A modern-day sugar tax is not about punishing a particular group and has a far more utilitarian basis. The concept of it is based on its function as a disincentive to change a set of unhealthy behaviours. Paternalism is often widely applauded – like compulsory minimum education, vaccination, drivers wearing seatbelts. Such laws are not immune to critique, nor should they be, but that’s ultimately how societies like ours can move along in roughly the right direction.

In Overland 201, writer and academic Julie Stephens writes a controversial examination on the neoliberalisation of female labour: There used to be a billboard in Melbourne that advertised milk by depicting young, large-breasted women cavorting on a trampoline. The radical graffiti activist group Buga-Up painted the words ‘Women are not cows’ in large letters across […]

In ‘The rhythm of engagement’ in Overland 201 (which can be yours to own), former Overland editor Katherine Wilson probes the world of craft labour: Forty-three-year-old Gilda Civitico and I are sipping tea and talking about craft in the open-plan rear extension of the modest brick home she shares with her partner, electrical engineer Andrew […]