Honi Soit: Week 1, Semester 2, 2019

Honi Soit

PRINTED SINCE 1929

WEEK 1, SEM 2, 2019

6-7: NEWS

15-17: FEATURE

International students working during a training period which at the Epic Tea outlet in the Jane lasted a week in some cases, with Foss Russell plaza have told Honi an hourly rate of $14 thereafter. Soit they are being paid between Those earnings were paid in cash $12 to $14 per hour, and are on a weekly basis, without any working without payslips, super- superannuation contributions. annuation and written contracts. Employees indicated they were Full story on page 7 >>>> being paid an hourly rate of $12

She arrives by truck handcuffed, and walked directly into a gated reception. It is stark and quiet and the space echoes. The walls are white and fluorescent and the air smells like disinfectant and something else that the disinfectant was meant to kill. She is led into a cell and asked

Investigation: Epic Tea underpays workers

Through Steel Doors: W*men at odds with the prison system to take off her clothing, squat, open her mouth and run her hands through her hair. For the next three weeks she remains in induction while awaiting classification.

Read more on page 15 >>>>

Acknowledgement of Country I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, whose land this paper is distributed on. In doing so, I also recognise my position as a settler on this land and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It is important to note that the editors of this paper occupy different lands across Sydney. Those lands belongs to diverse peoples who were part of different nations and had distinct cultural identities both prior to colonisation and to this day. Following the establishment of the settler colony that is Australia, there has been a tendency to essentialise First Nations Peoples into one homogenous “Aboriginal” group. This is made worse in the absence of a treaty. By remaining cognisant of the different nations, whose land we have settled, we can take a small step towards avoiding the legacy of ignorance and erasure that have persisted since the day of invasion. As we move into Semester Two, I want to reaffirm our commitment to centreing Indigenous voices in our paper. This semester will feature an autonomous edition of Indigenous Honi, that I’m sure will prioritise First Nations voices and provide important perspectives that are silenced too often by mainstream and student publications. Beyond that, it is my hope that we can do justice to the owners of this land by continuing to cover First Nations issues and working with First Nations contributors.

Contents

Editorial

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NEWSFLASH

Editors

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NEWS

8

OPINION

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PERSPECTIVE

Baopu He, Pranay Jha, Amelia Mertha Jessica Syed, Liam Thorne, Nell O’Grady, Carrie Wen, Joe Verity, Annie Zhang and Alan Zheng

11 OPINION

Writers

15 FEATURE

Jocelin Chan, Nina Dillon-Britton, Joseph Guo, Vivienne Guo, Kedar Madali, Momoko Metham, Layla Mkh, Yoona Oh, Swapnik Sanagavarapu, Ranuka Tandan, Max Tao, Tiffany Vaughan

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Artists

12 ART 13

INTERVIEW ANALYSIS

20 MULTILINGUAL 24

WRITING COMP

30 PUZZLES

Olivia Allanson, Shrawani Bhattarai, Grace Fu, Altay Hagrebet Cover Artist: Amelia Mertha

31 COMEDY Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Directors of Student Publications (DSPs), who are elected by the Students’ Representative Council (SRC). The SRC provides space and administrative support only, which is financed by the University of Sydney. The current DSPs - Laura Glase, Brandon Hale, Jinwei Luan, Kedar Maddali, Sean Perry and Jiaqi Shi - are the publisher of the print editions and online materials of Honi Soit. All expressions on Honi Soit are not to be regarded of the SRC, unless specifically stated. The SRC accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained in Honi Soit, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. The editorial team does not have control over the ads that appear in this paper. Please direct all advertising inquiries to publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au.

Semester 2, Week 1 is a rather odd time of the year for the Honi editors. Some of the members of our editorial team have observed that, in many ways, this is the “beginning of the end” for us. As much as we may wish to delay it, we are about to venture into the twilight of our editorial term. Having spent eight weeks away from the frenetic cycle of editing this wonderful paper, each of us has had the opportunity to reflect on what we achieved together over the previous semester. However, the path of reflection also leads to a rather vexing question- that of what our legacy will be. I am certain that we are not the only Honi team to be concerned by the desire to shape our legacy. When discussing our contribution to this paper with some of my fellow editors, a few aspects of our editorial term were frequently raised. We were able to deliver the first consistent multilingual section of the paper, revamp the way Honi reports on news, and take a stance in reporting on highly impactful issues. Unfortunately for us, however, the question of our legacy will not be resolved by our own reflections. For the most part, it will be determined

Gondola Altay Hagrebet

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by the memories of our readership – something well beyond our control. In that sense, perhaps it is better to focus on each edition ahead of us rather than fixate on the elusive goal of influencing the way we will be remembered. I want to make a note to thank Grace Fu and Altay Hagrebet for their amazing work over the holidays in preparing the art for this edition. Additionally, I am grateful to all the authors of long-form pieces for the thought and consideration they put into their amazing articles. It would be remiss of me not to thank Bob He for providing me with the design inspiration for many of the spreads in this edition. Lastly, I want to extend the warmest welcome to Amelia Mertha as she works on her first edition as an editor of Honi Soit. I’m genuinely unsure of the way this editorial team will be remembered. It’s an unpredictability that, at times, causes me some anxiety. In those times, however, I can seek comfort in the certainty that the words of my favourite author provide. At the end of our term, Liam, Jess, Alan, Annie, Carrie, Joe, Nell, Amelia, Bob and I would have made a journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go. Pranay Jha

N E W S L A S H

NewsFlash an encounter with vlad

News from over the break that you might have missed

UOW Council overrules Academic Senate to approve Ramsay degree

The University of Wollongong Council stepped in to approve a degree in Western Civilisation sponsored by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation in late June, ignoring the pleas of staff and its own Academic Senate.

“Free Sudan, new Sudan”: hundreds rally in support of Sudan Hundreds gathered in Hyde Park in June to rally in support of the Sudanese pro-democracy movement and to condemn the brutal wave of violence and repression inflicted by the Sudanese military.

SRC sacks in-house lawyer after longrunning tensions mount The Students’ Representatives Council clashed with a former staff member over the break in the context of multiple workplace related complaints. That staff member is in the midst of conciliating an unfair dismissal allegation in the Fair Work Commission.

St Paul’s College self-released Progress Report overstates success of reforms St Paul’s College released its own ‘Progress Report’ in late June, marking a headway made in implementing the recommendations of the infamous 2017 Broderick Review into residential college culture.

Altay Hagrebet

without gossip a quarrel dies down,” we have decided to tone down from a spiteful, evil burn to a joyful, sanctified lukewarm, and we now burst upon student politics a glorious, lukewarm shower of our wholesomeness to put out the fires we regrettably started last semester. A surge of devotion Proverbs 26:20 Last semester, Burn Book attracted a great deal of deserved scorn from certain valued members of our university. They contended that we were promoting a viciously toxic culture on campus for those righteous individuals who pursue their political ideals for the greater good of their fellow students. Upon deep reflection over the holidays, we at Burn Book have sought the spiritual wisdom of the original Burn Book, the Bible, and have decided to rebrand and repent of our sinful ways. Inspired by Proverbs 26:20, “Without wood a fire goes out,

SURG is entering a new, golden age ever since former Honi editor Andrew Ricket ascended to President. Selflessly, devoting his entire existence to SURG, Rickert promised a bold new vision for the station, and we can see this in his recent, groundbreaking move to let the station’s website domain expire — an ambitious stand against the pernicious influence of technology which we’re sure no media organisation has ever attempted before. Such is Rickert’s devotion that he spent his winter holidays on exchange, undoubtedly on some important reporting errand for SURG. We sincerely hope he had a great time. Seeing a place on a website is one thing, but actually travelling there is a whole new experience entirely.

VIDEO: UNSW students and staff protest trimesters On Wednesday 26 June, almost 1000 students and staff rallied at UNSW to protest one thing: trimesters. Scan the QR code to the right to watch Honi’s video.

Understandably Absent Jacky He, President of the SRC and of our warm affections, was recently unable to attend an important meeting regarding the implementation of the French Review, which examined free speech on campus. While our President has been forced to take measures against free speech in the past, far from being unbecoming of his greatness, we believe they show an inspiring commitment to the principle of selfcare. One can only imagine the gravity of the disturbance which caused Jacky to miss the meeting. We ardently hope that he will leave this rough patch unscathed, or that this absence was once again due to a passion for selfcare. Keep the fire burning Lukewarm Book has heard on the alcohol-free grapevine that a few noble students have made the decision to run to edit its somewhat inferior yet nonetheless prolific parent organisation, Honi Soit. Nina DillonBritton, Lara Sonnenschein, Jeffrey

Khoo, Ranuka Tandan, Justin Handisurya, and Momoko Metham are four short of a full ticket two weeks out from the due date for nominations. Daany Saeed of NLS fame has set his sights on joining a “leftie” ticket, and Lukewarm Book, after some investigation, discovered that he was distancing himself from a faltering ticket comprised of four whole men. Is four men better than a rumoured ticket comprised of members of the Liberal party? Hmm… both sound a bit, well, lukewarm. As for our next kind ruler? Though this year’s wildly democratic President Sir Jacky He has bestowed the highest of favours upon this fair kingdom, all good things must come to an end. All but confirmed for this year’s presidential race is former Honi editor and Groots kingpin Liam “Doon” Donohoe, up against soft-right Liberal Josie Jakovac. We understand the latter to be backed by Panda and the Libs, leaving everyone else in Doon’s corner.

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N E W S

Protest Religious Exemptions Bill: No Right to Discriminate Ranuka Tandan Hundreds gathered on Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon to protest the religious exemptions in AntiDiscrimination legislation, which is currently being reviewed by the Australian Law Reform Commission. Organised by Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH), the rally argued that proposed changes in federal anti-discrimination legislation were a backlash to marriage equality and an excuse to discriminate against the LGBTQIA+ community. As it stands, religious schools, hospitals and aged-care facilities in NSW have the right to fire staff and expel students on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The new Bill would not only give these institutions more freedom to discriminate, but also more protection under the law than they already have. The scene in Taylor Square was one of community and solidarity. A bubble machine whirred and rained down on everyone throughout the speeches, dogs and kids were

among the crowd, and groups from Satanic Australia to the Messiah College stood side -byside. Among the speakers was Greens MP for Newtown, Jenny Leong, who spoke to the spiteful nature of the public discussions surrounding religious freedom at the moment. Leong reminded the crowd that this bill is revenge initiated by those who lost the same-sex marriage plebiscite and that we will defeat it with the same community action that defeated the ‘no’ campaigners in 2017. CAAH said that this is nothing but an excuse to sack gay teachers, to expel gay students, and to refuse business and service to the gay community. Father Rod Bower, famous for the provocative, progressive signage outside his Gosford Church, also spoke about freedom, in some depth. “To be truly free is to be free from the need to discriminate,” he said. What is plainly obvious about this religious freedom Bill is that it is not about freedom at all. It does not care to protect the

religious freedom of minority religions, but rather, the interests of those who already have disproportionate amounts of privilege and power. Father Rod reminded the crowd that the vast majority of Australian Christians stand with them and that the Australian Christian Lobby do not represent them or him. Religious freedom has been on the mind of the Liberal government since 2017 when Malcolm Turnbull first appointed a panel to assess whether freedom of religion was adequately protected in Australia. This discussion coincided with the same-sex marriage plebiscite, and with the Safe Schools’ controversy, arousing a collective moral panic which increased opposition to each of these campaigns individually. The Review made 20 recommendations to improve religious freedom when it reported back to the government in May 2018, but came to the conclusion that Australians enjoy an extremely high degree of religious freedoms, and that

basic and adequate protections exist in Australian law. Despite this, the conversation is ongoing. The Australian Law Reform Commission is due to report the findings of its inquiry into the Framework of Religious Exemptions in AntiDiscrimination legislation on

April 20, 2020, so this issue will persist in the public sphere into the foreseeable future. It is certain that this rally was only the first of many. Similar actions in Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Canberra are planned later in the month.

USU enters semester two with updated C&S funding

St Paul’s overstates success of reforms

Joseph Verity

Baopu He and Jessica Syed

The University of Sydney Union (USU) will enter semester two with a new executive, a revised clubs and societies (C&S) funding model, and a positive budget outlook for the year of 2019. The news comes after a semester in which C&S executives complained of a hurried approach to funding reform, and the Union revealed substantial financial underperformance in 2018. President Connor Wherrett informed Honi that the Union is back on track to report an operating contribution at the end of the year — a stark contrast to the near half a million dollar deficit reported by the USU in 2018. Part of the reason for this is a turnaround in the performance of HostCo, the catering company run by the USU. HostCo previously operated off-campus at a wedding venue in Peakhurst — a venture which was ultimately a “failure” in the words of Wherrett and led to the cessation of the company’s off-campus operations. HostCo

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reported a profit in the month of June this year. Wherrett also expressed optimism regarding the performance of the USU’s bars, Hermann’s and Manning. “Hermann’s is going really, really well, we’ve got a lot of bookings,” he explained. The USU has also updated its C&S events funding model for the second time this year. On-campus C&S events will now receive 50% of their costs in funding from the USU, plus $1 per attending USU member. Previously, under a model introduced in February of this year following the rollout of Universal Access, this figure was only 30%. Base line subsidies for off-campus events remain at 30%. The February funding model was criticised by C&S executives for the hastiness of its introduction — barely a week before Welcome Week — and the effect it had on smaller C&S. Most executives are welcoming the new update, though some remain concerned

about the future of C&S that run primarily off-campus events. Joshua Maggiora, Secretary of both the Science Society and the Young Vinnies Society, is one such person. “The new changes are significantly better, but societies that are heavily focused with off-campus events will not see much of a benefit,” Maggiora said, referring to the decision to keep base funding at 30%. USU figures show that the average per event funding is down from 2018 by a marginal 3%, and that per attendee funding is down by more than 20% owing to increased attendance. Maggiora remains optimistic that the incoming reforms will address this discrepancy, however. “I think my two societies were initially worse off due to the new funding changes... however, I do think it is likely in the long run both societies will end up better off under Universal Access once the funding model is completely worked out.”

St Paul’s College has released its ‘Progress Report’, marking a headway made in implementing the recommendations of the infamous 2018 Broderick Review into residential college culture. The 44 page colour-coded document designates three progress levels: completed/ in place and ongoing, in progress, and delayed. Of the 50 recommendations, 38 are designated as completed, and only one as “delayed.” This report is said to be the first of many progress reports, with more scheduled to be published periodically in the future. Some claims made by the Report appear to overstate the success of the implementation of certain recommendations. There is no mention of hazing during the College’s annual Anzac Day celebrations — despite such allegations emerging at least six weeks before today’s release date. Ambiguously, the report further states that “the commitment of student leaders has been reflected … in their

very successful efforts to ensure that the 2019 Welcome Week was inclusive, respectful, and safe.” However, during Welcome Week this year, Honi reported on the alleged involvement of an Assistant Sub-Warden and Peer Support Leader of the College in a scheme to pay first year “freshers” the two dollar fee required to sign up to the Sydney University Liberal Club. Allegations such as these appear overall to undermine the wider picture of progressive momentum put forward by the College in its inaugural report of this kind. On this, the College told Honi in a statement that, “the purpose of the Progress Report is to report on the specific actions that the College has taken and is taking to implement the recommendations of the Broderick Review … the actions taken by the College to date are comprehensive.” Honi understands that reform coming from adult governance structures has not been well received by all residents.

N E W S

Protesters rally in support of Reproductive Health Reform Bill Tiffany Vaughan and Yoona Oh Early Wednesday morning, Macquarie Street was filled with pro-choice protesters pushing for the decriminalisation of abortion in NSW. The rallyists clamoured to support the Reproductive Health Reform Bill 2019. The new Bill is set to be introduced this week by independent Minister of Parliament Alex Greenwich, and is co-sponsored by 13 other ministers from multiple parties including the Nationals, The Greens, and Labor. Liberal Health MP, Mr. Brad Hazzard is notably in support of the Bill. “The idea that we hadn’t seen a debate [on abortion] since before women could vote…demonstrates that this should be put on the agenda,” said MP Jenny Leong. “We’ve seen to safe access zones to provide protection for women accessing healthcare and reproductive services,” said Ms. Leong referring to the changes prior to the new Bill. “But we now know it’s time to decriminalise abortion so that we don’t see anymore barriers.” On July 1st 2018, a Bill

imposing ‘safe access zones’ of 150 metres around hospitals and clinics that perform termination of pregnancy services was passed. According to the Australian Medical Association (AMA), New South Wales is the second last state in Australia to decriminalise its abortion laws under the Crimes Act, with South Australia still keeping abortion within its Crimes Act. The newly proposed Bill explicitly outlines that women are allowed to request abortion by a licensed doctor for up to 22 weeks gestation, and emergency procedures without another doctor’s approval. After this time, service of termination may be approved by two doctors with a criterion based on the long term physical, social and mental factors. “[It’s] got two elements. [One] what we are dealing with today which is legalising it, and the other which is still a fight, is making it bloody free!” said 65 yearold protester, Diane Fieldes. “ There is so little availability and it’s such a working class

issue because if you haven’t got the money… then your rights are actually curtailed.” Fervent chants were heard following speeches: “Our bodies! Our Lives! Our right to decide!” urged protestors from various activist groups, including the University of Sydney Women’s Collective. The pro-abortion snap rally was hosted by Women’s March Sydney, and eight other co hosts including Sydney Socialist Alliance, The Greens NSW, and the NSW Pro-Choice Alliance. Womens March Sydney has announced that another rally will take place before debates commence next Tuesday, again outside Parliament House. Supporters of the Bill anticipate a big show, in hopes of decriminalising abortion once and for all. Top: Several Greens flags fly outside NSW Parliament House, protesters hold up signs Bottom: A Socialist Alliance placard reads "Our bodies, our rights"

The student response to UNSW trimesters, by the numbers Alan Zheng A recent survey conducted by the UNSW SRC, with a total of 1084 respondents, has found that 90% of the respondents found trimesters affected them negatively, as staff and student resistance against the model ramps up under the banners of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), UNSW SRC and Socialist Alternative-led group, Cancel Trimesters. The survey captures the breadth of campus’ communities: with 27% of the respondents first years, 11% international students, and 9% being students who live on campus. More than 1000 students turned up to reject trimesters over the Winter break in the largest protest at UNSW in recent memory. Back in 2016, the University surveyed close to 5000 students to assess attitudes to trimesters, claiming that 63% of students expressed support for a model other than semesters, according to Tharunka. To date, the University has not released the results of that

survey to the public, because the survey was not a "referendum." UNSW’s SRC has presented the University with a list of ten recommendations which the University says it is committed to implementing: •

Reduce over-assessment

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Return of the mid-term break

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Additional mental health resources •

Full audit of special considerations • More enrolment information and changes •

Increased course availability

•

Active employer engagement

•

Week 0 means week 0

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Additional support for international students

•

Reduce supplementary exams squeeze

My mental health has been severely or very severely impacted

60% I think flexibility around class times has become much worse or worse

60%

90% 52%

Trimesters have affected me negatively

UNSW has provided little to no support with changing visa conditions due to trimesters

of all international students

My employment has been affected negatively or very negatively

59%

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N E W S

USU Board does not renew Woodward's contract

Uni establishes free speech group

Jessica Syed and Alan Zheng

Joseph Verity

Current CEO of the University of Sydney Union (USU), Andrew Woodward, will not have his contract renewed, and will not serve a further term as CEO of the organisation as decided in the Board’s latest meeting. The USU Board of Directors, alongside Woodward, are said to have made the decision mutually, with the Board voting not to renew Woodward’s contract during the June meeting. This is despite the fact that Woodward’s contract was not set to expire until early next year. In a statement sent to Honi, former president of the USU, Liliana Tai, attributed the early non-renewal “to ensur[ing] an adequate handover period and enough time for the next CEO to be involved in the 2020 budget process.” This signals the end of Woodward’s involvement in the USU – a ten year period during which he was also its Director of Finance. During that time, Woodward helped the USU partner with

Vittoria Coffee and Tsingtao. Both companies played major roles in the USU’s service offering during Woodward’s tenure. Vittoria Coffee has been the USU’s coffee partner of choice since 2012, and Tsingtao sponsored the Hermanns’ Bar refurbishment in 2017. Both also contributed more than $2,500 to Woodward’s Tour de Cure fundraising efforts in 2019. Honi makes no claim that Woodward received any personal donations, funding, financial payments or general benefits from Vittoria Coffee or Tsingtao as part of his Tour de Cure fundraiser. As CEO, Woodward has notably overseen the opening of several campus food outlets, such as Courtyard Café in the Holme Building. His tenure as CEO has not, however, been without controversy. Woodward was widely criticised by staff and student unionists alike in 2013 for his attitudes to staff strikes, for the release of a

letter in which he advised USU staff on methods for crossing picket lines. The tail end of Woodward’s current term saw the introduction of the nascent and unpopular change to the Clubs and Societies funding model. Woodward will officially step down on July 12 2019, and current Director of Sales & Marketing and Director of Infrastructure, Alistair Cowie is set to be appointed as interim CEO. According to Tai, the process of recruiting a new CEO will take several months, and will “heavily” involve the student board.

Last week, the University of Sydney established a group tasked with implementing the recommendations of the French Review into free speech, released in April of this year. The group, which includes various prominent figures from around the university, including SRC President Jacky He and outgoing St Paul’s warden Don Markwell, will present an initial report to Vice Chancellor Michael Spence outlining how best to implement the recommendations made by the former Chief Justice. The report, done at the behest of Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan, found that there is no real threat to freedom of speech on university campuses, but nonetheless strongly recommended the implementation of a model code for the protection of free speech and academic freedom. The model code supports “reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent any person from using lawful speech which a reasonable person would regard [...] as likely to humiliate

or intimidate other persons” but “does not extend to a duty to protect any person from feeling offended or shocked or insulted by the lawful speech of another.” It remains to be determined whether the model will be implemented in its entirety, overriding existing policies, or be embedded into the current model. Jacky He informed Honi that at the first meeting of the Implementation Group, the latter option appeared more popular, however, minutes from the meeting indicate that he was absent. The news comes weeks after one University student was suspended for orchestrating a protest against far right speaker Bettina Arndt in September last year, an incident which enraged many conservative commentators and is often cited as a principal impetus for the launch of the review. The recommendation of the Implementation Group will be presented to Spence in September.

UNSW partially divests from fossil fuel industry Liam Thorne

St Paul’s warden resigns

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has significantly reduced the amount it invests in fossil fuel industries, conceding to years of pressure from student activists in the Fossil Free UNSW campaign. Between 2017 and 2018, “investments in companies that directly own fossil fuel reserves reduced from $29.5 million to $16.2 million,” according to UNSW’s sustainability policy. Activists across the world have given significant attention to the ways universities choose to invest their portfolios, with many universities completely divesting from the fossil fuel industries, including Yale, Stanford and Oxford Universities, La Trobe University, and Queensland University of Technology. This 45 per cent reduction in such investments comes following a commitment in 2017 to begin divestment from fossil fuels. While 2018 brought no divestment updates, UNSW did commit to being completely reliant on renewable energy sources by 2020, signing a solar power purchase agreement

Dr Don Markwell, warden of St Paul’s College, has resigned from his position after only three semesters, according to an announcement made by the college on their website. Markwell will be taking up the Headship of St. Mark’s College at the University of Adelaide to “lead a major process of renewal,” but will continue his current role as Warden until the 30th of September. Like St Paul’s, St. Mark’s has been embroiled in controversy, the most recent of which involving an event where residents dressed up as Nazis and Jewish concentration camp victims. The resignation comes after a tumultuous year at the college, where Markwell spearheaded reforms aimed at extracting the college from its troubled history with misogyny and hazing. The first Warden of St Paul’s who is not also an ordained priest of the Anglican Church, Markwell’s time at Paul’s was marked by a greater willingness to engage with certain problematic aspects of the college’s culture, and saw

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with solar farm developer Maoneng and retailer Origin. UNSW’s partial divestment was announced on the Fossil Free UNSW Facebook page in late July, which remarked that while this is an “acknowledg[ment] that divestment is the right thing to do,” UNSW “are still lagging behind the many councils, universities and whole countries worldwide who have fully divested from the destructive Fossil Fuel industry.” The group have staged several shut-downs of the UNSW Chancellory and other University buildings to attract the attention of management to the need to divest. Fossil Free USYD coconvenor Alex Vaughan told Honi that they “congratulate [their] peers at UNSW who have been unwavering in their commitment to see UNSW divest.” “It is a reminder that the organising we do on campus is being recognised by the administration and that the voices of students can cause

change.” Fossil Free UNSW is a collective of student and staff activists who for several years have agitated their University to divest from the fossil fuel industries. According to Fossil Free UNSW, the news is, “the result of the cumulative, tireless work Fossil Free UNSW campaigners have been doing for the past 5 years.” The Fossil Free USYD branch has been particularly active in recent years, despite resistance from the University, organising several prolific actions around campus. “At USyd, our university still invests tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuels,” Vaughan told Honi. “It is imperative that Universities divest from coal and join the renewable energy transition.” Honi understands that USyd is currently devising a new sustainability strategy, in which divestment and energy plans are made, and that Fossil Free USYD members have been attending sustainability strategy working groups to influence the plan’s details.

Baopu He

the implementation of the recommendations made by the Broderick Review. Whether this has tangibly changed the college’s culture, however, is still unclear — earlier this year Honi reported on allegations of hazing during the college’s annual Anzac Day celebrations. Sources have also alluded that Markwell’s liberalising governance and attempts to change or end certain college traditions have been met with resistance from some student residents. It is not known whether possible tensions between Markwell and the student body had any bearing on his resignation. In response to the resignation, a global search has been started by the College Council to appoint a new Warden. Markwell's departure comes as the newly built co-ed Graduate House, the building of which was partially under the oversight of Markwell, goes into its second semester of housing women and men alike.

N E W S

Epic Tea outlet on campus underpaying employees, investigation finds

Unsure of how Call the Fair Work much you should Ombudsman on 13 13 94 be paid?

Carrie Wen and Alan Zheng International students working at the Epic Tea outlet in the Jane Foss Russell plaza have told Honi Soit they are being paid between $12 to $14 per hour, and are working without payslips, superannuation and written contracts. Employees indicated they were being paid an hourly rate of $12 during a training period which lasted as long as a week in some cases, with an hourly rate of $14 thereafter. Those earnings were paid in cash on a weekly basis, without any superannuation contributions, at the outlet located in the Jane Foss Russell Plaza. In one case, a student who chose to remain anonymous for fear of victimisation, told Honi they were being paid a higher rate of $18 only because they had a connection to Epic Tea’s parent company, Eternal Passion. These rates fall well under the national minimum wage and the hourly rate of $26.76 mandated by the Fast Food Industry Award for employees 21 years and over.

Epic Tea has also withheld pay slips from its employees, according to surveyed staff, who said they had been kept in the dark over their superannuation entitlements. Failing to provide pay slips may result in a fine, according to Fair Work guidelines. None of the students Honi spoke to were able to point to any employment contract with Epic Tea or Eternal Passion. Epic Tea and its predecessor, Easyway, have been tenants of the University of Sydney Union (USU) since 2009. The store underwent a change in management with the franchisor taking over responsibility for the store late last year, according to company extracts held by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. In that same period, Easyway rebranded to Epic Tea nationally, becoming one of several beverage brands managed by multinational parent company, Eternal Passion, who also own dessert chain, Meet Fresh. A previous Honi

investigation in 2017 uncovered employees were being paid as little as $10 per hour. The USU subsequently found that Easyway were paying a lawful wage because of a loophole in certain hospitality awards which allows staff to be paid 70% of the award rate for training periods of up to three months. The employees expressed sentiments of anxiety and apathy when surveyed. Some referred to a fear of immediate victimisation and chose not to participate in Honi's survey. One employee suggested there was a wider underpayment problem on campus, with other campus outlets, including those in the Wentworth Building food court allegedly also engaging in underpayment. USU president Connor Wherrett told Honi the USU takes its legal responsibilities “extremely seriously” and has already begun investigating Epic Tea. "At Board last week we confirmed we will be working with other campus bodies,

including the Uni, to better inform students about this. Underpayment equals theft, pure and simple. Education is the first step," Wherrett said. Just last week, the USU distributed a note reminding Epic Tea and other tenants of their legal obligations. Although underpayment is illegal, it may allow international students to evade certain conditions of their student visas, including the restriction of 40 hours of work per fortnight. However, this risks a breach of visa conditions and deportation. Reporting underpayment can risk admitting to a breach of those conditions, leaving international students particularly vulnerable to wage theft and workplace exploitation. One international student at USyd shared her experience working at Chatime two years ago with Honi, mentioning that she was paid $10 an hour during a trial which lasted an entire month, and $13 an hour thereafter. "We were cheap labor,

being exploited and terribly underpaid." "The boss was also an international student at Usyd. She hired employees who just arrived in Australia and who did not understand their working rights." The student then complained to Chatime’s head office but received no response. Epic Tea’s underpayment of staff comes after restauranteur George Calombaris withheld $7.8 million from workers at his restaurants and a national Fairfax investigation into Chatime revealed wage theft of millions of dollars from international student employees. Epic Tea will not be continuing as a USU tenant after this year for unrelated reasons, but campus is set to welcome a new tea outlet, Chinese brand Cha Li, which is expected to set up alongside the Co-Op bookshop in semester two. Honi invited comment from Eternal Passion, but received no response at the time of publication.

“A small win”: UTS delays decision to dump Traditional Chinese Medicine degree

Alan Zheng

The University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) plans to dump the degree have been put on hold, after students, staff and patients rallied against the Faculty of Science’s decision to axe the longrunning degree, and the Faculty Board voted against discontinuing the degree and the Chinese Medicine Clinic at the eleventh hour. In a narrow vote, ten members voted against discontinuing the degree, nine were in favour, and three abstained, at a meeting in late July, after members voiced concerns over the transition plan and the need to ensure students completing the degree received accreditation. The Board’s decision will delay the University’s plans to discontinue the Bachelor of Health Science (Traditional Chinese Medicine) degree, which currently plays host to around 220 enrolled students. The four-year degree — initially established as a diploma and one of the first outside China in 1969 — was originally slated for axing in 2021 after a review by the Faculty of

Science found the course was neither financially viable nor in the faculty’s strategic direction. The move attracted concerted student opposition after close to 9000 alumni and current students signed a petition demanding that management retain the degree. Students and staff also publicly protested the move, calling on the Faculty to stop prioritising “profit over healthcare,” in efforts which gained media attention in the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, and Chinese media. Under the previous proposal, students who were not on track to complete the degree by 2021, including part-time students and students commencing this year, were to be given two options: Internal transfer to another major in the Faculty, or external transfer to an existing Chinese medicine program at another, yet unconfirmed institution. In a statement after the meeting, UTS said it would consider implementing the discontinuation from 2022, giving students who

commenced the degree in 2018 the time to graduate and receive accreditation. The University Provost, Andrew Parfitt confirmed that he had accepted the recommendation of the Science Faculty’s Senior Management Group to ultimately discontinue the program and its clinic. “As a consequence, there will be no further student intakes into the TCM course and related combined-degree courses,” the University wrote in a statement. First year student Georgia Lloyd told Honi that UTS previously suspended intake for the degree back in 2018, but reopened enrolments after receiving advice that at least two years would be required before the course could be discontinued. “I feel grave misfortune that we will lose an establishment with such a high quality of staff and education.” “The fight isn’t over. We have to keep pushing. But for now, we have a small win,” Georgia said of the meeting. Dean of Science Dianne

Jolley has warned protesting students to avoid “aggressive and threatening approaches.” “The University will not tolerate behaviour of that kind, and threats to UTS staff or students will be referred directly to NSW Police for them to investigate in the normal manner, as well as subject to internal misconduct proceedings where appropriate,” Jolley said in an email sent to students on Saturday. The UTS Chinese Medicine Clinic — which hosts student interns and offers clinical treatment to members of the public at a significantly reduced cost — is now likely to continue operating until 2022. At the protest, recent graduate Rosemary Yim pointed to the financial productivity of the program. “The TCM unit is ranked fourth in the Science Faculty for revenue contribution to the university,” Yim said. Despite this, the University has contended the course’s ongoing deficits in the vicinity of $1.5 million per year, have become “unsustainable for a

publicly-funded institution” in a statement. Affected staff declined to provide comment to Honi because the University’s employment policy prohibits staff from talking with media. Traditional Chinese medicine — a broad school including acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, and practices like qi gong — is on offer at three Australian universities, including undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Western Sydney University.

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O P I N I O N

Self-reflection turned sour Men are sidelining toxic masculinity and leaving women in the gutter, writes Layla Mkh. Earlier this year, the billion dollar grooming company Gillette released a viral ad called We Believe: The best men can be, a play on the razor brand’s long-held motto, “The best a man can get.” The ad featured an emotional and carefully-spun narrative about the role models young boys see in their daily lives. It exposed bullying, sexual harassment on the streets and in the workplace, and even sexism on the big screen, by “promoting kindness, humility, and responsibility.” The emotional clips were woven together with a sombre, albeit hopeful, music track. The ad was supposed to demonstrate that these sexist behaviours make up a complicated and toxic form of masculinity. The ad thus aimed to revise and resolve all the normalised manifestations of masculinity that are both created and reinforced by media representation, by asking men to be constantly improving, and self-reflective. Gillette, perhaps in a faux pas, shared this ad in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and the ad itself was met with support from progressives and backlash from conservatives. As of July 2019, the

ad has over 31 million views on YouTube, with less than 800, 000 likes, and more than 1.5 million dislikes. The Gillette ad, among other campaigns, is just one of many instances of the current interest in toxic masculinity. From men wearing bright pink nail polish and putting flowers

limit their emotional range primarily to expressions of anger. The Good Men Project, an online platform that explores the world of men and manhood, defines toxic masculinity as: “A narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood

There is this idea that straight men are not allowed to be emotional in contrast to women. This comparison is not only unfair but also unequal in that it somehow assumes that women are allowed to be emotional without question or concern. behind their ears, to the ‘camp’ theme of the Met Gala this year, the last few years have seen a trend in straight men wanting to destroy toxic masculinity, often citing abuse, and emotional repression as fuelling it. As a young woman of colour, I find myself personally fascinated by the discourse surrounding emotions and masculinity. To define masculinity can be quite reductionist. Often people think masculinity is that which men do, or how men act. This implies that women cannot inhabit aspects of masculinity, or that masculinity and maleness are one and the same. A single definition of masculinity is limiting, and the concept is best understood by looking into patriarchal structures and the context-specific aspects of gender. Toxic masculinity, however, is defined by an adherence to traditional male gender roles and actions. This often translates to heterosexuality, alongside social expectations in which men seek to be dominant and

as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured…” Toxic masculinity is seen as the sole reasoning behind emotional repression in boys, impacting them even as they go into adulthood. Many commentators have framed the problem of violence against women perpetrated by men as being the result of toxic masculinity, defined by male entitlement and abuse of power. While this goes some way to

example, by pointing out forms of racism within feminist politics. She might not even have to make any such point to kill joy.” Ahmed points out that the emotions of women, specifically of Black women, are often racialised in that they are grossly exaggerated, ignored or misunderstood. Discussions on straight men having repressed emotions has always been linked to domestic violence, with ideas like, “And then the boys who never cried became the men that beat their wives” often circulating. The implication that women are allowed to be emotional is amplified in discourse surrounding domestic violence — the repressed emotions of men are somehow linked to excusing domestic violence and abuse, while women continue to overly emote everything, including shock and trauma sustained from abuse. The inverse is true in that generations of women have carried trauma and pain while still carrying on and living. They do not necessarily externalise these suppressed emotions in abusive ways. So, the idea that women are allowed to be emotional in comparison to men falls flat in that yes, it can be socially acceptable for women to cry. But men, who aren’t ‘allowed’ to cry, are then taught to project their feelings into violence. It’s no surprise, then, that the

Generations of women have carried trauma and pain while still carrying on and living. They do not necessarily externalise these suppressed emotions in abusive ways. identifying and labelling the problem, comparatively less work has been done to explore the way this affects women. Several problems with the discourse around toxic masculinity appear obvious. In discussions of the repression of emotions there is this idea that straight men are not allowed to be emotional in contrast to women. This comparison is not only unfair but also unequal in that it somehow assumes that women are allowed to be emotional without question or concern. This is clearly untrue, specifically in instances of the emotions of women of colour. Feminist theorist Sara Ahmed says that “the angry Black woman can be described as a killjoy; she may even kill fem i n i st joy, for

discourse around toxic masculinity, and the way men adhere to traditional gendered expectations of emotions, still places a burden on women. Indeed, this new found interest in destroying toxic masculinity and allowing men to express themselves still instrumentalises women, who are expected to facilitate the social and emotional renewal processes of men. As the very nature of toxic masculinity necessitates that straight men are unable to forge intimate relationships with other men, the women in their lives are burdened by both their initial lack of emotional intelligence, as well as their evolution in unlearning emotional repression. At best, this is a form of emotional labour. But one could go so far as to say that women are somehow expected to become ad-hoc therapists. Though ads like Gillette’s We Believe, alongside the trend of straight men wanting to destroy toxic masculinity, are well intentioned, there still remains a quagmire of problems. Somehow, in their plight to break traditional gender roles and standards of masculinity — as a stepping stone to making the world a more equal place for all genders — men still seem to be placing the burden on women.

O P I N I O N

Cancel culture vs campus subculture Pranay Jha and Jessica Syed consider the on-campus manifestations of cancellation. Cancel culture: wildly contentious, and everyone’s got an opinion on it. You either blindly endorse it, joke about it, reject it completely, or all three at once (depending on the particular subject of cancellation, of course). The term is so embedded in current social discourse that a skit revolving around it made its way into this year’s PoC Revue. Many a thing has been written about cancel culture — its benefits and tribulations, whether it’s progressive or useful to cancel! every problematic boat on the horizon, “well what about Keanu Reeves?” and so on. What is less considered is how, in a practical sense, the culture transplants itself into the social dynamics of student groups on campus — particularly when it comes to

sexual violence. It seems uncontroversial to suggest that prominence within a social network should be removed from those who have engaged in patterns of sexually problematic behaviour. In that way, the application of “cancel culture” to the lives of students appears to be a positive step, particularly given augmented rates of sexual violence on campus. However, campus social groupings have not realistically been able to apply cancel culture in the same way as the broader movements they appear to be taking guidance from. The more prominent movements that have produced a cancel culture, such as #MeToo, tend to adopt a survivorfocused approach to the sharing of sexual violence-related experiences. Subsequently, the social response to cases of sexual violence from the left prioritises, or at least gives consideration to, the interests and wishes of the survivor in question. Campus social groups like debating or student politics do not have the same degree of access to information as the aforementioned movements. In practical terms this means that the details of instances of sexual violence are shared by word of mouth through third-parties, rather than directly from survivors. In part, this is due to the absence of a substantial platform through which survivors are able to share their experiences should they wish to do so. Mainstream journalism

A Cool Angel's Thesis

Altay Hagrebet

tends to be uninterested in narratives that don’t involve famous figures. Campus media, which in some cases may be an avenue, is usually silenced by threats of defamation. Premising cancel culture on accounts of sexual violence that are spread through word of mouth creates numerous problems for the involved parties. Most toxically, it removes a sense of agency for survivors over the way their story is told and the degree of information to which others have access. Additionally, the decision to “cancel” someone by campus social groupings may not always be consistent with the wishes of the aggrieved person. Such practices are made worse when “cancellation” occurs with little to no consultation with the survivor. In many cases, the result is a small group of people within a campus sub-culture making widereaching moral adjudications without the requisite information or skills to do so. The manifestation of cancel culture on campus, albeit well-intentioned, has at times ignored the very people it sets out to protect. The pervasive problem is the existence of perpetrators. Students find themselves between two choices: do they cancel the perpetrator, severing ties with them and ensuring their isolation? Or do they seek out ways in which the perpetrator can be bettered and learn from their mistakes? The former is undoubtedly easier. Perhaps the perpetrator’s complete lack of social currency will allow them to realise that their behaviour does not come without consequence, and needs to change. Cancelling the perpetrator

further provides survivors with some surety that their welfare is being prioritised. Cynically, it may provide the person doing the cancelling with a sense of moral righteousness. The latter requires resources, and a high dose of emotional energy. This kind of undertaking likely involves one or two people urging the perpetrator to access counselling services, checking in with them during that process, and making sure that they refrain from going down a path that might lead them to repeat their behaviour. Given that the in-house rehabilitation of perpetrators is shunned by those who would prefer just to cancel them, all this becomes an incredibly draining process for those facilitating it. More often than not, the facilitator ends up being a woman, rendering the whole exercise a gendered one. It is often difficult to have a situation where there are enough resources to facilitate any meaningful rehabilitation of perpetrators in student communities, and the easiest way forward is to extract someone away from a particular group, even if their behaviour does not change. The inability to balance the individualised needs of the survivor, alongside ensuring perpetrators change their behaviour, is possibly too mammoth a task for student groups. The resort to cancel culture on campus stems ultimately from inadequate external support and resources from the University, with its efforts consistently proving sordidly ineffective at best. So, cancel culture becomes the default, the easiest way to put a bandaid over a bigger problem, and the problematic behaviour goes on unremedied.

Casteing a shadow on the immigrant experience Swapnik Sanagavarapu reflects on the inadvertance diaspora have to caste. Growing up, I saw myself as varying configurations of different identities. For the first decade of my life I was an Australian who incidentally happened to have parents from India. At various points I was an Indian-Australian, an Indian and somewhere in between. Above all that though, I was a Hindu. For me, being Indian and being Hindu were culturally synonymous: Hindu festivals were Indian festivals, Hindu rituals were Indian rituals etc. And yet, somewhere in my conflation of Hinduism with my amorphous Indian identity, the fact that I was a Brahmin was lost. For the most part, this is an experience common to upper-caste diaspora. To those immigrant families that have never borne the mark of caste oppression, it is a long-forgotten concern; a preserve of the old country with little applicability to their present lives. In light of my own experiences, I must interrogate why caste is so easily left out of the immigrant experience. It is hard to provide an authoritative definition of caste. It varies in nature across India, and castes that are "forward" in one area are deeply disadvantaged

in others. Broadly speaking, it is a hierarchical and hereditary division of labour comprised of four varnas: Brahmin (priest), Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (merchant) and Shudra (labourer). Within these broad categories are a multitude of jati, often overlapping between varna and reflecting highly specialised job functions. Outside the boundaries of Varna are dalits, formerly known as untouchables. Caste has a divine normativity and deviation from one's divinely ordained path (dharma) is purported to lead to social anarchy. This unquestionable spiritual authority, alongside notions of ritual purity, mean that those of backward castes and Dalits are excluded from all manner of social life. In many places, Dalits were forced to tie brooms to their backs to wipe away their impure footsteps. In other cases Dalits were attacked by mobs for using the same crockery as Brahmins. Despite the introduction of “corrective measures” such as reservations in the Indian constitution, Dalits still face crippling poverty, social exclusion and violence. My experience of caste was far

removed from the crippling reality of exclusion, marginalisation and oppression. My Brahminness was subsumed under my Indian or Hindu culture. Vegetarianism and sacred rites — this is what I thought was the universal "Indian" experience. References to caste were vague and esoteric, briefly mentioned in religious stories and invoked by elders, but never critically considered or explained in a broader social context. There was never any cognisance of the fact that my experience was not universal. It was especially anathema to me that outside Australia, where I was a victim of racialisation, I personally could be an oppressor. This appears to reflect the experiences of most diaspora kids who are woefully unaware of caste. At best they are ambivalent, at worst they inherit a reactionary disdain for backward castes, disguised as an egalitarian objection to scheduled caste affirmative action. A few factors can explain this general ignorance of caste in the diaspora. The first and most prominent is material. In light of the fact that resources and capital are overwhelmingly centralised

in the hands of savarna elites, it is not surprising that it is overwhelmingly higher castes that had the means to immigrate. These communities, even if not by malicious intent, reproduced their caste-based cultural practices in the diaspora. The desire for a homogenous, cultural identity in foreign and hostile environments meant that these practices were generalised as Indian or Hindu, such that caste was obscured from their origin. On the other end of the spectrum, a tenuous balance between cultural preservation and assimilation meant that Indian immigrant families were eager to "leave behind" practices that were deemed unsuitable for their new homes. Chief amongst these was caste, and again caste-specific cultural practices are subsumed under a broader Indian identity. The task for the emerging progressive section of the diaspora is to confront the indignity of caste, both internally and in the mother country. It is only through grappling with the complexity and brutality of caste can diaspora truly facilitate social justice.

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P E R S P E C T I V E

I could never imagine identifying myself as ‘Australian’ without mentioning that I’m ‘half Japanese’, because to me, that’s what being a halfie is. To be of two. A question of identity seems to be on the lips of everyone I meet. “Are you Latino?”, “Are you French?”, “Are you mixed?” But then my name gives it away. I wait for the collective “ahhh” moment people seem to experience when I explain that my name is Japanese, a nod to my mum’s heritage. Then comes the next question, like clockwork, “Are you half or full Japanese?” I’ve never understood this question. Would a fraction, a whole number or a decimal truly change their perception of me? Or perhaps I’m vain to think they’re so invested in me when really, they’re just asking me out of curiosity. This experience isn’t unique to me, in fact it’s a shared experience I have with many of my other halfie friends. Australia has never had as many bicultural, bilingual and biracial peoples as it does now — so why is there a need to force an identity onto them? Despite having an Australian father, I don’t have much memory of ever speaking English at home. After he passed away when I was nine years old, our bilingual household quickly became monolingual. My mum raised my brother and I as Japanese children. Being a Japanese teacher herself, she taught us to read, write and speak Japanese before we ever learnt to read

‘Australian’ without mentioning that I’m ‘half Japanese’, because to me, that’s what being a halfie is. To be of two. I’ve spent much time in Japan since I was born. My first trip to Japan was when I was just six months old, now I annually visit. When I was seven, my mum enrolled me at the local elementary school in Toyonaka, Osaka, over their winter term. It was the school that she went to as a child and fondly remembered. It was now rundown and a bluish-grey in the dimming winter light, with frost that snapped at your heels between your socks and slippers as you walked down the hall. Before enrolling me, she took my hand and walked me around the school, familiar yet unfamiliar to her. We stopped outside on the dirt oval, under a tall metal structure pasted with paper. It was browned and rusted, but you could tell it was once colourful. My mum seemed surprised, wistful almost. She revealed that it was her class’ artwork, group 5B from 1977, that they had made to decorate the school, still standing 29 years later. Years later, I asked her why she decided to enrol me. “I wanted you to have that memory and experience of being a Japanese child,” she said. But she was wrong. Each memory whispered you’ll never be a Japanese child to me. I was only half, and I couldn’t pretend I was full. I made friends quickly, as they saw me as an anomaly in a mundane city like Toyonaka. I spent my recess break

"Gaijin. I had a complicated relationship with the word." the alphabet. My first love has always been for my Japanese heritage. I think it’s an integral part of my identity. I could never imagine identifying myself as

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on the rusted jungle gym, surrounded by curious peers. They asked questions from what Australia was like, to whether my grandma would be picking me up in

the afternoon. On one particular day, I sat a second grade kanji test with the rest of my classmates. Although I had gone to Saturday school in Ultimo, I could barely answer three of the ten questions. My teacher was kind to me. This was unusual in a Japanese school setting, known for its academic rigour and disciplinary practices. She corrected

more accepting society, or something closer to fetishisation. Mixed race people in Japan are often perceived as ‘exotic’ and ‘sexually appealing.’ I had experienced this on the train in busy city centres around Osaka. Whispers on trains, shared glances and if people were forward enough, requests to have their photo taken with me. Although, I was

"Each memory whispered you'l never be a Japanese child to me. I was only half, and I couldn't pretend I was full." my attempts, but didn’t give me a grade — something I saw as a merciful act. Maybe she thought she was protecting me, or perhaps protecting me from my peers? Either way, I was thankful. The other day, I found a photo that my mum took of our class. I was unusually tall, unusually white and unusually westernlooking compared to my classmates. I stood out, easily. Despite my experiences, there’s been a long history of discrimination against halfies in Japan. For a country that still remains largely homogeneous, a person of mixed race was perceived as a threat to the pure breed of Japanese people. They quickly became part of a lower social class, and derogatory terms, such as ainoco and kinketsuji were used to describe them as only being ‘half blooded.’ In the past few decades, there has been a shift in attitude towards halfies, as they have become idolised in popular culture for their hybrid western and eastern looks. Halfies are highly visible in Japanese media, often featured on variety shows, with successful careers in acting and modelling. Personally, I wonder whether this is a result of a

surprised to have once experienced this down at the local laundromat with my obaachan. I was waiting on a small bench with her, watching our sheets rotate to the low hum of the machine. Suddenly, a stranger came up to me. “Are you famous?” she asked. Startled, I let out a nervous laugh and replied “No.” “Oh but you could be,” she insisted, “Such a pretty halfie.” My obaachan beamed with pride, pulling me closer to her whilst detailing my biracial life to the shopkeeper. Curious, I decided to ask my mum whether she deliberately raised me in Australia — somewhere I could blend in a little more easily. She paused, “To be honest, no. I just knew I wanted to move to a foreign country and marry a gaijin.” Gaijin. I had a complicated relationship with that word. In Japanese, it means ‘foreigner’, although to me it meant ‘but’. “You speak Japanese well but you have a gaijin face” or, “You have a Japanese name but you look like a gaijin.” It was a way of telling me that I was almost Japanese, but I wasn’t quite there. Gaijins were the ones who didn’t take off their shoes when they entered a Japanese home, the ones who talked loudly on the train in a quiet

carriage or the ones who struggled with their chopsticks when eating udon. That wasn’t me. And I hated being grouped into it. When I was young, strangers often thought I was adopted: I looked like neither of my parents. My round face and flat nose a hint of my Japanese heritage, my pale face and thin brows a nod to my British roots. When combined, I looked foreign. Often when we’d queue at the supermarket checkout, the cashier would mistake my mother and I to be separate customers. “She’s with me,” my mum would quickly say. When we’d walk out she’d make the same comment each time, “Wow, they didn’t think we were related.” I think she subconsciously considered believed in it herself. The last days of December were spent cooking and preparing our osechi for hours in my obaachan’s cramped kitchen. It could look like chaos preparing for oshougatsu. There is so much anticipation and preparation leading up to the day. It captured the nuances of Japanese people and culture I could never explicitly explain simply by telling someone what the experience is like. But nothing could take away from the specialty of creating osechi during oshougatsu: it was ultimately an art. It takes precision and an eye for detail to create beautiful arrangements in an osechi box. All the names read like a poem — datemaki for auspicious days, konbu for joy and kamaboko, reminiscent of Japan’s rising sun. I loved being my obaachan’s taste tester. “Try these kuromame and let me know if they’re sweet enough,” she’d say. They were always too sweet, but I loved them that way. On the morning of oshougatsu, my ojiichan would wake up before sunrise to enjoy mochitsuki, rice cake making, with others from our neighbourhood. It’s an intensive process, particularly for an 83 year old like my ojiichan, as it requires you to pummel rice and boiling water with a wooden mallet. Too slow and it hardens, too fast and you could lose a hand, but my ojiichan does it anyway — for good luck. By 11 o’clock my extended family would be cramped into the meek and unassuming apartment, now clustered with more people than trinkets. It was a

this year. I knew that inviting him meant he would see a completely different side to me, one where I was immersed in being a Japanese person — I wasn’t sure how he would react. He reflected on this moment, saying, “I think the feeling of seeing you land [in Japan] was not necessarily one of surprise as much as it was curiosity and interest. There was a connection, to see this part of your life that I may not have considered as being integral to your living experience when I first met you.” His words summed up perfectly how I felt — being Japanese was a part of my identity. Being a MalayChinese and Australian halfie himself, he told me that he was surprised at how ‘in touch’ I was with my Japanese side. He said, “I always thought that there was some kind of a trade off.”

* kanji - Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system obaachan - grandma oshougatsu - New Year's Day osechi - Japanese New Year's food datemaki - sweet egg roll konbu - a type of seaweed kamaboko - pink and white fish cake cut in semi-circles kuromame - sweet black beans ojiichan - grandpa

the significance of each food. He pushed a plate of lo hei, a raw fish salad, towards me. “You need to toss the salad with your chopsticks, for good luck!” I did so, warmed by his inclusion of me in his culture. Later, I was taken by surprise when I was offered a red envelope by Nick’s auntie — I was unsure whether to accept or decline it, considering I had only just met her for the first time. As I was about to decline out of what I thought was courtesy, Nick swooped in, thanking his auntie and prodding me to do the same. “Never decline,” he whispered “It’s rude not to accept.” I smiled. He had helped me navigate his culture, just as I had helped him with mine. Revisiting my own memories and finding their place in the Eurasian experience has made for an interesting reflection. Perhaps, it was more than reflecting — it was learning. The biracial experience is diverse and unique to each person, whether that be learning to speak, write and read the language or a subconscious learning through immersion in a culture. Either way, cultural heritage is inherent in each being. There is no parting from it. It is what moulds your attitudes, shapes your features and provokes every thought in your mind. Embracing this whilst constructing your own identity is to me, the biracial experience.

WORDS: MOMOKO METHAM Nick was raised as an Australian, heavily assimilated into Australian culture. Nick’s experience was completely separate from mine, to the point where we could never understand the other’s experience. And I’ve come

"Thinking back, there is no way to define being a halfie, the term is elastic, as are the meanings derived from it." challenge that I enjoyed, setting the table for twelve people when a maximum of five people could fit in the living room. We’d unhinge the paper doors that separated the dining room and bedroom to turn it into a larger room. There, my cousins, great cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, would all sit, gathered and eating, elbow to elbow. Here, it didn’t matter if you were half, you were Japanese. This moment was always special to me, so I was particularly excited when my boyfriend, Nick, was able to join us

a ‘true halfie’ because of this. But what did that even mean? Thinking back, there is no way to define being a halfie, the term is elastic, as are the meanings derived from it. I had no right to deny him of being a halfie simply because his experience wasn’t the same as mine. Nick brought up the very valid point that being able to read, write or speak your second language shouldn’t be used as a measurement of how ‘white’ or ‘Asian’ you are. He argued that the halfie experience is “Organic — simply by interacting with my relatives. There are subtle ways of interactions, mainly mannerisms, negotiation styles, hidden biases, that you can only really extract if you’ve spent a prolonged amount of time with people who have

to learn now that that’s okay. He didn’t speak, read or write Hokkien and he had never visited his family in his mother country. Nick’s experience was also common for my other halfie friends, as many could not speak or write in their language. In the past, we had a few arguments about how most halfies were turning into ‘bananas’, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I remember challenging him on numerous occasions, saying that he was ‘out of touch’ with his Malaysian culture and that he wasn’t

grown up in that environment.” I could see this, having spent time with Nick’s Malaysian grandparents. Prior to spending Chinese New Year with his grandparents and extended family, Nick had warned me of his family’s complicated relationship with Japanese people and culture, since the happenings of World War II. I was wary of meeting them, but Nick’s mother had kindly prepared a New Year’s gift I was to present to them, earning me some brownie points. His grandfather, Kong Kong, was cold and spoke few words, but his grandmother, Mahmah, was more warm, clasping her hands around mine, smiling. We all sat together, eating, with Nick explaining

ART: GRACE FU

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C O M I C

Sea Monsters by Amelia Mertha

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P R O F I L E

Reporting on Trump’s America: A conversation with Jelani Cobb Nina Dillon Britton profiles New Yorker staff writer, Dr Jelani Cobb.

Gothic Hun

Altay Hagrebet

Days before Dr Jelani Cobb arrives in Sydney to deliver a speech on civil rights in Sydney, President Trump tells a group of progressive congresswomen of colour (dubbed “the Squad”) to “go back” to where they came from. That fact dominates his brief stay in Australia. “It’s really striking how many people in Sydney have asked me about 45’s latest bigotry spree,” he tweets before returning to New York, the day after Honi Soit asked him to comment on the tweets. “As bad as he looks domestically this is a reminder that the entire world is an audience for this abject racist stupidity.” Dr Cobb is best known to readers as a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. His work on contemporary American politics largely focuses on race and racism. Cobb is pointed to as one of an ever-shrinking number of writers able to speak honestly about American racism (Cobb notes though, that he admires Adam Serwer’s work at The Atlantic). He is frustrated, for example, that outlets from the New York Times to Fox News label Trump’s fresh round of tweets “racially charged,” not “racist.” “Reporters don’t want to come close to racism. They apply an even-handedness that is inappropriate,” Cobb tells Honi. “They are reflecting a bigger discomfort with the reality of racism, using this language to soften the most outrageous things.” Though best known for his contemporary political writing, Dr Cobb is originally trained in history. His doctoral thesis, Antidote to Revolution: AfricanAmerican Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, is due for publication soon. Speaking to Honi, Cobb explains that his background as an historian has “deeply influenced” his work as a reporter. “In covering current events, my first move is to look at the roots of it,” Cobb says. That background distinguishes Cobb’s work from most American political reporting that concerns itself more with tracking political horse races. A piece on R Kelly’s sexual abuse discusses the history of scapegoating and lynching of black men; a piece on Trump’s removals of refugee and immigrant children from their parents draws comparisons to the enslavement of black children; speaking in Sydney, Cobb contextualises Trump’s recent attacks on “the Squad” as part of narratives of selective citizenship used to exclude African Americans since slavery. Backing any particular Democratic nominee, then, does not seem particularly important for Cobb. Appearing on The Drum, he responds to the host’s assertion that he’s a “fan” of Kamala Harris with a hesitant “eh.” His Twitter bio states simply: “rooting for (almost) anyone black.” That approach gives Cobb’s work a unique staying power when compared to much other contemporary American political reporting. Cobb’s 2012 book on the Obama presidency – The Substance of Hope – remains relevant following Trump’s election. The book is not a biography, but rather centres on the entrenched oppression and impoverishment many African Americans face, even as a select few succeed. The slew of glowing Obama biographies published at the same time, by comparison, have quickly appeared naïve. The impression one gets from Dr Cobb’s work, then, is that individual political figures are less important than the political contexts that shape them. He disputes the view that Trump, for example, is a distinctive “aberration” in American politics. “Speaking of Trump as an aberration assumes there is a default to return to,” he says. “Labelling Trump an aberration means you lose track of the factors that allowed him to come to power at all.” Similarly, his criticisms of the (largely white) Democratic leadership’s persistent attacks on “the Squad” recall Martin Luther King’s criticisms of the

“white moderate” as the true barrier to racial liberation. “Their response demonstrates a moral cowardice, an unwillingness to confront the ugliness in which we’re living,” Cobb says. Debates within the Democratic party, such as Joe Biden’s opposition to school bussing as a means to desegregate schools, are “a history and a tension the Democratic party will continue to grapple with.” Weeks after our conversation, Trump makes fresh attacks on “the Squad”, calling them racists. Almost exactly 5 years before, in one of his first pieces for the New Yorker, Cobb writes “[The US] is a nation of self-declared racial innocents, blithely detached from its past and their

prejudices [...] Innocents recognise no culpability, and thus are blamelessly capable of anything at all.” No one at that time could have envisaged a President Trump, but writers like Cobb have long pointed to America’s willful detachment from its history as the roots of right-wing, racist populism. The inability to speak honestly of that history makes one “naïve as to what it takes to enact change.” Many liberals prefer to view Trump as a brief, implausible, nightmare blinding them, as Cobb says, to the “more radical change is needed to address the roots of American racism.” If America is to no longer be a country of racial innocents, it will need the continued work of Dr Cobb.

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O P I N I O N

get up, you who refuse to be slaves 鹽記(Yim Kee)

As the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (anti-ELAB) protests entered their seventh consecutive week in Hong Kong, the University of Queensland became the first Australian host of a student-led protest on this issue. On 24 July, a diverse group of UQ students — Hongkongers, Australians, and other sympathetic parties — conducted a sit-in on campus to protest. But a contingent of Mainland Chinese students staged a counterprotest, trying to disperse the crowd with intimidation. The Mainland counter-protesters surged online soon after to explain their actions. The original batch of protesters were criticising the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) involvement in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. According to the counter-protesters, the anti-CCP protesters sought to undermine China’s unity. They called the protesters “traitors and “splittists [sic]” who sought Hong Kong independence, a threat to China’s ideological and territorial claim. Though the protesters had aimed their grievances towards the CCP, the counterprotesters viewed this as an attack on their nationality. Some even branded the protesters as “racists.” While attacks on a country can devolve into racism, the protesters’ primary target was the CCP as an institution. Several counter-protesters stressed patriotism, or more specifically, a desire to defend their nation’s name from being tarnished, as their motive for starting the fight. Such arguments are disingenuous. For one, the counter-protesters’ characterisation of the anti-ELAB protests as “pro-Hong Kong independence” betrays a failure to understand the issue. It is true that anti-ELAB protesters hold diverse views and envision different outcomes. However, the protests themselves make five demands to the Hong Kong government. They are: 1. A permanent withdrawal of the extradition bill. Thus far, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has refused to use the legal term “withdraw”, so the bill is only “suspended”. 2. The resignation of Carrie Lam, and implementation of full universal suffrage. Democracy is enshrined in Hong Kong’s constitution (Basic Law). However, Lam herself is unelected, and a number of prodemocracy lawmakers were barred from office after their election in 2017. 3. An independent investigation into police brutality. The excessive violence that police used against protesters and

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journalists has undermined Hongkongers’ faith in the force. 4. The withdrawal of the label “riot” used to characterise the 12 June protest. Though the right to protest is enshrined in Basic Law, rioting carries a ten-year sentence. 5. The release of arrested protesters without charges. The protesters fear that the arrests were made for political reasons. Independence is not on the list. Most anti-ELAB protesters would prefer that China simply respect the “one country, two systems” agreement. This agreement, intended as Hong Kong’s decolonisation model, should have secured the city’s political autonomy until 2047. But since Xi Jinping’s accession in 2013, Hongkongers have sensed efforts by Beijing to prematurely erode their constitutional freedoms. The anti-ELAB protests’ demands are not excessive either — nothing that cannot be solved without opening discussions with the people. However, Lam has long disappeared from the public eye, leaving Hong Kong’s future in limbo. The only intermediary left between state and people is the increasingly violent police. Instead of soul-searching, the CCP has abdicated responsibility for Hong Kong’s anger by blaming “foreign influences.” White House reports of Chinese forces gathering on the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border have understandably also fuelled fears of a second Tiananmen Square. As for Xinjiang, it would be insulting to pretend that nothing is happening to the Uighur population there. Satellite images show so-called “re-education camps” cropping up like weeds across the province. The CCP claims that they are there to rehabilitate the largely Muslim Uighurs from “extremism” (that is, Islam). Of course, this wording reflects international Islamophobic discourse, which condemns Islam as an inherently violent religion. Countless Uighur refugees attest to being barred from practising Islam, hounded by government agents outside of China, or tortured in camps. The CCP’s furtiveness has only raised suspicion. Without evidence for the contrary, many have concluded that the CCP is carrying out the cultural genocide of Uighurs. So, the counter-protesters’ rationale betrays a more disturbing viewpoint. For them, love for the country means loyalty to the government. Attacks on the CCP, for that group of Mainlanders,

were attacks on them as Chinese people. The CCP itself has drawn similar equivalencies between the state and individual; when anti-ELAB protesters in Hong Kong defaced the Chinese emblem with ink, a CCP spokesperson claimed that this “hurt the nation’s feelings.” Genuine love for the country should translate to love for the country’s citizens. Symbols are inanimate. Territory is impermanent. Governments can be arbitrary. The people are the beating heart of a nation. It is confounding that those counter-protesters, who claimed to be patriots, were not the first to raise their voices against the maltreatment of their compatriots. Instead, they ignored the protesters’ demands, which reflected fears about the rights and safety of Hongkongers and Uighurs. To re-establish “unity”, they mimicked on an Australian campus the CCP’s modus operani against dissidents: force and intimidation. But the protest itself did not create disunity in China. The protest was symptomatic of disunity.

Outside the controlled discourse of their homeland, these counter-protesters are in the perfect position to engage with those fighting against the CCP. The presence of Mainland allies in the anti-ELAB crowd reflects as much. In Australia, the counter-protesters have an opportunity to hear what Hongkongers and Uighurs think about the CCP. They can empathise with the dissenters and become conscious of their shared political struggles. Ultimately, they can learn that criticism of their government is not incompatible with their patriotism. Criticism can even express that patriotism. The UQ counter-protesters betrayed the deepest irony of their “patriotism” on 24 July. Attempting to drown out the protesters, they blared the Chinese national anthem on a boom box. But the first line of the anthem declares, “Get up, you who refuse to be slaves.” If anything, that is the call to which the anti-CCP protesters responded. The invitation is open to all.

brave new world

Grace Fu

Through steel doors: Wom*n at odds with Australia's prison system CW: This article deals with experieneces of incarceration, as well as sexual assault, domestic violence, mental health, violence and substance dependency.

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he arrives by truck handcuffed, and is walked directly into a gated reception. It’s stark and quiet and the space echoes. The walls are white and fluorescent and the air smells like disinfectant and something else that the disinfectant was meant to kill. She is led into a cell and asked to take off her clothing, squat, open her mouth and run her hands through her hair. For the next three weeks she remains in induction while awaiting classification. Sounds of the cement block, a cough, a scream, a fight, are amplified by the hollow spaces. She has been given a garbage bag on entry with track pants, plastic cutlery and a pair of white volleys, the closest size that will fit. Inside and outside her cell it is volatile and violent. A wom*n with which she shares a bunk bashes her head against the cell wall into the early hours of the morning. She has been given one Panadol caplet for the severe drug withdrawal symptoms that plague her system. If they’re not violent the days are mostly empty, moving from one basic space to another - the food is carb-filled, wom*n fight over the two TV channels available in the lounge, the yard is cemented and the wom*n walk in circles for sunlight and exercise. * * * Little is publicly known about the devastating effects of incarceration in Australia. By its very nature, prison

withholds people from the communities from which they came, preventing them from accessing rehabilitation and preventing the public from any belief that they should have the right to. Currently, the number of prisons in Australia and the number of inmates they hold are steadily rising while the national crime rate continues to fall. Wom*n in Australian prisons make up only 8% of the incarcerated population yet the rates at which the number of new wom*n are imprisoned is rising by 38% annually. Statistically, communities are the safest they have ever been, yet strict bail laws ensure that wom*n fall into the prison system quicker and easier than ever before. Additionally, more women are in prisons for shorter stays often on remand, awaiting sentencing. In New South Wales (NSW), the number of wom*n in prisons is the highest of any other state with a total of 996 wom*n incarcerated in 2018 in NSW alone. One day in prison is enough to ruin a wom*n’s life, and, with the destruction that these stays cause, the likelihood of a wom*n returning to prison once she has first entered is high. The narrative expressed earlier is Kat Armstrong’s experience of incarceration, a wom*n, mentor and advocate, who has moved in and out of prison for ten

By Nell O'Grady and Liam Thorne Artwork by Olivia Allanson years. Her story is not unique and her voice, and many voices like hers, are commonly unheard or regularly disregarded. Prisons themselves prevent wom*n like Kat from accessing rehabilitation and the government behind them fails to both allocate funding for the supportive programs needed and structure those support methods effectively. The prison system is devoid of support and oppresses based on gender, class and race. This is why wom*n’s experiences must be highlighted. The structure of these institutions inherently disadvantage them and their issues are made invisible, pushed aside and shrouded in a much larger discourse of incarceration. For Indigenous wom*n embroiled in this system, the structure and methods of these environments are particularly devastating. For them, prison environments enhance a broader narrative of cultural dispossession. This is a depiction of stories of Australian wom*n who have been incarcerated. It outlines only some of the injustices often concealed and warped by government and media. It does not encapsulate the experience of imprisoned men, nor do we, as writers, attempt to encompass all the perspectives and issues facing each wom*n who has been incarcerated either - this in hindsight would simply be far too big a task.

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F E AT U R E Instead, we observe the commonalities of some of these wom*n’s experiences which make clear the inherent flaws in these hidden, ancient and damaging structures. To observe the work of organisations and advocates in this field is to also understand that the labor they are taking on is at odds with the government, which continues to fund the construction of new prisons without the distribution of program or rehabilitation support to go inside them. * * * For wom*n in particular, there are gendered dynamics to the patterns and structures of incarceration that further damage those kept in its confinements. Kat spent her first night trying to stop the wom*n with which she shared her cell from “exposing her brains against the wall.” Having been in prison before, Kat knew not to ask these officers for assistance. “They will just laugh at you,” she said. If other women in the prison were to hear you, you would be punished by the wom*n for your weakness. “You have to automatically know this whole policy and politics level of what you can and can’t do. There’s no book, there’s no one telling you what to do and it’s a very volatile and violent area.” The cells in which these wom*n are placed destroy any sense of privacy from fellow prisoners or male prison officers. A lack of access to exercise, daylight, fitted clothing and an abundance of high carbohydrate filled food finds some wom*n unable to recognise their own weight gain. These wom*n have been displaced, wiped of any personal belongings and, unless they have money when they enter a cell, have no access to communication and subsequently to family or to their children. The Arunta phone system is the only connection line allowed for those wealthy enough to afford to be in contact with their family. “When you come into induction, you’re given a sheet of paper with 6 contact numbers on that list, so in three weeks if that Arunta system is set up and you have money you are able to make a call,” said Kat. The effect of this is enormous for wom*n. “If you have children in your care and you haven’t been able to phone them or tell them you’re in custody, more often than not they are lost to children and community services. Family members usually do the stressing and the searching themselves to try and find out where those women are. If you’re estranged from family, people might not know for six months where you are,” said Kat.

A lack of communication is just as damaging to the educative rehabilitation of criminalised wom*n as it is to their family ties. Kat Armstrong commenced a law degree while in prison. An application to commence studies for Kat was outstretched and restricted. You are regularly told “stop bothering us with these applications...you’ll always be in and out of gaol.” Volunteer organisations like Justice Action, a group that fights for the legal, communication and education rights of incarcerated individuals, strive to deliver those studying while incarcerated with the academic resources they require. At the same time, wom*n like Kat have their books thrown into the garbage by prison guards on duty. “I was waiting on my law books which academics had organised to be delivered to me and I was wondering why I still hadn’t received them yet,” said Kat. The only reason Kat found out this was occurring was because a fellow inmate whose job it was to clean and sweep the mail room, found them in the garbage and smuggled them back into Kat’s cell. “This is what we’re up against,” Kat said. “We’re regularly told that we’re hopeless if we want to progress.” Prison is, for the most part, undramatic and stagnant, damagingly so, with unimaginable bursts of violence

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and conflict. The first stage of entry, a space in which up to 60 wom*n are held, many on remand, is called induction. “Induction is a really volatile, violent area where you have the majority of women withdrawing from drugs, many are experiencing extreme mental health issues and I don’t mean just stress. I mean serious mental collapse due to withdrawal symptoms,” said Kat. For the twenty-four hours of the day that wom*n remain locked in these buildings they are herded from place to place with little consequence and overwhelmingly repetitive patterns. They are removed from their cells to an open space to eat, sent to a communal TV room “where wom*n fight over the two television channels available” for several hours. They’re walked in circles in the yard for exercise, heavily watched and regulated. They are returned to their cells in the early afternoon where they remain until 7:30 when they will repeat the arduous process again. These processes are completely dehumanising, devoid of purpose and energy. They can and do gradually derail personal autonomy. These communal environments wipe wom*n who have been incarcerated from their rights to privacy and safety. They are packed in, trapped in a cyclical environment, devoid of transformation, communication or support which contributes to their dehumanisation. These wom*n’s bodily autonomy are almost completely removed in the process of these systems. “Being strip searched, especially if you’re a victim of sexual assault which I have been, is a really horrible experience,” said Kat Armstrong. For those triggered by physical touch or association, the knowledgeable professionals required are simply not provided. Silverwater prison for example holds up to 300 women and up to 60 women in induction at any one time with two psychologists on hand,” Kat told us. At this stage, prison environments are volatile and devoid of this kind of specific support. Statistics provided by Justice Action suggest that in 2017, of the wom*n that entered prisons in Australia, 61% suffer from depression and 51% from anxiety, while 70% have witnessed a traumatic event and 71% have been in an abusive relationship. These statistics are almost too overwhelming to personalise — they paint a picture of a group of people who, in the early parts of their life, have likely suffered terrible experiences, causing complex trauma. We do not have access to statistics confirming whether these wom*n accessed medical support for their conditions. However it does not seem to be a far cry to suggest in many cases this would be unlikely, making prisons one of, if not the first, sustained contact they have with state support services. From those we spoke to, it seems as though prisons only abate the complex traumas and severe mental health problems wom*n often enter with. Kaz Zinetti is completing a masters in criminology and criminal justice, and both volunteers as a mentor for, and participates in research projects with the Women’s Justice Network (WJN), which provides support and mentorship for wom*n in and upon release from Australian prisons. She has also had personal engagement with the prison system earlier in her life. For Kaz, trans and gender-diverse women face structural disadvantages before entering prison, and may not have access to required health care resources. “Prisons are generally not the place for those with severe mental health issues.” Kaz points out that, considering how high incidences of domestic violence are for wom*n, and the debilitating impact that trauma can have, wom*n are effectively “criminalised [by the Australian justice system] through responding to acts of violence perpetrated against them.” In a context where prisons are themselves a common source of trauma, there seems to be a particular injustice when those same prisons do not provide adequate mental health support for the wom*n within them. A 2014 paper presented to the NSW Parliament by the Community Justice Coalition and Women in Prison Advocacy Network, indicated that only “two out of the seven women’s prison facilities in NSW offer sexual assault programs.” Run by qualified professionals and independent of prison staff, the wom*n who

participated reported high satisfaction with their care. However, these programs were only pilots and therefore of a small scale. “They were insufficiently accessible for the number of women in prison who are in need of sexual assault counseling across the State,” the paper remarked. The inadequacies of gender-unique health care provision extend far further than mental health services. Kaz considers herself a particular advocate for the rights of LGBTQI prisoners, given her personal connection to the community, and the fact that they receive disproportionately little attention. Kaz tells us that, transgender or gender diverse women may find it incredibly difficult to get access to appropriate transition treatment or specialists. Additionally, even if there was sufficient political good-will, it would still be difficult to fix such problems: Australian prisons record prisoner information using binary gender-classifications and documentation. Prisons continue to subject wom*n to harsh prison conditions. Those wom*n have been criminalised, at least in-part, due to their history of complex trauma, or membership of minority communities. All the while, despite being in the care of the state, they are not given the health-care one would imagine be prioritised in an otherwise rehabilitative justice system. * * * Wom*n’s health and wellbeing has been made invisible in society for hundreds of years. The wider narrative of a disassociated community that patriarchally ignores or disregards the welfare of wom*n is made more serious and measurable for women facing intersectional oppression. They are generally deemed the most hysteric, undeserved, worthless and outcasted of all wom*n. As a harsher and more invasive microcosm of this country’s broader cultural narrative, Australian prisons enhance this mentality. A community and government driven strive to “lock em up” is also an excuse to distance ourselves from a select few that perhaps require the most societal support. Prisons are not making the community safer, as many would believe, because wom*n are not made

F E AT U R E better by the system. They are released back into the community with the trauma of their experience in prison — short or long — stacked atop any trauma they may have accumulated throughout their lives. Kat Armstrong tells us, “You shouldn’t come out of the system more damaged than when you went in.” A rise in media representation of wom*n in prison has seen our national broadcaster begin to air programs depicting the lives of the rehabilitated criminalised wom*n. However, the profiles remain hollow, devoid of the truly devastating realities of daily life in prisons and their lingering effects. There is still little understanding of the ironically criminal violence and trauma that grows behind these government funded bars. “They’re not talking to people like me,” Kat tells us. “Until people get the direct honest insight of what prison does to somebody of how harmful, how negative and how oppressive it is, they’re happy to ignore the idea that people are locked up in this way.” Perhaps there’s also a level of wilful inadvertance in how the community disassociates itself from those who are incarcerated, branding them as ‘hopeless criminals.’ Without the support of governments, smaller organisations, often wholly consisting of volunteers and previously incarcerated individuals, are left to resolve the destructive aftermath of the prison system. Surely it should not be their responsibility. * * * While those in prisons suffer quietly, battling for public sympathy, upon leaving, many wom*n find themselves falling further into obscurity. Speaking to Ally Colquitt, who spent time in prison, is a graduate of the Women’s Justice Network and now is a member of their advisory panel, we got an idea of the personal difficulties wom*n go through trying to re-enter society. Ally, now 35, grew up around alcoholism in her Coffs Harbour home. Although she drank from 14, she did well in school and aspired to continue studying at university. After dropping out, she found herself working in alcohol-centered jobs, and eventually developed a drug dependency. She was arrested in 2015, at age 31, for drug-related offenses. Though her life until then was not merely defined by drug and alcoholconsumption, Ally says that their influence explains much of why she was inevitably criminalised. Ally now has a community services diploma, and helps shape WJN to be a positive influence in the lives of those they mentor and advise. She hopes to set up an art program for kids with behavioural problems, who might have already had contact with the juvenile prison system. Ally is very open in comparing the details of her situation to many wom*n she was incarcerated with or now works amongst, whether that be her ongoing battle with substance addiction or the trauma associated with contact with the justice system. Despite being criminalised as the result of her dependencies, she received very little rehabilitative support. The Intensive Drug and Alcohol Treatment (IDAT) program that runs in NSW prisons is often only available to those with “severe” dependency issues, with “a history of repeat offenses and drug related crime.” When Ally referred herself to the IDAT program in her prison, she was a first time offender, who had never been in rehabilitation and so was deemed ineligible for the program. When Ally was released in 2017, she was still battling substance addiction, and it was only with the support of the WJN that she was able to find a substantial rehabilitation service to help her engage her addiction. “It felt like no one wanted to help me,” Ally recounts. “When you’re reaching out for help and getting nothing, it is really hope-destroying.” All the advocates we spoke to told a similar story to Ally’s: parole officers tasked with helping wom*n find stable housing, employment, health services, and education are overwhelmed to the point where they are not able to provide sufficient case-management. Beyond inadequate funding, parole also seems particularly inflexible for the unique constraints of wom*n with children. Kaz explains that some women’s

parole breaches may be a result of being primary caregivers of children. Inflexible parole requirements can easily force mothers who need to care for their children to risk recidivism, a pertinent case of the criminal justice system’s inattentiveness to the gendered expectations of parenthood. This all takes place in a broader process that displaces already vulnerable wom*n from their families and communities, in many cases also aggravating existing complex trauma. In Ally’s case, her WJN mentor — a social work student from the University of New South Wales — was allowed by corrective services to form a relationship with her, and then provide both friendship and handson support once Ally left prison. Where corrective services is merely able to “house women, [rather than] fix their lives”, Ally suggests the WJN empowered her, and told her that she was “capable.” Where national statistics for female recidivism sit around 45%, the wom*n that engaged with the WJN sit at a rate of almost 7%. For Ally, this is because, unlike corrective services, the WJN takes a holistic approach to supporting criminalised wom*n, rather than punishing them for their vulnerabilities. * * * Those in the WJN are by no means the only people that recognise the insufficiencies or internal contradictions of Australia’s current approach to criminal justice. Amongst those we did speak with, and those we were unable to, there was a mosaic of political organisations. All of them were responding to the same crisis: wom*n left forgotten as they are scorned by the cyclical criminal justice system in Australia. While the WJN and Women’s Legal Service assist women affected by criminalisation, other organisations focus on intervention prior to criminalisation taking place. Debbie Kilroy, the founder of Sisters Inside, is currently operating a campaign to stop West Australian (WA) wom*n being prisoned for unpaid fines, operating off the logic that poverty should not be a reason for criminalisation. As of 4 August 2019, the fundraiser stood at $426 677, and she continues to lobby the WA Attorney General John Quigley to reform the laws in question. Heartbreaking but high profile stories of women like Ms Dhu, who died in a WA watch house she was being held in for unpaid fines, have sparked media attention, energising discussions about the need for the abolition of prisons as a tool of law enforcement. There are also organisations which spend their resources lobbying against the broader justice approach

being taken, arguing for system reforms that embrace less-punitive and more compassionate approaches to those vulnerable groups currently being criminalised. In addition to prisoner support, Sisters Inside have also hosted conferences for policy discussion around prison abolition, and alternate justice approaches. In November 2018, the 9th international Imagining Abolition Conference brought people to Brisbane to discuss the “failure of prison reform; over-imprisonment of First Nations people; systemic racism and sexism; state violence and deaths in custody”, amongst many other topics. Such discussions often involve many wom*n who have had experience with the justice system themselves, and aim to stamp out the information deficits that exist in broader society. The picture of these groups cannot properly be encapsulated within the scope of one article. However, commonalities exist between individuals and organisations. These advocates recognise that a great deal of problems exist in the status quo of the Australian criminal justice. Some are more willing to openly make a prison-abolitionist argument. Others respect these arguments, and openly praise the work of abolitionists like Debbie Kilroy, but see there being a trade-off in how they personally can spend their energy, thus choosing to instead intervene in the lives of wom*n suffering in the cycle of criminalisation. Together, however, these groups form a broader movement of people, comprised largely of those with lived experience in the justice system themselves, who work tirelessly and often thanklessly to respond and organise against the structural failings of Australian prisons. Of course, they can be nowhere near as effective without the centralised powers or immense capital of a government. To cease the endless cycle of criminalisation that ravages the lives of indigenous, low SES, trauma-impacted wom*n all across Australia, there would need to be sweeping systematic changes to the options courts use when presented with vulnerable people who have broken laws. Until those changes are won, however, the Australian public must know the harm prisons continue to inflict upon wom*n.

We would like to thank the following people for sharing the knowledge and experiences that brought this article together: Kat Armstrong, Michelle Bennett, Brett Collins, Ally Colquitt, Gloria Larman, Dr. Chin Jou and Kaz Zinnetti.

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A N A LY S I S

B

eing one of India’s largest cultural exports, Bollywood has undeniably played a major role in shaping the national identity and international image of India. The cultural pervasivity is almost inescapable, as the industry’s biggest stars can be seen plastered on every street. They populate the public consciousness, making appearances in every form of media from soap commercials to being the owners of popular IPL cricket teams. Each language in India has its own film industry with its own cult following of prolific actors. These amount to around 28 unique industries, representing a different language or dialect and producing around 200 films per year. This creates an idiosyncratic climate where there are usually 5-6 films of different origin playing in the same theatre. However, behind the glitz and glamour, there is an element to Bollywood that is inherently detrimental to

the cultural diversity of what was once a multifarious film industry. The often normative effect that Bollywood plays on smaller Indian screen cultures such as Tollywood (the Telugu film industry) and Kollywood (the Tamil film industry) and the advent of the “Masala” film genre has diluted the once thriving and unique film industries. Coupled with this, the industry is plagued with rampant plagiarism, with some plots being directly lifted from Hollywood, and even entire songs being stolen to be produced as a degraded rendition. Furthermore, individuals are able to make entire careers out of these practices profiting immensely by India’s relaxed to non-existent copyright laws. The immense amount of cultural hegemony that the Bollywood industry holds is reflected in the normative effect that it bears on all other film industries: it is often the case that other Indian film industries take after Bollywood specifically in terms of format and style, adapting as many elements as they can to mirror Bollywood film. This wasn’t always the case. In the early stages of Indian cinema, each language developed its own unique industry for film. The Indian film industry was birthed in the midst of a British Raj (Colonial India): beginning in the art of silent films, it then inspired filmmakers

around the country to create their own visions in this artform. Many of the plots of these films drew from ancient poems, folklore and traditional plays from Parsi and traditional Hindu theatre. Dadasaheb Phalke was the first to produce a full length film, and is considered the original pioneer of Indian cinema. His movie Raja Harishchandra (1913), depicted a religious parable and set the precedent for most early films bringing religious narratives to the screen. The film premiered in Mumbai with intertitles produced in Hindi, English and Marathi. On the 15th of June, 1947, India achieved independence from the British Empire, also separating Pakistan as its own independent nation. As a consequence, the culture and arts sector of the country dove into what is considered the ‘Golden Age’ of Bollywood cinema. Filmmakers depicted themes of working life, urban social struggles, political conflicts — it painted the new India that was anti-colonial and independent, in its own unique cultural brush. Notable classics include Pyaasa (1957) by Guru Dutt, which depicts the

multifaceted cultural and linguistic groups. The Tamil industry had its own equivalent in Kollywood, as with the Telugu industry in Tollywood. Tollywood, in particular, saw its roots in the renowned director Raghupati Venkaiah who is considered the father of Telugu film. The 1930s saw the beginning of a large following in Telugu films, propelling the film, its actors and directors into the mainstream. Telugu films would often centre around heavily politicised plots, delving into revolutionary undertones, even going insofar as to depict uprisings against the British Raj and highlighting the social friction spurred by the caste system. Raithu Bidda, produced in 1939 by Gudavalli Ramabraham, explored the historical uprising of peasants against their aristocratic landowners who were particularly powerful due to their relationship with British colonial imperialists who bestowed them ‘princes’. This film was banned by the British Raj. However by the time the 1950s and 1960s rolled around, the films became evidently less provocative, and appealed more to undemanding

In the early stages of Indian cinema, each language developed its own unique industry for film. romance between a struggling poet and a sex worker. Another exemplar is Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420, produced in 1955, illustrating the wishful hopes of a young boy from country Allahabad who pursues his dreams in the big city. The popularity of film in India was also evident in the flourishing of films that were produced by, and for, its

plotlines, jovial theatrics and music, and heroic male protagonists. Yet an almost cultural renaissance emerged during the 70’s and 80’s where movies such as Sankarabharanam and Maa Bhoomi reignited the social and political genre of film that was once thought to be extinct. These films were landmark developments within the industry creating a distinct brand for Telugu films. Despite a history of unique and vibrant film cultures, the once diverse industries slowly started producing the same genre of film over and over again, the “Masala” film. The advent of this type of film revolutionised not just its progenitor, Bollywood, but all Indian film industries, setting the tone for films for the next five decades to come.

A N A LY S I S

It was first experimented with in the mid 1970’s in films such as Sholay (1975), where it became wildly successful. This type of film became increasingly popular during the 90’s to such a large extent that almost every other genre, bar horror, was choked out of theatres. By the turn of the century, films under this genre, such as Munna Bhai MBBS, Rang De Basanti and Dhoom, were wildly successful.

from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) and proceeded to be well received by the largely unaware audiences at the time. This is but one of many plagiarised films and, according to one study, there are well over 300 films that have been plagiarised. This practice is in fact becoming even more prevalent despite the tightening of copyright laws. The lucrative nature of plagiarised

This predatory practice of feeding unknowing audiences repackaged and stolen media is even more prevalent in the Bollywood music industry. Almost all industries picked up this genre and started producing such films en masse, creating the formulaic homogeneity that Indian films are all too well-known for in the present day. This was all at the expense of killing off the unique subcultures that each industry had developed. The rapid adoption and extreme saturation of the “Masala” genre can be linked to many factors, the most obvious being the cultural capital that Hindi has in India; it was once a language only spoken in the north of India and the rest of the populus was not privy to the language or had no exposure to it. This allowed for distinct cultures to emerge in their own language bubbles in each region, a phenomenon reflected in the film industries early on each language had its own screen culture. In more recent times, the blurring of cultural lines via the advent of instant communication and the increasing cultural hegemony of Hindi has resulted in film industries taking a similarly normative turn, caving into demands from audiences who crave the next “Bollywood style film” in their own language. Along with the domineering effect that Bollywood has on its sister industries, it has also fallen prey to a dangerous practice of plagiarism. This phenomenon is relatively new, originating in the 1970s often stealing from prolific Hollywood films, taking all but the actors and language. An early example of this practice was Dharmata (1975) where the plot was taken

films attracts many directors as it is relatively low effort to steal the script of another successful film, and box office success is already assured. One such director is Vikram Bhatt, director of Raaz (2002), a remake of What Lies Beneath (2000), and Kasoor (2001), a remake of Jagged Edge (1985). Bhatt has blamed the audiences and their desire for ‘American culture’ and pressure from the producers wanting multiple blockbuster films within months of each other, stating, “Financially, I would be more secure knowing that a particular piece of work has already done well at the box office. Copying is endemic everywhere in India. Our TV shows are adaptations of American programmes. We want their films, their cars, their planes, their Diet Cokes and also their attitude. The American way of life is creeping into our culture.” This predatory practice of feeding unknowing audiences repackaged and stolen media is even more prevalent in the Bollywood music industry. Despite their immense popularity, the Indian music industry had no hesitation in directly plagiarising iconic foreign songs such as

Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’, the ‘Macarena’, the main theme from The Godfather, and ABBA’s ‘Fernando’. It was no coincidence that this explosion of plagiarism was set off after the introduction of cable television in India. It made the hegemonic US film industry far more accessible to the populus, with cultural homogenising an inevitable consequence. This phenomenon seeps through the fabric of arts and culture in India. The lack of artistic integrity that pervades the mainstream entertainment industry begs the question as to why such practices are allowed to occur. The industries are undeniably nepotistic in their functioning — actors are cast by their own family, films funded by royalty and dynastic family powers. Ultimately, at the root of Bollywood’s unabashed plagiarism lies profit. The international film world in the late 80’s and 90’s had not yet familiarised themselves with the still obscure Indian film industry. This brewed the perfect conditions for money-centric industries to easily appropriate blockbusters and turn them into their own, only with Indian actors speaking Hindi rather than English. Under Section 52 of The Copyright Act 1957 of the Indian Constitution, an individual may reuse copyrighted work, if limited and used for specific purposes. This vague and

easily manipulated law has irrevocably been jumped over by Bollywood, time and time again. The Indian film industry has undertaken many transformations, adapting to its constantly transforming, international context. However, it has been distastefully mired in both its Bollywood centric prevalence and the rampant plagiarism that has diluted originality and artistic creativity. Having its beginnings in the British Raj, to finally being liberated from its colonial bindings, and eventually entering the capitalist boom as a major world power, the artistic achievements of the country’s most prolific and game changing filmmakers and actors should be applauded. Films serve to reflect the world around us, and India’s best films have driven cultural, social, political boundaries to achieve just that. Art by Amelia Mertha and Grace Fu

M U LT I L I N G UA L

关于咖啡的一些常识 Jinsen Guo 因中国国内奶茶比咖啡更盛行，很多留学生 们对咖啡都不是特别感兴 趣，即使中国星巴克咖啡 深受欢迎，大多数人去星 巴克也都是点饮品。实际 上无论国内还是澳洲的星 巴克咖啡，都不能被称之 为专业的咖啡，甚至还会 被咖啡师们嗤之以鼻。大 家一定很好奇，专业的咖 啡到底是什么意思，为什 么他跟星巴克的咖啡会有所不同？那么今天我 就给大家做个详细的介绍。 首先，澳洲的主要土地由于气候影响不是 非常适合生产咖啡豆，所以基本上市面上能见 到的咖啡豆，百分之90%的原材料都来源于进 口。目前专业咖啡店里最主流的咖啡豆有以下 几种：Single O, Campos, Mecca, Toby’s Estate, Pablo and Rusty’s. 不同的咖啡豆会在细微方面 影响咖啡的口感，但一般来说非专业人士是无 法喝出区别的。普通人区别咖啡的方法无非就 是靠品尝，看看到底他是太苦了还是太淡了。 但是其实这种分辨方法是存在偏见的。有

Art by Shrawani Bhattarai

些咖啡店对咖啡的口感做了控制，所以使得咖 啡味道会淡一些或者浓一些，并不能代表咖啡 质量的好坏。总体上来说，咖啡豆是不存在好 坏区分的，重要的是这个咖啡加工厂对咖啡豆 的打磨。比如我个人认为，类似于Campos和 Toby’s Estate的咖啡豆，有时候还没有小众的 咖啡厂烤出来的咖啡豆好，其中的原因可以归 咎于因为这两个牌子的咖啡豆市场需求量比较 大，所以它们无法从细节上追求高品质的咖啡 豆。当然，每个人都有自己不同的喜好和口 味，比如我自己比较偏爱淡一些的咖啡。 目前澳洲喝的最多的基本上就是Flat White和Latte这两种咖啡了，有很多人觉 得它们喝上去是一模一样的口感，所以很 好奇为什么咖啡店里要将这两款咖啡区分 开来。Flat White首先跟Latte在味道上是有 区别的，这两种咖啡的奶咖混合比例是不同 的。Latte一般情况下是比Flat White更具有 奶香味的，因为Flat White的调制标准是按照 1: 1制作的。这也就是为什么如果你们仔细 观察，Latte的咖啡杯上的奶泡会比Flat White 的要厚一些。总体上来说，Flat White的口感会 更加的丝滑柔顺。

不得不承认，喝咖啡是真的会上瘾。我刚开 始的时候，从一天只喝一杯咖啡，到现在一天 最少要3-4杯。有研究证明，咖啡每天只能喝一 定的量，喝太多了就会对身体产生负面影响。 最直接的就是长期喝咖啡会导致牙齿变黄，原 因是由于咖啡其中所含有的一种叫单宁酸的物 质，他是深棕色的。其次，咖啡里的钾，草 酸，咖啡因，是会让身体里的钙流失以及使身 体内的高血糖保持更长的时间。 一天最佳的喝咖啡量是两杯，四杯以内 都不会对身体产生任何的影响。在这里我 指的是专业咖啡，不是超市里买的 那种速溶类型。当然，也有人天生 就对咖啡因敏感，所以如果出现在喝 咖啡后有不稳定心跳或者腹痛等症状 的就尽量不要喝咖啡。 很多时候，在学业工作压力大的情况 下，同学们都会通过大量的喝咖啡来保持精 神，在忙的时候甚至可以达到一天和8-10杯 咖啡的情况。 再次我提倡大家能尽量少喝速溶咖啡，现磨 咖啡在总体上来说对身体危害更小，含糖率更 低。

通过调查发现， 校园内Epic Tea奶茶店出现克扣员工工资的现象 原文: Carrie Wen and Alan Zheng Epic Tea奶茶店位于悉尼大学Jane Foss Russell 广场，里面工作的国际留学生告诉Honi Soit， 他们的工资是每小时12至14澳元之间，并且没 有工资单，退休金和书面合同。 奶茶店的员工表示他们在培训期间每小时的 工资为12澳元，培训时间在某些情况下长达一 周之久，转正之后每小时的工资为14澳元。这 些收入每周是以现金的方式被支付，没有任何 的养老金的缴纳。 在一个案例中，一名因害怕失去工作 而选择匿名的同学告诉Honi，她曾 经得到18刀每小时的时薪，仅 仅是因为她与Epic Tea 的母公司Eternal Passion有关联。 这些资远远低 于国家最低的 工资标准以及 快餐业的薪 酬规定，年 龄在21 岁及

14

翻译: Yazhi Xue

以上雇员的每小时工资26.76澳币。 据接受调查的员工称，Epic Tea公司还拒绝 向员工发放工资单。这些员工表示，他们对自 己的退休金福利一直一无所知。根据澳洲公平 交易委员会（Fair Trading）条例，不提供工资 单的雇主可能会被罚款。 与Honi交谈的学生当中，没有人与Epic Tea 或者 Eternal Passion 公司签订雇佣合约。 Epic Tea及其前身Easyway自2009年以来 一直是悉尼大学董事会（University of Sydney Union，USU）的租户。据澳大利亚证券投资 委员会（Australian Securities and Investments Commission）持有的公司摘录显示，去年年 底，该店的管理层发生了变化，特许经营者接 管了该店的责任。与此同时，Easyway在全国 范围内更名为Epic Tea, 成为同样拥有甜品连锁 店-鲜芋仙的跨国企业Eternal Passion 管理的系 列饮料品牌之一。 早在2017年Honi的一次调查中发现，员工的 时薪只有10澳元。随后USU发现，Easyway之所 以对其员工合法的支付工资，是因为某些餐饮 的薪资设定存在漏洞，允许员工在长达三个月 的培训期间获得70%的工资。 员工在接受调查时表达了焦虑和冷漠的情 绪。一些人因害怕会影响他们在奶茶店继 续工作，而选择拒绝Honi的调查。一名 员工表示，校园其实存在了大量的工资 低于合法要求的问题，包括Wentworth Building美食广场在内的其他校园商 铺，据说也存在雇主克扣工资的情 况。 USU主席Connor Wherrett告诉 Honi, USU“极其严肃”地对待自己 的法律责任，并已开始调查Epic Tea。 “上周的董事会 已确认，我们将 与包括大学在 内的其他校园 机构合作， 以更好地向 学生们通 报这一情

况。我们要走的第一步就是教育学生克扣工资 完全等于偷窃。” 就在上周，USU发布了一份通知，提醒Epic Tea和其他租户他们的法律义务。 虽然克扣工资的行为是违法的，但这却允许 国际学生逃避他们学生签证的某些条件，其中 包括每两周限制40小时的工作时间。不过，这 有违反签证条件和被驱逐出境的风险。举报商 家克扣工资，可能也会间接承认自己违反了学 生签证的条件，使国际学生特别容易受到工资 盗窃和工作场所剥削的影响。 悉尼大学的一名国际留学生与Honi分享了她 两年前在日出茶太的工作经历。她提到，在为 期一个月的试用期间，她的工资是每小时10澳 元，之后是每小时13澳元。 “我们是廉价劳动力，被剥削，而且我们的 收入严重被克扣。” “老板也是悉尼大学的国际学生。她却故意 雇佣刚到澳大利亚的学生，因为他们不了解政 府规定的员工工作权利。” 这名同学随后向日出茶太奶茶店的总部投 诉，但并没有收到任何的回复。 在餐厅老板George Calombaris向他的餐厅 员工克扣了780万澳币之后，Epic Tea也被发 现克扣员工工资的现象。同时据澳洲主流媒体 Fairfax 对日出茶太的一项全国性调查显示，国 际留学生员工的工资被盗数达到数百万澳元。 Honi 邀请Eternal Passion公司，对克扣工资 的情况作出解释，截止到本刊出版时并没有收 到任何回复。 __________________ 如果你不清楚你在澳洲的合法工资是多少，使 用这里的工资计算器，计算你的合法薪酬。或 致电澳洲公平交易委员会（Fair Trading）的电 话13 13 94 （如需口译员，请先致电131450与口 译服务部联系）。 悉尼大学的学生代表委员会（SRC）还为所 有学生提供免费的法律服务。 你可以在这里阅 读其雇佣法的概况。 你如果也有关于学校雇主非法克扣员工工资 的消息， 也可以向我们进行匿名举报，我们会 严格保密。

大权在握的圣上， 大权旁落的傀儡 Max Zhuili 讲述宋徽宗的双重形象。 在常人的眼中，宋徽宗赵佶是一位杰出的艺术 家，同时也是一位著名的亡国之君，“宋徽宗诸 事皆能，独不能为君耳”一语，亦为众津津乐 道。不过，这句话是从《池北偶谈》截取，其 后还有一句：周正夫说宋仁宗什么都不会，就 只会做皇帝。这种安排，实际是传统文学的笔 法，意在点慧帝王之术，若作摇头晃脑之用， 便可爱得惹人嗤笑。根据《宋史》对宋徽宗的 评价，这位特殊的亡国之君不可归于一般的昏 君、暴君或傀儡皇帝。那么宋徽宗到底是一位 怎样的皇帝呢？ 概括而言，宋徽宗的政治生涯分为四个阶 段：第一阶段（1100-1102）是宋徽宗发迹的阶 段；第二阶段（1103-1110）是宋徽宗巩固皇权 的阶段；第三阶段（1111-1125）是宋徽宗稳定 专权的阶段；第四阶段（1126）是宋徽宗统治 终结的阶段。本文详写第一阶段中宋徽宗夺得 皇权的过程，其他阶段则略写。本文主体内容 引自《宋史》与《续资治通鉴》，细节加注原 文出处。 1100年2月23日，宋哲宗赵煦23岁英年早 逝，没有儿子。此时距离北宋灭亡还有27年， 而自庆历新政以来的北宋党争已经持续了57 年，但所幸四朝皇帝都熟谙皇权的自律和对官 僚派系的制衡，所以到哲宗时，北宋尚能对 外保持战略主动，对内保持政局稳定。宋徽宗 此时是端王，18岁，丧母。他政治生涯的启程 是相对偶然的，一因哲宗的早逝无子，二因章 惇与向太后双方对峙，三因他自己的聪明与天 分。这些既是幸运，又是不幸。 章惇，前朝元老，控制核心官僚。生卒年有 争议，此时年龄在67岁左右，性格高傲凶狠， 《挥麈后录》说他是私生子出身。此前他主政 期间，对内对外均采用强硬政策，控舆论、兴 宫狱、废皇后、征西夏，这既让他大权在握， 又让他树敌朝野。向太后，哲宗嫡母（非生 母），是北宋历史上女性政治人物代表，当年 其联合“北宋武则天”高太后扶持哲宗以庶子的 身份成功继位，此时年龄约55岁。徽宗发迹， 便从章惇和向太后的对决开始。 皇帝驾崩后，章惇和向太后成为帝国核心 的候选人。政治斗争争分夺秒，章惇火速拿下 热门储君——申王赵佖和简王赵似，向太后则 另辟蹊径选取丧母的端王赵佶。政治需要创 造力。在回答立储这道政治问题时，章惇将所 有的选项都选上，向太后则在题目中增加一个 选项，两人都不走寻常路。随后，向太后紧急 召开朝议，以至于章惇没有时间事先统一大臣 内部的政治意见。政治需要懂得“先”。先不是 快，而是掌握主动。 根据《宋史》记载：向太后故作姿态说自己 原欲选申王为储，但因其眼部有疾病而不得不 支持形象良好的端王。中国帝国时期立储时， 候选者的身体缺陷是一个模棱两可的问题，向 太后这番说辞实际上是在暗示群臣自己要一心 扶持端王，并非临然起意。章惇未预料到端王 候选，露怯，气急败坏，强推二王。当庭的大 臣见章惇失态，纷纷变脸支持太后。蔡卞先行 翻脸，这是史家笔法暗喻新宠到来，曾布后发 斥难，这是元老站队暗示章惇无回天之力。龙 虎相斗，倚仰天时，章惇与向太后水平相当， 则向太后必然胜利，因为章惇只是官僚领袖， 而向太后是皇室代表，可官僚需要的是放权的 人，而不是争权的人。向太后顺势用先帝评价 为端王竖起道德的大旗，章惇默然。 与《宋史》的本纪、赞和章惇传中记载不 同，据《续资治通鉴》与《曾公遗录》说，章 惇听后，厉声对质：“端王轻佻，不可以君天 下！”为曾布呵斥打断。章惇这句特殊情境下 的评语，有人认为是早已看透端王本性，有人 认为只是一时恼怒的话，《宋史》略过此语， 而《续资治通鉴》的作者则笔法精妙，将它作

Art by Grace Fu

为伏笔置于原始情境而非人物评论 中，供读者自行理解。向太后让端 王连夜继位，而支持太后的群臣趁 机鼓动她垂帘听政，以确保成果。向 太后表示新君已成年不需要垂帘听政， 端王立刻哭求向太后顺从众臣意见，满足 大家共同的利益，这就是一个18岁“花花公子” 的情商水平。 从皇帝继位到太后垂帘听政，有不足一个 月的过渡期。宋徽宗此间做了以下决策：尊崇 章惇扶立的先帝刘皇后；调遣章惇主持先帝葬 礼避免政治漩涡，加封其为申国公；厚待此前 的立储候选人；分赏近臣和后宫以求无忧；取 消首都的“言论警察”。这些是本纪中的事件， 是编撰者认为影响到国家命运的重大事件。宋 徽宗继位前似乎早有观察和准备。随后，宋徽 宗开始了自己的虚君生涯。 虚君不好当。据《续资治通鉴》记载，向 太后听政后，章惇主动辞职，太后不从，宋徽 宗偷偷反对。等到群臣商议罢贬章惇，向太后 顺水推舟，细数章惇过去恶行，而宋徽宗表示 服从。不仅服从，他还为太后圆场，同时偷偷 捞章惇一手。这是宋徽宗作为虚君时的对策表 现。清代的光绪皇帝，与宋徽宗采取的对策可 谓天壤之别，有兴趣的读者可以去比照参考。 群臣又商议罢贬蔡京，向太后则选择反 对。罢贬蔡京的理由与章惇相似，都是在细数 对方过去劣迹，但向太后这次另有打算。向太 后深谙皇权之道，她一要防止章惇和蔡京同时 被贬破坏政治平衡，二要筹建自己理想中的“混 合政府”，于是托词编修史书，留下蔡京。官僚 集团的嘀咕对太后没有多少威胁，但是宋徽宗 却迎来政治生涯的转机。 还政以后，宋徽宗继续纵容向太后及其亲 戚干政，诱使官僚怨言四起。陈瓘作为谏官骨 干，直言外戚和官僚之间的利益争夺正是太 后引起。宋徽宗斥责陈瓘说话“荒诞”，将他贬 官，背地里又偷偷给他赏赐黄金。官僚们立刻 心领神会，先是求情让陈瓘留京观察，接着操 纵舆论攻击太后，其中以丰稷和陈师锡作为代 表，丰稷甚至直言要不是宋徽宗没有大权，哪 里来的蔡京乱政？将全部责任都归咎到太后身 上。士大夫议论纷纷，以至于太后颁布诏令禁 止众人传播谣言。据《宣和遗事》说，宋徽宗 见时机已至，偷偷召见丰稷说出真心话。据传 迫于舆论压力，向太后最终自闭东宫，以泪洗 面，不久离世。 宋徽宗为何成功？政治斗争最怕没有防 备。宋徽宗选择向太后引以为傲的道德为突破 口，一面将自己打扮成仁君孝子，一面静待时 机。当向太后误以为可以实践其政治理想时， 她没有料到这个早年丧母，曾视自己为亲生母 亲的人会亲手埋葬自己。攻击对手的强项有时 会产生奇效，因为很多人看不见强项带来的破 绽。同时，宋徽宗作为聪明人，非常擅长“偷 偷”地做些事情，而他的这个强项也被新的对手 偷偷地看在眼里，记在心上。 掌握皇权后，宋徽宗意气风发，踌躇满 志，决定要整顿四朝以来的党争问题，又适逢 韩忠彦与曾布不和，便着手重组帝国秩序。此 时，刚被众人赶出朝廷的蔡京借宦官童贯的帮 助，重新回到政治舞台。他已55岁，曾与王安 石和司马光一同活跃，依靠左右逢迎生存在集 团之间。他将成为控制宋徽宗的胜利者。 蔡京深知宋徽宗很有能耐，早期失败也告 诉他只有皇帝才能主宰整个帝国体系。与许多 人限制皇权的做法相反，他疯狂地扩大宋徽宗 的权力。所谓“丰亨豫大”，“陛下当享天下之 奉”，在蔡京主导之下，宋徽宗想要实现什么， 他就能得到什么，不需要偷偷摸摸。蔡京是非 常有能力的人，他主导的经济改革将天下财源 集中起来，以至于有很多商人因破产而自杀。

丰厚的 国 库 ， 让宋徽宗 可以实现鳏 寡孤独具有 所养，也可 以实现自己的 文韬武略，一切军 政财大权都集中到了宋徽宗的 手里，自然经手的官僚也偷偷跟着享 福。蔡京如宋徽宗所愿，终结了党争的问 题，因为权力已高度集中，而宋徽宗本人也 因此在政治战场上“赤身裸体”。帛书《老子》 乙本说，”祸莫大于无敌“，历史将让宋徽宗付 出应有的代价。 人终有极限，宋徽宗也会分身乏术。他将 大权分享给蔡京等人执行，自己便聪明地坐享 接下来的成果。然而，这其实是不得不分享的 至高权力，他个人本就无力掌控。蔡京等人偷 偷控制了宫城的信息网，宋徽宗由此形同木 偶。军事上的失败，官僚系统的迅速腐败，对 于一个政治、经济、文化、教育、上升通道统 统被垄断的帝国体系而言，只要皇帝爱惜面 子，那就都是民间传言而已，更何况他还被蒙 在鼓里。蔡京帮助宋徽宗成为大权在握的圣 上，也让他沦为大权旁落的傀儡。其间乱象， 至今民不绝唱。 结局耳熟能详。宋朝与金国结成“海上之盟” ，联合灭辽，用兵时却将国家虚弱暴露无遗， 招致金军南下。靖康之变，宋徽宗的儿子宋钦 宗为了证明自己比他爹还要厉害，不听宋徽宗 劝告，最终被金军俘虏，宋徽宗也随即被叛徒 一并奉送金军，北宋终于灭亡了。宋徽宗为什 么失败？《宋史》说：“恃其私智小慧，用心一 偏”，这句话是说皇帝不应该聪明吗？皇帝可以 聪明，但不要自恃聪明而忘记中国帝国体系内 皇帝的本质。中国帝国时期的皇帝、官僚和子 民，具有一种复杂的共生体系，如黄老之说， 国家是人体。皇帝既要保障官僚的利益来维持 帝国运作，又要保障子民的利益来支撑帝国基 础，但官僚与子民是争夺利益的两方，这就要 求皇帝必须学会平衡之术，做一个利益动态化 的天平砝码，构建一套精密的矛盾关系网。因 此，无论皇帝能力多强，权力多大，他必须牺 牲自己，牺牲他的才华、理想，甚至个人爱 好，成为帝国体系的舵盘。从这一刻起，皇帝 不再是自由的人，他们是历史创造并诅咒的熔 炉核心。 宋徽宗如此聪明，为何被蔡京击败？政治 斗争，对付强大但自负的对手，如果你的实力 不足，那不如加入他的阵营，借他的手构建双 方的共生关系。你在他头顶加冕王冠，他就不 得不求你帮忙扶住王冠。看透这一点的人越来 越多，他头顶的王冠就会越来越多，越来越 重。最后，至高权力者沦为傀儡，而奴颜婢膝 者都将成王。中国政治思想有一个核心概念， 叫作德，并非只是道德。据《说文解字》解， 德的本义是一种特殊的迁、登，需要众人支持 才可以同心所向。甲骨文的字形是一只悬挂的 眼睛在动态的四方之上，喻意一个人要理解自 己在大环境下可以做到的事情与应该做到的事 情。所谓积德之业，就是要先巩固自己的统治 基础，再根据客观条件去实现理想抱负，量力 而行，保持忧患，这就是中国的智慧。 21

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No sustainability in shame Vivienne Guo sheds light on the classism behind the sustainability movement. With the impending doom of our planet on the horizon, environmentalism and sustainable lifestyle choices has rightfully come to the forefront of the global consciousness. However, it is important to note that the sustainability movement has often come under fire for being elitist; and it absolutely is. To briefly define sustainable consumption, it can be understood as the use of services and products that cause minimal harm to our planet and preserve it for future generations. Those that police how environmentallyfriendly our consumption is – from militant vegans to sustainable lifestyle influencers – are notorious for their simplistic views of sustainability. For the most part, they are unable to differentiate between those who are unwilling to be sustainable and those who are unable to. Being good to the planet has a price tag, which is often quite substantial, and effectively locks out those in low-income brackets. The culture of shame that emerges from the sustainability movement ignores the complex barriers to entry that are created by capitalism. Free-market capitalism has ensured that sustainability is not universally accessible: higher price points for sustainable essentials such as food and clothing effectively bar sustainable options to people in lower-income brackets. In addition, the sustainability movement often neglects to critique capitalism as the main instigator behind the profit-driven actions of large corporations, in destructive industries such as mining. This should not be news to us; this year in Australia, the approval

of the notoriously disastrous Adani mine in Queensland shows us that the greed of capitalism will continue to win out over the continued survival of our fragile ecosystems. The Carbon Majors Report, tells us that a mere 25 corporations have been responsible for over half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions over the last 30 years. As long as ecocide is profitable to such corporations, capitalism will continue to quietly carry out ecocide to a global level. And yet, the sustainability movement too-often sets it sights on the choices of individuals. The sustainability movement is flawed and largely inaccessible in many ways. Particularly regrettable is the emergence of a shame culture that villainises non-sustainable lifestyles, blind to why people may not be able to live more sustainably. The animal rights group PETA has previously declared that eating meat and being an environmentalist are mutually exclusive. This rhetoric underlines submovements for sustainability such as militant veganism, which have often come under fire for being too dogmatic in their methods of persuasion. I have often found that the shaming of nonsustainability turns the sustainability movement into a hostile environment, which is inadvertent to the complex barriers of entry that sustainability entails. Social media platforms such as Twitter have given rise to the amplified rhetoric of militant vegans. Recently, I came upon a tweet: “If you still eat meat at this point you are honestly just selfish”. Sadly, this was not the first statement

what to do, what to do Grace Fu

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from this ignorant line of rhetoric that I have encountered, nor will it be the last. These statements highlight a central flaw in the sustainability movement the onus of saving the planet should not merely be on individual consumption but on the consumption of multimillion-dollar corporations who leave devastating ecological footprints in their wake. This attention given to individual consumption goes to show the shortsightedness of militant veganism. Many people cannot become vegan for reasons such as health or financial instability. Inability to be sustainable is too often construed to be unwillingness. Until the sustainability movement is able to move beyond simplistic views and a culture of shaming others into joining their ranks, it cannot meaningfully contribute to the continued survival of our planet. The barriers of entry to sustainability created by capitalism must be brought to the forefront of our discussions. It is an issue that is so often ignored, either by the aggressive views pandered by militant vegans or the simplistic representation of sustainability by social media influencers. On social media, ethical fashion brands such as Reformation or With Jéan are promoted as shining beacons of sustainability. We need to keep in mind that though these companies are represented as ethical and eco-friendly, they are still positioned to be profitable, as capitalism would have them be. A quick glance at their price points, which mostly sit in the hundred to hundreds range, prove them to be inaccessible to most. Optimistic representations of ethical fashion uphold the culture of shame

because they are exclusionary and create an economy of cultural capital that revolves around one’s ability to access or perform sustainability. There is a lack of awareness on social media regarding the absence of accessible sustainability that feeds back into the sustainability movement’s shame culture. While sustainability should absolutely be championed, the shame culture that it often plays off is unproductive in many ways – shame won’t put food in mouths or clothes on backs. It realistically does nothing to reduce barriers of entry into sustainability while creating an animosity that makes the sustainability movement even more unwelcoming to outsiders. There are good arguments for ecologically sustainable life choices. The meat industry treats animals horrifically, and we are devastating our planet with the wasteful processes that underline fast fashion. These are all sound points to make for the argument for sustainable living. However, the priorities of lowincome demographics lie in quiet everyday survival. Capitalism plays a central role in both the devastation of our planet, and the disenfranchisement of working class communities. As consumers, we should be mindful that sustainable options are simply not accessible to all. The shame culture that we see emerge from the current elitist sustainability movement is unproductive and aggressive, shaming poor people for being poor rather than prioritising the root of the inaccessibility dilemma; capitalism. Shame is not a sustainable force of change; compassion and collaboration are.

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Ella McKelvey || First place non-fiction

I fell in love with Daphne du Maurier at the age of eleven. It happened after my mum lent me her copy of Rebecca; a book which had left a lasting impression on her own adolescence. Du Maurier’s novels might not be renowned for literary sophistication, but their capacity for spectacle goes unmatched. Rebecca practically drips with tension and brooding. Its heavy atmosphere swells and crashes through plot devices that are both gripping and surprising. Du Maurier’s novels are virtually ubiquitous in themes of mystery, jealousy, and deception. As such, critics and commentators have been eager to draw parallels with the author’s own life. In particular, there has been much attention devoted to the “mystery” of du Maurier’s sexual orientation. Du Maurier married her husband in 1932, and had three children with him. Although her marriage was noted for being impassive at times; in later life du Maurier admitted to feeling intensely jealous of her husband’s ex-fiancée. It is often claimed that du Maurier herself had several affairs during her marriage – only one she admitted to being physical, and that was with a man. Regardless of these facts, what tends to receive much more attention is du Maurier’s involvement with women. In letters written to a friend, Daphne described these as “obsessions”. She certainly shared high levels of emotional intimacy with three women during her life– her French teacher (when du Maurier was an adolescent), and then later, her publisher’s wife Ellen Doubleday, and actor Gertrude Lawrence. In 2009, I chose to start researching du Maurier for a school assignment. During my research, I encountered several articles published around the centenary of her birth two years prior. These were almost entirely devoted to the subject of her “lesbianism”. In the sexual naivety of my early teenage years, I was immediately rendered uncomfortable by newspaper headlines which screamed of “forbidden lovers”, “unruly passions” and a “terrible secret”. I scrapped the assignment. I told my mum I had fallen out of love with du Maurier’s books; pretending that I agreed with the sneering responses of her contemporary critics. In reality, I just didn’t want to let myself love Daphne any longer. The problem was that, in 2009, I had just completed my first year at all all-girls High School. Here, lesbian was used as the insult of choice; and was regularly hurled at myself. Homosexuality was entirely excluded from our sex-education. The articles thus reaffirmed what my school experience had taught me same-sex relationships between women were salacious and shameful. Struggling to come to terms with my own

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IS S I H T

Queerness and Daphne du Maurier sexual orientation, I suddenly felt mortified about all the time I had spent staring adoringly at Daphne’s portrait inside the front cover of Rebecca. I wondered if my own admiration for the author, along with my undying curiosity about her life, constituted the same sort of illicit infatuation that Daphne herself had been accused of. Even when lesbianism isn’t decried as overtly wrong or amoral; ambiguity in women’s sexual orientation tends to be presented under the guise of scandal. In 2017, the publication of a biography of Jane Austen inspired an outpouring of press reports that Austen “could have been a lesbian”. In the words of the biography author herself, however, “the door of possibility may remain ajar by the very tiniest crack, and only in the absence of evidence”. When terms like “lesbian” and “bisexual” are applied to historical female figures, it is rarely done so to help modern audiences understand the same-sex relationships they might have had. Instead, these terms are used to conceal nuance and generate shock-factor. Despite the numerous reports pushing the label on her, du Maurier herself actively did not

I wondered if my own admiration for the author, along with my undying curiosity about her life, constituted the same sort of illicit infatuation that Daphne herself had been accused of. identify as a lesbian. She is reported as once having said, “If anyone should call that sort of love by that unattractive word that begins with ‘L’, I’d tear their guts out”. The author often referred to her childhood self as a “half-breed”, although, despite what some sources claim, this was not an admission of bisexuality. Instead, du Maurier was referring to the fact that she thought of herself as having “a boy’s mind and a boy’s heart”. This quote, in turn, has been used by some to suggest the possibility of her being transgender. It seems like modern terminology is not necessarily able to accommodate how the circumstances of Daphne’s life during the early 20th century would have limited her opportunities to explore, practice and define her own sexuality. It was only after coming to terms with my own queerness a few years ago that I was able to return to du Maurier. I was so glad that I did. I was able to appreciate the emotional texture of the novels in a way that I couldn’t during my pre-teen years. For the first time, I was also able to identify the potentially lesbian subtexts in the portrayal of Rebecca’s Mrs Danvers. It was fascinating to be able to think about how her relationships with Lawrence and Doubleday influenced her later novels, like My Cousin Rachel. Fascinating — precisely because her sexuality escapes easy interpretation.

It Takes Two to Tango Kiran Gupta || Second place non-fiction Day Six of the Australian Open 2018. The crowd on Rod Laver Arena are waiting patiently for Angelique Kerber and Maria Sharapova to take centre stage for their blockbuster encounter. Tens of thousands of eyes scan the schedule in gleeful anticipation of the Swiss maestro, Roger Federer, who follows them. Very few will look down to Court 8. Even fewer will bother to walk over to spectate. But this is where the magic will happen. Nicolas Mahut, famous for playing the longest match in singles history at Wimbledon, is playing alongside his partner Pierre-Hugues Herbert. On the other side of the court, the largely unheralded Chilean-Belarusian team of Hans Podlipnik-Castillo and Andrei Vasilevski. The crowd is barely half full. Yet, after the subsequent hugging of supporters, coaches and the lifting aloft of the Chilean flag, there is not a dry eye in the house. However, apart from the few hundred spectators at the match, few will ever know. This is the world of doubles tennis. It is an unfortunate reality that doubles tennis has come to be regarded as the “ugly stepsister” of the more illustrious singles game. Even tennis icon John McEnroe, himself the winner of seven doubles grand slams, remarked in a recent interview with The Times of London, “Doubles—why are we even

playing it? […] The doubles [players] are the slow guys who aren’t quick enough to play singles.” So what has happened to the doubles game? It is certainly true that there are more “doubles specialists” (those who don’t play singles) in the game than before. Only 48 of the 128 men’s doubles players at the Australian Open were in the top 100 for singles. It has also been observed by many sports journalists that the doubles game has become a game of “big serves and big returns,” the implication being that there are less grinding rallies than we have become accustomed to in the singles game. According to tennisabstract.com, there is some truth to this. At the 2019 Australian Open, the average men’s doubles rally was 0.7 shots shorter than its singles’ counterpart on average, and on the women’s side, this discrepancy was 0.5 shots. However, while there is a clear difference here, it is certainly not as great as the media sometimes portrays it. Furthermore, while points may be shorter, surely that is better for a generation with shortening attention spans? Shorter, more high-octane points can be both exciting and different for a new sport-watching audience. Accounting for the common criticism of singles tennis that it has become too monotonous, with endless baseline rallies, it seems increasingly likely that

doubles could fill a void that singles simply cannot. I spoke with Olympic Silver Medallist and 2019 Australian Open Mixed Doubles Champion Rajeev Ram, who described the doubles game as a “very exciting brand of tennis that offers some different skillsets [to] singles [such as] quick reactions and good teamwork.” He believes that doubles “adds a new and very interesting dimension to the game that does not exist in singles,” and this combined with what he characterises as the pinnacle of the doubles game, “the teamwork between partners,” makes for a game that appeals to the younger generations. As with anything there are reasons why doubles has fallen down the pecking order of sports watchers. Coach of former top 10 player Janko Tipsarevic and advisor to many ATP doubles players, Dirk Hordorff said to me that he believes that there should be “better promotion of doubles matches” through “a separate doubles court” and other initiatives. Rajeev Ram also notes that doubles players “do not have the same notoriety as singles players” and the key to addressing this is to “get [doubles] on TV more.” Ram has a point here. Only seven of 195 doubles matches at 500 level (the second tier tournament on the ATP tour) were even produced for television.

Unfortunately, until this vicious cycle is broken, doubles tennis will not regain its popularity. It’s a long road back to popularise the doubles game. Every TV station in Australia would have been showing Roger Federer’s straight sets win over Richard Gasquet on that day at the Australian Open, not one likely to mention the patriotic triumph of Hans PodlipnikCastillo and his partner out on court 8. However, the people sitting on that court who saw the joyous face of their proud coach and the delighted legion of Chilean supporters will never forget the moment when the underdogs took the biggest win of their career. The power of doubles tennis will never be lost on them. And with the dominance of tennis’ biggest stars ending as they enter the twilight of their careers, the administrators would be very wise to promote this fast-paced, energetic game to their young fanbase.

Coalition of the Terrified Thomas Sydney St John || Third place non-fiction They gathered at intersections and roundabouts, marching with the confidence of a crowd that knew they would be tomorrow’s headline. The disparate many that make up the gilets jaunes have an undisputed flair, adorned in high-vis regalia and possessed of a notorious temper, a narrative that moved around the planet with the speed we’ve come to expect of tweets and live-streamed video. They mostly hail from the rundown cities that lend their small-font names to the spaces on maps between one affluent metropolis and another. Fuel wasn’t cheap in France, but President Macron’s plans to transition the economy away from carbon emissions culminated in plans to levy a new tax on diesel and gasoline. In the eyes of many around the world the protesters were little more than the stubborn resistance we have come to expect from enemies of progressivism; bigoted hicks, junkies for coal, holding us back. And so they rebelled. They broke shopwindows and brawled with police, the leaderless mob engaging in spontaneous ‘mobilisations’ in provincial cities across France. The op-ed class happily dismissed their concerns as the myopia of the drooling masses, their violent insurrection proof in itself of the

invalidity of their claims. Many young progressives from around the world shrugged their shoulders and agreed for lack of anything better to say on the topic. Then on March 18, in our own country, a young boy tried to make an omelette using a racist senator’s head. Rightly so, a generation celebrated a protest that fell somewhere between hijinks and praxis. We were, of course, not uniform in our national response — the civility cops were quick to feign outrage that a senator could ever be treated with such wanton disrespect (think of The Children!). The two events viewed together might not have immediate resonance, but I suspect there is something that unites the crowds of gilets jaunes and the supporters of eggboy, something that perhaps reveals something about the nature of civil disobedience in the world today. The gilets jaunes are the natural outgrowth of a class of people who are incessantly watched but never heard. Eggboy, likewise, represents the moral revolutionaries that have long been marginalised in Australia — Indigenous Australians, immigrants, and, to an extent, young people. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1968, “for the

first time in history, all peoples on earth have a common present.” But where the millennials expressing their support for eggboy are acting as a rejection of the values of the past, the gilets jaunes and people of their ilk are scared of the future. Together, we make an awkward coalition of the terrified. I’m always hesitant to try to reference Foucault in just about any setting. Trying to explain why Foucault was brilliant is like trying to explain why a joke is funny, and trying to condense his rambling sentences into palatable morsels through ellipses just reads like he formulated all of his theories while constipated (‘Power… is… a mechanism… by which… we, as human beings… attempt’ etc.). Despite this, his work is precisely what best describes the yin-yang of authority and repression that undercuts our many attempts at civil disobedience in the 21st century. Rebellion’s only hope of effectiveness relies on the assumption that we make our world, and not the other way around. If there’s another similarity between these jumbled groups around the world, all fighting against a ruling class co-opting ideologies and esteemed institutions as the anti-majoritarian rearguard of their dying movement, it’s the draw to nihilism. It’s easy to assume

that there is little use or hope for the losers in this game. In the wake of the Cold War, history was pronounced to be over. The ideology of liberal internationalism had succeeded, and people were told to wait while the world improved around them. All we had to do was sacrifice participation in democracy and allow the enlightened technicians of our world to fix the planet for us. This fiction lies in ruin, and (pardon the financial analogy) we are now rushing to recover the cost we paid for a good we never received. The ensuing panic has blurred what we thought were the fault lines of modern discourse — between conservative hipsters and progressive nihilists, it’s hard to imagine we ever had solidarity at all. But that’s probably where some hope lies. People poised to profit from the inertia of the world toward mayhem would love nothing more than for us to be immobilised by transient distaste and propaganda. It’s hard to tackle the banal evil of the political class because it’s easy to advocate for nothing. People make careers out of it in Canberra. Atomised rebellion is doomed to fail, but the true enemies of progress are smart enough to pick their battles. We need to do the same.

25

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Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney

Notice of 2019 Students’ Representative Council Annual Election Nominations for the Students’ Representative Council Annual Elections for the year 2019 close at 4:30pm on Wednesday the 21st of August 2019.

Nomination forms can be downloaded from the SRC website: www.srcusyd.net.au/elections/, or picked up from SRC front office (Level 1, Wentworth Building) from 4:30pm July 31st 2019.

Polling will be held on the 25th and 26th of September 2019. Pre-polling will take place outside the Jane Foss Russell building on Tuesday the 24th of September 2019 from 10am–3pm.

Nominations must also be lodged online along with your policy statement and Curriculum Vitae (optional), by close of nominations at: www.srcusyd.net.au. For more information call 9660 5222.

All undergraduate students who are duly enrolled for attendance at lectures are eligible to vote. Members of the student body who have paid their nomination fee to Council are eligible to nominate and be nominated, except National Union of Students national office bearers. Full-time officebearers of the SRC may also nominate as NUS delegates.

Original signed nomination forms and a printed copy of your online nomination must be received no later than 4:30pm on Wednesday 21st August, either at the SRC front office (Level 1, Wentworth Building), OR at the following postal address: PO Box 794, Broadway NSW 2007.

Nominations are called for the following elections/positions and open on the 31st July 2019 at 4:30pm: (a) The election of the Representatives to the 92nd SRC (35 positions) (b) The election of the President of the 92nd SRC (c) The election of the Editor(s) of Honi Soit for the 92nd SRC (d) The election of National Union of Students delegates for the 92nd SRC (7 positions)

Nominations which have not been delivered (printed, signed, hardcopy) either to the Electoral Officer at the SRC front office or to the post office box shown above and submitted online by the close of nominations will not be accepted regardless of when they were posted or received. The regulations of the SRC relating to elections are available online at srcusyd.net.au

Authorised by C.Lu, Electoral Officer 2019, Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: srcusyd.net.au

SNOWED UNDER? Does managing uni, work and life just sometimes feel too hard?

Ever felt like the University just doesn’t get what it is like to be a student these days?

Don’t just rant about it to your friends – make your voice heard! Take our student experience survey: surveymonkey.com/r/8HV5RL3

Friday 30 August, 6:00pm - 8:30pm Rydes Sydney Central, 28 Albion Street, Surry Hills • • • • •

Dress Code: Casual For gay international students and friends (18 years+) Make new friends Talk about living and dating in Sydney Learn about services for gay men RSVPs are essential, please REGISTER HERE: bit.ly/whenworldscollide Or check out the event on: FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/362412701064051/ For more information, please contact internationalstudents@acon.org.au or (02) 9206 2080.

Help the SRC advocate for better conditions and go in the draw to win free movie tickets!

Textbook Help! The SRC is helping students with the cost of buying textbooks. Apply online: srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy

Apply for Textbook Help online: http://srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy Level 1, Wentworth Building (G01), University of Sydney (02) 9660 5222 | help @ src.usyd.edu.au facebook.com / src help | Instagram: @SRC_USyd

This event is sponsored by CALD Gay Men’s Action Group, ACON and partnered with ANTRA, Selamat Datang Indonesian Community, Fobgays and Trikone Australasia. Proudly supported by the Students Representative Council, University of Sydney

S R C

President Jacky He Welcome Everyone! Welcome back to Semester 2! Hope everyone had a restful holiday and took some time to explore the world beyond University. For all students who are just starting at the University of Sydney, welcome, and hope you have a great first week and an enjoyable journey at the University and all the best with your studies. For all students who are here on exchange, I wish you an amazing experience exploring the local culture of Australia, and enjoy yourself as much as you can! Welcome Day Engaging in clubs and societies and signing up for their memberships are the best ways to meet like-minded people and form strong relationships at University. Each faculty has their own society, as well as various cultural societies, sports societies and music societies as well.

R E P O R T S

Note: These reports belong to the Office Bearers of the SRC. They are not altered, edited or changed in any way by the editors of Honi Soit Hope everyone had lots of opportunities to interact with the societies that you wanted to join and got to have a feel of how exciting campus life can be! Casework and Legal Service Students may face a variety of different issues at the beginning of the semester, especially matters relating to accommodation, subject selection and Centrelink. But don’t worry, the SRC is here to help! If you are seeking for any help related to academic appeal, msconduct, special consideration, tenancy and Centrelink, please contact 9660 5222 to book in to see our caseworker. You may also E-mail our caseworkers at help@src.usyd.edu.au to enquire any relevant queries. If you are involved in court matters, traffic offences, violence or having issues with visa, please contact 9660 5222 to book in with our solicitor. All our services are free to all undergraduate students at the University of Sydney.

Shani Patel - Switch Layla Mkh - Grassroots

Hello! We are very excited for a jam-packed semester 2! Here are some of the things to look out for:

Avenue. You have the opportunity to hear from NGOs, student organisations, SRC collectives and student support services.

Zac O'Farrell - Liberal

Textbook Subsidy Program starting Week 1

Satellite Campus Visits in Weeks 3/4

Hartley Dhyon - Liberal

This year, we have worked to launch the first ever Textbook Subsidy Program! In semester 2 2019, the SRC will provide $100 subsidies to 400 undergraduate students who are in financial need. There are also 600 subsidies to be given out later. This is for textbooks, readers, science equipment and learning materials. You can apply in two easy steps. [1] You need to fill out an online form at www.surveymonkey.com/r/ srctextbooksubsidy – applications open at 10:00am on Wednesday 7 August 2019. [2] You need to attend an interview with a professional, confidential caseworker between weeks 2 to 5. For more information, please visit www.srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy. Welfare Week in Week 2 Welfare Week is happening next week from Tuesday 13 to Thursday 15 August 2019. We will have free food along Eastern

We will be visiting satellite campuses during weeks 3 and 4 to tell you about what the SRC can do for you. This includes Mallet Street, Conservatorium and the Sydney College of the Arts. We are already advocating the University to increase the hours of workshop facilities at the SCA. But we are always interested to hear about the issues you are facing and fight for you! Other Events in Semester 2 We will be very busy throughout semester 2. We are currently working to negotiate a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement with the SRC staff. We are helping out at Welcome Day and Open Day to tell students about the SRC. We are preparing to help out with the USU’s Health and Wellbeing Week in week 10. And we are hosting a 90th Anniversary Reunion. Finally, we are giving a student voice in the University’s Student Life, WHS, Student Consultative, Education and Research Education Committees. If you have any questions or ideas, email to vice.president@src.usyd.edu.au.

General Secretary Niamh Callinan & Yuxuan Yang Welcome back to Semester 2! We hope that everyone who went to Europe got some great Instagram photos, those that went skiing found some snow and everyone else who was stuck in Sydney had an enjoyable break. During this July break the General Secretaries have been working on a number of things. Firstly, we have been working on the various events that will be held throughout semester 2 by the SRC, including Welcome Day, Welfare Week (organised by our Vice Presidents) as well as the 90th celebration of the SRC. Secondly, we have been working alongside the current research officers who are conducting two student focused projects regarding Student Housing and Student Wellbeing respectively. The research officers are about to publish a survey which we encourage every student to participate in. The survey will address both housing and wellbeing and is designed to provide the researchers

with information regarding the current situations faced by students. The purpose is to build two final projects that articulate the issues faced by students and finding ways to solve the problems, by engaging with the main stakeholders- students. During this period, we have also been working to assist staff members, changing a number of internal policies and updating a number of procedures. This is to ensure that the SRC is consistently providing the most efficient and effective service for students and providing ongoing support for the staff members who provide invaluable services to students on campus. Finally, we are looking forward to supporting all collectives and departments in their various events, activism and representation throughout this semester. We hope that students continue to engage in these events and activist projects to unite, and fight for an outcome that improves the lives of all students.

JP Baladi - Liberal Lily Campbell - SAlt Ella Finlay - Switch Wanlin Chu - Panda Xiaoxi Hou - Panda Guipeng Jiao - Panda Josie Jakovac - Liberal Jiaqi (Abbey) Shi - Advance Jayesh Joshi - Labor Right Swapnik Sanagavarapu - Grassroots Himath Siriniwasa - Grassroots Gabi Stricker-Phelps - Shake Up Chia-Shuo (Alex) Yang - Advance Nick Forbutt / Felix Faber - Labor Left James Ardouin - Liberal Prudence Wilkins-Wheat - Switch Zifan Xu - Panda Daniel Hu - Advance Lara Sonnenschein - Grassroots Jingxian Wu - Panda Xiaoyu Jin - Panda

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

×

✔

× ✔ × × ×

Manchen Wen - Panda

Jun

Jul

✔

✔

✔

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

× × ×

✔

✔

Shangyue Mu - Panda

May

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

×

Yihe Li - Panda Juming Li - Panda

Apr

✔ ✔

×

Yiting Feng - Panda

Mar

✔ ✔

Kelli Zhao - Switch

×

✔

× ×

Dane Luo - Shake Up

✔

Adriana Malavisi / Amy Newland Labor Right

×

×

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

×

✔ ✔

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

✔ ✔

× ×

✔

×

✔ ✔

× ×

✔

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

× ×

✔

✔ ✔ ✔

× ×

× ✔ × ✔

×

✔

× × ×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

×

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

×

✔ ✔ ✔

×

× ×

✔

✔

✔

✔

✔

*According to minutes and agendas on the public record

The Indigenous, International Student and Global Solidarity officers did not submit a report by the deadline.

28

Feb

CANCELLED

Dane Luo & Caitlyn Chu

Name - Faction

CANCELLED

Vice President

Report card: How many meetings have your councillors turned up to?*

S R C

C A S E WO R K

How to Appeal a Grade

H E L P

Ask Abe SRC caseworker help Q&A Problems with housemates Dear Abe, I’m having problems with my housemates and I think my landlord is going to make us pay for a few things that got broken. We’re all on the lease but it wasn’t my fault. What should I do? Need Space

Dear Need Space,

Appeals should be started within 15 working days of an academic decision or result. 1. Start with an informal appeal. Attend the exam review session or email the subject coordinator to ask for the breakdown of your final mark, or clarify why you received that mark. They may be able to provide you with a marking rubric. If you don’t understand the reason why you received a certain grade, then you’ll trouble putting together a clear or strong appeal. 2. If you’re still unhappy with the mark make a formal appeal to the faculty. You have 20 working days to submit this to your faculty. If you are not successful you should receive an email with a letter explaining why the faculty believes they gave you a correct mark. 3. If you’re still unhappy with the mark make an appeal to the Student Appeals Body (SAB). You have 15 working days from the Faculty response to submit this appeal online. You will need to identify areas of procedural unfairness or breach of policy with the Faculty’s decision. This may include faults in the formal appeal outcome, or that the Faculty did not fully consider all of the information provided to them. If the Student Affairs Unit (SAU) considers that your appeal satisfies this criteria they will set a meeting date with the SAB. You will be invited to attend this meeting, together with the Faculty, to determine whether your appeal is successful or not. Be clear about your appeal. Address the reasons for an academic decision. Clearly identify the point of your appeal and write a well-structured argument. It is advisable to question an Academic’s assessment process rather than academic judgement. Working hard and then unexpectedly failing is not grounds for appeal. An appeal also cannot be based on someone else passing when you did not. Know your desired outcome. Have a realistic idea of what outcome you want before you start the appeal

process. For example, a second academic opinion, a remark, an extra assessment, a different type of assessment or a change of weighting towards a particular piece of work. Not all of these options are available for every situation, but it is helpful if you know what you want. Be informed. Familiarise yourself with relevant information such as course outlines, marking criteria, University assessment policies and the appeals process. Remember that at each stage the decision maker must provide you with reasons for their decision. SRC Caseworkers may be able to help you with your appeal. Be realistic. The appeal process can be a long one. Be sure that you can spend that time and emotional energy. The University was wrong. If you have exhausted the appeals procedures within the University and feel that the University has still not followed its policies or there is procedural unfairness you can lodge a complaint with the NSW Ombudsman. Note: this is not just another level of appeal that you can use if you are unhappy with the decision. You will need to show that the University has not followed it policy or has been procedurally unfair. The Ombudsman will not change a decision but can make recommendations to the University on actions they should take to resolve the matter. Other Appeal Hints Keep and refer to any documents, emails or notes of meetings relevant to your appeal. Were you provided with clear guidelines or marking criteria for the assessment task? If you received a late or word count penalty, check if your faculty has an approved policy for this, and that the penalties have been applied correctly. If you are unhappy with the course delivery, teaching or treatment you received, rather than an academic decision, you may find the University’s complaints process a more appropriate avenue to raise your concerns.

In a rented share house, your legal status depends on a number of possibilities. If you are named on the residential tenancy agreement (your lease) along with one or more others, then you are a co-tenant. Your rights are “equal and several”, so you could be held liable for the actions of your housemates. However, you are also covered under the Residential Tenancies Act.

Try to resolve your problems informally with your housemates first. If the damage was caused by someone else on the lease, you and your housemates should try and come to an agreement as to how things should be paid for. If that doesn’t work you could try talking to your landlord. Remember that you are not required to pay for urgent repairs like hot water or anything that makes the house unsafe. You also shouldn’t have to pay for ‘reasonable wear and tear’ to the property. However, things like walls, floors, cupboards, etc. are your responsibility to keep clean and in good repair. If your disagreement can’t be worked out informally, or you need advice about how to handle your dispute, speak to your local Tenants Advice and Advocacy Service or an SRC Caseworker to find out what to do. Abe

Check out the SRC Accommodation Guide: http://srcusyd.net.au/src-help/accommodation-issues/ accommodation-guide/

Textbook Help! The SRC is helping students with the cost of buying textbooks. Apply online: srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy

Apply for Textbook Help online: http://srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy Level 1, Wentworth Building (G01), University of Sydney (02) 9660 5222 | help @ src.usyd.edu.au facebook.com / src help | Instagram: @SRC_USyd

29

P U Z Z L E S

Cryptic Crossword

This week’s Quick is a little different! Instead of a written description, each word in the grid is clued by a short video. Follow the link or QR code to the YouTube playlist that contains all 32 clue videos. We hope you’re good at Charades!

ACROSS 1 Chess champion heard in library (6) 5 Rascal, lopsided and secreting fish food? (8) 9 Tile in way to a high heel? (8) 10 Drone! Audibly sigh before endless bore last suffering? (6) 11 Police advocate had a squabble about faulty tool (10) 12 Temporary humid American weather starts melt? (4) 13 Spilt water, ink - my woolens! (8) 16 No tops back? Perfect! (4,2) 17 Connery’s English assignments are on Aussie lads (6) 19 Eyes turned after decree - dead centre? (5,3)

Charades Crossword

21 Forgo beginning on radio (4) 22 About dad: control atonement (10) 25 Snarl oddly by way of funky leaves? (6) 26 He paints poorly: stick to drama! (8) 27 Endless pulp satisfies its buzzing! (8) 28 Seen my daft sycophants? (3-3)

DOWN 2 Use nitro to discover the beginnings of a whole new world! (5) 3 50 Shades author inside steamy Spartan Slave? (5) 4 Dirty latrine takes shit all the way to Argentina (7) 5 Returned Pulp Fiction captain and Queen play with Cue (7) 6 Power lines transmit power? (7)

7 LNP member so anti fun? Have some drinks! (9) 8 Short execution of a Conservative, sending them beyond (9) 14 Discount Dracula has a ghastly anus fetor (9) 15 Skulk, steal, eavesdrop and tell the future? (3,6) 18 Help! I’m stuck in a lesser vantage point (7) 19 Uncommon avenues to youth parliament in Saunas? (7) 20 No second race between LA and New York - crimes committed? (7) 23 Tossed pasta the Spanish way! (5) 24 Waffle on for a bit about decorated veils (5)

Credits Cryptic Crossword by Ms Eel Kink All other puzzles jointly by Cloudrunner and Tournesol

Link: https://tinyurl.com/ yypub3ns

Quiz 1 Who is the cricketer with the most first class runs? 2 Which cricketer has the highest first class batting average?

Sudoku

T.W.A.T.

1. Not villain 2. Not odd 3. Not fake 4. Just

30

3 Who is the cricketer with the most first class wickets? 4 Which batsmen has faced the most balls per innings in test cricket?

KenKen

SINCE 2019 FREE FROM INTEGRITY | PROUDLY DEPENDENT ON CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP

THE INDEPENDENT NEWS: Local Woman Barb Dwyer lands new job at Wilson Security

THE DEPENDENT BRINGS YOU NEWS EACH WEEK COURTESY OF OUR SPONSORS. THIS WEEK, THEY ARE: Cricket Australia & Wilson Security

CELEBRITY SHOCK: Ostracised sting ray gatecrashes Bindi Irwin’s engagement party

New merger sees Calombaris partner with Uber Hell Ennick can sniff a prized souvlaki from a mile away. Spurred on by the mammoth public relations storm following news of the fact that he severely underpaid workers employed by his company by almost 8 million dollars, self-proclaimed magnate George Calombaris has announced a partnership with Uber. The partnership comes after the University of Sydney Epic Tea outlet rejected a merger. “It was neither ethical nor epic enough,” an Epic Tea spokesperson said. Calombaris’ recent social

crucifixion by all sectors of society was no barrier to the deal. The Fair Work Ombudsman, who merely dealt Calombaris a literal slap on the wrist, was keen to see Calombaris redeem himself in a new industry. “Calombaris’ conduct was neither hot nor cold, it was neither yes or no, in then out, up then down, wrong when right, black and white, fight and bre— oh shit, wrong statement,” a spokesperson said. Jagjit “Jason” Malhotra, a spokesperson for Uber, told The Dependent that he expects the new

food-delivery program, UberCheats, to succeed wildly. Malhotra explained that the new service would facilitate the delivery of overpriced and overly exoticised “Mediterranian” food directly from the producers who supply to Calombaris’ restaurant chain to “shittier parts of Sydney, like in Western Sydney and shit, for an insanely high price, but it’s fair that they have to pay so much for it because they live so fucking far away from fresh produce and civilisation.” “The business model is disgusting,”

Malhotra said. “Disgustingly good.” Calombaris welcomed the merger in a written press release, the full 500 words of which were published in their entirety on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald: “Some would say that Uber and myself have something in common in that we have utter disregard for workers’ welfare. Well then why do we both have so many workers?” UberCheats is expanding outwards from Penrith from Tuesday, August 6th. Worker pay will be determined using a “mystery box.”

Why I support Australia in the cricket and not India Jagjit “Jason” Malhotra confronts the inconsistencies in his family’s outlook on life. At exactly 1:15pm on Saturday 26th March 2018, Australia came to a standstill. As a fellow Australian with full Australian citizenship and voting rights, I stood with my fellow countrymen and shed a tear as allegations of downright balltampering were downright proved against Steve Smith. What a true cunt of a day in Australian history, and one we look back at with downright shame. Nonetheless, I never turn my back on my self-adopted Australian heritage. I mean, how could you, with such legends such as Dave Warner and Shane Warne representing our

great country in the sport. Well, that’s a question for my deadshit Indian migrant family, who for some godforsaken reason support India, and at their lowest points, even Bangladesh, in cricket. Like, what the heck, you know? You come to this nation with nothing but a suitcase, and what do you give it? A slap in the face. I am lucky enough to wear my 100% pure nylon-cotton blend official Australia jersey from JD Sports, whereas my father sweats porously through his shitty India shirt (Made In India) because it’s polyester. Fucking disgusting.

WORLD: Dad buys family box of pizza shapes as substitute for trip to Italy TV GUIDE: White supremacist who signed up for The Amazing Race in for a huge shock 31

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