Progressive culture since 1954
These are men who were brought here from Manus and Nauru prison for medical treatment almost two years ago. They have received little medical treatment, and their physical pain has been compounded by two more years of stolen time and literal torture.
When walking, things somehow have a way of getting organised. Like Tetris. The oddly shaped blocks that are your thoughts, falling down from the sky. Fitting them into the right space, then ping, the lines form. The more lines you form, the better you feel. Ping ping ping. Soon, the blocks start to fall even faster. Ping ping ping. Lines and lines disappearing before you fully get to grasp them.
In 2016, the Economist’s Global Liveability Index ranked Melbourne the world’s ‘Most Liveable City’ for the sixth year in a row. That same year, I spent my first two semesters of tertiary education at Melbourne’s premier university, living in a cramped twenty-four person share-house in the inner-city.
The death of Mhelody Bruno and the court’s acceptance of Mr Toyer’s evidence regarding the manner of her death are further evidence of the racism and transphobia at the heart of Australia’s justice system.
Young people like Hayat should not have to commit suicide because of the current policies and Australia’s refusal to resettle us. The ban on the resettlement of asylum seekers who registered with UNHCR in Indonesia after 1 July 2014 must be reversed. All that refugees here want is their freedom. They want to make their way in this world, create a life for themselves.
In late October 2020, towards the end of Victoria’s second lockdown, I logged into the discussion forum on essentialbaby.com.au. That day, a short post appeared in the forum from editor Letitia Rowlands informing members that the forum would close on 30 October. Essential Baby, along with the millions of posts, mostly by Australian women, on myriad topics, would be deleted just over a week later.
And you thought you had stumbled into paradise — the word virgin on your lips, blind to the giant kapok’s ancient life. Your arrival has disturbed my dreaming, frightening the anteater who’s been searching for worms all day. Leave Amerigo, we are not a discovery.
While union membership is at its nadir, the RAFFWU v Tantex judgement is a small but important victory that shows the enormous possibilities of unionism. Young workers organising hints at the future of a resurgent labour movement. This is a development we desperately need, especially in the industries most affected by Morrison’s industrial relations law changes – industries such as fast food, retail, and hospitality, which are already rife with casualisation, wage theft, and unhealthy and unsafe conditions.
We are at a crossroads where gas could be locked into the energy grid for the coming decades. We could combine investment in renewable energy to decarbonise manufacturing jobs, and regulate the industry to ensure that more gas stays in Australia. But the choice is likely to be obfuscated as a single pathway: one more silver bullet, one more rush for gas.
All Australians were robbed when the Australian Government breached the New South Wales Eden Regional Forest Agreement in 1999 and when they breached it for the second time under the Eden multi-purpose wharf compensation negotiations of the early 2000.
Across the twenty-two episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin somehow managed to predict the state of political satire years into the future – not in spite of his strangely earnest approach to the subject of comedy, but because of it.
It may well be a law of nature that when you defeat the empire, you become the empire. Cobain and Nirvana had challenged corporate power from within, but the adaptability of those structures saw them drawn unwittingly into the middle of the machine. Cobain was too honest to give in, but also too exhausted to keep running ahead. The more successful Nirvana became, the less he was able to control his own message, to represent something other than the symbol he had become – the constructed symbol of a rock’n’roll star, a polite focus for suburban rebellion, even in spite of the challenging art he made.
Who are we? We’re some of the volunteer readers at Overland – you might recognise our names from the editorial pages of the journal. Ordinarily, we have the pleasure of reading a selection of the works submitted to the journal each month before they move onto Claire’s desk for further consideration. We read and carefully consider each piece, but don’t make the final choice of what’s published, and we don’t ordinarily interact with the authors.