Published in Overland Issue Aotearoa online · Uncategorized The Aotearoa nonfiction issue Giovanni Tiso This digital collection complements the special Aotearoa issue of Overland and is a testament to the response that our call for submissions received. These four essays shouldn’t be regarded as the ‘next best’, but rather as other directions in which the print issue could have gone, and which our writers wanted to explore. In the issue, campaigner Murdoch Stephens writes on the comparative politics on refugees in New Zealand and Australia; union organiser Megan Clayton describes the often paradoxical experience of university workers dealing with the ominous ‘change process’; journalist Naomi Arnold reports on the conditions of New Zealanders living and working in Australia without the expectation of social safety nets or full citizenship; and writer David Young examines the prospects for environmental stewardship and Indigenous values against the pressures of capital and globalisation. It is the breadth of themes and concerns that makes these essays integral to the overall project, and further evidence that the kind of writing that Overland seeks to locate and support articulates an urgently felt need for critical engagement, discussion and resistance. This need is felt on this side of the Tasman, too. Read the issue ‘Looking west’ – Naomi Arnold ‘The global university’ – Megan Clayton ‘The deep silence of the Pacific’ – Murdoch Stephens ‘Cloud nine on the Manawatu’ – David Young Giovanni Tiso Giovanni Tiso is an Italian writer and translator based in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the editor of Overland’s online magazine. He tweets as @gtiso. More by Giovanni Tiso › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
