiries to publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au. Email the editors at editors@honisoit.com.
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Hello everybody,
Editorial
I hope everyone is having a decent few university weeks, we are now almost midway through another semester. We bring to you in this edition an exposé of corporate universities and their million dollar AI deal made right after a staff strike. Here we can see the value of educators’ voices in a corporate world: silenced and ignored. Teachers are losing their right to expression within an institution that should be serving educators and prioritising them in the first place, a grim reality of the current state of our system. Alongside this, my feature explores the Australian education system and the changes needed currently, the decline of global literacy, as well as the importance of reading, media literacy and education in the protection of societies and, ultimately, human rights. Because education is the foundation of a society, and also the first target for malicious forces. As I explore in my piece, reading isn’t only about comprehension; it’s part of the framework that determines a society’s resilience to being misled. Researchers are linking weaker literacy and critical-reading
skills to higher vulnerability and susceptibility to misinformation, with some describing education and literacy as a “protective factor” against deception. A population that has lost the habit of reading closely and questioning what it’s told is more vulnerable to propaganda and disinformation, and its most dangerous consequence is that this population is also slower to notice injustice when it’s dressed up in the right language. This isn’t only a modern or hypothetical risk, where controlling and corrupt regimes have historically treated literate, educated populations as a direct threat, and this is exactly why education institutions and educated individuals are the first things authoritarian systems move against. In this edition, Victor Zhang covers the realities of Australia’s housing crisis with the privatisation of public housing, violating the basic human right to housing and targeting vulnerable Australians. Alastair Panzarino criticises the selective consequences of cancel culture, exposing the double standards present in political witch-hunts. Joely Scott questions where Australia’s climate coverage has disappeared to, breaking down the
‘climate fatigue’ farce used by mainstream media and Vince Tafea analyses the Job-ready Graduates Package in Psychology, and the normalisation of extreme profit in institutions initially built to serve future generations. Additionally, Eve Carlin analyses the virus-like spread of AI music, and its consequences for the industry whilst Kuyili Karthik covers the Darwin Indigenous housing crisis, exposing governmental neglect. As a future teacher, I aimed to channel my concerns for the future of youth into this edition, and I hope I also evoke some critical thinking from students alike, and hope for a better future, and the motivation to help build it alongside all of humanity. We are also one month away from the Student Journalism Conference, filled with amazing speakers and panels, including Lamestream, Michael West, Jordan van den Lamb, Antony Green, Shona Martyn, Patricia Garcia, Jake Lynch, Geordie Williamson, Megha Kapoor, Antoun Issa, Cathy Wilcox and several more! We can’t wait to see you all at our free conference, go ahead and register via either the Honi Soit website or Instagram!
What do USyd Students say about USyd partnership with OpenAI Peter Griffin: Hi Honi readers! Glad to have been randomly selected to give my opinion on this, again! I think AI is pretty bad, and I don’t think this is a particularly great idea. What is the uni doing? We should be making sure that people are educated properly, not just going through slopped up degrees. Chuckie Chuddleson: I love AI so much. I use AI for everything ever. I’m so keen to use AI to write my assessments for FASS3999, because I hate that subject so much. After that I’ll probably go get a beer at Courtyard with
my friend, Chuddie Chuckleson. P. Pickle: AI is horrendous and I’d never use it. I think less of this institution because of its partnership with OpenAI. Belinda H. : Personally I think this Uni should be completely and brazenly for profit, and anti-student. I fucking hate when students learn from their degrees, and I really love when the Uni makes a lot of money. Next we are going to announce a direct partnership with the Military Department of the United States of America.
Honiscopes Aries: Zombies. You’re messy as hell and your problems are all boring and solved by you taking a second to think about how to help yourself out of the situations you’re in. Taurus: Ecocide. Give yourself some time to think about the consequences of your actions. Invest in some pot plants, and think about pivoting from petrochemical fabrics. Gemini: Meteor impact. You’re a good hearted person and there’s a lot of great things in your future! Just make sure that you stay organised, and start exercising more. Cancer: Nuclear apocalypse: Sometimes you need to stop and smell the flowers. Your explosive personality is getting in the way of you enjoying life. Sometimes in life you’re the toxic person. Leo: Pandemic. You’re like the locust plague. Everyone hates to see you coming, but you’re inevitably at the function. You’re such a strong personality you send people into mass hysteria.
Charlie Brown: I’m more concerned right now about whether or not Lucy is going to pull the ball out from under me before I kick it. I think it will be ok. Here goes nothing… P. Chen: Boy, this beach really is beautiful… There’s nothing like a good Sydney beach… Anyway, AI is pretty bad, and this partnership is bad.
Virgo: Judgment Day. Your life right now is like hellfire or the biblical deluge. You are being plunged into the lake of fire this week. But will you emerge in salvation. Libra: Robopocalypse. You’ve heard of Robodebt, the Terminator, and the Matrix. Don’t be robotic. Introduce some change into your routine this week.
What's On There Goes Me W/ Tamara Roldan, 44 Homes, Bez Wednesday 16th September 7pm @ Bootleggers @ Kelly’s On King Crank W/ Hugh B & The Modern Pop Ensemble, Eddy Diamond Thursday 17th September 7:30pm @ The Vanguard Yes or No? 3 W/ Low Life, Xiao Xiao, Station Model Violence, Kidskin, dusk2dawn, crank, Lara, DJ Prop Records, DJ Daddy Friday 18th September 7pm @ Oxford Art Factory Students say NO to Hanson: Nationwide Day of Protest – Gadigal Country Thursday 17 September 1pm to 3pm @ Hyde Park 2026 USU Creative Awards Exhibition
Scorpio: Heat death of the universe. Entropy, heat expanding, everything becoming less chaotic and more homogenous. You’re getting boring. Start randomising.
Till the 25th of September
Sagittarius: Capitalism. Your materialism will kill your soul. Consumersim is killing your bank account. Tighten your budget, shopaholic.
for more, visit sydneymusic.net
10am to 5pm @ Verge Gallery
Capricorn: AI. A former Anthropic employee said: “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Put down Claude. Stop letting your brain atrophy. Aquarius: Cordyceps. Zombie fungus killing all the bees. Stop being moldy. Take a shower. Wash your dishes, for once, before they grow furry. Ew bro. Pisces: Alien invasion. You’re the Bugonia alien that is coming to destroy Earth. You would look nice with a shaved head. You live on your own planet.
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| NEWS
USyd signs multi-year partnership with OpenAI Sebastien Tuzilovic and Victor Zhang report. The University of Sydney has signed a multi-year partnership with OpenAI which will see the introduction of AI agents at all levels of learning. The partnership happens a week after thousands of USyd staff walked off over AI encroachment into their jobs. The partnership aims to provide all staff and students with access to ChatGPT edu, a “version of ChatGPT built for universities to responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers and campus operations.” The partnership also sees the investment of $1 million dollars of USyd’s money into the AI Sustainability Research and Innovation Fund, details of which USyd has not yet made public. In an all staff email to be sent on Monday, the draft of which Honi Soit has seen in full, ViceChancellor Mark Scott will say that USyd is “proudly leading… the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence”. Staff will receive access to ChatGPT Edu from October 2026. Students will receive access from Semester 1 2027 with a pilot program commencing in October 2026. The email details the extent of USyd’s adoption of artificial intelligence, listing its “inventory of endorsed AI tools”, such as Cogniti, Harvey AI, Microsoft Copilot, ServiceNow Now Assist, and Zoom AI Companion”. This follows the sudden expansion of AI integration into USyd’s digital infrastructure, an expansion that has caused much alarm across the university from both staff and students.
“Now management is also rushing headlong into AI without the evidence, consultation or due diligence a change of that magnitude demands.” The NTEU’s Concerns National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) USyd Branch President Peter Chen told Honi Soit the union was not consulted on the procurement of ChatGPT Edu. While staff had raised concerns about the quality of the current LLM vendor Microsoft Copilot,
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Chen said that the branch suggested to management that staff and the NTEU should be consulted “prior to the acquisition of a new platform / toolset”. “It is unfortunate that this has not occurred and explains why the Union is vigorously prosecuting its claims in bargaining around AI,” Chen said, stressing that the union was not consulted about the procurement of ChatGPT Edu. “The University of Sydney has a marginal — sometimes very poor — history of top-down technology acquisitions. Hence current staff dissatisfaction, with the possibility of repeating this problem again.” NTEU members at USyd went on a 24-hour strike on 2nd September over several demands. One demand was to place safeguards on the rollout of AI in the enterprise agreement. The union viewed USyd management’s resistance to safeguards on the rollout of AI as part of a broad assault on job security. The NTEU’s proposal brought to management during bargaining sought to define AI, mandate the use of AI in the public interest, safeguard AI from replacing jobs, retain human oversight over AI, ensure consultation with staff on AI, and to protect the moral rights of staff. NTEU NSW Division Secretary Vince Caughley said in a media release ahead of the strike that university management could not be trusted with being given “a blank cheque to use AI to accelerate the hollowing out of university jobs and education”. “Our members have watched secure jobs disappear through years of restructures, casualisation and costcutting. Now management is also rushing headlong into AI without the evidence, consultation or due diligence a change of that magnitude demands. “This is happening in a sector with a governance model that is demonstrably dysfunctional. Federal and state inquiries have exposed unaccountable decision-making, repeated management failures
and university leadership increasingly disconnected from the staff who actually teach, research and run our institutions.” Ahead of the strike, USyd released a statement saying that “AI is best governed through policies and frameworks that can be updated as needed to respond to this rapidly changing technology rather than set for the three-year term of the enterprise agreement. “We have developed strong safeguards around privacy, ethics and academic integrity to ensure AI adoption is undertaken as safely and ethically as possible, and is of benefit to our community.” An item in the NTEU USyd branch’s log of claims demands including in the enterprise agreement “provisions to protect staff against any adverse effects of artificial intelligence systems in the workplace.” “Management needs to accept that they need to include staff in these decisions,” Chen told Honi. “Having failed to engage with the union over a year ago when we proposed collaboration — they have only themselves to blame that we are insisting that inclusions be made in the Enterprise Agreement. This top-down ‘we know better than
you’ approach is hubris.”
Concerns over AI across the sector USyd trails behind UNSW and other Australian universities in its adoption of a partnership with Open AI in Australian universities. These partnerships demonstrate a decisive turn from the tertiary sector to the use of AI in education. Earlier this year, the University of Newcastle implemented a controversial digital avatar to teach a first-year programming course. While UoN’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education Innovation) Professor Karen Blackmore told the Sydney Morning Herald, UoN did “not support replacing traditional lectures with AI-delivered content”, students and staff both questioned why such an avatar was being used in education. USyd’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students) Professor Joanne Wright told the Sydney Morning Herald that USyd saw benefits to the use of an avatar in some circumstances. “There may be some circumstances where considered use of an AI avatar can enhance teaching. We’ve seen the technology put to innovative use by educators providing students with oral exams and presentation practice, and by an academic who lives with a vocal disability,” Professor Wright told the SMH. The partnership also brings concerns about privacy and personal data storage. Its announcement comes months after USyd suffered a cyber data breach, and weeks after AI agents from OpenAI performed a successful hacking operation against a third-party company.
NEWS |
transformation” across five key areas rather than an “incremental change”. USyd partnership with OpenAI also continues its investment in companies that provide assets to international military organisations. President of the Students’ Representative Council Grace Street said “It is outrageous that our University is partnering with the same company that is partnered with and provides tools for Donald Trump’s “Department of War,” which won the bid due to its “low refusal rates.”
Staff and student express concern The University’s AI green paper, Education in the Age of AI, proposes that the introduction of AI in education requires a “coordinated
The five key areas developing student capability on AI use, redesigning learning experience “to support active, personalised, and relational engagement”, redeveloping assessments along a “two-lane approach” (one where AI is permitted and the other where it is not), developing educators to “design and deliver excellent AI-enabled education”, and redesigning the broader student experience. “The University’s position reflects a clear recognition that AI is not an optional add-on, but a defining feature of contemporary and future knowledge and practice,” the green paper reads. The University’s green paper also says that “Student partnership has been key to our response to AI”, adding that students should have “ongoing input into design, governance, and evaluation of how AI is deployed for learning and for their broader student experience”. Street also said that student organisations were not consulted about the procurement of ChatGPT Edu. “I must condemn this decision that was made without any work with
student organisation representatives and at a time where the staff unions are actively bargaining, but not making progress, on safeguarding their jobs from adverse effects of AI,” Street said.
Alma Torlakovic, a professional staff member on the NTEU USyd branch committee and member of the FightBack caucus, told Honi about the environmental impacts AI and data centres cause.
“Funding new research into sustainability and the environmental impacts of AI is putting lip gloss on the pig that is this new reckless and dangerous multi-year partnership with OpenAI.”
“AI is a threat to the environment as the data centre technology needed to power it uses exorbitant amounts of water and electricity,” Torlakovic said. “The university should be raising the alarm about the detrimental impacts of AI on climate action goals, not embracing the technology that’s extending the life span of the fossil fuel industry.
Nick Riemer, a senior lecturer in linguistics, NTEU USyd Vice-President (Academic), and member of the Rank-andFile-Action NTEU caucus, also slammed the decision to partner with OpenAI. “Management are supposed to be consulting staff on their AI green paper, but they announce this when the deadline for submissions is still a fortnight away,” Riemer said. “The announcement pays lip service to keeping humans at the centre, but says nothing of substance about how. Their talk of AI-driven operational improvements is code for joblosses. And their determination to actually encourage students to use it flies in the face of our responsibility to cultivate human capacities like understanding, imagination, and critique — not find substitutes for them. “They’re [management] playing with fire and don’t even know it. Will AI-boosterism be the most disastrous of the long series of half-baked plans they’ve imposed on the university over the years?”
“The announcement pays lip service to keeping humans at the centre, but says nothing of substance about how. Their talk of AI-driven operational improvements is code for job-losses.”
“No genuine consultation has occurred with staff at all. AI should not be imposed on staff and students, and it should not be used as an excuse to replace jobs.” Honi Soit asked the University of Sydney around specifics of the OpenAI partnership, how the integrity of staff and student data will be protected given the recent OpenAI security breaches, and whether staff and students were consulted about the procurement of ChatGPT Edu. A spokesperson for the University said “We’re preparing to announce a partnership with an enterprise AI vendor, and will communicate with our whole community very soon.”
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Palestine activists rally as Federal Government lags behind UK sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements Victor Zhang reports. Thousands of activists gathered at Hyde Park on 13th September to protest Australia’s complicity in the on-going genocide in Palestine. Earlier in the week, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced that Australia would not join the United Kingdom and 11 other countries in ceasing to trade with illegal settlements in the West Bank. Shamikh Badra, a Palestinian writer, film-maker, and academic, spoke to the rally, asking why the Australian Government would not uphold our duties under international law.
Herzog in early 2026 should be dropped. “We demand accountability for violence against protesters. Because solidarity with Palestine is not a crime. Protesting against killings of civilians is not a crime. Opposing the Israeli occupation is not a crime,” Badra told the rally. “The Palestine solidarity movement has become bigger, stronger, and broader. Students, workers, unions, doctors, teachers, academics, artists, and families are standing together.” UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced on 8th September new measures to sanction Israel and restrict trade with illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 11 other nations. Miliband’s unusually forceful speech to the UK House of Commons denounced settler violence in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.
“If the Australian government says that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal, then those words must mean something,” Badra said. Badra also said the charges against people who protested Israeli President Isaac
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Miliband announced an import ban on goods produced from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, sanctions against providing services for construction or financing in the illegal settlements, banning advertising settlements in the UK, and a ban on other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”. A joint statement released on 8th September from the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK
confirmed their intent to restrict trade with illegal settlements in the West Bank. Australia did not join the 12 nations in pursuing these sanctions. Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Senate on 8th September that while Australia would pursue “targeted measures”, the Government would not consider “a blanketstyle import ban” due to concerns over “unintended consequences for Australian businesses, for Palestinians and for Israelis”. Wong did not elaborate on what these consequences would be. Greens Senator David Shoebridge condemned the Government’s decision the following day. “This is unbelievable gaslighting from Labor. They want us to believe the reason for the ongoing complicity of the Albanese Labor government in its unwillingness to take actions against illegal settlements… is that they’re concerned about unintended consequences for Palestinians,” Shoebridge told the Senate. Shoebridge also highlighted the ties Australian industry has to the on-going genocide in Palestine, pointing to the Illawarra manufacturer Bisalloy that entered a partnership with an Israeli firm to manufacture steel for armoured vehicles. Australian civil society called on the Government to join the UK in implementing sanctions. The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) said that the targeted measures announced by Wong did not meet the “legal and moral obligations” Australia must
uphold “while Israel’s genocide in Gaza, unlawful occupation and illegal settlement enterprise continue”. “In July 2024 the International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, found the occupation itself to be unlawful and said it must end,” a statement from APAN read. “Crucially, the Court did not address Israel alone. It set out the obligations of third states, not to recognise the illegal situation as lawful, not to render aid or assistance in maintaining it, and to ensure that they do not, through trade or investment, entrench or profit from an illegal enterprise. Those obligations fall on Australia as much as on any other signatory.” The Jewish Council of Australia also urged the Australian Government to also ban settlement trade. Bart Shteinman, Executive Officer of the JCA, said that doing so was the “bare minimum” expected of Australia under international law. “Once again Australia is at the back of the pack when it comes to upholding our international law obligations,” Shteinman said. “This genocidal regime will continue to operate with impunity until more countries take action. Australia’s desire to continue doing trade with illegal entities while paying lip service to human rights concerns is beyond comprehension.”
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MUA escalates industrial action against ferry operator Transdev Victor Zhang reports.
Sydney ferry workers are escalating industrial action against the ferry operator Transdev. The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), representing the ferry workers, said their members are seeking a five per cent wage increase, wage protections against inflation, and roster improvements. The MUA said that as part of industrial action, members would leave the gates and turnstiles open to allow passengers to ride fare-free from 11th September to 6th October. “Workers are taking action against Transdev, not against the people of Sydney,” MUA Sydney Deputy Branch Secretary Paul Garrett said. “If ferry workers cannot get a proper payrise, there is no need for passengers to pay anything! By switching off Opal readers, our members are making sure commuters are not out of pocket because of this dispute. “These workers are not asking for anything outrageous. They want fair wages, they want their pay protected against inflation, and they want Transdev to recognise the skills and responsibility involved in operating
a safety-critical public transport network.” The MUA also called for Sydney transport to return to public hands. The Sydney ferries were privatised in 2011 by the Liberal state government at the time. “Sydney Ferries are a public service. They are part of the infrastructure that keeps this city functioning, and they should be publicly owned and operated in the public interest,” Garrett said. “Instead, Sydney has a foreignowned multinational private company sitting between the government, the travelling public and the workers who actually deliver the service.” Transdev retaliated by suspending the F3 services along the Parramatta river on 12th and 13th September. Transport for NSW urged passengers to plan ahead due to the disruptions. Transport for NSW said that “Transdev Sydney Ferries say this decision is necessary due to the impacts of ongoing industrial action”. Jarrod Graham, Managing Director of Transdev Sydney Ferries said
Trandev has a “formal offer on the table and we are meeting the unions again next week to seek a resolution.”
“The workers are ready to do their jobs and will be at work across the weekend being paid to leave boats tied up to the wharf.
Both Transdev and Transport for NSW said that passengers should still tap on even if gates are open or unattended.
“The people of Sydney deserve better than Transdev and TfNSW’s pigheaded and damaging workplace relations strategy. Instead of cancelling services and lying to the public, Transdev and TfNSW should come to the negotiating table and hammer out a fair deal with the committed and professional workers who actually deliver this public service.”
The MUA condemned the decision to retaliate against ferry workers and reiterated that ferry workers were ready to turn up to work and keep the ferries operational while also suspending ticketing. “If Transdev chooses to cancel services, that is a decision being made by the company, not by the workers,” Garrett said.
Ferry workers took strike action earlier in the month, from 9am to 2pm on 2nd September.
Unions mount opposition to Victorian Government bill Victor Zhang reports. to ban RAFFWU The Victorian public sector union and maritime union have expressed their opposition to newly minted Victorian Premier Ben Carroll’s bill that would deregister the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU). The Associations Incorporation Reform Amendment Bill 2026 would refuse registration or wind up organisations if they are not an industrial organisation registered under the Fair Work Act. The Bill would also refuse registration or wind up organisations associated with terrorist organisations or proscribed hate groups. The Bill was introduced to stamp down on “Red Unions”, organisations astroturfed by the Liberal party. However, the wording of the legislation would deregister RAFFWU, the progressive retail union rival to the socially conservative and dominant Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA). Premier Carroll has a long-standing association with the SDA, a key factional group in Labor Right. Greens Member for Richmond Gabrielle de Vietri accused Premier Carroll of pushing the bill for factional purposes. “RAFFWU was formed in 2016 to fight for the rights of retail and fast-food workers, who are often young, who are often low paid and who are often marginalised. RAFFWU presents a direct threat to the SDA, and they want to shut them down,” de Vietri told the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) Victoria Secretary, Jiselle
Hanna said that “Red Unions” were a genuine problem to be addressed but did not believe the legislation was the solution. “CPSU Victoria opposes the Red Unions and their model of unionism. But we also oppose this legislation,” Hanna said. “There is a fundamental principle at stake here. Workers have the right to organise. They should be free to join unions, build unions and participate in them. And when workers are dissatisfied with their union, they should be able to organise to change it.” The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) also expressed solidarity with workers in RAFFWU. “The MUA supports the right of workers to join and build a genuine union of their choosing. That right is especially important in industries where workers have faced low pay, insecure work, wage theft, poor enterprise agreements and weak collective bargaining power,” their statement read. “RAFFWU has established itself as a legitimate organisation of retail and fast-food workers through practical organising, workplace campaigning, industrial advocacy and legal action. Its work has helped workers challenge under-award conditions, defend penalty rates and improve workplace rights. This is the work of a genuine trade union. “A union should not be judged only by whether it holds a particular form of registration. It should be judged by whether it is democratic, member-led, independent of employers, committed to collective action, and capable of advancing the wages, conditions and dignity of workers in its industry.”
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| FEATURE
To Read or Not To Read: That Is the Societal Foundation “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Reading is the foundation of society. It sustains students’ academic growth, their intellectual development, and their capacity to participate meaningfully in the world around them. And yet, reading engagement is in decline, replaced by avoidance, disinterest, and increasingly screens. If students are to grow into informed, capable, and active citizens, the education system must prioritise literacy and cultivate motivated, critical readers from the primary years. This concern is now widespread globally, with researchers increasingly debating how easily illiteracy spreads through a population. The decline in reading is not just one problem; really, it’s four problems tangled together: children are reading less, enjoying it less, absorbing less of the world through it, and as a result, becoming less equipped to question what they’re told. Each of those threads deserves attention and effort. The numbers don’t lie Australia’s reading results are not just stagnant, they are steadily declining. The OECD’s PISA 2025 results show reading performance declined between 2022 and 2025, extending backsliding that has been observed since testing began in 2000. Australian 15-year-olds are now roughly two years of learning behind students who sat the test in 2000. Despite this, Australia still ranked 10th in reading among the 91 countries tested in 2025, and remains above the OECD average. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) most recent NAPLAN results tell a similar story for younger ages. The 2026 results show average reading scores across Years 5, 7, and 9 have fallen since 2025, and roughly one third of students nationally are now in the “developing or needs additional support” band for literacy and numeracy. The gap is not evenly spread: nationally, around 31 per cent of Indigenous students fall into the “needs additional support” reading band, compared with fewer than 8 per cent of non-Indigenous students. This gap is wide enough to count as a standalone equity crisis affecting the
students who most need reading to be their ladder out of disadvantage. It gets starker still once you look past test scores and ask whether children actually want to read. A survey by Australia Reads found the proportion of Australian children aged 6–17 who read frequently has fallen from 37 per cent in 2010 to just 28 per cent. In the most recent PIRLS assessment, Australia ranked 21st out of 50 nations for reading enjoyment, with 26 per cent of students saying they don’t like reading at all and a further 45 per cent saying they only enjoy it “somewhat.” This is a global pattern. In the UK, reading enjoyment among school-aged children recently hit its lowest recorded level since tracking began in 2005. In the United States, the share of 9-year-olds who read for fun almost every day has dropped from 53 per cent in 1984 to 37 per cent in 2025, where among 13-yearolds the proportion is now down to around 1 in 7. Why are students struggling to read, or choosing not to? Researchers point to several likely contributors: an overcrowded curriculum that leaves little room for children to read simply because they want to; the gradual disappearance of adult reading role models at home; and the pull of screens that fill hours once devoted to books. Australia’s own national survey data show that screenbased activities have overtaken reading for pleasure among children, with the vast majority of children spending significant weekly hours on screens. None of this is a moral failing on the part of young people. It’s the predictable result of an environment that hasn’t taught children to adopt reading from a young age, and that has made reading feel like an obligation while everything else feels effortless and immediate. If schools want to reverse the trend, the fix isn’t more testing or more pressure; it’s instilling these reading habits in primary school and genuinely motivating children to read through sincere teacherstudent relationships and consistent, repetitive effort. We need to rebuild the desire to read through choice, discussion, and real access to books that reflect what
students actually care about. The age of technology The reading decline is happening in classrooms and homes built around devices rather than books, and its consequences are now showing up in brain studies of children. Neuroimaging research has found that time spent reading is associated with higher functional connectivity in the brain regions supporting language and cognitive control, while heavier screen time is associated with lower connectivity in those same regions. A large longitudinal study of early adolescents, using data from roughly 12,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, found that screen use has a measurable causal effect on reduced reading time. It is this reduction in reading, rather than screen use directly, that mediates the negative effect on brain development and cognition. I don’t mean to say technology has no place in schools, as digital tools do have value, especially when teaching media literacy. But it does mean that limiting screen use where it truly isn’t necessary for the teacher, is the optimal choice for young, highly sensitive, developing brains. Reading the world Reading is also how children learn to see beyond themselves. As C.S Lewis said: “we read to know we are not alone”. Through fiction, students encounter experiences that would otherwise stay abstract or invisible to them. An experimental study found that readers who became emotionally “transported” into a fictional story showed a measurable increase in empathic concern a full week later, an effect not found among people who read non-fiction, or who read fiction without becoming emotionally absorbed in it. Helen Keller once said, “the highest result of education is tolerance.” A child who reads widely learns early that the world is larger than their own direct experience, and that understanding doesn’t arrive on its own. In our current media climate, children default to a fairly self-centred view of the world, simply because it’s the only one they’ve directly experienced. Empathy for people outside that experience has to be taught, gently and consistently; literature is one of the few tools that can put a child inside someone else’s life without them ever leaving the classroom. Society and literacy Reading isn’t only about comprehension; it’s part of the framework that determines a society’s resilience to being misled. Researchers are linking weaker literacy and critical-reading skills to higher vulnerability and susceptibility to misinformation, with some describing education and literacy as a “protective factor” against deception. A meta-analysis synthesising 49 experimental studies (more than 81,000 participants) found that media
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FEATURE |
Firdevs Sinik believes in bettering the future with better education. literacy interventions meaningfully reduce belief in misinformation, improve people’s ability to distinguish real information from fake, and reduce how often people share misinformation. Related research on adolescents specifically finds that programmes teaching lateral reading and source verification improve students’ ability to identify misleading content online. However none of this happens automatically; it has to be taught the same way comprehension or grammar is taught, not assumed to emerge once a student can technically decode text. A population that has lost the habit of reading closely and questioning what it’s told is more vulnerable to propaganda and disinformation, and its most dangerous consequence is undoubtedly that this population is also slower to notice injustice when it’s dressed up in the right language. This isn’t only a modern or hypothetical risk. Controlling and corrupt regimes have historically treated literate, educated populations as a direct threat: in the years after Turkey’s 2016 staged coup attempt, the government’s emergency decrees dismissed more than 34,000 teachers and over 6,000 academics, shut down 15 private universities, and forced the resignation of 1,577 university deans. Education institutions absorbed the single largest share of a purge that removed more than 130,000 public servants in total. Literacy and education are the powerful tools that keep this kind of dismantling from happening quietly, preventing citizens from being brainwashed and exploited through deceitful media. This is exactly why education institutions and educated individuals are the first things authoritarian systems move against. Who’s doing the teaching? None of the above works without people taking responsibility for teaching, and that’s where the conversation about literacy usually stops short. Curriculum documents can call for explicit comprehension instruction and rich engagement with literature, but all of it depends on teachers who are trained, supported, and given time to actually do it. Right now, that’s the part of the system under the most strain, and a big part of the reason is how Australia treats the profession itself. There’s a persistent perception in Australia that teaching is a fallback profession rather than a first choice. In NSW and the ACT in 2015, half of all school leavers offered places in teaching degrees had ATARs below 50, and only around 1 in 5 teachingdegree offers nationally went to students with an ATAR above 80 — compared with well over half of offers across all other university programs. The proportion of high-achieving school leavers choosing teaching has declined markedly since 2006. Researchers who study the trend point to an image problem: teaching is talked about, in media and political commentary, as an ‘Option B’ profession rather than one worth aspiring to, and that shapes what ambitious 17-year-olds think they’re “too good for”. Consequently, 71 per cent of Australian
teachers say they don’t believe the public appreciates what they do. Finland’s famously first-class education system is praised precisely because of how the state treats the profession: teaching is deliberately one of the hardest professions to enter, harder by acceptance rate than law or medicine at the University of Helsinki (roughly 6.8 per cent acceptance for teaching versus 7.3 per cent for medicine and 8.3 per cent for law). If a nation wants its next generation raised by its best minds, it has to build a system that supports and prioritises teachers accordingly. The greatest irony is that an intelligent, high-achieving 18-year-old choosing teaching isn’t “wasting” their ability; it’s the best use of it. A brilliant teacher shapes the reasoning, curiosity, and values of hundreds of students a year, with these students going on to become doctors, engineers, journalists, and citizens who run society. But increasing funding alone isn’t enough, though pay and workload both matter: Australian teachers work an average of 46.4 hours a week, among the longest working weeks of the OECD countries, and roughly a quarter work more than 60 hours a week during term. Monash University’s 2022 research also found that 71 per cent of teachers feel unappreciated by the public and that a substantial share are considering leaving the profession within the next few years, driven by workload and declining status as much as pay. Australia’s own National Teacher Workforce Action Plan explicitly names “raising the status of teaching” as a priority for exactly this reason. Reversing the decline in reading, and everything that decline puts at risk,
depends on actually putting in a nationwide effort to build that a reality rather than a line in a policy document. Taken together, these points lead to one conclusion: schools need a whole-school culture of reading, not an isolated literacy block bolted onto an otherwise unchanged timetable, and that culture is only as strong as the teachers tasked with delivering it. This requires treating reading as a wholeschool priority rather than one subject’s responsibility, protecting reading time from the things currently crowding it out, and being willing to fund and staff the profession that has to deliver it all, which can be done by elevating the status of teaching in the first place. The bottom line Students should be taught not just to decode a page, but most importantly, to ask whose voice is on it, whose is missing, and what it’s asking them to believe. A student who reads deeply learns to see past their immediate circumstances, and a student who questions what they read becomes harder to mislead and exploit. And a student who has encountered others’ experiences on the page is more likely to recognise injustice when they encounter it in real life. Reading, truly, is the foundation on which everything else — critical thought, empathy, and an informed, conscious society — is built. The decline we’re seeing isn’t inevitable, and the research is clear about what reverses it: books, discussions, and a deliberate effort and passion to teach not just how to read, but also how to question. The earlier schools take that seriously, the better the odds of raising a generation that not only knows more about the world but is also equipped with the tools to protect it.
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| CAMPUS
Mind Over Mandate 2: The Id, the Ego, and the $15k Invoice Vince Tafea psychoanalyses the Job-ready Graduates Package. A spectre is haunting the University of Sydney (USyd) — the spectre of frustration with Scott Morrison’s Job-ready Graduate’s Package (JRG). For USyd psychology students, that frustration comes with some rather curious price tags. Whether you’re completing a psychology honours year in a Bachelor of Science/Arts, or within the Bachelor of Psychology, every student must complete the exact same set of units. These comprise 1.0 Equivalent Full Time Study Load (EFTSL), or 48 credit points (CPs). Surely the difference would at most be the colour of your sash and gown during graduation. Well. You’d be wrong. Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP) students completing their honours year in a Bachelor of Science/Arts (Honours) pay $17400, and those within a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) pay $9537. That makes for quite an expensive $7863 difference between the gold fuzzy sash of the Bachelor of Science/Arts and the Irish green & ivory of the Bachelor of Psychology. At first glance, this looks like a simple — although unethical — case of students being charged different amounts for the same study, but the more interesting question is why. The answer, according to the University, is not that the Bachelor of Science student is studying less psychology, or that their honours year is somehow less professionally relevant, it is that the government defines which courses qualify for the reduced contribution amount under the ‘Professional Pathway’ scheme.
But, there is still a major disparity, and the Bachelor of Science student is being penalised for something: having options. The Professional Pathway: a distinction without a difference Currently you can study a 36 CP Psychology minor, 48 CP Psychology major, or 60 CP Psychology program at USyd. The 60 CP program is a requirement if you want to progress to Honours. This program can be done in a range of degrees including a Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, and a Bachelor of Psychology, and can reasonably said to be the pathway to… becoming a professional, and the USyd website itself so describes it with: “The psychology program is designed to both meet the requirements for accreditation so that students can engage in further training to become registered and practicing psychologists AND/OR to engage in higher degree research in one or more of the areas of Psychological Science.” However, the JRG website stresses that it’s about the particular degree that you complete your program in. I can’t stress
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enough how stupid this shit is. You are studying the exact same units but penalised for the title of your degree? Again, I’d like to reiterate that none of this was communicated to us, the current cohort, or present in any backwater footnotes that a sharp eye could catch and we had no reason to suspect otherwise.
A Statistically Significant Rip-Off The cumulative costing for the 60 CP psychology program is $9685 if you have completed a Bachelor of Psychology, and $18548 if you try to complete the pathway otherwise. Again, you are studying the same exact program to prepare you to become a professional. So, the problem is worse than we previously diagnosed, with a $8863 disparity between those who study the 60 CP Program in a Bachelor of Psychology and those who study it in another degree. Combining all the information we have thus far, completing the 60 CP Psychology program and 48 CP Honours bring us to: Bachelor of Psychology + Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) = $10721 + $9537 = $20258 B Arts/Science/Other + B Science/Arts (Honours) = $18584 + $17400 = $35984 That’s a $15726 difference in total. Considering that a Bachelor of Psychology (non-appended honours) is categorised as a “Professional Pathway” and does not even guarantee an honours year which is a requirement to be a professional. This is further evidence of the tenuous thread of logic that appears to explain the disparity in the JRG.
What did the University say? We reached out to provide them the chance to reply to the concerns about the cost disparity, and the following statement was given: “The government sets the definition and eligibility criteria for courses that receive the reduced student contribution amount for the Professional Pathways scheme, and universities can’t override these requirements. “If a student enrolls in the Bachelor of Psychology or Bachelor of Psychology Honours, these courses meet the government’s criteria because the course structure makes the study of the psychology units compulsory for students. “The Psychology program and units in psychology studied as part of our liberal studies degrees such as the Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts unfortunately do not meet the criteria, as only courses where the structure is compulsory for students to study units relevant to professional registration as a psychologist by the Psychology Board of Australia are eligible. We continue to offer psychology in
these degrees despite the different student contribution amount because not every student interested in psychology will meet the eligibility criteria for entry to dedicated psychology degrees or want to only study psychology. We appreciate there could be confusion or frustration about the different ways these costs are determined, which is why we provide students with information about their tuition fees by unit of study, and the ability to change or withdraw from their choice of units of study by set dates. We’re also considering additional ways to make these different costs for different courses clearer for students in the future.” The University says psychology remains available for degrees such as the Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts because “not every student interested in psychology will [...] want to only study psychology.” But the flexibility of those degrees is what makes them appealing, and ultimately the designation of the 60CP psychology program no matter the degree reflects a desire to pursue a path to be a professional. It also doesn’t account for the postgraduate Graduate Diploma in Psychology students who have been completing their subsequent honours year in an appended Bachelor of Science (Honours). USyd says it provides students with information about fees by unit of study, which is not quite the same as making the consequences of choosing one degree over another clear from the introduction of the JRG. Knowing that a unit costs a particular amount is one thing. Understanding that its cost is predicated on the degree you choose and that it could ultimately leave you more than $15,000 worse off is another. Now the decent news is that this information was added and communicated on the university’s CSP website in 2026 using the ‘Wayback Machine.’
Clarity for future cohorts does little to address the likely millions in additional costs that have been already incurred from 2021–2026 by past ones. What Is To Be Done? As USyd SRC General Secretary and a current psychology honours student, I’ve alerted current SRC President Grace Street and started a petition calling on Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellors Annamarie Jagose and Joanne Wright to take action. Scan the QR code to read the letter, or sign on!
ANALYSIS |
Where did all the climate coverage go? In June, The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) forecast Australian farm profits would fall 70 per cent this financial year. ABARES’ own Acting Executive Director, David Galeano said that while fuel and fertiliser costs would weigh on returns, “the greater factor shaping grower decisions will be a drier seasonal outlook.” This story ran across ABC News, regional papers, and industry outlets as a straight production forecast. Almost none of the coverage used the words “climate change” or “global warming”. This is one of many examples of a story about a drought-driven or climate-caused issue being repackaged under another name. Climate change isn’t disappearing from Australian news because its consequences have disappeared. It is disappearing because those consequences are increasingly being reported as isolated economic, political, and regional stories rather than as examples of all-sector-encompassing ecological crisis. The depoliticisation of climate coverage can be seen in the Australian response to the devastating flood in Nepal. Nepal’s prime minister, Balendra Shah, has attributed the crisis to climate change saying, “There is no doubt that this disaster has occurred due to climate change”. Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal said compensation “is not a matter of charity; it is a matter of legal and moral liability”. When asked what climate action should be taken to prevent future disasters, both Anthony Albanese and the opposition leader claimed that now was not the time for a climate conversation. Australian media has allowed politicians to frame the event as a solely humanitarian crisis and not an ecological crisis. Australia is the 14th largest greenhouse gas emitter, but when exports are accounted for, we jump to second largest. Within the next few years, the world’s temperatures will rise above 1.5 degrees. Although this disastrous statistic was released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report last week, there has been insufficient coverage of it by Australian media.
impacts of climate change. Our own country’s complicity should be receiving significant media attention.
So why is the media silent? MeCCO’s researchers point to newsroom consolidation and job cuts. Nine Entertainment cut around 50 news jobs and $100 million in costs in November 2025 alone, more than 20 regional and community newspapers stopped printing in the 18 months before that, and over 350 outlets have closed or contracted in five years, per the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report (Australia). Globally, the Washington Post laid off 300 to 375 reporters, including most of its climate desk, in February 2026. A national farmer survey found 63 per cent of readers rely on specialist agricultural publications as their primary, trusted news source, actively distrusting metropolitan media as city-centric. That is exactly the category of masthead hit hardest by the outlet consolidation. The 2021 Digital News report found that News Corp Australia and ACM “terminated printing to more than 100 local and regional newspapers”. When farmers rely on rural mastheads for climate news, the closure of more than twenty regional papers in 18 months threatens to sever an important source of trusted climate information for these communities. The suppression of climate stories may also be attributed to the lack of media diversity in regional areas, as the majority of regional outlets are owned by News Corp, ACM, and Seven West Media.
Climate change isn’t disappearing from Australian news because its consequences have disappeared. It is disappearing because those consequences are increasingly being reported as isolated economic, political, and regional stories rather than as examples of an all-sectorencompassing ecological crisis.
According to the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), global media coverage of climate change fell 14 per cent in 2025. This is the fourth consecutive year of decline, leaving coverage 38 per cent below its 2021 peak. Climate coverage in Oceania was 23 per cent lower in February 2026 than the same month a year earlier.
Recent evidence of farmers adopting sustainable energy complicates the assumption that rural Australian communities are uniformly resistant to climate action. Farmers for Climate Action found that nine of the ten leading NSW electorates for rooftop solar installations are rural, not urban. “Solar saves you money. Country people know it. It’s that simple,” the organisation’s chief executive, Verity MorganSchmidt, said of the figures in February.
The Ipsos’ 2025 People and Climate Change study found that 64 per cent of Australians are concerned about the
ABARES found that seasonal conditions between 2001 and 2023 cut average broadacre farm profits by 18 per cent, or around $28,500 a farm each year. These are financial losses already being absorbed by
Joely Scott will not stay silent.
the agricultural sector industry. This impact is being reported by the media as lone agricultural struggles, instead of as a result of climate change. This trend has been observable since 2019, a report commissioned by The Guardian found that only 5.8 per cent of stories mentioning ‘drought’ made any mention of climate change. Further ecological actions could be taken if farmers were provided with a comprehensive account of the financial toll climate change is having on them. MeCCO’s Max Boykoff claims a second factor is “climate fatigue,” a term for editors who sense readers are weary and so shift coverage elsewhere. However, the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report 2025 found 69 per cent of Australians avoid the news at least sometimes, but the reasons people actually give are mood, distrust, and general exhaustion, not climate specifically. Concern also hasn’t shifted as the Australia Institute’s Climate of the Nation 2024 found 69 per cent of Australians were still concerned about climate change, barely down from 71 per cent in 2023. This suggests that fatigue may describe an editorial assumption, rather than a fact about readers. Another cause of reduction in coverage is climate NGOs’ failure to create pressure, politically or through the media. Climate and ecological institutions receive millions of dollars in donations and funding, but they are failing to convert this support into progress. This decline is particularly apparent in the once radical organisation Greenpeace. The climate movement needs loud and passionate voices urging change, instead of another moderate and politically acceptable tree planting institution. The media is supposed to hold those in positions of power to account. As the nation’s public broadcaster, the ABC is obligated to act in the public’s best interest by hiring specialist reporting teams to drive the climate conversation as a public interest issue. Scientists have been warning the world for decades that climate change requires urgent proactive action. Ecological disasters are happening more often, and they are becoming more dangerous. These floods, droughts, and fires are not isolated events and Australian media should be reporting on those experiencing the brunt of these events. We have a global obligation to the countries our actions are harming. Countries like Nepal are already suffering devastating human costs. The media’s priorities should not only be informed by safe, unaffected metropolitan Australians, we should also think of our global community. Concern about climate change increases dramatically in more vulnerable nations such as the Philippines (82 per cent) and Indonesia (81 per cent concern). The story is as urgent and pressing as it was during climate coverage’s peak in 2021. People need to see how lives are already being affected by Australian and global climate inaction. Despite Albo’s deflections, this is not an issue for later, it is an issue for yesterday.
Rupert Murdoch
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| ANALYSIS
Extreme heat is killing First Nations people: $4 billion housing is one of the culprits.
Kuyili Karthik is concerned.
The Northern Territory and Federal governments are speeding $4 billion over ten years to “improve” remote housing in the state. What the government is actually building, on unceded land in so-called Australia, consists of million-dollar hotboxes that are culturally insensitive, climate-inappropriate, and disregard the impacts of extreme heat on First Nations health.
Australia is set to see its hottest summer ever in 2026, with the strongest El Niño in a thousand years hitting us soon. Record-high temperatures are set to extend well into 2027, warns the Bureau of Meteorology, with heatwaves to be expected. Colonisation’s dispossession of indigenous sovereignty not only deprives autonomy when it comes to designing appropriate housing. It kills indigenous people. Aboriginal people are 2.3 times more likely to be hospitalised and 1.7 times more likely to die from environmentally-linked diseases than non-Indigenous Australians, especially from preventable illnesses like acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD). 81 percent of those affected by RHD in Australia are First Nations People, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, with one report by the Institute showing the disease is most prevalent in the NT. Housing is a driving force behind high rates of ARF and RHD, due to crowding and poor cooling infrastructure. RHD rates have doubled in Australia between 2021 and 2021. Australia at large is in a housing crisis, with recordhigh rents and homelessness increasing. Purple Pingers’s ‘Shit Rentals’ database, where anonymous posters share images of their housing, can attests to this. It provides evidence of general shittiness — walls collapsing, broken taps, exposed wiring — but also severe health hazards like mould and fungi growing out of carpets. In this housing hellscape, the Labor government proudly announced, in 2024, a $4 billion investment for remote housing in the NT to “help Close the Gap”, specifically citing a goal to decrease overcrowding. It’s hard not to be sceptical when residents
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of Papunya, living in extreme heat, are suing their landlords (the NT government) over unsafe housing conditions.
The housing is not only flawed but expensive. Thick concrete blocks that trap heat, nonreflective paint, a lack of shade, mis-placed windows, dark curtains needed to cool houses: “It’s like an oven…it’s like it’s cooking you from the inside,” said Ashley Robertson, a Papunya resident, to the ABC. This community has reported children having seizures, nosebleeds, and ‘blacking out’ due to dehydration, living in an area that regularly sees 40 degree days in summer.
regular event for prepayment customers, meaning that essential medication cannot be refrigerated, food spoils, and homes reach unsafe temperatures for long periods of time. During extreme heat, disconnections are doubled.
Seemingly a punitive response to First Nations communities, prepayment arrangements are the default option provided by states with significant First Nations populations, including the NT, WA, Far North QLD, and parts of SA. In some cases, prepayment is mandated. Prepayment compounds systemic inequality and increases accrual of debt
Wilya Janta’s Tennant Creek home
Many NT houses don’t have air conditioning at all, or the air conditioning is broken, going months without repairin. When there is working air conditioning, it usually can only ventilate one area of the house, causing residents to crowd in one room, one of the biggest risk factors for developing RHD. The pre-paid power card system providing electricity to many remote communities is another reason for worsening health. Residents are spending more money to keep their homes cool year after year, with the architecture of the houses rendering these efforts null and void. A 2025 report, The Right to Power, was the first national investigation into the way First Nations people can access electricity. It found that more than 65,000 First Nations people across 15,000 households access electricity through prepayment agreements, with 9,000 affected by frequent disconnections. “When credit runs out the home is automatically disconnected, cutting off access to lights, power, refrigeration, and cooling,” the report reads. Losing access to power is a
for First Nations people. Some financial hardship supports, like the Home Energy Emergency Assistance scheme, specifically exclude prepayment customers. Dr Simon Quilty is a remote specialist physician who has been working in the NT for over 20 years. As a researcher, he studies the links between extreme heat, poor quality housing, and health impacts in Aboriginal communities. Quilty warns that houses in the NT are not climate-ready, and the ones being “built right now will become a legacy problem. What makes the NT housing situation so inappropriate is the seeming loophole afforded by the jurisdiction: unlike all other Australian states and territories (apart from Tasmania), the NT does not hold homes to the usual 7-star building code that insists on thermal performance. These houses, which resemble ‘toilet blocks’, says Quilty, would be illegal elsewhere in Australia. Operating on its own 5-star building code, the NT seems to ignore the fact that climate change will render these homes completely uninhabitable in the near future. The NT’s paternalistic and
repressive policies extend well into the privacy of homes. In 2025, the NT Government announced a plan to retrain existing public housing safety officers under police command, arming them with guns for the purpose of responding to “antisocial behaviour in public places”. The NT Country Liberal Party government’s rhetoric of curbing antisocial behaviour has operated as a justification to introduce public housing reforms that disproportionately target Aboriginal people. The reforms intend to “fast-track evictions”, with Housing Minister Steve Eddington saying: “antisocial behaviour and unpaid rent won’t be tolerated… rolling out the red carpet for repeat offenders is over”. The peak Aboriginal housing body in the NT (AHNT) said these reforms will only exacerbate the NT’s homelessness crisis and increase overcrowding. The NT has twelve times the national rate of homelessness, with 87 per-cent of those homeless people being Indigenous. The $4 billion NT remote home builds are not only extreme heat death traps, they’re behind schedule. Senator Thorpe claims $330 million in Commonwealth funding was ‘not delivered’ and NT government progress reports are ‘missing’. As concern and distrust deepens in the Aboriginal members of the Remote Housing Agreement’s Joint Steering Committee, Senator Thorpe called for the NT government to be dropped from the project and for the federal government to directly empower Aboriginal organisations to build housing. Dr Simon Quilty founded Wilya Janta (we all stand strong together) in the wake of the catastrophe of longer, hotter summers. Wilya Janta’s Tennant Creek housing pilot, designed with Aboriginal people, creates culturallyappropriate, modular, accessible, energy-efficient homes that prioritise outdoor verandahs, shade, and solar panels, which a lot of NT homes lack entirely. There’s hope, but only if First Nations voices and designs are actually centred, but apparently this is a hard ask for a racist nation that failed the Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.
Read full story online.
PERSPECTIVE |
The multicultural imaginary: Chungking Express through Australian eyes
Simone Wong watches.
Chungking Express (1994) invaded my life before I had even watched it, all because of a song: “All the leaves are brown… and the sky is grey…” My dad would sing it around the house, in the car, and I gradually inherited his love for it. It weaved its way through my memories and settled there in the haze of childhood. I hadn’t known the root of his obsession, until I finally watched Chungking Express this year and the Mamas and Papas began to play on repeat in the second act, excessively: “California dreamin’… on such a winter’s day…” It fascinated me that such a seminal piece of Hong Kong cinema was scored with an overtly Western song. Even Faye Wong’s cover of ‘Dreams’ by the Cranberries plays twice, Cantonese lyrics to a familiar melody. The soundtrack is a collision of two cultures and foregrounds the film’s implicit depiction of Hong Kong’s adrift and disoriented cultural identity before handover. The Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984 to facilitate the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty over to the People’s Republic of China after 156 years of British colonial rule. In the period between the legally binding treaty and the official handover in 1997, the state of Hong Kong and its people were in flux. Many were fiercely anti-colonial and sympathised with the Chinese Communist Party’s rejection of Western capitalism. However, the lingering cultural influence of Western presence in Hong Kong and the desire to escape from the political instability of mainland China also strengthened opposition to the handover, creating polarisation of communities and culture. Wong Kar Wai came to the height of his popularity in this liminal period, directing films that displayed a generation’s aimlessness amidst fastmoving cityscapes. The blurry stepprinting techniques of Wong’s longtime collaborator, Australian
cinematographer Christopher Doyle, engrossed his viewers in a hyperreal, neon-coloured world of urban isolation.
Particularly in Chungking, characters float around public spaces that epitomise Hong Kong’s aesthetic of clashing cultures. The ‘woman in blonde wig’ frequents an international bar where spinning CDs refract green and pink light; she and He Zhiwu bounce from language to language; the hazy camera shots rush through the bustling vibrance of the Graham Street Markets; people crowd food stalls, eating meat and rice with wooden chopsticks. It is a vision of Hong Kong as an international melting pot of sparkling glamour and colour. The co-existence of Cantonese and Western culture is far from peaceful. It entraps the characters into a routine of uncertainty and indecision. As He Zhiwu dwells in the heartbreak, he accumulates piles of pineapple tins to delay the process of moving on. Some critics view his expiry date fixation as a metaphor to the impending ‘expiry’ of British coloniality and Hongkongers’ difficulty with grappling with such a change. The policemen’s dual stagnation is seemingly analogous to how many people could not resonate with either Westernness or the Chinese mainland during this shifting cultural landscape. While Faye flies off to chase the ‘California dream’, Cop 663 remains in his isolation. Wong Kar Wai may have had an Australian cinematographer, but it is unlikely that he intended his film to speak directly to the Hong Kong diaspora here in Sydney. And yet, it does. Early migrant flow from China to Australia began after the discovery of gold, most departing from Hong Kong. Arrivals of Chinese labourers grew from around 120 in 1848 to numbers reaching 17,000 in 1855, according to migration records. However, despite this initial boom, entry restrictions imposed by the government and social marginalisation by Australian communities discouraged the integration of Chinese migrants into Australia’s cultural landscape. The White Australia Policy was written into the law in 1901, directly shunning Chinese people from the country.
Chinatown in the CBD has become a kind of tourist attraction, something recognisable to me yet unrelatable, distinct from how I experience my Hong Kong heritage. Along the Haymarket streets, there are gold lights and walls slathered in red paint, not unlike the warmly lit bars and spilling streets of Chungking. On the rare occasion I go to Chinatown, there is a sensation beyond loss. It is unfamiliarity– I am interacting with my ‘culture’ as a stranger. Though far from the seedy criminal underbelly portrayed in Chungking, cultural hubs of Hongkongers have cropped up around Sydney that stray from the glamorous image of Chinatown– Burwood and Chatswood immediately come to mind. As Butler’s theories of social performativity argue, cultural identity relies on citability and repetition of specific significations. Yet, at its very nature, identity is a deeply personal and subjective value. Such was the confusion of many Hongkongers during handover. In a world saturated by commodifiable symbols and aesthetics, there has been an ingrained sense of cultural disconnection that extends across generations.
During handover, a new, disoriented Cantonese identity was produced. Many filmmakers committed to promoting Chinese values and influence in Hong Kong cinema, with countless Kung Fu action films featuring the triumph of Chinese over foreign foes and imperialists. Returning to the media were Kung Fu uniforms, flowing robes, and canvas Tai Chi slippers. Yet Wong Kar Wai does not present his characters in opposition to Westernness, but entangled in it. Nowadays, Hong Kong is still projected as a multicultural fantasy, a ‘melting pot’ of international business and lifestyle not dissimilar to the idealistic images of Australia’s diversity and pluralism. And while the film echoes this performance of multiculturalism, it feels hollow because of the disillusionment of the characters. Particularly in the second act, the film presents another reaction to handover’s cultural stasis: escape. Faye Wong’s
character, named after herself, seeks certainty and purpose. She momentarily finds it in organising Cop 663’s home, creating external order to combat her internal restlessness, yet she is still unable to stay still. ‘California Dreamin’ ’ is on full blast as she moves and dances. She desires something beyond the liminality of her present Hong Kong. So, she flies away.
Faye becoming a flight attendant resembles the escape of many Hongkongers during the ‘80s and ‘90s. She adopts the uniform of Cop 663’s exgirlfriend and leaves him alone at the ironically named Bar California, never quite speaking aloud her feelings for him. The characters never had a moment of confrontation or confession. When I asked my father about it, he shrugged and told me that was what society was like at the time. “People were happy to remain in their bubbles,” he said, describing a culture that dwelled in uncertainties. While the diaspora in Sydney has varied levels of identification with Hong Kong nationality, there is a lingering sense of alienation. Not only are we isolated from Western or Chinese culture, but from Hong Kong itself. There is a sense of collective restlessness amongst many first and second generation migrants like me. Chungking’s depiction of cultural disorientation is not limited to the period of handover, but captures a crisis of identity in a globalised world. Now, as more people in Australia speak out against immigrants and multiculturalism, there is a sense of endangerment within the Chinese-Australian identity. It is as if we are headed towards an increasing polarisation of Australian culture, and for many secondgeneration immigrants, like myself, our place feels uncertain. I find myself in a state of listlessness, watching the world go by like Wong’s characters in Chungking. I mourn an inner stability that I’m not sure ever truly existed.
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| OPINION
Slop of the Charts: AI and the Price of Making Music ‘Just an average joe making bangers in a bedroom.’ This is how Josh Fawaz describes himself to his followers while celebrating 100 million streams of his AI cover of Like a Prayer. Sitting in his bedroom, Fawaz films himself singing into a microphone, declaring ‘obviously I can’t sing for shit’ before feeding the recording into Suno, a generative AI platform capable of turning a prompt into a song. The result was a tropical house Madonna cover that reached number one on Australia’s national radioairplay chart and later peaked at number two on the ARIA Top 20 Australian Singles chart. The ability to make music in your bedroom has come to symbolise the accessibility of music production for independent musicians. But critics argue that some generative AI platforms like Suno (which is currently facing a litany of lawsuits), are trained on copyrighted music without creators’ permission and used to produce recordings that compete with human musicians at lower cost. Fawaz has defended his approach, saying he has released music for years and that he used AI ‘as a tool’. The music industry has a storied history of arguing over new technology. In 1906, composer John Philip Sousa wrote that the phonograph would allow composers’ work to be reproduced and sold without remuneration. Similar anxieties have followed with technology such as synthesisers, drum machines, and Auto-Tune. When the electronic band Kraftwerk were among the first to use harmonisers, critic Keith Ging wrote in Melody Maker: “For God’s sake, keep the robots out of music.” Despite the backlash, these technologies expanded who could make, access and distribute music. Generative AI, however, is in a league of its own apart from other forms of technology. It can produce ‘original’ music at speed and scale. It may make production cheaper, but its systems mine a vast cultural archive whose contents may have been collected without the permission of the people who created them. The debate is therefore not simply about whether AI is a ‘tool’. It is about who controls the
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technology, whose work it depends on, and who benefits when music becomes cheaper to produce. It’s hard to blame artists for turning to technology to increase output and lower costs. According to a 2025 survey by Musicians Australia, 44 per cent of musicians earned less than $250 per gig and 59 per cent of gigs provided no superannuation. This doesn’t mean the industry is unprofitable. Music Australia’s The Bass Line found it generated $8.78 billion in revenue in 2023–24. At the same time, the median income for a musician was just $14,700.
...artists absorb much of the cost of production themselves, with little support, and labels get to pick from the slim successes. These figures complicate the idea of the bedroom as a symbol of creative freedom. Rather, it can be a symptom of an industry in which artists absorb much of the cost of production themselves, with little support, and labels get to pick from the slim successes. Artists are expected to make themselves economically useful before they have been given the conditions to create. Being a musician often means being a strategist, content creator, promoter, marketer, publicist, booking agent, touring manager, grant writer, financial administrator, director… who also makes music.
That context helps explain why tools like AI appeal to some
artists. It does not resolve the legal and ethical questions raised. It does, however, show why those questions cannot be separated from the economics of making music. In a relatively free market economy, intellectual property laws attempt to protect artists from having their work copied and provide a basis for art to be licensed and sold to profit the artist. But copyright alone cannot protect income, particularly when artists have limited bargaining power and the markets for their work are dominated by larger private companies. Streaming services provide a useful example: major platforms generate billions in subscription and advertising revenue, while most artists receive only a small return around $0.003 to $0.005 each time their music is streamed. AI is thrown into this existing economic imbalance. Patronage is an older answer to this intensifying problem. Historical criticisms warn of a Medici-style system in which wealthy individuals determine which artists deserve support. However, patronage recognises that art can have value beyond its commercial viability. Australia has a public version of this system. Federal, state and local governments support artists through grants and public institutions such as broadcasters, arts organisations, venues, and community programs. In principle, this allows cultural value to be assessed through a public and accountable process, although it does not make those assessments neutral. The federal government’s Revive Live program supports majority Australian-owned live music venues and festivals that showcase Australian artists, while Music Australia supports the contemporary music industry. In 2025, the NSW Government announced a $9.3 million package supporting local musicians and music organisations with recording, promotion, touring and industry development. This support makes a real difference, but it has limits. Competitive grants can pay for a recording, tour or career step without providing ongoing income, affordable rehearsal spaces or a reliable local circuit. Artists must also spend time preparing applications,
Eve Carlin listens. which favours those with the time, knowledge and institutional access to navigate the system. Public funding also requires governments to make judgements about cultural value. In a democracy, those judgements should be transparent and open to scrutiny, but they can still favour established forms or work that is easiest to justify to the taxpayer. Art that is counter-cultural or critical of the government may struggle to fit those expectations. ARIA has responded by excluding recordings in which generative AI produces the primary creative elements from its charts. AI-assisted music can still qualify if it remains ‘substantially humanmade’. This phrase leaves room for interpretation. Each track may require a case-bycase assessment, particularly if AI tools become more deeply integrated into ordinary recording software.
Fawaz’s success shows that AI can lower the cost of producing music that competes in the mainstream market. It also exposes the financial pressures that made the technology attractive in the first place. Unstable incomes for artists long predate AI, and this problem will not disappear simply because AI is regulated, restricted or banned. But there are new questions about consent, attribution and substitution. It has also made an older question harder to avoid: who foots the cost of producing art, and who captures its value?
| OPINION
The Anatomy of a Sell-off Victor Zhang thinks housing is a human right. An exercise in language The conversation around public housing is not helped by the jumble of terms that all sound vaguely similar in common parlance but have rather specific meanings. Terms such as social housing, public housing, community housing provider managed housing, affordable housing, and now the dubious “public homes” and “social homes” are being thrown around. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare publishes data and reports on housing assistance and social housing. They define social housing with four subcategories: public housing, community housing, state owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH), and Indigenous community housing. Social housing is affordable rental housing allocated on need rather than ability to pay, typically charging a tenant 25–30 per cent of their income. Public housing is owned and managed by state governments, while community housing is managed through a community housing provider but regulated by the state. Indigenous housing also has a similar distinction between SOMIHs and Indigenous community housing.
SOCIAL HOUSING PUBLIC HOUSING
Owned and managed by the state government
COMMUNITY HOUSING
Managed by a private community housing provider
Affordable housing, provided through community housing providers, charges tenants rents at a proportion below market rates.
Australia’s policy regime over the decades has promoted the construction of public housing since the end of the second world war, and then a shift in the ‘90s to promote a multiprovider regime where the non-government and private sector were incentivised to finance and develop social housing. In 1997, 95 per cent of all social housing was public housing. In 2025, that figure collapsed to 65.6 per cent, in large part due to the transfer of public housing stock to community housing.
Labor commits to a moratorium on privatisation? A motion moved at the 2022 NSW Labor Conference by delegates Zac Gillies-Palmer and Rita Mallia — the latter of whom was the then president of the NSW branch of the CFMEU — committed Labor to ending public housing sell-offs. The motion which passed the conference is now in the party platform as item 1.33 in the Building Sustainable Communities chapter.
about it, I think that’s cowardly,” Gillies-Palmer told the independent media publication Green Left in late 2025.
The platform commits Labor to place “a moratorium on the privatisation of public housing including the sale, outsourcing, or leasing of any public housing assets or services”, “to guarantee that the number of public housing residences in NSW increases in both: aggregate terms and as a proportion of total new housing stock”, and “to ensure that public housing in the inner suburbs of Sydney increases in aggregate terms at a rate exceeding local private housing developments”.
Waterloo demolition
At the 2023 state election, NSW Labor campaigned on a platform of ending housing privatisation. Residents were sent campaign messages saying “ONLY LABOR WILL STOP THE SELL-OFF & PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN NSW!” by Chris Minns and Rose Jackson. Since then, the NSW Labor Government’s actions in demolishing the public housing block on 82 Wentworth Park Road in Glebe and now in Waterloo South have been characterised as a betrayal of that promise.
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Thanks this really helps me understand the landscape! From the AHURI Multiprovider Social Housing Report.
“If Rose Jackson won’t admit that she’s torn up Labor’s promise, or reply to questions Map of the Waterloo estate. Waterloo South is outlined in pink.
While proposals have existed for the better part of two decades to redevelop the Waterloo public housing estate, the current Waterloo South estate redevelopment plan would see the 750 public housing units demolished for redevelopment. Homes NSW’s (formerly NSW Land and Housing Corporation) development application submitted in April 2026 proposes to build 3,300 units, allocating a minimum of 30 per cent as social housing, 50 per cent as private market housing, and the remainder as “affordable” housing. Only 7 per cent of the gross floor area is required to be allocated to affordable housing in perpetuity. A 20 per cent allocation to affordable housing is mandated in the first 25 years of the redevelopment. A NSW Government property audit found that the state government had privatised more than two-thirds of its public land holdings. Since Labor’s election into the state government in 2023, Minns and Jackson have both consistently
redefined the meaning of “selloff” and “privatisation”. Since the announcement of the development proposal, a community picket was set up in May on the public housing estate to defend it from being demolished. In June, NSW police forcibly cleared out the encampment, arresting some demonstrators. Karyn Brown, tenant at the Waterloo South estate and housing activist, wrote a scathing submission to the Waterloo South development application. “Demolishing 750 homes during the current housing
OPINION |
Social housing by category from 2005 to 2025
Beginning in the ‘90s, the neoliberalised policy regime promoted a multi-provider system inviting in the nongovernment and private sector to finance and build social housing.
crisis does not make any sense,” Brown wrote. “Families and elderly people are living in cars. They need housing now, not in 5, 10, or 15 years. Building housing on already vacant land is a better use of resources. Existing housing can be refurbished and used for decades more. “The proposed 50 per cent market housing does nothing to address housing stress across the board. It will be unaffordable for the majority of the population, so it will primarily benefit Stockland and property investors. This is not the best use of public land.” The City of Sydney Greens Councillors Sylvie Ellsmore and Matthew Thompson also made a submission opposing the development, writing “the current project will continue the trend of declining public and social housing in the inner city”. “Replacing a site where 97 per cent is currently public housing with only 30 per cent is a lost opportunity and does not deliver sufficient public benefit. The project should ideally be 100 per cent public housing.”
1995 6.5%
65.6%
88.8%
“[The] new system has generated very little overall growth. Community housing has grown substantially — but this is largely due to stock transfers from public housing,” the AHURI report says.
The Redfern Legal Centre, a non-profit community legal centre that works closely with tenants in Waterloo, made comments on the development application warning that the 20 per cent gross floor area allocation to affordable housing be mandated in perpetuity. “For an Estate that was 100 per cent public housing to become 67 per cent private or market rent within 25 years would result in Waterloo South becoming a place that is primarily for those who can afford to pay market rent and would not increase the accessibility of affordable housing in the inner city,” their submission reads.
The anatomy of a sell-off The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s 2026 report on the state of Australia housing notes that “while [the] need for social housing remains elevated, the stock of social housing has stagnated”. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute’s (AHURI) 2026 report illustrates the complexities of the social housing provider landscape. Commonwealth-State Housing Agreements (CSHA) existed from 1945 to 2008 where the Commonwealth financed and funded public housing that would be constructed and managed by state and territory governments.
“Despite this aggregate growth, the social housing stock has declined in proportionate terms from 5.2 per cent of dwellings in 1997, to 3.9 per cent of dwellings in 2023.” Here the distinction between public housing and community housing becomes important. Community housing providers will often be financed privately, to pay a private property developer for the construction or redevelopment of dwellings. Community housing tenants are eligible for Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) that public housing tenants are excluded from. The CRA in this case acts as a direct subsidy from the government to the housing provider. In effect, the community housing provider model is where social housing is delivered through private financing, private construction, and private management, while being subsidised by the government. The Hawke Labor Government massively expanded CRA payments in the ‘80s, and by 1992 funding for CRA payments exceeded funding for direct investment in housing. The AHURI report notes that the exclusion of public housing tenants from Commonwealth Rent Assistance means “there is an in-built mechanism ensuring that growth of community housing is likely to be the main way in which the social housing system expands. “This mechanism is effectively an operating subsidy. It certainly makes sense for the states to transfer stock to CHOs for once that happens the very same dwellings, even with the very same tenants, suddenly become eligible for a Commonwealth subsidy.
Proportion of public rentals to all occupancies
2020 2.9%
“Seen in this way, the idea that choice plays a key role in social and affordable housing outcomes is mistaken.” This is not to say that all community housing providers are empirically worse than public housing. The AIHW’s National Social Housing Survey reports that from 2014–25 community housing tenants were moderately more satisfied with their tenancy than public housing tenants (72.6 and 66.9 per cent respectively, though the trend is downwards on both categories). Community housing providers have also amalgamated over the decades, where the largest 22 CHOs manage 56 per cent of the all community housing stock, and the largest 36 organisations manage 71 per cent of the stock. The community housing landscape in 2001 saw 1,350 CHOs with an average of 19 dwellings per organisation. In 2023, the number of CHOs amalgamated to 429 with an organisation managing an average of 232 dwellings. Ironically, community housing originated in Victoria as a push to democratise social housing against an increasingly bureaucratic and unresponsive housing authority. The FitzroyCollingwood Rental Housing Association was established in 1977 as a housing cooperative. Co-operatives today are vastly underutilised, only representing 0.03 per cent of the housing stock. The AHURI report warns that “without tenant-focused regulation and protections, there is a risk that large-scale CHOs could replicate the issues of the organisation they were initially created to improve. This is before we even talk about the perverse economic incentives posed by Labor’s flagship housing policy the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) passed in late 2023 and the enmeshment of housing with the superannuation industry. What is the answer amid increasing housing unaffordability, rates of homelessness, and housing waitlist times? The answer is public housing to combat the commodification of housing, and an honesty to recognise that the current policy regime of private financing, private construction, and effective private landlords subsidised by the government has not delivered the housing results we need.
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Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney 2026 Elections
VOTE!
2026 SRC Elections & Referendum
2026 SRC Elections & Referendum will take place on 22, 23 & 24 September The 2026 referendum question is as follows:
‘The University must adopt an academic boycott policy against Israeli institutions complicit in apartheid and genocide and immediately end all exchange relationships with Israeli universities including Tel Aviv University, Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The University must also end all research partnerships with weapons companies supplying Israel. The SRC will pursue this policy and support the struggle for Palestinian freedom.’ POLLING
TUE 22ND
WED 23RD
THURS 24TH
LOCATION
SEPT 2026
SEPT 2026
SEPT 2026
Jane Foss Russell
8:45 – 17:15
8:45 – 17:15
8:45 – 17:15
Fisher Library
No polling
8:45 – 17:15
8:45 – 17:15
Manning House
No polling
10:45 – 15:15
No polling
Conservatorium of Music
No polling
10:30 – 15:30
No polling
Susan Wakil Health Building
No polling
No polling
10:45 – 15:15
Peter Nicol Russell Building
No polling
No polling
10:45 – 15:15
All Sydney University undergraduate students who are currently enrolled are eligible to vote in the upcoming 2026 SRC Elections. For more info see: bit.ly/SRC-elections Authorised by K. Latty, 2026 Electoral Officer, Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: bit.ly/SRC-elections
ANALYSIS |
Minns plays politics with endangered species Native forests are all of our business. When our government attempts to play political theatre with them, we should all be angry. The climate crisis is reaching a fever pitch, confirmed last week by a UNFP report warning that the world is set to meet the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming. Conserving what little native forest is left in NSW is truly the bare minimum of climate action, yet the state government currently verges on breaking its promise to establish the Great Koala National Park on the Mid North coast.
Chris Minns has divided passionate forest campaigners with an impossible choice as he weaponises the protection of climate and forests. Why? He wants to give more concessions to big polluters. In September 2025 the NSW Government announced the Great Koala National Park (GKNP) would be established in northern NSW, promising a 31,5000 hectare protected area for Koalas, Greater Gliders and hundreds of threatened species. This promise spans back to the 2015 state election, when then-Labor leader Luke Foley committed to the park, with Labor taking the promise to subsequent elections. The presence of Greater Gliders are a key indicator of forest health, but their numbers have halved in the last 20 years, painting a bleak picture for the state of our forests. The delivery of the park banned native forest logging in the area, but the establishment of the park was never legislated, leaving the area in peril with a lack of binding protection. Chris Minns made the establishment of the GKNP conditional on the establishment of the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) method, a new method of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit scheme. This was despite the park continually being promised without these conditions for a decade prior. Carbon credits are a token sold to businesses when they reduce the amount of CO2 pollution they generate, generally either done by holistically reducing the pollution or by planting trees. Carbon credits represent a unit of CO2 that would have been released by a big polluter but was either offset or avoided entirely. These credits can be traded among companies, and have previously been used by the coal and gas sectors. There are many different Australian Carbon Credit Unit schemes that vary in integrity, yet critics of the entire scheme have called
it a way to maintain the status quo of big polluters paying to pollute. It comes as no surprise that the state Labor government is motivated to introduce these credits, as they are the designer and financial beneficiary, and can use the credits so that their industrial facilities comply with regulations. The credits could contribute over $1 billion to the state budget. Minns is now framing the establishment of the GKNP as ‘additional’ to justify making it conditional, despite the years of promises to establish it that did not include conditionality. The National Party and Coalition moved for the INFM method to be disallowed in the Federal senate on the basis of their support for the logging industry, however the method passed with the support of Labor and the Greens. The question put to those in Parliament with environmental interests at heart was if they should vote with the Nationals and scrap the scheme, the outcome of which may lead to the NSW Labor Government rescinding its promise for the GKNP and leaving it vulnerable to schemes with less integrity that would continue logging. Some politicians such as Independents David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe have defended the INFM scheme, with Pocock calling it ‘potentially the highest integrity carbon credit method we have’ and calling for a review of the safeguard mechanism rather than stopping the method from passing. The debate over the method has caused significant division among environmental advocates as well as within the Greens, who have consistently called for strong action on climate as well as ending native forest logging. I spoke to Sue Higginson, who has taken a stance of support for the method, breaking from the position of high profile figures such as Greens founder Bob Brown. In her view it is a “truism that the INFM as it has been approved is a much better method in terms of integrity than when it was first proposed”, adding that this was due to the efforts of forest advocacy from the Greens. Higginson commented on the genuine environmental wins that the INFM scheme and subsequent establishment of the GKNP would deliver with a dire warning of the perils of logging:
“I have stood in forests the day after they have been logged, smelled the death of some of the most wondrous animals and watched songbirds flying around looking for the trees once there”.
Indigo Grey wants our forests safe.
Despite this support she acknowledges the conditionality of the GKNP as an “enormous betrayal of political trust in a massive departure from labor politics of the past, when they promised to create a national park and just did it”. Higginson acknowledged her differences from others in the forest movement, saying “this move by Labor has caused harm in our movement, they’ve attempted to wedge and divide us between climate and nature’ yet is ‘confident we will get through this together”. She said that “together we will smash the carbon credit system”, but disallowing the scheme is not the hill to die on for carbon credits as the integrity of native forests must be prioritised. Bob Brown has led lobbying against the scheme and said that capitalism and profit seeking is overtaking the creation of national parks. Higginson diverges from this, believing the current monetisation of forests that are being turned into “woodchips, tomato stakes and toilet paper” is far more offensive. Despite divisions she believes “we have to fight together” to stop logging so that forests can once again be “big, wild and old” and urges young people to join the movement to protect the planet. Higginson encourages young people to write to ministers in the Minns government and urge for environmental action.
These divisions between passionate environmental campaigners are the direct result of a broken promise from the Minns Labor government. Environmental advocates face a difficult choice between allowing big polluters a pass to pollute or continuing the destructive and violent practices of the logging industry. What is clear is that forests should not be leveraged for corporate and government profit, and nature is worth protecting for its own sake. Despite a win for native forests, the issue raises concerns about the monetisation of our natural landscape: forests, rivers, and oceans that belong to the people. Those who care about forests and the planet must continue to fight for it to be protected and keep governments accountable for their broken promises.
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| SRC OFFICEBEARERS’ REPORTS
President
Grace Street (Grassroots)
WHAT A BIG WEEK! I’m excited for our student movement to turn out and show up on Tuesday for the Students Stand Against Sexual Violence rally, and Thursday for the Students Say NO to Hanson rally. I will be speaking about student unionism and to what’s happening at universities and in activist organising at both rallies. I hope to see you all there - message @src_usyd if you need more details or a buddy to go with! These are important actions to use our voices as youth to demand and force change across our government and institutions.
year partnership with Open AI - the very company riddled with controversies surrounding working with Trump’s Department of War, security and data breaches, unethical labour practices, and much more. This comes as staff are actively bargaining and not making progress with the University regarding protection from adverse effects of AI, and as the University is pushing a ‘responsible AI framework’ that it meant to include partnering with students. This week’s announcement shows that the University is going for a ‘boiling frog’ strategy - making change and hoping that eventually everyone will forget, lose steam, or just get used to it - much like their approach to the Campus Access Policy. We can’t let that be the case, and I certainly won’t be.
We are also preliminarily planning a protest in response to the shock news that the University of Sydney has signed a multi-
In solidarity, Grace
Education Officers Hello USydians, It has been a busy time for the education action group! since my last report, the EAG took a strike in solidarity with staff on september 2nd to ask for better conditions, including demanding an end to casualisation, a 20% pay increase, better super, protections against AI, academic free speech, and more. The University of sydney has chosen time and time again to choose profit over people. We were proud to strike in solidarity with staff, run a bake sale to fundraise, organise a tshirt blockprinting session to engage students, participate in the picket lines, and to build the strike! if you are interested in getting involved, message @usyd. education.action on instagram. We have also been building the upcoming referendum for BDS.
Dana Kafina (Grassroots) Jasmine Al-Rawi (SAlt)
It is important now more than ever to demonstrate our power and show up to the referendum! Usyd must cut all ties with israel and divest from weapons companies and BDS-complicit companies. We need thousands of students to come show up to the vote! Check out Students Against War and Students for Palestine for more info on the referendum. Dm us to help build it! Finally, we are organising another student strike against Hanson. show up on Thursday to show One Nation and Pauline Hanson that we don’t want her bigoted, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, queerphobic rhetoric, not now, and not ever. There is no room for fascism here or anywhere!
Environment Officers Aria Nadkarni (Grassroots) Lucas Pierce (SAlt) In March Council, one of our Enviro Office Bearers, Aria, raised a motion about committing to reducing the use of GenAI in the SRC. Since then, our university has shamefully signed a years-long contract with OpenAI. In no unclear terms, this spells out the cheapening of our degrees and a blatant concession to technofascism by the University. In the last few months, the environment collective has been at the forefront of this battle against GenAI. Our contingent at the Anti-AI rally in Parramatta confirmed our commitment to
solidarity with Western Sydney in their fight resisting the toxic encroachment of Data Centres, and we will continue to pledge our resources to building the Alliance Against AI. Now that the promise of environmental degradation, the poisoning of Parramatta’s water systems and ecological collapse are knocking at our door, it’s time to get up, get involved, and get angry. Message us on our Instagram @usyd_ enviro to get involved and stay tuned for more updates.
Women’s Officers Maxine McGrath (Grassroots) and Avin Dabiri (Independent) Hi folks!! I’m very happy to say that I saw so many of you at the picket lines last Wednesday. It is so immensely important for WoCo to take a stand as a collective and for students to support our wonderful staff. One of the key demands of the staff was job security and protection from AI. AI slop has been forcefully implemented into our university, at the expense of the staff. This is now as prevalent as ever, as our corporate management has shamefully signed onto a contract with Open AI. Our management witnessed hundreds of students and staff protest at the picket lines, yet signed onto a deal which feels like a punch in the face. Shame. I would also like to inform readers that on Tuesday the 15th, antichoice bigots are planning on hosting a demonstration with the intention to take away reproductive rights. John Ruddick’s repressive bill will soon be voted upon in parliament, and we must fight the emboldening of the misogynistic right. Email your local representative to tell them to vote against this bill!!
WoCo is helping to organise for the Student Strike Against Sexual Violence, which is also on the 15th. This country has seen such a rise of femicide, with an average of a woman killed once every eleven days. This is also seen on our university campus, with sexual violence occurring en masse during every Welcome Week, with one in eight of all acts of sexual violence occurring during this time. WoCo has been consistently fighting this culture, most notably seen with our ‘Abolish the Colleges’ campaign. The colleges have a century long history of enabling gender-based violence, and WoCo is committed to fight to repurpose them into safe, affordable and accessible housing. During this strike, we will fight all forms of gender based violence. Attacks upon bodily autonomy is a form of gender based violence; this bill would result in deaths if passed. Please message @ usydwoco if you would like more information. In love and rage, Maxine McGrath
International Students’ Officers Aoyue Cao, Anu-Ujin Khulan, Lucas He, George Feng (PENTA) Over the past few weeks, the International Student Officers have continued working to strengthen connections among international students and make SRC support more accessible to the community. One of our recent highlights was a social sports event, which brought together around 30 international students. The event provided students with an opportunity to meet new people, stay active and connect with others outside the classroom. We were very pleased to see students from different backgrounds participating and engaging with one another, and the event concluded successfully. We have also continued responding to student emails and enquiries about the international student experience. This included questions around loneliness, cultural adjustment and the challenges international students may face when adapting to a new environment. In our responses, we also highlighted the support available through the SRC and
explained how students can access relevant services, including caseworkers and legal support. Following the staff strike on 3 September, we also shared relevant information through our RedNote platform. As there was some unclear and potentially misleading information circulating among students, we reposted key updates and provided clarification to help international students better understand the situation and access accurate information. Throughout the month, we have continued responding to emails and enquiries from international students and directing students to relevant services where appropriate. Moving forward, we hope to organise more opportunities for international students to connect with one another, while continuing to improve awareness of the support and services available through the SRC.
Interfaith Officers Yibo Pei (PENTA) Shiya Liu (PENTA) Jaseena Al-Helo (Grassroots) Eleanor Low (YCU) Interfaith Officers did not submit a report.
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SRC RESOURCES |
Supporting Documentation for Special Consideration, DC Applications, and Show Cause.
Ask Abe
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? When you apply for special consideration, late discontinuation under special circumstances (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, your practitioner can 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 unable to attend classes or complete written assignments, or your sleep and concentration were impacted. For a DC application, your PPC or medical certificate should also explain why special consideration or disability adjustments would not have allowed you to complete the units. If you’re applying a DC for some units in a semester but not all, it should also explain why some of your units were impacted 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 (Statutory Declaration) or University (Student Declaration) 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 Declarations are not as meaningful as other third-party documents, so it is best to use them in conjunction
with other documents, e.g., a death certificate, if possible. 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. If you are applying for special consideration or late discontinuation under special circumstances due to an event involving the Police, you may also need to provide a certificate or letter from a health professional (such as your GP or psychologist) stating that your health/wellbeing has been impacted and over what period. 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.
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
Department of Community Justice website: Help someone experiencing domestic violence
THE UNI TAKES ACADEMIC INTEGRITY SERIOUSLY IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED AN ALLEGATION OF PLAGIARISM OR ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT FROM THE UNIVERSITY, CONTACT THE SRC TO SPEAK TO A CASEWORKER
srcusyd.net.au bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker
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| PUZZLES
Quick Crossword
Crossword by Harper Boon
Dusting Off The Cobwebs
Across:
Down:
1. Doing 11 Down you might expect to see police use 2. Not your friends (7) their powers in this way (9) 3. With French or Industrial, abbr. (3) 6. Billionaires and dragons have this in common (5) 4. Sometimes spelt with an e, discrimination 8. Keep it to the ground, to stay in the know (3) against your nonna and other 9. Wishing for something that someone else has, might nonagenarians (5) be described by 33 Down (7) 5. A power or influence, like America’s (9) 10. To tell your main points succinctly (3, 2) 6. Measurement unit on Doomsday Clock, 13. Famous poet of a movement to “make it new” (5) abbr. (3) 15. Ridicule by imitation (5) 7. A historical view of Australia, signified by 17. Much of this, but not about nothing (3) metaphorically wearing a black one of these 18. A topic or subject of debate (5) (7) 19. Twilight, to a poet (3) 11. Large group in public arguing for or 21. Give someone a small push in the right direction (5) against something, usually attracting police 22. It promotes sustainable finance, initially (3) (10) 23. All together, in Italy (5) 12. What the French, Electricity, and antibi25. A compound harmful to the ozone layer, banned by otics have in common (10) the Montreal Protocol (3) 14. Expression for something very bad (3, 4) 26. The beginning, perhaps of an attack (5) 16. People who [REDACTED] (7) 28. A negative conjunction (3) 19. Like temperatures, when an issue is 29. 3 Down around this celestial body, in Latin; sounds heated up (9) like a serious state of affairs (5) 20. Start of an NWA Song, but SFW (3) 31. An important place for the exchange of ideas, histor-24. The tides are changing and the tables are ically (5) doing this (7) 32. You might be forced between two types of 33 Down, 27.Course outlines that rhyme with AI, after hopefully the lesser (5) USYD’s recent announcement (7) 34. Maternal figure and 20th century saint (7) 30. Looks that reveal characters, by looking 36. American agency with 1 Across (3) at 15, 18, 19, 21 and 29 Across (5) 37. Diet of Melbourne-born philosopher who wants you 33. 9 Across is one (3) to do “The Most Good You Can Do” (5) 35. Australian nature protection agency, 38. The Hunger Games series, for example (9) abbr. (3)
The People Want Answers! Here are the answers for all previous crosswords from this semester.
Quiz 1. Which AI company has USyd recently signed a multi-year partnership with? 2. Who is the Maritime Union taking industrial action against? 3. What days did the USyd book fair run? 4. Who collects stones in In the Night Garden?
22
Answers: Open AI 2. Transdev 3. 12-16 September 4. Makka Pakka
Current Daily Mail reporter Nicholas Comino’s Honi Soit USU Candidate profile from 2021.
UNETHICAL SATIRE SINCE 1929
Libel
Slander
Defamation
Proudly hateful
Dividing the USyd student community
“DO YOU GUYS LIKE ME?” ASKS VICE-CHANCELLOR MARK SCOTT
USYD HOLDS LAST BOOK FAIR BEFORE ALL BOOKS DONATED TO AI
“Hey everyone... I just wanted to hop on here, I know stuff has been like so crazy lately, but I just wanted to ask, basically, do you guys like me?” Mark Scott stated in a rare personal address on Instagram Live from his account @vc_usyd.
Many have heard of, or perhaps already attended, the annual USyd Book Fair. It’s barrels of fun for the whole community of USyd students, belligerent young children, and seniors who enjoy reading half of each book before putting it back.
“I know we haven’t always had the best relationship, and I know people have been calling for my resignation basically since I was appointed, but I like to think that despite everything the staff and students do basically like me” Scott said, a pleading grin on his face.
What people may not know about the most recent USyd Book Fair is that it is slated to be the Uni’s last ever.
The VC continued: “I hope I haven’t done anything we can’t get through together. I miss you baby. Come home. I mean, um. Staff and students, I love you.” Scott then abruptly ended the livestream. Negative comments spammed the stream continuously throughout, including comments speculating about his possible inebriation.
Following its blockbuster new partnership with OpenAI, one of the worst human creations (after the Atomic Bomb and the British Empire), USyd is planning to “skip the middleman” and “send the books straight to Sam Altman’s house where he can do whatever the fuck he wants with the pulped-up garbage”. In a statement, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott told the student and staff body: “I genuinely don’t give a fuck any more. I have a 5 Year Plan like I’m fucking Stalin. The plan is, replace all teachers with AI, replace all books with nothing, replace all USyd buildings with those chopped smooth square structures like we have over the Quad entrance, replace everyone’s degrees with some credits they can go use at the ChatGPT vending machines we’ll install on campus.”
“Dude seems fucked off the sauce” one commenter said. “This guy is ruining the whole fucking university, of course we don’t like you bozo” another comment read.
An Honi editor commented: “Look, we’ll see. To be honest, it would be pretty funny if the AI bubble pops next year and Mark Scott costs the university millions of dollars. But if that doesn’t happen, I’m thinking of impaling myself on the Quad flagpole. Either option is fine with me.”
The embarrassing outburst appears to be in relation to the recent OpenAI partnership, the news of which was broken by Honi Soit, to Scott’s potential chagrin. Well, you know what they say: Fuck you Mark.
In Next Week’s Edition...
The Right to Bare A
rm(pits)
Emily E. shaves.
Maiden, M other, Cro n
e, Woke: T h
e Woman
Fuck you Mark .
Who Spok e
Mandy Ma th
ers delineate s.
ap Who’s Afraid of Horsemeat? In Defence of Che
Protein
pass Sawyer Simpleton runs PR for Com
.
Antoun Issa Antony Green Purple Pingers Michael West Geordie Williamson Neha Kale Cathy Wilcox Violet Coco Jake Lynch Amy Remeikis
Megha Kapoor Gladys Lai Safdar Ahmed Patricia Garcia Nordacious Tigest Girma Shona Martyn Lamestream Voiceworks Jahan Kalantar