Lot's Wife Edition 7 2015
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Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong><br />
MoNASH UNIVERSITY student MAGAZINE - CLAYTon<br />
ISSUE SEVEN - <strong>2015</strong>
What’s more<br />
brilliant then a<br />
Monash degree?<br />
Writing for Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong>!<br />
We’ll publish anyone.<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> is a student-run<br />
publication, written by people<br />
just like you.<br />
If you’re a writer, artist, cartoonist,<br />
illustrator, or just a plain-old narcissist,<br />
we want to publish you! (First timers welcome)<br />
Drop by the Lot’s Office on the 1st<br />
floor of Campus Center, or send an<br />
email to: msa-lotswife@monash.edu
Infinite Parking<br />
Cover Artwork by<br />
Miss Terry & Guy Incognito<br />
Parking at Monash has been a major issue since before the<br />
fall of the Berlin Wall. The University has always struggled<br />
with balancing the need for space (because 6 residential<br />
halls apparently isn’t enough) with the need for parking<br />
spaces (because heaven forbid public transport be useful).<br />
This striking photo of the N1 carpark (taken by Miss Terry)<br />
was inspired by the news that it was going to be expanded<br />
by an additional 4 floors by the end of this year. As the total<br />
land area on Clayton campus is reduced, while demand to<br />
for parking rises, it’s a logical conclusion that parking will<br />
become more and more vertical.<br />
The rainbow stained-glass effect (done by Guy Incognito)<br />
was inspired by mucking about in Photoshop. He’s not that<br />
creative.
Editors<br />
Bill Molloy<br />
Claire Rowe<br />
Jarrod Verity<br />
Design<br />
Danielle Natividad<br />
Timothy Newport<br />
Politics<br />
Bree Guthrie<br />
Hareesh Makam<br />
Kirsti Weisz<br />
Tom Clelland<br />
Student Affairs<br />
Julia Pillai<br />
Kristin Robertson<br />
Rosie Boyle<br />
Science & Engineering<br />
Alisoun Townsend<br />
Kathy Zhang<br />
Arts & Culture<br />
Emily Neilsen<br />
Kelly Pigram<br />
Lisa Healy<br />
Photography<br />
Carina Florea<br />
© Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> <strong>2015</strong>, Monash University Clayton, Victoria<br />
As you read this paper you are on Aboriginal land.<br />
We at Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> recognise the Wurundjeri and Boon<br />
Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nations as the historical<br />
and rightful owners and custodians of the lands and<br />
waters on which this newspaper is produced. The land<br />
was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> condemns and will not publish any material<br />
that is racist, sexist, queerphobic, ableist, or discriminatory<br />
in any nature. The views expressed herein are<br />
those of the attributed writers and do not necessarily<br />
reflect the views of the editors or the MSA. All writing<br />
and artwork remains the property of the producers and<br />
must not be reproduced without their written consent.<br />
Contents<br />
3<br />
Editorial<br />
4<br />
OB Reports<br />
Politics<br />
8<br />
Amnesty<br />
10<br />
Two Simple Words<br />
11<br />
Trial by Twitter<br />
12<br />
500 Word Challenge<br />
13<br />
Playing the Trump Card<br />
14<br />
How sexism saved lesbians<br />
16<br />
Playing the Trump Card<br />
Student Affairs<br />
18<br />
An Aussie Bloke in<br />
Bergen<br />
20<br />
Constitutional<br />
Recognition of<br />
Indigenous Australians<br />
22<br />
WinterFest Reviews<br />
23<br />
Parking on Campus<br />
25<br />
Wholefoods Demolition<br />
26<br />
How to Survive Student<br />
Elections<br />
Science & Engineering<br />
28<br />
Conservation Conversation<br />
29<br />
What’s Up Doc?<br />
30<br />
New target prompts new<br />
challenges<br />
31<br />
Puzzles<br />
32<br />
World Record Stargazing<br />
33<br />
Internships<br />
34<br />
Personality Traits<br />
36<br />
Event Schedule<br />
Arts & Culture<br />
38<br />
Etymology of Emoji<br />
40<br />
Where does your food come<br />
from?<br />
41<br />
When you go to Asia<br />
42<br />
Step inside The Ministry<br />
43<br />
The Ashley Madison Hack is<br />
no one’s victory<br />
44<br />
Gig Guide<br />
46<br />
TV Junkies and Junk TV<br />
47<br />
Art Showcase
EDITORIAL 3<br />
Editorial<br />
University life is rarely unpredictable; semesters begin<br />
calmly with refreshed ambitions for academic excellence<br />
and typically end in a bit of stress and anticipation for<br />
holidays. Here is a detailing of what you can expect from the<br />
coming weeks.<br />
WEEK EIGHT<br />
By this point, class sizes have significantly dropped down<br />
to 15 percent with the other 85 percent not to be seen for<br />
another month or so. Those savvy enough to have dropped<br />
out of the more mundane units before the census date are<br />
now the envy of the entire faculty. Perhaps now is a safe time<br />
to sit in on first year Television Studies (ATS1304) or Extreme<br />
Earth! Natural hazards and human vulnerability (ATS1310),<br />
or some other unit you actually wanted to take but was too<br />
embarrassed for it to pop up on your transcript.<br />
It’ll probably be during this week that the oral presentation<br />
you were assigned in week one hits you. Back at the start of<br />
the semester when everyone was being allocated their weeks<br />
for presentation, week eight felt like ages ("two months,<br />
easy I’ll work it out by then"), but somehow that time slipped<br />
by so quickly and now you’re feeling a bit silly in front of a<br />
powerpoint staring at 15 or so vacant looking students.<br />
WEEK NINE<br />
That annoying week when all those mini Bill Shortens and<br />
Sarah Hanson-Youngs litter campus centre talking to you<br />
about the 601 bus or ‘how it’s time for a change’. Your mum’s<br />
sandwiches may be average but FOR GOD’S SAKE, take them<br />
because the 10 dollar focaccia at Coffee Wise is not an option<br />
this week. If you’re one of those few students still attending<br />
lectures at this point in the semester, cease your good<br />
habits; your lectures will all be ‘bashed’ by some aspiring<br />
candidate that will most definitely piss off your lecturer.<br />
Week nine also marks the beginning of major assessment<br />
time. This is when those exorbitantly weighted assignments<br />
are expected and you find yourself going back to the<br />
referencing guide you downloaded in first year to remember<br />
the difference between Harvard and Chicago style<br />
bibliographies.<br />
MID SEM BREAK<br />
The long-overdue mid-semester break finally arrives three<br />
quarters into the semester. This presents the perfect<br />
opportunity to listen to all the lectures you’ve been skipping,<br />
get started on that major assignment that was due in week<br />
six, and most importantly - binge watch season two of True<br />
Detective on Netflix. By the end of this week you’ll feel about<br />
the same as you did after you finished year 12: a little too<br />
good about life and completely unprepared for the future.<br />
The only difference is unlike when you were 18 and had a few<br />
months or living in your alternative reality, the future will<br />
smack you hard in the face by the following week.<br />
You might make a time somewhere during this week to<br />
visit your parents where, over a nice cup of tea and a tim tam,<br />
you tell them about all of the amazing, groundbreaking, work<br />
you’ve done so far in the semester. They’ll heap praise on<br />
you and how you’ve done such great work since high school.<br />
You’ll sit, take a bite of your 6th tim tam and silently nod in<br />
agreement.<br />
WEEK TEN<br />
When people begin to stand around the outside of Matheson<br />
and talk about "how much work I have to do" or "how I’m<br />
so stressed right now". The irony is that despite being<br />
supposedly busy, these people rarely make it past the steps<br />
into the actual library and generally go to the Den instead<br />
and continue to feel stressed.<br />
For those of you still unphased by the impending exam<br />
period, week ten is also the time for you to catch up with the<br />
one person in your tute whose name you have learned and<br />
make awkward small talk about what you did over the break.<br />
Of course, it’s during these four weeks that Issue 7 of Lot’s<br />
<strong>Wife</strong> will be on the stands. This issue, Elspeth Kernebone<br />
presents the pitfalls in the parking plan, Emma Simpkin<br />
examines the etymology of emoji, and Henry Kerstens details<br />
the dizzying debacle that is Donald Trump. So find an empty<br />
lecture theatre and settle in so you can read Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> in peace.
4<br />
OB REPORTS<br />
OB Reports<br />
President<br />
Sinead Colee<br />
Report not submitted<br />
Secretary<br />
Daniel King<br />
Report not submitted<br />
Treasurer<br />
Abby Stapleton<br />
Over the past month I attended education conference, run<br />
by the national union of students. This year the conference<br />
was in Sydney hosted by the University of New South Wales.<br />
During the week I attended an array of workshops beneficial<br />
to my role as treasurer. Much of the conference was spent<br />
planning for the upcoming national day of action on August<br />
19th. The conference involved a lot of skill sharing and<br />
provided a great opportunity to meet other activists from<br />
different states and universities. There were a number<br />
of notable speakers who presented to NUS; I particularly<br />
enjoyed Luke Hilakari’s presentation on how to run an<br />
effective campaign.<br />
Education (Academic Affairs)<br />
Amelia Veronese<br />
Hey all!<br />
I hope Semester 2 is treating you well. As it’s getting to<br />
that stage where assignments are piling up and exams<br />
are approaching, it’s important that if you have any<br />
concerns, you want a contest a mark, are unhappy with<br />
your tutor/lecturer or not coping well that you please<br />
make an appointment with MSA Student Rights at msastudentrights@monash.edu,<br />
they will help you out!<br />
Recently, I have begun an online campaign, ‘We need<br />
Feedback about your Feedback!’ This campaign aims to get<br />
student responses assessing the quality of feedback that<br />
they receive in their assignments. The MSA Student Rights<br />
Service and myself have become aware of many issues about<br />
students receiving very little feedback, no feedback at all or<br />
waiting too long to receive feedback. With these responses<br />
and analysing the Monash University Feedback policy, I will<br />
be presenting this information to the University so they and<br />
faculties can improve their policy on this.<br />
I have also been working on preparing the MSA Teaching<br />
Awards Night. Nominations for Semester 2 have just closed<br />
so thank you to everyone who nominated excellent teaching<br />
staff. We will be releasing the recipients who have won each<br />
of the awards soon, so stay tuned!<br />
Education (Public Affairs)<br />
Sarah Spivak & Mali Rea<br />
The National Day of Action on August 19th was a great<br />
success, with over 60 Monash students taking the bus<br />
with us to the State Library where we heard from NUS and<br />
the NTEU then went on a march and had a good yell! Our<br />
Bluestockings Week panel was also a success with 50<br />
students attending and the speakers all commenting that it<br />
was a great discussion. We also had a full house at the trivia<br />
night and a good time was had by all.<br />
For the rest of the semester we’ll be keeping an eye on<br />
Chris Pyne and his failing efforts to lobby cross benchers,<br />
helping out other MSA departments with their activism and<br />
doing some research into how the changes to undergraduate<br />
degrees in 2016 will affect current and future Monash<br />
students.<br />
As always, get in touch with us by liking our Facebook page<br />
‘MSA Education’ or emailing us at msa-education@monash.edu.<br />
Environment & Social Justice Officers<br />
Lauren Goldsmith & Rhyss Wyllie<br />
It’s a really exciting time to be engaged in environmental<br />
and social justice movements, with big wins happening all<br />
the time, such as the University of Warwick’s commitment<br />
to divest from the Fossil Fuel industry (Monash’s partner<br />
University), and the recent successes of the campaign to<br />
save the Great Barrier Reef from dredging.<br />
The Environment and Social Justice officers have been<br />
busy in planning on campus projects such as the Fossil Free<br />
Monash Trivia Night (September 3rd); a fun way to build<br />
momentum and celebrate the campaign generally. After<br />
engaging with the University administration, we want to<br />
show our strength in student support by a petition delivery<br />
set for week 11! Divestment workshops were also given by ESJ,<br />
in collaboration with the AYCC at the Torque conference (a<br />
global health education program).<br />
Planning is also underway for Environment and Social<br />
Justice week in Week 11, with workshops forums and other<br />
events in the works, covering topics including the ‘new/<br />
sharing economy’.<br />
Keen to get involved? As always, feel free to like ‘MSA<br />
Environment and Social Justice Collective’, and ‘Fossil Free<br />
Monash University’ on facebook for updates, or shoot us an<br />
email!
OB REPORTS 5<br />
Queer Officers<br />
Viv Stewart & Jarvis Sparks<br />
Report not submitted<br />
Women’s Officers<br />
Ellen Flach & Sophie Vassallo<br />
Bluestockings week was a smashing success! Together<br />
with the MSA Education Public Affairs department and<br />
Monash branch of the NTEU we put on an excellent forum<br />
and trivia night. Thanks to Jeannie Rea, Celeste Liddle, Swati<br />
Parashar and Rae Frances for speaking at the forum, it was<br />
a great discussion about the representation of Women in<br />
tertiary curriculum and university more broadly. Two giant<br />
tampons also came to Monash to raise awareness and<br />
support for removing the GST on pads and tampons. We<br />
hope to see the tax being removed soon! Planning is now in<br />
full swing for Women’s Week (week 10) so keep a look out<br />
for those events coming soon. As always we have our weekly<br />
events: Discussion Group on Wednesdays 1:30-3:30 in the<br />
Women’s Lounge and the Women of Colour only Discussion<br />
Group on Tuesdays 1:00-3:00 in the Women’s Lounge. You can<br />
get in touch via msa-womens@monash.edu or swing by the<br />
office on Level 1 of the Campus Centre.<br />
Disabilities and Carers Officer<br />
Andrew Day & Adrienne Bicknell<br />
August already? That certainly came around all too quickly.<br />
Hopefully you’ve been around to one of our weekly morning<br />
teas on alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays (we like to mix<br />
things up here). We’ve been so happy to meet new people and<br />
fulfil our mission of feeding some hungry students.<br />
We’ve commenced a working group with university<br />
administration on our Equal Access proposal and are<br />
now exploring ways that the university can better ensure<br />
essential content makes it to students who are vulnerable to<br />
missing classes for disability or carer related issues – more<br />
to come soon hopefully!<br />
And finally we’ve had our "How to be a better Ally"<br />
pamphlets come in – they’re a great little resource for people<br />
to use to get their head around the basics of how to be a good<br />
ally to carers or people with disability so check them out!<br />
Welfare Officers<br />
Rebecca Adams & Jesse Cameron<br />
Welfare has been extreeemely busy these past few weeks!<br />
We ran a successful welfare week and many people joined<br />
in our free fitness classes, free cooking and growing food<br />
workshops, free food, a housing co-op info session, and the<br />
much anticipated Misfits Ball! It was so heart-warming for<br />
your welfare obs to see you guys getting involved!<br />
Come along to any of our normal activities,,, Free Food<br />
Mondays, free weekly yoga classes, our Survival Centre, and<br />
come chat to us if you need any help with anything or advice.<br />
Activities Officers<br />
Tahnee Burgess & Jake Krelle<br />
Hey guys!<br />
Buckle up for the rest of semester with Activities! Comedy,<br />
Oktoberfest and on-campus activities heading your way<br />
we’ve got you covered for a lot of fun with a lot of fun people.<br />
The cold weather hasn’t slowed down hump day and we’ll<br />
continue to be feeding hungry students every Wednesday at<br />
12 so don’t forget to come down and enjoy a snag, hash brown<br />
or veggie patty on us! Shout out to the Welfare department<br />
for the success of Misfits ball in week 5 very impressed with<br />
the atmosphere of the event and look forward to the events<br />
other MSA departments will be running for the remainder of<br />
the year!
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When things go wrong...<br />
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...and you need to understand your options.
7 7<br />
POLITICS<br />
Politics<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY AMIRUL NASIR @kingrool<br />
Articles by<br />
Julia Pillai<br />
Tom Clelland<br />
Kirsti Weisz<br />
Matthew Edwards<br />
Luke James<br />
Cassie Spry<br />
Henry Kerstens
8<br />
POLITICS<br />
BY JULIA PILLAI<br />
Discussing Sex Work<br />
Amnesty International has passed a motion to push for full<br />
decriminalisation of sex work. As explained by Catherine<br />
Murphy, policy advisor of Amnesty International:<br />
"Amnesty International has a responsibility to assess<br />
how best to prevent human rights violations. As such,<br />
it is right and fitting that we should look at one of the<br />
most disadvantaged groups of people in the world, often<br />
forced to live outside the law and denied their most basic<br />
human rights: sex workers.<br />
We have chosen to advocate for the decriminalization<br />
of all aspects of consensual adult sex - sex work that<br />
does not involve coercion, exploitation or abuse. This<br />
is based on evidence and the real-life experience of sex<br />
workers themselves that criminalization makes them<br />
less safe."<br />
This has been controversial step, as celebrities such as<br />
Lena Dunham, Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep have spoken<br />
out against this new policy from Amnesty; signing and<br />
endorsing a Change.org petition from Coalition Against<br />
Trafficking in Women International (CATW) titled "Vote NO to<br />
Decriminalizing Pimps, Brothel Owners, and Buyers of Sex".<br />
In this petition declares that CATW "...firmly believes and agrees<br />
with Amnesty that human beings bought and sold in the sex trade,<br />
who are mostly women, must not be criminalized in any jurisdiction<br />
by law enforcement or governments. However, what Amnesty’s "Draft<br />
Policy on Sex Work" proposes is in violation of long established<br />
human rights principles, and women’s rights in particular, including<br />
the right to live a life free of violence and with dignity."<br />
Currently in Victoria street sex work is illegal and heavily<br />
policed. Private escorts need to be registered by the Business<br />
Licencing Authority, escort agencies and brothels are legal,<br />
and are are defined as any venue that facilitates sex works.<br />
Agencies and brothels must also be registered with the BLA.<br />
There is little regulation on webcam based sex work.<br />
I spoke to social work masters student Annette Pritchard<br />
and sex worker Mikki* about their thoughts on Amnesty<br />
International’s new policy.<br />
"There are many<br />
misconceptions about sex<br />
work; it’s a much broader<br />
industry than the stereotype."<br />
Amnesty international has passed a policy that calls<br />
for decriminalisation of sex work. Is this a step in the<br />
right direction? Are there areas of this policy that are<br />
problematic, or are based on misconceptions about sex<br />
work?<br />
Annette Pritchard: This is a great step. There are many<br />
misconceptions about sex work; it’s a much broader industry<br />
than the stereotype. Trafficked women are victims and<br />
should not be charged with their captors crimes.<br />
Mikki: Decriminalisation is the only legal system<br />
that protects and supports sex workers. The Amnesty<br />
International policy is a huge step forward in acknowledging<br />
that criminal laws are ineffective and dangerous in governing<br />
sex work. Self regulation within the industry creates far less<br />
exclusive systems and allow legal systems to protect all sex<br />
workers. That said, the policy continues to encourage police<br />
intervention for underage workers, which remains dangerous<br />
and fails to provide safe alternatives but instead focuses<br />
on punishing young sex workers, even if that punishment is<br />
indirect.<br />
Celebrities have spoken out against this policy. Are their<br />
arguments misguided? If so, how?<br />
AP: Yes they are misguided and they don’t take into<br />
account societal structural reasons why sex work is entered<br />
into or why its services are sort.<br />
M: Celebrities’ responses to the Amnesty International are<br />
entirely misguided. Sex workers are the most effective group<br />
in fighting against sex trafficking; providing legal protections<br />
and the ability to unionise will do more to protect trafficking<br />
victims than criminalisation ever could. The needs of sex<br />
workers and trafficking victims are not opposites- neither<br />
group want those we work alongside and those who support<br />
us criminalised. Criminalisation of clients only lends itself to<br />
statist violence and increased violence within the industry by<br />
forcing it underground.<br />
What are some of the more prevalent misconceptions<br />
people have about sex workers? How do social workers cut<br />
through these misconceptions?<br />
AP: I think people don’t see that there are a lot of complex<br />
issues that affect the situation of sex workers. For instance,<br />
how much choice, if any, that they may or may not have in
POLITICS 9<br />
"There is a dogma around the sex industry that forces<br />
workers further underground, thereby creating a system<br />
within which we become acceptable targets for violence.<br />
Many view my participation in sex work as either about<br />
empowerment or victimhood; the reality is that it is a<br />
survival mechanism."<br />
entering, performing, or leaving sex work as individuals.<br />
There are some situations where sex workers have no choice<br />
such as trafficked workers, but other sex workers may have<br />
a great deal of choice in their decision to enter the industry.<br />
There are a lot of financial barriers women in particular face<br />
that mean sex work can often be the only option to get by,<br />
even if its not their ideal choice. Flexible part-time work that<br />
fits around child rearing mothers who predominantly parent<br />
in our society, that actually pay enough to cover the cost of<br />
living are rare; Centre-link doesn’t always cut it either, so in<br />
this situation sex work may be the most viable option.<br />
M: There is a dogma around the sex industry that forces<br />
workers further underground, thereby creating a system<br />
within which we become acceptable targets for violence.<br />
Many view my participation in sex work as either about<br />
empowerment or victimhood; the reality is that it is a<br />
survival mechanism. Neither rescue from or education about<br />
the industry can substitute my income, and continuing to<br />
refuse to take sex workers seriously only makes it harder to<br />
organise against employers that do exploit us.<br />
What do you want to see change in policies around sex<br />
work? How will these changes help sex workers?<br />
AP: Let’s start talking about the customers and having<br />
policy that regulates safety and working conditions for<br />
workers.<br />
M: All criminal laws governing sex work need to be<br />
removed. Licensing systems that out sex workers and<br />
place them at risk do not regulate the industry, but merely<br />
stigmatise and criminalise it.<br />
sex workers in order to ‘catch’ johns. It contributes to the<br />
stigma around our work, and removes clients who do intend<br />
to respect the law, which leaves only clients that are more<br />
dangerous. It does not provide alternative work opportunities,<br />
and criminalises workers who choose to work together<br />
for safety. The Nordic Model poses nothing but danger to<br />
sex workers, and does nothing to decrease trafficking. All<br />
legal models criminalise coercion and trafficking- but<br />
decriminalisation is the only model that provides recourse<br />
for all victims of it.<br />
Final thoughts?<br />
AP: Not all women need to be rescued from sex work. Many<br />
people have had a sex industry chapter in their lives. We<br />
need to break the stigma and focus on societal structures<br />
that put women at a financial disadvantage and quit<br />
punishing them for it. We also need to make it easier for<br />
those who do need help to get out of the industry by making<br />
it realistic for women who are being enslaved, mistreated<br />
by managers or raped by clients to speak out and get help.<br />
We need to be looking at how society can offer viable and<br />
realistic financial alternatives to entering the industry in the<br />
first place.<br />
M: Decriminalisation is the best legal model to support sex<br />
workers, but it only defines the law. Under decriminalisation,<br />
sex workers will have the ability to organise and work on destigmatisation<br />
of the industry. It is important to remember,<br />
though, that the journey does not end with the law.<br />
Many sex workers are against the Nordic Model; a model<br />
that decriminalises selling sex work, but criminalises<br />
clients. What are your thoughts on the Nordic Model?<br />
AP: I think it is definitely worth talking about. In every other<br />
industry we have consumer laws to protect both customers<br />
and vendors. We don’t have that when it comes to sex work<br />
in Australia. There are many reasons customers seek sex<br />
work services. Not all are the stereotype of cheating, raping,<br />
misogynistic dicks, but it’s too easy to be that currently.<br />
M: The Nordic Model continues to treat our work as<br />
criminal activity. It allows police, the biggest perpetrators<br />
of violence against us, to continue to harass and stalk<br />
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
10<br />
POLITICS<br />
BY TOM CLELLAND<br />
Two simple words<br />
A couple of years ago I was watching a press conference<br />
of then Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison. There I was,<br />
slumped in a deep malaise of disinterest, when the man said<br />
something that grabbed my attention. Even as I type these<br />
words, I am surprised at myself; I would generally be the<br />
last person to accuse Mr. Morrison of being even remotely<br />
interesting. However, his response to having been asked a<br />
relatively direct and clear question about boat turn-backs<br />
made me sit up and take notice. And yea, he spoke thusly:<br />
"That goes to operational matters that, whether they affect<br />
current or future operational activity, you will not be getting<br />
commentary from this podium or that podium either way on<br />
those matters." The passage of this remark through the room<br />
left many, including the offending journalist, nonplussed. I<br />
sat watching the exchange, incredulous. Surely that’s against<br />
the rules! You can’t just say that you’re no longer going<br />
to answer questions about a key election promise! That’s<br />
cheating! But say it he did, and, more amazingly, he got<br />
away without answering the question. Though I didn’t know<br />
it at the time, I had just experienced my first taste of the<br />
‘operational matters’ era of the Abbott government.<br />
There are many factors that constrain and govern the<br />
behaviour of those we elect to power; laws governing<br />
corruption, ideological positions, and individual morality<br />
among them. One of the subtlest of these factors, however, is<br />
adherence to political norms that exist within our society. For<br />
instance, it would traditionally be considered to be a breach<br />
of a political norm to renege on an election promise, with the<br />
result that the party in breach of the norm would ideally be<br />
held accountable to the electorate (i.e. voted out of office). We<br />
all either consciously or intuitively understand the concept<br />
of norms, and political parties and officials generally refrain<br />
from violating them, which brings us to our present situation.<br />
I would argue that it would generally be considered a political<br />
norm to, as an elected official, respond to relevant questions<br />
from the media at an event such as a press conference.<br />
Nothing particularly revolutionary there, right? Well, imagine<br />
a situation where you, as an elected official, are about to be<br />
asked some sticky questions at a press conference about<br />
some dirty laundry that you do not particularly want aired. It<br />
would seem that you have two choices; answer the questions<br />
honestly, with all that entails, or lie, right? Well, it seems<br />
that the Abbott government has decided that there is a third<br />
option.<br />
You can almost imagine the meeting that spawned the<br />
‘operational matters’ moniker; the idea would have been<br />
scorned at first, until someone decided that it might just<br />
"The ‘operational matters’<br />
saga has significance in a<br />
wider sense; it shows that it<br />
is in fact possible to change<br />
the rules of the game."<br />
be a harebrained-enough scheme to work. The new policy<br />
underwent its first real trial by fire in early 2014, when a<br />
somewhat clumsy naval vessel caused an international<br />
incident by allegedly straying into Indonesian waters. Once<br />
it became clear that the incident had, in fact, occurred, both<br />
Angus Campbell (military commander of Operation Sovereign<br />
Borders) and Scott Morrison flat out refused to discuss the<br />
details. I know what you’re thinking; surely this is where the<br />
supremely ridiculous policy crumbles to dust in the face of<br />
titanic media pressure. Well, somehow the ‘I’m not going to<br />
answer that because that is about an area that I don’t want<br />
to talk about’ approach survived the herculean test. In fact,<br />
the ‘operational matters’ era continues unabated. In June<br />
this year, Tony Abbott once again used the phrase to avoid<br />
answering questions on radio network 3AW about allegations<br />
that Australian border officials had bribed people smugglers.<br />
Despite the increasing media furor, the line once again<br />
carried the day.<br />
Whatever your opinion on the policy, there is undoubtedly<br />
something to learn here about the mechanics and nature<br />
of our political system. The ‘operational matters’ saga has<br />
significance in a wider sense; it shows that it is in fact<br />
possible to change the rules of the game. It is demonstrably<br />
possible to alter the political norms of expected behaviour<br />
in a way that renders previously unthinkable conduct<br />
somewhat acceptable. The longer this narrative continues,<br />
the harder it will be to displace it; we are at risk of developing<br />
a new universal norm that allows those that we elect to<br />
office to simply refuse to answer questions that are inimical<br />
to their interests. Whatever your political alignment, there<br />
seems to be something profoundly undemocratic in allowing<br />
political parties and officials to operate in a way that is not<br />
accountable to the media, and by extension the electorate.<br />
I am willing to admit, however, that my concerns may be<br />
old-fashioned, and, given a few years, it will perhaps be<br />
acceptable behaviour on the part of politicians to simply<br />
send a sticky-note saying ‘no comment’ to press conferences.
POLITICS 11<br />
Trial by<br />
Twitter:<br />
How online vigilantes<br />
can shatter lives<br />
BY KIRSTI WEISZ<br />
Think of social media – particularly Twitter – as a courtroom.<br />
The jury is us, the average citizen, but we are also the lawyers<br />
and the judge. We raise our argument and not only decide<br />
who is guilty or innocent, but we can influence the sentence.<br />
In this courtroom, however, the formalities are stripped away,<br />
not just the formal dress-code and the legal jargon but the<br />
rules and procedures that have been developed to keep the<br />
process as balanced as possible.<br />
This is where Jonah Lehrer, a science writer and journalist,<br />
was punished and "drenched in shame and regret." Lehrer<br />
was shamed in 2012 when a freelance journalist accused him<br />
of making up and misattributing quotes about Bob Dylan in<br />
his best-selling book Imagine: How Creativity Works. When he<br />
admitted to falsifying quotes and apologised live, a screen<br />
played Twitter posts behind him that were degrading and<br />
scolding.<br />
Journalist and author Jon Ronson recently published a new<br />
book titled So you’ve been publicly shamed where he describes<br />
how Lehrer’s apology played out like a courtroom drama.<br />
Ronson says the people chose their roles and opted for "the<br />
hanging judge."<br />
Lehrer is just one of the many victims of public shaming<br />
Ronson interviewed for his book, which details the rise of<br />
culture shaming and the virtual mob. Originally, Ronson<br />
admired the power of social media and its ability to<br />
"democratise justice" but he now takes a different view.<br />
"Social media gave a voice to the voiceless people, so I think<br />
it’s a sad irony that a way to survive social media now is to go<br />
back to being voiceless," he says.<br />
The issue lies in proportionality. Shaming is not necessarily<br />
wrong but the lack of rules and an ‘off switch’ makes it lethal.<br />
It also comes in many forms, from fat shaming and skinny<br />
shaming to being shamed based on your beliefs or political<br />
opinions. One of the latest victims of body shaming was Iggy<br />
Azalea, a 24 year old singer who returned from a vacation<br />
and found nasty comments about her body. This led her to<br />
quit social media but the repercussions were arguably more<br />
trivial compared to other victims who may have made an<br />
innocent mistake or a badly worded joke which derailed their<br />
careers and lives. A frightening reality is that four people this<br />
year have taken their lives due to public shaming, according<br />
to Ronson.<br />
Ronson’s book aims to attack disproportionate<br />
punishments where minor transgressions, or in Lehrer’s<br />
case, rather serious ones, are punished out of proportion.<br />
Public humiliation as a punishment isn’t a recent<br />
phenomenon and has been a cultural practice for centuries.<br />
Stoning, branding, public hangings and witch trials prove<br />
this. Ronson says in his book that public punishment was<br />
phased out because it was viewed as far too brutal and<br />
appalling. Online shaming is the revival of this form of<br />
punishment and while it doesn’t necessarily lead to physical<br />
violence, it has a wider audience and a permanent effect<br />
that’s almost just as damaging.<br />
Threats of rape, death, physical violence and<br />
unemployment canvass some of the more serious cases that<br />
have taken place. It is not often discussed, but the attacks<br />
and their effect can be interpreted as violating human rights<br />
such as the right to dignity and right against cruel, inhuman<br />
or degrading punishment.<br />
Writer and media strategist Cole Stryker says that<br />
"considered through a historical lens, public shaming begins<br />
to look like a tool designed not to humanely punish the perp<br />
but rather to satisfy the crowd."<br />
There’s a sad irony in that the people doing the shaming<br />
often feel they are doing the right thing and serving social<br />
justice but in reality amateur law enforcers and vigilantes are<br />
dangerous. The degree of anonymity provided by social media<br />
makes this policing unaccountable and unrestricted in the<br />
damage it can cause.<br />
At the same time, there are benefits to using shaming as<br />
a punishment. Walter Palmer, the US dentist who shot and<br />
killed Cecil the lion, and Mark Latham highlight how social<br />
media can be a reasonable platform for some kind of moral<br />
punishment.<br />
Social media can be a tool for justice, it can cause inner<br />
reflection and illustrate the behaviour society enshrines<br />
but it can also be a weapon. A weapon that can rip apart<br />
someone’s life, marginalise them from society and leave<br />
them beyond repair.<br />
We may root for the vigilantes on TV shows or in movies<br />
but the vilification and harassment taking place on social<br />
media destroys the lives of people to unfair proportions. This<br />
courtroom set up by social media supersedes the realms of<br />
justice and fairness it ironically claims to pursue. As Ronson<br />
said in a recent talk in Melbourne, "can you think of anything<br />
less judicial than this?"<br />
Illustration by Amirul Nasir @kingrool
12<br />
POLITICS<br />
500 Word Challenge<br />
BY MATTHEW EDWARDS<br />
For<br />
Australians smoke weed more than they take any other illicit<br />
drug. The 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey<br />
report found one in 3 Australians aged 14 years and over<br />
had used marijuana at least once, with more than half a<br />
million indicating use in the last 12 months. Sixty thousand<br />
Australians are arrested every year for possessing or using<br />
cannabis, accounting for around 60 per cent of all drugrelated<br />
arrests.<br />
But marijuana is illegal, isn’t it? Yes and no. It’s against<br />
the law to use, own, cultivate, or sell cannabis in Australia,<br />
but the penalties for cannabis offences are different for each<br />
state and territory. Because what sensible system based on<br />
scientific fact and harm minimisation wouldn’t have seven<br />
different sets of consequences for the same offence?<br />
Some jurisdictions have already decriminalised minor<br />
cannabis offences, like South Australia, the Australian<br />
Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory. These minor<br />
offences include possession of small amounts for personal<br />
use, and can be dealt with as a civil penalty, similar to<br />
speeding.<br />
Like most countries, Australia started banning illicit<br />
drugs more than half a century ago. In 1971, US President<br />
Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs", increasing the size<br />
and scope of federal drug control agencies, and pushing<br />
mandatory sentencing. The laws have changed over the<br />
years, but some politicians are still obsessed with ‘fighting<br />
the good fight’ against drugs ever since; our own Tony Abbott<br />
has claimed Australia is caught in an "ice epidemic", and has<br />
created a campaign of fear around the substance.<br />
There is no good estimate for the cost of arresting 60,000<br />
people, processing these arrests, and punishing the offender,<br />
every year. But I’m sure it would not be cheap. It’s not a<br />
stretch to imagine how much time and money it would<br />
save law enforcement, and by extension, the taxpayers, if<br />
marijuana was decriminalised.<br />
Furthermore, legal marijuana might actually make money.<br />
Not only would the government save on law enforcement,<br />
but with safe and proper regulation of marijuana supply and<br />
sale, we could see the introduction of marijuana stores like<br />
Legalise it<br />
"It’s not a stretch to imagine<br />
how much time and money it<br />
would save law enforcement,<br />
and by extension, the<br />
taxpayers, if marijuana was<br />
decriminalised."<br />
those in Colorado, one of the US states that recently legalised<br />
the drug. The money made from taxing marijuana alone<br />
could resolve Australia’s federal budget. Dank kush could<br />
make some dank cash.<br />
The fundamental problem with the "war on drugs",<br />
especially in regards to marijuana, is that it focuses not<br />
enough on regulation, and too much on the drug itself. The<br />
government prohibits and creates fear surrounding the drug<br />
– the fear that "we" will become like "them": the drug addicts.<br />
We’ll destroy our families, we’ll destroy our community. This<br />
is wrong.<br />
Marijuana is often described as a gateway drug, meaning<br />
it could potentially lead to more harmful substances. The<br />
fact is, marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs available<br />
– alcohol is a far more dangerous drug in the short-term and<br />
long-term, and is still legal.<br />
It’s time to get rid of the stigma around marijuana and<br />
just, like, chill out, man.
POLITICS 13<br />
This month’s issue:<br />
Legalising Marijuana<br />
Against<br />
Free Ganja<br />
BY luke james<br />
Marijuana plays second fiddle to only alcohol and tobacco<br />
when it comes to what people think of when the phrase<br />
"recreational drug" is mentioned in conversation. Let’s be<br />
honest, most of you reading this have either tried it, or plan<br />
on trying it at some point. But what if you didn’t need to get<br />
it off your mate who has a friend who knows a guy? What if,<br />
just like buying your first six pack, you could just get it over<br />
the counter? What if it was legalised?<br />
To explore this hypothetical why don’t we take the example<br />
of the first state in America where it actually was legalised<br />
– Colorado. In January 2014, Colorado became the first state<br />
to allow the sale of cannabis for recreational use to anyone<br />
aged 21 or older, and more than a year on, the effects of this<br />
move have begun to show. At least 14 Colorado children, aged<br />
three to seven, were sent to hospitals in the first half of 2014<br />
for accidentally ingesting marijuana products – as opposed<br />
to 4 in the last three years. Whilst this figure may seem a<br />
minute problem, it highlights a bigger issue surrounding<br />
legalisation, the way marijuana is perceived will change.<br />
Legalisation brings marijuana into the same realm as<br />
alcohol and tobacco, and hence the stigma surrounding it<br />
currently will vanish. Underage drinking and smoking runs<br />
rampant in our schools and universities, adding marijuana<br />
to that mix doesn’t sound like a genius idea to even the most<br />
liberal of policy makers. Marijuana is also, like tobacco and<br />
alcohol, a gateway drug to worse things – like cocaine and<br />
synthetic party drugs, which are, without question, very, very<br />
bad things. Legitimising marijuana, as anyone can intuitively<br />
perceive, simply widens the gateway to this next level of<br />
recreational drug use.<br />
But let’s forget that for a second, why don’t we look at<br />
this from a purely economic perspective? Arguments about<br />
legalizing marijuana tend to contain a lot of dollar signs.<br />
Proponents point to higher tax revenues, "pot tourism," and<br />
lower law enforcement costs. Fair enough, if it wasn’t illegal,<br />
there wouldn’t be any need to arrest someone for smoking a<br />
joint, and I know Amsterdam is a popular tourist destination,<br />
and that’s only partly due to the stunning architecture. As<br />
an economics student I am inclined to say - go ahead and<br />
"Legitimising marijuana,<br />
as anyone can intuitively<br />
perceive, simply widens the<br />
gateway to this next level of<br />
recreational drug use."<br />
legalize marijuana as long as the expected net benefit of<br />
doing so is positive, but before you go off thinking "yay!<br />
Economics says yes!" consider the flipside. Opponents’<br />
arguments against legalisation are just as strong, two of<br />
the major ones being that medical costs will go up, and<br />
workplace productivity will go down. This too, makes intuitive<br />
sense, as high people are clumsy people, just like like drunk<br />
people, and if Bradley Cooper had been smoking weed in<br />
"Limitless", that movie probably wouldn’t have been called<br />
that – for obvious reasons.<br />
So to legalise or not to legalise? I put the question to you,<br />
the reader, but before you answer let me leave you with a<br />
quote from the current governor of Colorado, a year on after<br />
his state voted in favour of legalisation – "If I could’ve waved<br />
a wand the day after the election, I would’ve reversed the<br />
election and said, this was a bad idea."
14<br />
POLITICS<br />
BY cassie spry<br />
How Sexism Saved Lesbians<br />
From Boston marriages to Nazi Germany, throughout history,<br />
there have been instances where prejudice against women<br />
has helped lesbians and bisexual women.<br />
With a recent study showing reduced explicit and implicit<br />
bias against gays and lesbians in the last few years (despite<br />
the Australian marriage equality campaign hitting a road<br />
block) it’s interesting to look back on how far we have come.<br />
And one intriguing facet of this evaluation is how women who<br />
love women were often saved from some of the homophobia<br />
that gay men faced.<br />
The reason? Sexism. Who would have thought that it could<br />
have had its uses?<br />
Most people have heard the story of Queen Victoria<br />
refusing to ban lesbianism in 1885 because she did not think<br />
it existed. Many people believe that it is a myth, with some<br />
suggesting that Parliament did not want to draw women’s<br />
attention to the existence of lesbianism. Either way, it meant<br />
that lesbians were not persecuted in the same way that<br />
homosexual men were.<br />
Those 1885 amendments were so famous in their<br />
persecution of homosexual men that it became known as<br />
‘The Blackmailer’s Charter’ and was used to send Oscar Wilde<br />
to prison in 1895 with hundreds of other gay men following.<br />
However before this Charter, anal sex had been punishable by<br />
death since 1533.<br />
At the same time, it was common thought that women had<br />
no libido or sexual desire, but were simply passive players<br />
who had to dutifully endure sex solely for the creation of<br />
children.<br />
The idea of purity was obviously a harmful concept to<br />
women with the idea of virginity and slut-shaming still<br />
impacting women today. Hymen reconstruction surgery<br />
is currently in high demand, particularly in third world<br />
countries where virginity is still often a requirement for<br />
marriage.<br />
The unexpected upside to this damaging idea that only<br />
a man’s penis could affect the worth of a woman and that<br />
women never initiated (or enjoyed) sexual encounters<br />
themselves, was that two women could live together with<br />
people believing they were only close friends.<br />
This became known as a Boston Marriage. Two women<br />
could live together, even sleep in the same bed, and it<br />
was assumed that they were straight and would never do<br />
anything sexual with each other.<br />
Unfortunately, this was only an option for wealthy women<br />
– mainly those who had inherited money or those few who<br />
managed to have a career.<br />
These women often also faced some taunts and<br />
discrimination for being spinsters, but for some, it was worth<br />
it.<br />
Conservatives in pre-World War II Germany also believed<br />
in the passive role of women, considering them to be both<br />
inferior to and dependent on men.<br />
And, as lesbians could still fulfil their ‘duty’ of producing<br />
more Aryan children, they were still able to be as beneficial as<br />
a woman could be to Germany.<br />
During the Second World War, lesbians were persecuted by<br />
Nazis to a lesser extent than gay men. When they were sent<br />
to concentration camps, they generally were not imprisoned<br />
simply for their sexuality, but for being part of another<br />
targeted group also. They did not have to wear the pink<br />
triangle either, which was reserved for homosexual men.<br />
Legally, sexual acts between women were not against the<br />
law before or during the war, but the Nazi Party spend a lot<br />
of effort shutting down safe spaces for lesbians and lesbian<br />
media; such as the journal die Freundin (Girlfriend).<br />
Many lesbians married men in order to protect their safety<br />
or because Nazi restrictions of women’s careers meant they<br />
could not financially support themselves.<br />
Sexism – in this instance, the belief that women were less<br />
valuable than men – protected lesbians, as they were not<br />
hunted and killed to the same extent as homosexual men.<br />
In the Middle East where homosexuality is still punishable by<br />
death in many countries, there are still ways in which the law<br />
favours lesbians.<br />
In Iran, for example, male homosexuals face execution<br />
after only one conviction; whereas, lesbian sex is punishable<br />
by 100 lashes with the death penalty being imposed only after<br />
the fourth sentence.<br />
While the law is based on mainstream views, it also helps<br />
to maintain the status quo. It is much harder for queer people<br />
to gain acceptance when laws that are meant to protect you<br />
are used to persecute you.<br />
It was not until 1997 that homosexuality was<br />
decriminalised in the last Australian state. This meant that<br />
the law discriminated against queer people, which meant<br />
that people felt more justified in their own discriminatory<br />
beliefs and behaviours.<br />
While changing discriminatory laws won’t change a<br />
nation’s view overnight, it will help to alter popular mindset.<br />
In the West, there are many homophobes who hate gay men,<br />
but are fine with lesbians because they get turned on by girl<br />
on girl porn.<br />
While this may seem like a victory for lesbians who may
POLITICS 15<br />
"Sexism – in this instance, the belief that women were<br />
less valuable than men – protected lesbians, as they were<br />
not hunted and killed to the same extent as homosexual<br />
men.<br />
In the Middle East where homosexuality is still punishable<br />
by death in many countries, there are still ways in which<br />
the law favours lesbians."<br />
not have to face quite as many homophobic rants or slurs,<br />
the discrimination that queer women face is insidious.<br />
Female couples are yelled at to kiss and leered at if they<br />
display any sign of public affection. The importance of their<br />
relationships is often downplayed by people who assume<br />
that it is less significant because no men are involved.<br />
The fetishisation of queer women’s relationships is a huge<br />
issue in our society with lesbian porn being a huge industry.<br />
This spreads the sexist idea that has been around for<br />
centuries that women are passive in sexual relationships<br />
with everything being done for the man’s pleasure.<br />
In 2014, "lesbian" was the second most searched for term<br />
on Pornhub. While queer women also use this site and<br />
contributed to the statistics, it is a male-dominated website<br />
and thus it is predominantly males who make up lesbian<br />
porn watchers.<br />
We should not necessarily condemn anyone who enjoys<br />
girl/girl porn, but it is important to analyse the effect this has<br />
on queer women.<br />
In the past, queer women weren’t thought to exist or to<br />
matter because a man wasn’t present in the relationship;<br />
now, when two women kiss, it’s thought that they are trying<br />
to interest a man.<br />
And some straight women also buy into this idea. They<br />
believe that they should kiss a girl they are not attracted to in<br />
order to impress or turn on their boyfriend.<br />
While this is not the worst thing (experimenting with your<br />
sexuality definitely helps many people better understand<br />
themselves and their attractions), it does cheapen women’s<br />
relationships by encouraging the idea that women are meant<br />
to please men, even in relationships that do not involve them.<br />
Queer women experience sexism in a different way to straight<br />
women and experiences of homophobia are different for<br />
queer women and men. Sexism plays into the queerphobic<br />
discrimination faced by queer women and both forms<br />
of prejudice feed each other, strengthening the hatred,<br />
ignorance, and negative actions.<br />
In Australia, lesbian couples are much more likely to have<br />
children living with them (22%) than gay men (3%) with the<br />
children being from either previous relationships, adoption,<br />
IVF or other situations.<br />
However, it is still hard for same-sex couples to adopt, even<br />
in Australia (in Victoria, only heterosexual couples and single<br />
parents can adopt).<br />
Many gay parents look at international adoption, but sadly,<br />
they are often disqualified as being substandard parents.<br />
While these nations strongly believe women are innately<br />
nurturing mothers, they value the family structure more.<br />
So although sexism has had its benefits in helping lesbians<br />
in the past, it is not the way of the future.<br />
These sexist views hurt gay men by meaning they have<br />
often received the more violent forms of discrimination,<br />
and they hurt lesbians by popularising the belief that their<br />
relationships are not worth as much without any men.<br />
Hopefully with the recent study showing explicit bias against<br />
homosexuals falling 26% from 2006 to 2013, we can look<br />
forward to more acceptance for all queer people and an end<br />
to misogynistic ideas about lesbians.
16<br />
POLITICS<br />
BY henry kerstens<br />
Playing the Trump Card<br />
If Netflix’s House of Cards taught me anything, it has taught<br />
me that American politics can be bought. Flexible campaignfunding<br />
regulations, an abundance of pliable candidates and<br />
an intoxicating cash-rules-everything attitude makes for<br />
the perfect breeding ground for money and power. Since the<br />
landmark case of Citizens United v FEC, corporate donations<br />
are now considered a legitimate expression of ‘free speech’<br />
under the First Amendment. It’s leveraged on both sides of<br />
the political playhouse (Obama’s presidential campaign cost<br />
just shy of $750 million), and promises to become only more<br />
endemic as the public and private sectors further align.<br />
In every way, Donald Trump’s recent presidential bid<br />
is this process taken to its logical conclusion. When the<br />
system allows for multinationals and their billionaire CEO’s<br />
to purchase political access, it is inevitable that someone<br />
would eventually stop paying the candidate and actually<br />
become one. It’s business after all, and the middlemen<br />
only add extra costs and increase margin for error. Now,<br />
this would be funny if it wasn’t scary. In a competitive<br />
Republican field this year containing five Governors, three<br />
Senators and a Neurosurgeon, ‘The Donald’ currently has<br />
overwhelming support from 24% of registered Republican<br />
voters. That’s more than second placed Jeb Bush (13%)<br />
and third placed Ben Carson (8%) combined, and equates<br />
to roughly 12 million American voters. By any political<br />
sensitivity, that’s a distressing amount of people backing<br />
the sometimes-businessman, mostly reality TV star and<br />
never-before politician into assuming leadership of the Free<br />
World. His ‘policies’ make it scarier. On tackling the divisive<br />
Mexican immigration issue, Trump proposes building a "big,<br />
beautiful, powerful wall" and deporting children born on U.S<br />
soil to undocumented parents back across it. On reviving<br />
the tattered economy, the man most well known for saying<br />
‘you’re fired!’ pledges to be - without further specification -<br />
"the greatest jobs president that God has ever created". And,<br />
on foreign affairs, Trump warned China - U.S’s second largest<br />
trading partner - that if he got in "the poor Chinese" would<br />
"be in trouble" because of how "they’re ripping [America] off".<br />
It’s a political campaign that Frank Underwood couldn’t even<br />
persuade you to get behind. Yet, even when it’s gift-wrapped<br />
in Trump’s shameless self-aggrandisement and dripping<br />
with corporate agendas, he’s somehow convinced one<br />
quarter of the Republican demographic that it’s the right way<br />
forward.<br />
Admittedly, our representatives aren’t always exemplars<br />
of the high-quality leadership expected from the democratic<br />
process and, in fact, are probably more often that not<br />
reminders of the Abbott-solute opposite. But, while our<br />
parliament does shelter the bombastic political ideologies<br />
of personalities like Palmer and Lambie, they’re generally<br />
relegated to the political fringe and rarely placed in the<br />
meaningful political spotlight. Their straight talk on hotbutton<br />
issues is similar to Trump in substance and delivery,<br />
but thankfully, distinct in terms of widespread public<br />
support and credibility. Although public disillusionment with<br />
our politicians feels as alive as ever, surely ‘Prime Minister’<br />
and ‘Palmer’ are two words that could only be used in the<br />
same sentence comically, and never politically straightfaced.<br />
It seems then that while our ‘worst’ says something about<br />
the reckless political periphery of our system, America’s<br />
implore that there is something deficient at the heart.<br />
Trump’s status as frontrunner exemplifies that when a<br />
system is jacked by unmitigated corporate congestion, name<br />
recognition and shock value can go so far in winning the<br />
race. What’s left behind are the politics. More than anything,<br />
this theme has plagued the presidential debates so far, with<br />
Obama even critical of it’s proceedings as not "conducive<br />
to good politics or good policy". Trump’s propensity for fear<br />
mongering, his reliance on ideological rhetoric and displays<br />
of tacky showmanship hollows the quality of political<br />
dialogue for the nation. When the playing field is injected<br />
with such venom, opponents are forced to consider, rebut<br />
and thus potentially validate positions that should have no<br />
place in the modern political landscape.<br />
That being said, most pundits will tell you that despite a<br />
convincing lead in the polls, Donald is just blowing his own<br />
Trumpet when he speaks of imminent presidential glory.<br />
Surely, for a man so susceptible to media gaffes the lengthy<br />
presidential battle presents too many opportunities for<br />
misadventure for him to survive.<br />
But, at least for now, Trump’s ascent demands the need<br />
for discussion: discussion of not just what is misguiding<br />
the priorities of American voters, but of how such priorities<br />
could devalue the political process so important in setting<br />
the standards for public debate in democratic countries.<br />
Trump, in every way you wouldn’t want to, indulges the House<br />
of Cards devotee in all of us. He reminds us not just of the<br />
depravity underpinning politics, but of Underwood’s own<br />
grave philosophy that although "power’s more important<br />
than money; when it comes to elections money gives power,<br />
well, a run for its money".<br />
Image courtesy of<br />
www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore
17<br />
Student Affairs<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY AMIRUL NASIR @kingrool<br />
Articles by<br />
David Jeffery<br />
MSA Indigenous Department<br />
Carina Florea, Jessie Crossman,<br />
Timothy Newport & Rosie Boyle<br />
Elspeth Kernebone<br />
Melodee Ried<br />
Student Affairs Editors
18<br />
STUDENT AFFAIRS<br />
By David Jeffery<br />
An Aussie Bloke in Bergen<br />
In the penultimate year of my Arts degree at Monash (while I was<br />
still eligible for funding and a very attractive OS HELP Loan) I<br />
applied for a semester of study aboard at the University of Bergen<br />
in Norway. These are the accounts of my seamless integration into<br />
Nordic life i.e. finding a job, room to rent and hiking.<br />
Broke ass bitch<br />
I have recently arrived in Bergen after haggling my way<br />
onto the train from Oslo to Bergen; the conductor was nicer<br />
than I anticipated. "If anyone asks you to move it’s because<br />
you’re sitting in their seat, we’re fully booked". To stay-put in<br />
someone else’s seat I pretended to be asleep for the 7-hour<br />
journey, which was a shame because this route is noted as<br />
one of the most scenic in Europe.<br />
Three weeks interning in London and a month glampacking<br />
through Western Europe had left me with just over a<br />
thousand Australian dollars (which in Norway will buy you a<br />
couple of beers, dinner and a week at the YMCA). It was time<br />
to find a job.<br />
I was optimistic about my chances of finding a job<br />
speaking English. A friend had told me "Everyone speaks<br />
English in Norway". I wore my best ‘go-getter’ outfit and<br />
canvassed the city with my CV. On my fifth day in Bergen<br />
I had a trial shift at a bar called Hem, which translates<br />
to Home in English. It was perfect. Hem used to be Café<br />
Hollywood, a magnet for Mods and political activists in the<br />
80’s. Today it is a lounge bar with a retro interior that serves<br />
craft beers, cocktails and the best Lapskaus you will ever<br />
eat. It is located smack bang in the middle of the theatre<br />
district. I was exotic, Norwegians love Australians, which is<br />
something I am still trying to understand. A weekend of work<br />
left me with enough tips to maintain my glamorous lifestyle.<br />
Within no time I was going out for breakfast and had my<br />
bottom on a seat watching the new Woody Allen film.
STUDENT AFFAIRS 19<br />
Better homes and ghettos<br />
Opting out for student housing I had no option but to book<br />
myself into the tragically decorated hostel the ‘Piano Hostel’.<br />
If you ever find yourself in Bergen, don’t do it to yourself (see<br />
image above).<br />
In my month of house hunting I had checked-in to every<br />
hostel in Bergen. I got used to sleeping in a room with 16+<br />
people. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep alone from hereon<br />
in. The rental market over here is interesting. Rooms for<br />
rent range from creatively converted (some with bed sheets<br />
for dividing walls) lounge rooms to 11 person wooden share<br />
houses. Private landlords exist with one purpose; to totally<br />
exploit international students. At one inspection the landlord<br />
sat me down man-to-man, and said "Good news is, its<br />
available now... Bad news is, it could be bigger". I examined<br />
the room and tried to think of how I would fit a single<br />
mattress in this hallway come bedroom. I saw the walls and<br />
asked, "Is that asbestos?" he replied, "What is that word? I<br />
have never heard it in my life, all the walls are like this in<br />
Norway..." I decided not to sign the 3-year lease written only in<br />
Norwegian.<br />
I posted on the university’s version of Gumtree and found<br />
a room that ticked all the boxes. I am living on Nygårdsgaten<br />
(which is like the Footscray of Bergen, but 150 meters from<br />
the university) with three flat mates, a Swede that works<br />
for IKEA, an Indian IT Technician for the university and a<br />
Norwegian extreme sports athlete; it’s fantastic.<br />
Faffing about in the Fjords<br />
This semester I’m taking Social Anthropology and Geography<br />
units centered on climate change and international<br />
development. To avoid any uncomfortable conversations on<br />
the carbon tax, Australian foreign aid or current immigration<br />
policies I will revisit ATS1091: Introductory German and take up<br />
an alter ego for the seminars.<br />
Before commencing my studies I’ve been riding the<br />
Fløibanen up to Mt Fløyen and pretending to hike alongside<br />
hundreds of American tourists. Seven fjords surround the<br />
city so hiking is naturally a common pastime. My first hike<br />
was prompted by a friend who asked me whether I would like<br />
to go for a walk. I expected it would be a round-trip to the 7<br />
Eleven. I was totally unprepared and returned seven hours<br />
later exhausted with sore feet.<br />
All pessimism aside, this has been the most phenomenal<br />
experience and I would encourage anyone to apply for<br />
student exchange in Bergen.
20<br />
STUDENT AFFAIRS<br />
By MSA Indigenous Department<br />
Constitutional Recognition of<br />
Indigenous Australians<br />
Constitutional Recognition – The campaign to "Recognise"<br />
Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution. It’s what sounds<br />
like the feel good simple solution for that one problem we can’t<br />
really be bothered to talk about unless they’re playing sport...<br />
Indigenous people.<br />
This semester our MSA Indigenous department aims to<br />
enlighten you on the yes, no and ‘meh’ cases where our<br />
current Indigenous rights discussion sits. If you’ve been<br />
paying attention to the news, AFL, Facebook suggested<br />
pages or Corporate Partnership Advertising, you will notice<br />
the campaign for Constitutional recognition is everywhere.<br />
If you don’t subscribe to the said mentioned channels or<br />
just mentally blocked them out because you’re fed up with<br />
the world of symbolic internet activism, you may have some<br />
questions. In that case, good! We are here to help.<br />
So what is Recognise? It is the federally funded campaign<br />
to acknowledge Indigenous people in our constitution as well<br />
as remove racist outdated sections of the document and<br />
potentially ban racial discrimination at a constitutional level.<br />
The movement, with its glowing ‘R’ graphic logo, has travelled<br />
along the backburner throughout the Howard, Rudd, Gillard,<br />
Rudd and now Abbott governments, waiting for its politically<br />
opportune moment to be called to a referendum.<br />
So first off, a few FAQs and myths about the campaign<br />
need to be dispelled before we have any rational discussion<br />
and debate on the topic. Remember this year when our<br />
national Indigenous Reconciliation and NAIDOC weeks were<br />
dominated by media coverage of people booing a guy with an<br />
imaginary spear? In that very same week, do you remember<br />
when reports of sky rocketing indigenous incarceration rates<br />
came out and received only a blip of mainstream media<br />
coverage? In light of this, imagine how hard it would be to<br />
have a genuine discussion about Indigenous sovereignty<br />
and rights. Something you may have also noticed in the<br />
Indigenous rights debate is that the conversation on the<br />
whole has lost it’s shape in the last decade; the Indigenous<br />
voice on the whole has been defunded, dismantled, silenced<br />
and generally confused with no real platform for intelligent<br />
discussion or leadership.<br />
So lets start that discussion.<br />
1— There’s no final wording, yet: With only a tentativeless<br />
than likely-2017 date for a referendum, currently<br />
constitutional recognition is just graphically designed logos,<br />
stickers and notions of positive things. The final proposed<br />
words to go into the constitution are yet to be announced<br />
and with good reason; this is an incredibly contentious legal<br />
argument that this country has avoided for over 200 years,<br />
so we are in a the grace period right now where our political<br />
leaders can look good by politely supporting this feel good<br />
notion before their respective parties get to reveal any real<br />
positions.<br />
2— It’s nothing new: The idea for constitutional recognition<br />
has travelled along since the 1967 referendum on the<br />
discriminatory elements of the constitution; so don’t<br />
automatically write it off because of the current woeful<br />
downward spiral of unscripted government slip ups. Keep in<br />
mind that this is the only Indigenous rights item currently<br />
being discussed, as all of our best efforts to close the gap<br />
continue to fail due to both sides of successive government<br />
policy.<br />
3— Is this a Government administered symbolic political<br />
band aid on our country’s history? Well, yes and no. The<br />
campaign has been crafted by some of country’s most<br />
respected senior Indigenous leaders with the full intent to<br />
reshape our national identity by slowly walking away from<br />
our racist past towards a respectful future. However the<br />
campaign is touted as holding the potential to open new<br />
doors and hold new conversations towards a better future<br />
and is a stepping stone to greater achievements. Regardless<br />
of how you word the symbolic synonym stairway to change<br />
the campaign is no different to any other band aid applied on<br />
our nation’s history. It’s the cultural equivalent of addressing<br />
climate change by planting some trees.<br />
4— It is the right thing to do? In theory, the right thing<br />
would be to sign a treaty with our traditional owners before<br />
we even create a constitution. However 200 years later we are<br />
stuck in this grey area where Indigenous people never ceded<br />
sovereignty and regardless of this, the country of Australia<br />
was established by ignoring them, therefore, anything we<br />
do from here will not exactly be the ‘right thing’ and any<br />
next step will always have to acknowledge this fact when<br />
determining what is right and what is fair.<br />
5— Recognise’s billion-dollar campaign. Amidst the outrage<br />
of federal cuts to Indigenous health and legal aide, Recognise
STUDENT AFFAIRS 21<br />
"The movement, has travelled along the backburner<br />
throughout the Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Rudd and<br />
now Abbott governments, waiting for its politically<br />
opportune moment to be called to a referendum."<br />
has copped flack for receiving funding to promote their<br />
campaign. Under the Abbott government, the campaign has<br />
hit a real downturn of support with the prime minster himself<br />
professing his commitment to the cause whilst at the same<br />
time continuously requesting that Indigenous Australians<br />
drop their "unsettled" "lifestyle choices" to assimilate. The<br />
campaign itself has only been given 10-15 million dollars<br />
since 2013 to get the ball rolling in the promotion of raising<br />
awareness, which does sound like a lot. So where does that<br />
money go? Consider that Harvey Norman spends an upwards<br />
of 50 million dollars each year in marketing to inform you<br />
on retail products, and a 30 second beer commercial at the<br />
super bowl costs 4 million dollars. In comparison to these<br />
figures, a 10-15 million dollar campaign with a handful of<br />
staff tasked with educating an entire country on some pretty<br />
complex constitutional issues doesn’t seem like very much<br />
at all.<br />
6— And what about the bigger picture of a treaty between<br />
Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians? Well this<br />
proposal definitely isn’t a treaty, well not the kind that<br />
Mandawuy Yunupingu sung about. Additionally, it doesn’t<br />
negate any future rights to treaty. The process towards<br />
recognition is not necessarily the course of action you would<br />
take towards signing a treaty. If we were to establish a<br />
binding agreement, it would be more logical for you to hold a<br />
discussion for a treaty. The fact that recognition is the only<br />
discussion being had right now in the mainstream political<br />
sphere does give the impression that this may well be just<br />
a step towards assimilation as opposed to negotiation<br />
with substantial change being made for Indigenous people,<br />
however we can only speculate and be active in the campaign<br />
to ensure this does not occur.<br />
following day we will be holding a "BBQ referendum" on the<br />
matter for everyone to have their say.<br />
The Constitutional Recognition Forum will be held<br />
in building 15 Ancora Way, in room L3 on the 14th of<br />
September from 12pm -1:30pm, with speakers from<br />
Monash University, and advocacy groups: ANTAR and<br />
Reconciliation Victoria.<br />
The MSA Indigenous department BBQ referendum will be<br />
held on the 15th of September from 12pm-1 out front the<br />
Indigenous Centre (bus loop) and the BBQ will be available<br />
from 12pm-2pm on the Menzies lawn. Come by for a free<br />
sausage sizzle and cast your vote.<br />
So how do you make an informed vote of either ‘Yes’ or<br />
‘No’? You may even be wondering whether you should<br />
even be making an informed vote on issues that belong to<br />
Indigenous people. Come to the MSA Indigenous department<br />
Constitutional Recognition Forum in Week 8 and any of these<br />
kinds of questions will be discussed and answered. The
22<br />
STUDENT AFFAIRS<br />
Winter Festival<br />
We students of Monash University are accustomed to random<br />
buildings popping up over night, however it came as much of a shock<br />
when what seemed to be a wooden winter wonderland emerged at<br />
the foot of the campus centre out of no where.<br />
It was this sudden construction that marked the beginning<br />
of the very first Winterfestival. The festival, attracting a crowd<br />
of 15,000 and involving the help of 100 student volunteers,<br />
entailed snow fights, film screenings, fire twirling and<br />
performances by the renowned musicians and comedians.<br />
Following the tradition of the late Short Courses Centre,<br />
which tragically disappeared at some point during 2014, the<br />
Chalet also ceased to be after the festival’s end. Rumours has<br />
since emerged that Clive Palmer has purchased it and it is<br />
now being used as a cubby house for his children.<br />
Snow Party<br />
By Jessie Crossman<br />
This year’s Winterfest could not have taken place at a<br />
more appropriate time. On the night of the Snow Party,<br />
temperatures in the Lemon-Scented Lawn hovered just<br />
above freezing and far below comfortable. You could imagine<br />
the mixture of fear and awe felt by attendees when they<br />
encountered the few people that had decided to go to the<br />
Snow Party wearing only a tutu and leggings, and sometimes<br />
– if they were feeling slightly chilly – a leotard.<br />
The Chalet, the largest and loudest, was filled comfortably<br />
with dancers, the occasional phone-checker, and<br />
conversationalists battling the music to be heard. Organizers<br />
also set up an inflatable igloo filled with manufactured snow.<br />
The igloo also housed a large-scale snow fight that involved<br />
missiles of compacted ice being shot around at participants.<br />
The people who stayed in the snow fight were playing for<br />
keeps, which was felt by this writer and her friend when a<br />
snowball rebounded so hard off the back of the friend’s head<br />
it caught the writer full in the face. It was awesome, but stung<br />
for a few minutes afterwards.<br />
Snow Party <strong>2015</strong> was a fantastic night out, and hopefully it<br />
returns again for next year’s Winterfest.<br />
Winter Blues<br />
By Carina Florea<br />
The first night of Winterfest opened with a wide selection<br />
of food trucks and music on display as Monash lit up with<br />
fairy lights and the warm, inviting glow of The Chalet. This<br />
set the scene for the night’s fantastic line up of blues and<br />
jazz artists featuring Movement 9, Clare Bowditch and The<br />
Black Sorrows. Reworking the music of Amy Winehouse in<br />
their own twisted way, Movement 9 recreated popular songs<br />
such as ‘Valerie’, ‘In my bed’ and ‘What is it about men’<br />
giving us a taste of their new EP ‘May we never meet again:<br />
The music of Amy Winehouse’. The night continued with<br />
a lively performance by ARIA award winner and Offspring<br />
star, Clare Bowditch. Stripped down from her usual 12 piece<br />
band, Bowditch was joined on stage by long-time friend and<br />
collaborator, Monique Donatina on piano. To finish the night,<br />
The Black Sorrows took to the stage to deliver an energy<br />
packed set that got people up and dancing in the Chalet.
STUDENT AFFAIRS 23<br />
Friday Night Freeze<br />
By Carina Florea<br />
Comedy Night<br />
By Timothy Newport<br />
After spending the week showcasing talented musicians,<br />
artists and comedians while also throwing the occasional<br />
snowball here and there, Monash’s inaugural WinterFest<br />
celebrations came to an end with Friday night fireworks and<br />
fire twirlers.<br />
The appropriately named ‘Friday Night Freeze’ celebrations<br />
got people moving and jumping with a dodge ball style<br />
snowball competition, toboggan slope and bubble soccer.<br />
Meanwhile, the braver souls among us took the ice slide<br />
challenge to help raise funds for motor neuron disease (MND).<br />
It was a packed Chalet for Thursday’s comedy night, and<br />
if we were cold outside, the stellar talent warmed us up<br />
quickly. Our MC was Nova’s Tommy Little, who was lost for<br />
words when the two audience members he asked the majors<br />
of answered "genetic engineering" and "neurotechnology."<br />
Following him was local talent Naomi Higgins, whom Tommy<br />
Little introduced as being "So good, I’m embarrassed to<br />
be stealing the spotlight from her." With rapid-fire jabs at<br />
sexist internet idiots, she slayed with a verbatim reading<br />
of the "Nice Guys" Facebook group. Following her was fellow<br />
student David Rose, who didn’t let anyone get a breath in<br />
with his commentary on the tokenism of "Sorry Day." Finally,<br />
the headliner Nazeem Hussain destroyed us with his tales of<br />
being treated to dinner... by ASIO.<br />
MidWinter Carnival<br />
By Timothy Newport<br />
A merry night of hot food, snowmen, and movies about<br />
snowmen. The MidWinter Carnival was a roaring success,<br />
with hundreds of people showing up to try some of the<br />
amazing food from the wide variety of speciality stalls. The<br />
main event was, of course, the 6pm screening of Frozen,<br />
bringing children and slightly drunk students alike to the<br />
amazing Chalet cinema. Anna and Elsa also showed up for<br />
photos, while throughout the night there was also some ice<br />
sculpting and a snowball fight in the inflatable igloo next<br />
door. The night wrapped up with a 9pm screening of the Coen<br />
classic Fargo, drawing the older and colder crowd.<br />
Monash Academy Orchestra<br />
By Rosie Boyle<br />
Recently I spent a couple of Sunday hours at Monash,<br />
watching opera. As someone who isn’t very into theatre, likes<br />
classical music, but never felt drawn to opera, I didn’t know<br />
what to expect. In fact, I knew very little about the production<br />
until just before.<br />
Prior to the main event, we had a treat in the form of<br />
excerpts from the Hary Janos Suite – short and glorious<br />
samples of music by Zoltan Kodaly. Then we had Thomas<br />
Reiner’s Lacan: Ein Lehrstuck, an ‘educational’ piece on<br />
the works of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The<br />
stunningly powerful soprano Jessica Aszodi took us through<br />
Lacan’s ideas about our world: The Symbolic, the Imaginary,<br />
and the Real, accompanied by pieces I recognized, and some<br />
that were new.<br />
Famous names were there on stage: Deborah Humble, in<br />
the role of Judith, and Warwick Fyfe in the devilish, Gothic<br />
Duke Bluebeard. They both enthralled me with their presence,<br />
and it felt like stealing to bask in such talent for free.<br />
If you’re new to opera or classical music, the concerts,<br />
plays or performance art put on by Monash Academy of<br />
Performing Arts are a great introduction. You don’t have to<br />
be a theatre buff to go along and have a great experience.<br />
There’s no pressure to dress up, the sessions are a great<br />
length, and several of them – including special rarities such<br />
as Bluebeard’s Castle – are FREE!
24<br />
STUDENT AFFAIRS<br />
By ELSPETH KERNEBONE<br />
Parking on Campus<br />
Photographs of the Menzies building under construction in<br />
1964 show it surrounded by scrubby grass, with VW Beetles,<br />
Ford Falcons and the like, drawn right up to the edge of the<br />
scaffolding. An almost unaltered Campus Centre is the only<br />
building nearby. Despite the cars and machinery, in no photo<br />
is any person in sight. To a student used to the jumble of<br />
smaller buildings backgrounding Menzies, it feels stark<br />
and bare. With over 25,000 students currently enrolled on<br />
Clayton campus, drawing your classic tinny Beetle up to<br />
H6 is obviously no longer practical. Aptly, however, Monash<br />
was, in the words of historian Graeme Davison, Australia’s<br />
first, "drive-in university." Founded in 1961, it was planned<br />
and built in the boom time of Melbourne’s car based Eastern<br />
suburbs. However in <strong>2015</strong>, we no longer live in the glory days<br />
of consumption and consumerism. We face global warming,<br />
high petrol prices and an obesity crisis; that many of us live<br />
in suburbs where the infrastructure is designed for cars is<br />
no longer a sign of our nation’s economic prosperity, it’s a<br />
burden.<br />
Monash was designed to be accessed by car. That’s not to<br />
say we shouldn’t use sustainable transport options where<br />
we can; where possible, it is of course ideal to use buses,<br />
trains, bikes or to walk. I am lucky enough to live a ten<br />
minute walk from a bus that takes me directly to Clayton<br />
campus, however many friends of mine, even those living in<br />
the same suburb, are not so lucky. Melbourne’s bus coverage<br />
is patchy, routes are limited, services often run infrequently<br />
and connections are unreliable. So, while Monash does<br />
boast an impressive number of buses stopping on campus,<br />
they are just not a practical option for many students.<br />
Nor are trains; while the 601 bus frequently connects with<br />
Huntingdale station, the Cranbourne Pakenham line only<br />
covers the Southern suburbs. Walking and cycling have clear<br />
geographic limitations. By anyone’s estimations, Monash<br />
is hard to get to. Thus, while car parking is one of the most<br />
boring issues imaginable, like filing a tax return, it matters<br />
for many Monash students.<br />
Parking at Monash is indisputably expensive. Full year Blue<br />
Permits for Clayton campus cost $389 this year. Over the two,<br />
twelve week semesters, for a student who comes to campus<br />
five days a week, that’s $3.20 per day; four days a week, $4.10<br />
per day; three days, $5.40 per day; two days, $8.10 per day;<br />
after which point it becomes cheaper to pay the $8.50 per day<br />
for parking in the N1 and SE3 parking areas.<br />
A $389 parking permit would, you hope, guarantee the<br />
holder a parking spot. However, at the end of Semester 1,<br />
in the name of improvements to infrastructure and the<br />
construction of the Monash College learning village, all<br />
blue permit parking was removed from the South West 2<br />
car park. The upper level of the South East 4 multi-level was<br />
converted from carpool parking to blue permit parking. The<br />
parking above the synchrotron, on the corner of Wellington<br />
and Blackburn roads is now blue permit and carpool parking.<br />
Previously, carpooling was moved from the centre of campus<br />
to make way for the construction of new halls of residence.<br />
Monash’s assurance, in one of its innumerable emails, that<br />
more than 1000 new parking spaces will be provided during<br />
2016, is presumably little comfort to those who have been<br />
unable to find a park on campus this semester.<br />
The carpark above the synchrotron, housing some blue<br />
parking spaces and carpooling, is 1.2 kilometres from the<br />
Menzies building. This is a healthy fifteen minutes’ walk to<br />
campus for most Arts, Education, Law and Music students.<br />
For anyone whose classes are in the Science and Engineering<br />
area of campus, it is 1.7 kilometres from the synchrotron to<br />
the Hargrave Andrew Library, that’s a twenty-two minute<br />
walk. This means that a student who, at the start of <strong>2015</strong> paid<br />
$389 for their blue parking permit, could be forced to park<br />
as much as a twenty-five minutes’ walk from their eventual<br />
destination.<br />
If Monash could demonstrate that its parking prices were<br />
high to encourage students to use sustainable forms of<br />
transport, honestly, I would support that. Carpooling solves<br />
many of the problems students face getting to uni and<br />
Monash should be encouraging it. Monash’s marginalisation<br />
of carpooling, however, and its failure to provide parking<br />
spaces even for those who have a permit suggests that the<br />
university’s main interest lies in maximising its revenue, not<br />
in encouraging sustainable transport.
STUDENT AFFAIRS 25<br />
University administrators to<br />
demolish Wholefoods stairs<br />
On behalf of the Wholefoods Collective<br />
By Melodee Ried<br />
As you are hopefully aware, Monash Wholefoods is a<br />
collective and student-run food cooperative on level one<br />
of the campus centre. It’s been around since 1977, serving<br />
students cheap and healthy food, as well as being a<br />
supportive and inclusive community.<br />
Earlier this semester the Wholefoods Collective found<br />
out that the Monash administrators were planning on<br />
demolishing our balcony stairs without consulting us. Once<br />
these plans were confirmed by anonymous sources, we<br />
began emailing Monash’s admin to air our concerns.<br />
These balcony stairs are our main exit in case of<br />
emergency. Our only other feasible exit directs students<br />
back into the campus centre; a situation which would create<br />
a massive bottleneck, in the event of an emergency and<br />
even just during busy lunch periods. Wholefoods gets really<br />
crowded around lunch time, and as such the collective is<br />
worried that without these stairs Wholefoods-goers will be<br />
denied adequate safety measures because of the university’s<br />
decisions.<br />
The stairs are also a main factor in the accessibility and<br />
visibility of Wholefoods. As the restaurant is on the top level<br />
of the campus centre and buried away at one end, it can be<br />
hard for newcomers to find us. These stairs help to point<br />
us out and massively contribute to Wholefoods being a<br />
convenient eatery and place to hang out on campus.<br />
Despite the significant merits of the stairs, university<br />
admin has thus far rejected our concerns and suggestions<br />
to consider alternative development plans. Members of the<br />
Wholefoods Collective recently met with relevant members<br />
of the Monash admin to ‘negotiate’ this development plan.<br />
They accused us of ‘holding up’ the architect who would<br />
refurbish our balcony in exchange for demolishing our stairs.<br />
We were not comfortable discussing the refurbishment as<br />
doing so would be submitting to the demolition without<br />
them acknowledging the adverse impacts Wholefoods would<br />
face as a result. The collective was frustrated by this meeting<br />
as the Monash admin flat out refused to acknowledge<br />
that the removal of the stairs would be any form of loss for<br />
Wholefoods. They suggested we make use of hidden-away<br />
stairs that connect to the balcony from behind our couches<br />
and go through to the basement. This was presented as a way<br />
of making ‘finding Wholefoods’ into some sort of a game!<br />
We did not receive this well, as we feel that convenience is a<br />
significant and legitimate factor for students and hiddenaway<br />
stairs would only make Wholefoods inaccessible.<br />
We asked the admin if they’d considered any alternative<br />
development plans that did not involve removing our<br />
stairs and were literally answered with a Tony Abbott-esque<br />
pause followed by a suspicious "I don’t know". This was<br />
disappointing, as was the research referenced by those at<br />
the meeting who claim their development would ease foot<br />
traffic congestion underneath Wholefoods. When a collective<br />
member suggested that the true interest for the development<br />
is to make profit from rent, the admin dismissed it and<br />
pressed that they were refraining from making this a<br />
‘political issue’ and were holding back likewise political<br />
comments about how we are a collective and student-run.<br />
The admin’s plans involve demolishing our stairs,<br />
expanding the northern ground level portion of the<br />
campus centre and constructing a 7m wide glass canopy<br />
to accommodate retail spaces. As a general rule, the<br />
collective is not opposed to developments that may benefit<br />
students. That said, we do not accept that reducing the<br />
safety and accessibility of a student space is worth the<br />
gains from extravagantly increasing retail space on campus.<br />
Additionally, we do not think that it is necessary to remove<br />
our stairs in order to provide more food choices for students.<br />
We admit that the stairs are quite large, but we believe that if<br />
it was in the admin’s interests they could find another design<br />
that would have accommodated existing student groups on<br />
campus.<br />
The Wholefoods Collective is still trying to negotiate with<br />
university admin before they attain a building permit.<br />
The Collective has a petition to show that students are<br />
supportive of Wholefoods’ opposition to the proposal.<br />
To sign online head to https://<br />
www.change.org/p/monashuniversity-administration-consideralternative-development-plansprovide-us-with-relevant-safetydocuments-and-meaningfullyinclude-us-in-any-decisions-thatwill-impact-on-our-community<br />
or<br />
sign the hard copy in Wholefoods.<br />
Melodee Ried is a member of the Wholefoods Collective
26<br />
STUDENT AFFAIRS<br />
By the Student Affairs editors<br />
A guide:<br />
How to survive<br />
student elections<br />
Throughout the ninth week of semester<br />
two of the academic year, every aspiring<br />
political leader of tomorrow ventures out<br />
into campus centre to make their case<br />
for potential election into their desired<br />
position. During this week, your lectures<br />
will be filled by people in coloured t-shirts,<br />
your favourite coffee spot occupied by<br />
the discussion of union corruption and<br />
revolutions and your attempts to exit<br />
campus will be disabled due to the sheer<br />
amount of political ‘prop’ littering the<br />
campus. This is a guide of how to survive<br />
student elections. We wish all of you<br />
the highest amount of safety and peace<br />
throughout the week.<br />
1— Pack your lunch (avoid campus centre and it’s<br />
surroundings at all cost). Bring your deep fryers, as this will<br />
mean making your own peri-peri chips.<br />
2— Take your ‘I have voted’ sticker to a tattoo parlour and<br />
have it tattooed onto your forehead. This will help you out for<br />
many elections to come...<br />
3— Become a Monash staff member, a postgraduate student<br />
or apply to graduate before week 9. If this is not possible, at<br />
least try to acquire a fake Monash staff ID card to produce if<br />
asked or come up with a ‘thesis topic’ so you can discuss it at<br />
length in the instance of interrogation.<br />
4— Say you are a member of the Liberal party and that you are<br />
a second cousin of Christopher Pyne. This will make the vast<br />
majority of campaigners run a mile.<br />
5— Remain in ‘MSA spaces’ such as Sir John’s for the entirety<br />
of the week (no campaigning is permitted in these areas). You<br />
probably already spend all of your time in Sir John’s anyway.<br />
6— Obtain as much unimelb and University of Melbourne<br />
student union merch, and wear it all at once for the entire week.<br />
This will undoubtedly mean that you will be the laughing stock<br />
of Stalkerspace and a general pariah, but hey, no one will want<br />
to be anywhere near you and you certainly will look ineligible to<br />
vote.<br />
7— Use this edition of Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> as invisibility properties.<br />
Use this to cover your face as you briskly approach the<br />
campus centre. Do be warned that this could lead to walking<br />
straight into concrete walls. Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> and the MSA do not take<br />
responsibility for any misuse of this illustrious publication.<br />
8— Just don’t go to uni this week. Election week is is what<br />
MULO is made for.<br />
9— Quit whining and appreciate democracy. Go vote, get a sticker.
27 27<br />
POLITICS<br />
Science & Engineering<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY AMIRUL NASIR @kingrool<br />
Articles by<br />
Alisoun Townsend<br />
Kate Mani<br />
Ben Neve<br />
Emma Simpkin<br />
Eleanor Albury
28<br />
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING<br />
By Alisoun Townsend<br />
The Conservation Conversation<br />
I should probably put a disclaimer in here (or many disclaimers?). I am a<br />
conservation ecology major. Conservation is very close to my heart, borne<br />
from living with how dynamic and amazing the Earth is. I was raised in a<br />
small farming community by proudly greenie parents. So yes, Nanny, the<br />
family does approve of my ‘leftist dealings’.<br />
The concept of conservation as a stagnant science is well<br />
founded. In the past, conservation efforts have been intensely<br />
focused on maintaining whatever species remain and<br />
reversing the environmental changes after human influence.<br />
And human influence is acknowledged to be terrible.<br />
In the Sixth Great Extinction, all sorts of species will become<br />
extinct. This is due to a range of factors, and human based<br />
climate change is a significant factor in this. Human<br />
influence on changing the environment is also a massive<br />
factor in extinctions.<br />
But how would do we judge where to return the Earth to?<br />
Should we aim for its original quality when agriculture was<br />
first introduced into human society? Before the industrial<br />
revolution? 50 years ago when our population was smaller?<br />
This is a difficult question to answer. Also, it must be noted<br />
that calling for a reduction or halt in population growth<br />
definitely comes across as xenophobic. Westernised people<br />
often fear the unknown, and the large population growth in<br />
periphery countries of the world is an unknown. The entire<br />
human population is not at fault here. What is at fault is<br />
the small part of the population that encourages economic<br />
growth over the health of the planet. Our present society is<br />
definitely a by-product of this.<br />
The effort exerted by many scientists and conservationists<br />
to return the Earth to what it once was, either before humans<br />
or before human influence reached its worst, is well meaning<br />
but ultimately a falsely placed energy. Conservationists can<br />
sometimes come across as preservationists. The Earth is a<br />
dynamic planet where change is inevitable. Change will occur<br />
regardless of human influence and returning the Earth to a<br />
state before change has occurred is missing the point.<br />
Human influence is what we have to work with now. We<br />
as young scientists, conservationists and humans must<br />
be looking towards the future. Trying to reverse what<br />
humans have done since we began disrupting the natural<br />
progressions of the Earth would be like trying to stop a sand<br />
dune from shifting. Instead, we must looks for ways in which<br />
we can tread lighter on our only home.<br />
The wider public must be encouraged to understand that<br />
exerting less pressure on the world is an important factor<br />
in our survival. Governments must put in place policies that<br />
favour environmental sustainability over economy for the<br />
good of current and future populations.<br />
Food production and agriculture are perhaps the most<br />
important factors for human survival, but intensive farming<br />
and intensive agriculture are extremely harmful to the planet.<br />
Monoculture farms are common, but this does not have to<br />
be the way for all food producing practises. Most farmers<br />
understand that sometimes their farming practises can be<br />
harmful to their land, but the economy must be favoured<br />
above all else. Because how else will they be able to feed their<br />
families?<br />
A society where intensive farming is not used and food<br />
production is local would be ideal but until farmers are<br />
allowed to choose their crops and style of production free<br />
from economic pressures this cannot happen. Sustainable<br />
agriculture at a more local level should be a priority for<br />
governments, but instead the current Federal government<br />
favours export of raw product above sustainability. This<br />
ultimately means more importing food for Australians.<br />
Transporting and refrigerating this food all over the world is a<br />
blatant and rude waste of fossil fuels.<br />
Some of the most arable land within Australia is being<br />
lost to the suburban sprawl and to coal mines, such as the<br />
newly approved Liverpool Plains coal mine. Sustainable<br />
housing and farming are interconnected. Our population<br />
needs to reconnect with what our country is able to produce<br />
as food and fuel. People are too distanced from the reality<br />
of agriculture by packaged meats and perfect fruit. There<br />
needs to be a large scale revitalization of our society and<br />
communities with how we are associated with land, food and<br />
our changing environment. The government needs to assist<br />
in this matter. The broad issue feels so much bigger than<br />
what an individual person, household or business believes<br />
they can do to help, but it is not. We need to accept human<br />
influenced climate change and work with the significant<br />
consequences of our actions. Although the damage we’ve<br />
done cannot be reversed and the challenges we face feel<br />
insurmountable, we must start to change as an entire<br />
population and become more connected with the land.
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING 29<br />
What’s Up Doc?<br />
Anna Scovelle’s fascination with sleep has inspired her to research the link<br />
between sleep and attention, and how this changes with age, at a PhD level. She<br />
completed a Bachelor of Psychology with Honours at Monash University and has<br />
given lectures and worked as a tutor for third-year Monash psychology students.<br />
She is currently Chair of the Psychology Graduate Research Student Executive<br />
Committee, has presented at interstate conferences and talks regularly about<br />
her research to older adults through local community organisations.<br />
by Kate Mani<br />
Kate Mani: What are you specifically researching in your<br />
PhD?<br />
Anna Scovelle: My research is predominantly focused on<br />
sleep. I’m interested specifically in the role that changes in<br />
sleep have on attention as people get older. We know that as<br />
people age, many experience a degree of cognitive decline.<br />
One of the areas where we see this quite markedly is in<br />
attention, and attention forms the basis for many cognitive<br />
functions. I’m having a look at whether we can pinpoint the<br />
aspects of sleep that are involved in the changes we see in<br />
attention. Hopefully if we can identify those aspects then<br />
we’ll be able to develop some targeted sleep intervention to<br />
improve attention in older adults.<br />
KM: Are these inventions the goal of your research?<br />
AS: My research is really hoping to develop the foundations<br />
for those targeted sleep interventions. I’m not trialling<br />
an intervention because I’m still trying to establish<br />
the connections in order to inform those interventions.<br />
Ultimately I would like to think that my research would go on<br />
to aid in the development of those interventions.<br />
KM: As uni students we’re often told we’ll concentrate<br />
better in lectures after a good night’s sleep! Does your<br />
research confirm this for us?<br />
AS: Absolutely! In a way my research relates perfectly to that,<br />
showing sleep is so important for our ability to sustain our<br />
attention, when you’re in lectures and when you’re reading<br />
articles. Also, sleep is really important if you’re preparing for<br />
exams, cramming your mind full of things during the day.<br />
Having a good night’s sleep to consolidate all of that learning<br />
is definitely going to be beneficial. It serves two purposes,<br />
your daytime function and your consolidation of memory<br />
overnight.<br />
KM: How has your research been going since you started<br />
the PhD?<br />
AS: It’s been going well. PhDs are, as I’m always learning, full<br />
of ups and downs, and research never goes completely to<br />
plan. There have been small changes along the way but I’ve<br />
been fortunate to be part of a big lab with lots going on where<br />
I’ve been able to get involved in lots of different things. I’ve<br />
had a lot of support to help me create a project that I’m really<br />
interested in, with the resources for me to complete that<br />
research.<br />
KM: What advice do you have for future PhD students for<br />
coping with those ups and downs?<br />
AS: If you love what you do and you’re really passionate<br />
about it you can ride the waves. It’s not an easy journey,<br />
but I know that nothing else would make me as happy as<br />
doing my research and my PhD and that’s enough to give<br />
me the determination and motivation to keep going. I think<br />
if you really follow your passion you can endure whatever<br />
comes your way. I also think you should make sure you’re<br />
surrounded by other people doing similar research or<br />
other post-graduate students who can support you, offer<br />
their advice and make you feel you’re not alone. Having<br />
that support from other students is really important in the<br />
journey.<br />
KM: Are there ways students can prepare themselves<br />
before they enter the PhD stage so they have the necessary<br />
study skills and focus?<br />
AS: I think in general working hard in your undergraduate<br />
studies is going to set you up well for your PhD. You’re not<br />
expected to be the perfect student or the perfect studier or<br />
the perfect writer. In your PhD you’re still learning to do all of<br />
those things. But you want to set the foundations early on,<br />
you want to work hard in your undergraduate degree and do<br />
the very best you can. I think it’s also about exposing yourself<br />
to research environments, seeing if you can volunteer in<br />
different laboratories to get an idea of what research is all<br />
about. I think the biggest transition from undergraduate<br />
to PhD is what research on a daily basis really looks like.<br />
Exposing yourself to those things early on is probably the<br />
best thing.<br />
KM: You mentioned that you give talks at local community<br />
organisations. Do you think that giving back to the<br />
community and sharing what you’ve been studying is<br />
important?<br />
AS: Yes, absolutely. I think it helps to keep you real. It keeps<br />
you grounded in the fact that you’re not just doing research<br />
for the sake of research, you’re doing research so that it can<br />
be translated to people, to the community. Going back into<br />
the community, talking to people about their sleep and how<br />
they’re feeling about their attention or memory keeps that<br />
passion alive for what you’re doing.
30<br />
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING<br />
By Ben Neve<br />
New Target Prompts New Challenges<br />
No matter how one views the issue, a proposed cut of 26-<br />
28% on 2005 levels represents a significant reduction in<br />
our overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When it was<br />
announced by the Australian government, the responses<br />
were polarised: business groups generally accepted the<br />
target, while those more environmentally concerned<br />
stakeholders criticised it as lacklustre. Either way, a<br />
reduction in the order of 26% is a considerable challenge to<br />
overcome, especially for an economy as carbon-dependent as<br />
ours (more on this later). In November Julie Bishop will travel<br />
to Paris to attend climate talks with other world leaders, to<br />
try and agree on legally binding emissions reductions. The<br />
ultimate goal is to avoid a situation in which global average<br />
temperatures rise more than two degrees Celsius (the socalled<br />
450ppm scenario). While we can only speculate at<br />
this moment on the outcome of the Paris talks, it is easier<br />
to predict that an increased emissions target will have a<br />
considerable impact on the STEM sector. After all, it will be<br />
engineers and scientists who develop many of the methods<br />
to reduce emissions in the future.<br />
The federal government’s current policy to reduce<br />
emissions is the so called Direct-Action scheme. By most<br />
estimates, we will achieve our Kyoto target of 5%, in part<br />
due to the reductions led by the program and also due to a<br />
national fall in demand for electricity. But in the future, with<br />
a target of 26% we will no longer be able to rely on these two<br />
drivers, because the nature of reductions in the order of<br />
5% differs vastly from 26%. The Emissions Reduction Fund<br />
(ERF) – the funding source behind Direct Action scheme –<br />
is designed to purchase the lowest cost per tonne of GHG<br />
reductions. It makes no attempt to target certain sectors<br />
because it is essentially a reverse auction. As a result, the<br />
kind of reductions achieved under the Direct Action scheme<br />
are naturally the easiest ones. Over the coming years we will<br />
need to deviate from this path to find the ‘hard’ reductions,<br />
and cut emissions embedded in our economy rather than<br />
addressing efficiency.<br />
Over the mid-year break I visited Tongji University in<br />
Shanghai, during which we toured the China headquarters<br />
of Disney Imagineering – the research branch of the Disney<br />
Company. Whilst there I learnt that when it came time<br />
for the business to retrofit their communist-era concrete<br />
office block, they arranged for all the heating and cooling<br />
systems to be provided under a lease agreement with the<br />
energy provider. Rather than purchasing an expensive<br />
air conditioner, the company only pays for the use of the<br />
machine for a certain period of time. Should the need arise<br />
"The kind of reductions<br />
achieved under the Direct<br />
Action scheme are naturally<br />
the easiest ones."<br />
to replace or remove the unit, it is returned to the energy<br />
provider who can recycle or reinstall the unit somewhere else.<br />
Each of these units carries with it an amount of embedded<br />
energy, which is the sum of the emissions created directly<br />
and indirectly during its service life. A service-based<br />
approach reduces the carbon footprint of Disney’s business<br />
operation because the embedded energy – and therefore<br />
emissions – in the heating/cooling system is neither lost<br />
nor gained, it is simply passed on to a different user. The key<br />
difference is that the Disney Company leases the services<br />
which the heating unit provides – functionality and flexibility<br />
– without taking ownership of the product. Service based<br />
approaches still recognise that emissions are produced, but<br />
by closing the loop on the product cycle there is a greater<br />
potential to reclaim the emissions down the track.<br />
The STEM sector will be positioned at the nexus of<br />
decarbonisation as it develops the solutions to the future<br />
emissions reductions. The scale and complexity of the task<br />
means that technology must continue to advance in tandem<br />
with behaviour. In 2013 the number of installed small-scale<br />
solar power systems in Australia had risen to 1.25 million.<br />
New advances in battery technology mean that energy<br />
captured from the sun during the day can now be stored in<br />
molten-salt or rechargeable batteries, so that households<br />
can draw on the excess electricity generated during the day<br />
in times of high demand.<br />
It is this kind of approach, combined with societal change<br />
that will accelerate the decarbonisation process. To put this<br />
into perspective, even things like the beloved Monash coffee<br />
culture carries with it different kinds of embedded energy;<br />
among others, it is in the paper cups and the resources<br />
consumed to transport the coffee beans and milk. That is<br />
not to say we shouldn’t enjoy a coffee in the morning, but<br />
that we must regard an emissions cut of 26% as the impetus<br />
to decarbonise every sector of the economy. We must break<br />
the link between traditional buy-and-sell approaches, and<br />
move towards service based industries which will reduce<br />
the amount of hard waste and preserve virgin materials. All<br />
the while the STEM sector should be allowed to develop and<br />
flourish, because a strong technological base will ensure we<br />
can apply emerging technologies to the ever increasingly<br />
difficult challenge of cutting emissions.
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING 31<br />
Puzzles<br />
Puzzle<br />
1<br />
Puzzle<br />
3<br />
Secret Symbol<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Answer<br />
<br />
Starting with 17 and ascending through the odd<br />
<br />
numbers, connect all the valid numbers with a<br />
<br />
line (you can cross multiple squares at once).<br />
<br />
The <br />
answer is the name of this maths symbol!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Maths Maze<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Puzzle<br />
2<br />
Puzzle<br />
4<br />
Protons, Neutrons,<br />
Electrons<br />
<br />
The protons are red, neutrons are blue, and<br />
electrons are yellow. The question is, is it possible<br />
to connect each numbered electron to its<br />
matching proton with a line that doesn’t cross any<br />
other lines or touch any subatomic particles?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
5<br />
1<br />
3<br />
2<br />
1<br />
3<br />
<br />
<br />
Triangles and Triangles<br />
<br />
How<br />
<br />
many triangles can be made by connecting<br />
<br />
different combinations of the dots below?<br />
(Triangles are still <br />
valid if they encapsulate<br />
another dot within their boundaries)<br />
5<br />
4<br />
2<br />
4<br />
Answer<br />
Honour Roll<br />
<br />
Find the shortest path through the maze, from<br />
the <br />
bold ‘3’ to the ‘?’. The numbers along this<br />
path<br />
<br />
follow a certain pattern. The answer is the<br />
<br />
next number in the sequence, located at ‘?’!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Success, fame and glamour can all be yours! Simply submit the answers to msa-lotswife@monash.edu<br />
and you’ll get your name published on this page in the next issue!<br />
Issue 3 Issue 4<br />
Max Zadnik<br />
Christopher E Orrell<br />
William Molloy<br />
Sarah Spencer<br />
Christopher E Orrell<br />
Max Zadnik<br />
Lucas Azzola<br />
Issue 5<br />
Christopher E Orrell<br />
Max Zadnik<br />
Issue 6<br />
Neil Kedar<br />
Max Zadnik
32<br />
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING<br />
By Emma Simpkin<br />
World Record<br />
Stargazing<br />
"We always classify each other as what we do<br />
you’re an artist, you’re a chemist, you’re a designer.<br />
But what I love about astronomy is we’re all just<br />
humans staring at the sky."<br />
August 21st saw thousands gather across Australia in a<br />
nation wide attempt to set the new Guinness World Record<br />
for Most People Stargazing at Multiple Sites in a Country. Led<br />
by Australian National University’s Mt. Stromolo observatory,<br />
professional stargazers, budding astronomers and the<br />
telescope inept alike came together at over 40 sites to enjoy<br />
an evening under the night sky.<br />
The Monash event was hosted by the School of Physics<br />
and Astronomy and took place at Clayton campus. Highlights<br />
included guided observations with staff and students,<br />
children’s face painting, an "Ask an astronomer" Q&A, food<br />
trucks, a raffle draw, and talks featuring topics from the sky<br />
culture of the Boorong clan and the importance of the sky in<br />
indigenous artwork, to the Mission to Mars and Australia’s<br />
Mars One candidate Josh Richards.<br />
Regardless of whether you’d come to ask if supernovas can<br />
be seen with the naked eye, to show off an antique or hightech<br />
telescope, or simply to enjoy the romance of a night<br />
under the stars, everyone considered the night a wonderful<br />
success. Unofficial figures on the night saw the previous<br />
record of 3,007 simultaneous stargazers broken, with official<br />
figures to be released in the coming weeks. Meanwhile,<br />
Australia National University’s city campus managed to set<br />
a second world record for Most People Stargazing as a Single<br />
Site with 1,869 participants.<br />
Monash’s own event had a 700 register to attend, with over<br />
1,100 present on the night. Monash managed to sell out of<br />
commemorative telescopes (similar in size to those Gaileo<br />
used) before the record attempt even took place. Jasmina<br />
Lazendic Galloway, organiser of the Monash event, was<br />
delighted with the results and hopes to host more Astrofest<br />
events in future.<br />
"We always classify each other as what we do - you’re an<br />
artist, you’re a chemist, you’re a designer. But what I love<br />
about astronomy is we’re all just humans staring at the sky."<br />
With the current World Record tally climbing past 8,000<br />
participants, it seems the rest of Australia would agree.<br />
Photograph by Benjamin Peng @benpeng_
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING 33<br />
Internships<br />
Company Where When Looking For Length Paid? Apply<br />
ITW Construction Melbourne, Sydney Feb<br />
Cisco Sydney Jan-July 2016<br />
AVID<br />
CRCC Asia<br />
Suncorp Bank<br />
Adelaide, Brisbane,<br />
Melbourne, Perth,<br />
Sydney<br />
Beijing, Honk<br />
Kong, Shanghai,<br />
Shenzhen<br />
Brisbane,<br />
Melbourne, Sydney<br />
Engineering<br />
Students<br />
Engineering<br />
Students<br />
Full Time Work<br />
Yes<br />
6 Months Unspecified<br />
Feb All Students 1-18 Months Allowance<br />
Summer<br />
Summer<br />
Engineering<br />
Students<br />
Engineering<br />
Students<br />
1, 2 or 3 Months No<br />
before September<br />
17<br />
before September<br />
17<br />
before September<br />
22nd<br />
before September<br />
24<br />
10 Weeks Yes before September<br />
CBA Sydney Summer All Students 10 Weeks Unspecified from July<br />
Orica<br />
Adelaide,<br />
Gladstone, Mackay,<br />
Melbourne,<br />
Newcastle, Sydney,<br />
Townville<br />
Summer<br />
Engineering<br />
Students<br />
3 Months Yes from October<br />
Shell Perth Feb All Students Full Time Work Yes before December 15<br />
Jane Street<br />
Hong Kong,<br />
London, New York<br />
Northern<br />
Hemisphere Winter<br />
Eng/Science/IT<br />
Students<br />
2-4 Weeks Unspecified Unspecified<br />
Look out for more opportunities online; the Monash<br />
Summer internships will open on September 14th!<br />
Illustrations by Amirul Nasir @kingrool
34<br />
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING<br />
By Eleanor Albury<br />
The Cult of Personality<br />
You may have heard of the Myer-Briggs personality test, a<br />
short survey that claims to condense your personality into<br />
one of sixteen different personality paradigms. It has little<br />
to no scientific basis, superseded by considerably more<br />
comprehensive, but also more time intensive and financially<br />
consuming tests. And yet, it remains amongst an almost cult<br />
status across varying social groups. In multiple instances,<br />
people have asked me for my personality type in an effort to<br />
try, at least ostensibly, to understand me more. At one point<br />
a friend and I spent the duration of a beer trying to gauge<br />
my personality type on a piece of paper, discussing reasons<br />
why I would be one personality type more than another. While<br />
discussion arising from this test ignited intense examination<br />
of our own distinct personalities, it seems that its use also<br />
constrains and dismisses the multidimensional nature of<br />
human personality.<br />
If you aren’t already aware, the personality types are<br />
defined by a combination of four different letters, each of<br />
which refers to one of two options regarding a particular<br />
personality trait. E for Extroversion or I for Introversion, S<br />
for Sensing or N for Intuition, T for thinking or F for Feeling<br />
and J for Judging or P for Perceiving. Your answers to the<br />
test determine your assignment to one of the sixteen<br />
combinations and a complete write up of your not so unique<br />
personality type, as well as your strengths and weakness<br />
according to answers that you provided during the test. After<br />
receiving their results some people even get them tattooed to<br />
their bodies, the four letters used as a personal insignia that<br />
proudly proclaims their alliance to a particular personality<br />
type. It seems strange that people’s need to belong within<br />
a stratified group is strong enough to compel them to write<br />
arguably meaningless letters on their bodies. Is there an<br />
inherent human need to understand human beings by<br />
simplifying one another?<br />
On a long car trip with friends, we spent a considerable<br />
amount of the car trip discussing the test and its debatable<br />
accuracy as well as the differences we all had in our<br />
personality types. While my analysis said I am an extroverted<br />
decision maker (ESTJ), a friend of mine (somewhat<br />
coincidentally) received the exact opposite of me, her<br />
analysis conveying that she is introverted and preferring to<br />
go with the flow (INFP). There were several sections of the test<br />
that I found accurate for each of our different personalities,<br />
and we became increasingly enthused by the notion that<br />
our personalities belonged within a particular type. The<br />
conversations prompted by the test enabled me to further<br />
understand that no personality is alike, and that people see<br />
the world very differently to the way I see it; a fact that is<br />
easy to miss in our increasingly narcissistic society where<br />
the most important person is the self. While I may see the<br />
world in black and white, others see the world in a cascade<br />
of colours. Realising this has motivated me to reconsider the<br />
tact I use when dealing with others, especially in situations of<br />
conflict. The test also enables people to become more aware<br />
of their strengths and weaknesses that are often associated<br />
with certain personality traits. This is a positive aspect of<br />
the test, as it is beneficial to some extent to be aware of<br />
our own personal weaknesses. Knowing them can aid us in<br />
assimilating into the expected norms of society, and as a<br />
result increase our own enjoyment of life through improving<br />
our interactions with others.<br />
I was sharing the test with people I knew, blissfully<br />
unaware of its lack of scientific reliability until I urged my<br />
friend studying psychology to take it. She told me that the<br />
tests have no credence within the scientific arena, and<br />
the ensuing research (i.e. quick Google) that I conducted<br />
suggested that her contention was valid. Only 50% of people<br />
that retake the same test have the same scores, and as a<br />
result the internal validity of the tests is very low. The Myer-<br />
Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was produced in 1943, motivated<br />
by the desire of two women (who were not psychologically<br />
qualified) to extrapolate the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung<br />
regarding personality. Despite the information before me<br />
indicating that Myer-Briggs might not be as reliable as I<br />
thought, I simply couldn’t accept the realisation that the test<br />
it had no basis on fact. I wanted to believe that I conformed<br />
to the personality type I was assigned. I felt that it suited me<br />
and it made me feel happy that I was considered a decision<br />
maker, someone with power and who doesn’t wane under<br />
pressure. And therein lies the allure; people love to hear good<br />
things about themselves regardless of its validity. Their<br />
conformance to a particular personality profile is the nod<br />
that they fit in within society, and therefore are accepted and<br />
belong. Hence the MBTI’s cult-like status, as belonging is allimportant<br />
in a world of seven billion people. Unfortunately,<br />
personality is complex and it cannot be simplified by a test<br />
conducted on the Internet. While taking the tests has the<br />
benefit of being able to understand the notion that not all
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING 35<br />
"The conversations prompted by the test enabled me to<br />
further understand that no personality is alike, and that<br />
people see the world very differently to the way I see it<br />
a fact that is easy to miss in our increasingly narcissistic<br />
society where the most important person is the self."<br />
personalities or worldviews are the same, taking the test with<br />
a grain (or bucket) of salt is recommended.<br />
You shouldn’t judge somebody by his or her proposed<br />
personality types, and yet to some extent it is hard to avoid.<br />
I have a new feeling of futility with some of my friendships<br />
that have starkly different personality types to mine.<br />
Thoughts such as "I don’t understand that personality<br />
type at all" and "their personality type is so different from<br />
mine, we will never understand each other" reverberated<br />
around my head. The test provides a mode of justifying<br />
relationships but also their presumed incompatibility. As a<br />
result, I had to make a conscious effort to dismiss that way<br />
of thinking to avoid dismissing my relationships as based<br />
on an evidently fallacious, but nonetheless pervasive test.<br />
The Myer-Briggs personality test not only motivated me to<br />
consider my relationships with others, but also to analyse<br />
my own personal weaknesses as defined by it. I had this<br />
desire to alter my personality, to be perfect by minimising<br />
my weaknesses. But how much of a person’s personality is<br />
mutable?<br />
Many self-help books champion self-improvement<br />
techniques to remedy various "weak" tendencies. However,<br />
when it comes to fundamentals of an individual’s<br />
personality, research indicates we don’t have as much free<br />
will over that arena as we would like. As mentioned at the<br />
beginning of this article, more comprehensive tests than<br />
the MBTI exist that can accurately and reliably identify<br />
aspects of personality. The most notable form of analysis is<br />
known as the Big Five personality traits, where personality is<br />
devised into five different domains: openness, conscientious,<br />
extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. While you can<br />
change your behaviour relatively easily, innate traits such as<br />
the Big Five are considerably more ingrained. It is true that<br />
environmental factors do influence personality, however,<br />
research conducted by the Colby Personality Lab at Colby<br />
College in Waterville, Maine, indicates that approximately<br />
50% of personality traits are caused by genetics, and 50%<br />
are caused by environmental factors. Although this number<br />
may be argued against, longitudinal studies of twins also<br />
strongly suggest that genetics have a definite influence on<br />
personality. Being aware of your weaknesses allows you to<br />
understand yourself on a deeper level, but the extent that an<br />
individual can truly change aspects of their personality is<br />
disputable. Thus, just as strengths are an inherited aspect<br />
of personalities, with that we must also accept our own<br />
weaknesses as an innate part of our personality also. The<br />
true lesson the test and its associated ponderings have<br />
taught me is acceptance and understanding of my self and<br />
of others.<br />
Although the tests may not be valid in the scientific area<br />
there is, as noted, intrinsic value in the test. It provoked<br />
conversation within my friendships groups that I otherwise<br />
wouldn’t have had and I am more aware of my own apparent<br />
strengths and weaknesses. However, it is overly simplistic<br />
to believe that human personality can be understood in a<br />
matter of ten minutes over the Internet, and in only sixteen<br />
distinct personality types. To believe this is to relegate the<br />
entire world’s population into an impossibly simplistic<br />
paradigm.
36<br />
Month Week Date Event Club Time Location Type<br />
SEP<br />
Event Calendar<br />
8<br />
9<br />
MID SEM<br />
BREAK<br />
<br />
Mon 14th Weekly Talk and Discussion MPS 13:00 TBD Weekly Event<br />
Mon 14th Weekly Board Game Nights MBS 13:00 Engineering Hall 2, 23 College Walk Weekly Event<br />
Thu 17th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Fri 18th Care Group (Dinner & Bible Study) ASOC 18:30 S105, Chancellor's Walk Weekly Event<br />
Fri 18th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Sat 19th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Mon 21st Weekly Talk and Discussion MPS 13:00 TBD Weekly Event<br />
Mon 21st Weekly Board Game Nights MBS 13:00 Engineering Hall 2, 23 College Walk Weekly Event<br />
Mon 21st The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Tue 22nd The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Wed 23rd Masterclass: A Dive into the World of Red Bull MMSS 13:00 Clayton Campus Academic Event (Guest Speaker/Networking)<br />
Wed 23rd The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Thu 24th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Thu 24th Vegas Ball SMUCE 19:00 The Brighton Savoy Ball/Cruise/Party<br />
Thu 24th Disney Party <strong>2015</strong> DIS 20:00 Oakleigh Bowls Club Ball/Cruise/Party<br />
Fri 25th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Sat 26th The Ministry MUST 19:00 Monash Uni Student Theatre Performance/Arts<br />
Mon 28th Monash Model United Nations Conference MIAS 9:00 Menzies Building, 20 Chancellors Walk Academic Event (Guest Speaker/Networking)<br />
Tue 29th Monash Model United Nations Conference MIAS 9:00 Menzies Building, 20 Chancellors Walk Academic Event (Guest Speaker/Networking)<br />
OCT<br />
10<br />
11<br />
12<br />
Fri 9th Submissions Due: Incisors & Grinders MCWC 23:59 Email creativewriters@monashclubs.com Other<br />
Wed 14th Film and Theology CU 17:30 Cinema, Campus Centre, 21 Chancellors Walk Fundraiser<br />
Wed 21st Oktoberfest GC 19:30 Banquet Hall, Campus Centre Ball/Cruise/Party<br />
Clubs<br />
ASOC - Adventist Students on Campus<br />
CU - Christian Union<br />
GC - German Club<br />
DIS - Monash Disney Club<br />
MBS - Monash Boardgames Society<br />
MCWC - Monash Creative Writers Club<br />
MIAS - Monash International Affairs Society<br />
MMSS - Monash Marketing Students' Society<br />
MPS - Monash Philosophical Society<br />
MUST - Monash Uni Student Theatre<br />
SMUCE - Society of Monash Uni Chemical Engineers<br />
Event Types<br />
Ball/Cruise/Party<br />
Fundraiser<br />
Academic Event (Guest Speaker/Networking)<br />
Other<br />
Weekly Event<br />
Performance/Arts<br />
Trivia Night<br />
* Please double check event details with club in case of changes<br />
** To enter events in the Calendar for Semester 2 check club emails around late June!<br />
Career Connect<br />
Chat with us about:<br />
■ Meeting with a careers consultant<br />
■ Getting your job application checked<br />
■ Interview tips<br />
■ Developing your employability skills<br />
■ Your work rights<br />
■ Career Gateway jobs board<br />
■ Jobs for Students program<br />
■ Student Leadership Development<br />
■ Volunteering at Monash<br />
■ Career seminars and events<br />
monash.edu.au/students/career-connect
37 37<br />
POLITICS<br />
Arts & Culture<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY AMIRUL NASIR @kingrool<br />
Articles by<br />
Emma Simpkin<br />
Kristin Robertson<br />
Anna Zhang<br />
Carina Florea<br />
Julia Pillai<br />
Brodie Everist<br />
Josh Zuzek
38<br />
ARTS & CULTURE<br />
BY EMMA SIMPKIN<br />
Etymology of Emoji<br />
Hilary Clinton’s social media team recently asked the<br />
presidential candidate’s followers to tweet how their student<br />
debt made them feel in three emoji or less.<br />
The tweet was intended to start conversation about the<br />
candidate’s new college affordability scheme and doubled<br />
as yet another example of why politicians should steer<br />
clear of social media. Yet by asking twitter to respond to a<br />
complex topic in emoji, Clinton unwittingly rekindled public<br />
debate about the place of the evolving symbols in current<br />
communication.<br />
To those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of being<br />
acquainted with linguistics, the scientific study of language,<br />
serious analysis of emoji sounds laughable. For many emoji<br />
linguistics carries the same amount of academic weight<br />
as dank memetics but when looking at what qualifies a<br />
language versus communication, it becomes apparent we<br />
shouldn’t be quick to dismiss the value of emoji.<br />
The earliest predecessor of emoji was born in 1982 with<br />
a clear-cut meaning and defined purpose. Brainchild of<br />
computer scientist Scott Fahlman, the humble :-) was<br />
created as a joke marker, one that today’s generation<br />
may recognise as the outdated smiley frequently used<br />
by older relatives on Facebook. :-) was the first of many<br />
band-aid solutions to a problem just appearing in digital<br />
communication. How do you avoid misunderstanding and<br />
multiple interpretations when you can’t rely on tone or nonverbal<br />
cues?<br />
The smiley gained popularity in Japan in the 90s and<br />
spawned development of large-scale punctuation based sets<br />
of emoticons in the Japanese mobile market. Emoticons<br />
at this stage substituted for ideas rather than words and<br />
were heavily influenced by anime as well as kanji, a form of<br />
Japanese writing. Japanese emoticons or kaomoji continued<br />
to be successful in Japan before becoming part of Unicode in<br />
2010, a global computing standard for displaying fonts and<br />
text in multiple languages. A year later in Apple introduced<br />
its first emoji keyboard and Android followed suit in 2013,<br />
bringing emoji to the world stage.<br />
The world has seen some fascinating, innovative and<br />
occasionally plain bizarre happenings with emoji. Earlier in<br />
<strong>2015</strong> a Norwegian airline was the first company to publish<br />
an all-emoji URL (www.<br />
.ws) and last year a New<br />
York couple texted solely in emoji for a month to prove it was<br />
possible. Instagram confirmed roughly 40% of text on the app<br />
involves emoji (possibly less now they have banned the<br />
emoji for its sexual connotations) and for $200 USD you<br />
can own a hardback translation of Moby Dick written entirely<br />
in emoji.<br />
Emoji are credited in the media as the world’s newest<br />
and fastest growing language with potential to provide a<br />
universal communication system. Banks are researching the<br />
potential for emoji pin codes and some Dominos ask regular<br />
users to tweet for their order to be delivered. In the digital<br />
age emoji act as an enrichment and supplement to written<br />
text, not only filling the void left by lack of pitch, prosody<br />
and intonation but also giving clues to how the user feels or<br />
wants a statement to be interpreted.<br />
Emoji does envy - and in some cases arguably surpasses<br />
- the ability of written language in conveying emotion,<br />
descriptions and reactions. Find one word in English that<br />
specifies the oh-thank-god-that-could-have-been-worserelief<br />
of the or the exaggerated but likely trivial heartbreak<br />
of the .<br />
What the media miss when they claim emoji is a language<br />
is that a communication system needs more than just the<br />
ability to convey information to be a language. Languages<br />
are incredibly varied in the way they combine words to create<br />
messages but the ability to create larger structures is what<br />
" What the media miss when they<br />
claim emoji is a language is that a<br />
communication system needs more than<br />
just the ability to convey information to be<br />
a language."<br />
separates English from the babbling sounds toddlers make<br />
and a fully fledged sign language like Auslan from the series<br />
of hand gestures you might try and use to communicate with<br />
someone in a noisy bar or club.<br />
Unlike words in any human language, emoji can’t be strung<br />
together to form larger units in a meaningful way. There are<br />
rules for how words combine to make meaningful sentences<br />
and speakers know these rules when dealing with a language<br />
they’re fluent in. However when you read a string of emoji,<br />
there’s a noticeable lack of patterns as emoji don’t appear to<br />
organize by rules. Common small strings like<br />
can be easily understood as I love pandas but when it<br />
comes to reading a string of ten emoji even the author of<br />
the Moby Dick translation would struggle as the order and<br />
meaning breaks down. This isn’t just an issue with large<br />
combinations of emoji, even two-emoji combinations<br />
like can be unclear and ambiguous. The example here<br />
could be interpreted as horses make me happy, I smile at<br />
horses or even happy horses. Meaning is entirely dependent
ARTS & CULTURE 39<br />
"Emoji does envy - and in some cases arguably surpasses -<br />
the ability of written language in conveying emotion,<br />
descriptions and reactions.<br />
Find one word in English that specifies the<br />
oh-thank-god-that-could-have-been-worse-relief of the<br />
or the exaggerated but likely trivial heartbreak of the ."<br />
on the speaker’s interpretation of not only what each of the<br />
individual emoji mean but what the function of each emoji<br />
(e.g. as a noun, adjective, verb) is in the sentence, and really<br />
there’s no right answer.<br />
To complicate matters further we don’t all agree on<br />
exactly what each emoji means and how to use them. For<br />
example, a common translation for is lets go out drinking<br />
but it has also been known to be used by workmates to say<br />
thanks for covering a shift. Even something as apparently<br />
straightforward as can be interpreted as cringing,<br />
nervously smiling, awkwardly smiling or in one bizarre<br />
interpretation, getting ready for a tooth canal. Likewise there<br />
has been debate whether the emoji depicts someone<br />
praying or a high-five. So who decides what the meaning of<br />
an emoji is and how to use it?<br />
Given that we can’t even agree to the single and plural<br />
forms for emoji (emoji, emojis, emojus, emojipodes?) trying<br />
to force standard meanings onto users seems a futile<br />
endeavour. If we liken emoji to a natural language such as<br />
English, then users would decide the preferred meanings of<br />
each emoji and document these in dictionaries. Unlike words<br />
emoji are designed, edited and released onto our keyboards<br />
at their creator’s discretion. Theoretically this grants emoji<br />
creators more say than the average user about intended<br />
meaning and usage but much like the man who coined the<br />
word gif with an initial j sound, people ignore the authorities<br />
in favour of their own communicative needs of the user.<br />
Interestingly how you interpret and use emoji varies along<br />
similar lines to general language. It has been shown that<br />
emoji use differs with age, a study using data from twitter<br />
found that people with older more conservative interests<br />
were more likely to include a nose in their smileys :-) while<br />
those with younger interests (e.g mentioned Miley Cyrus<br />
etc) preferred to exclude the nose. Similarly we tend to<br />
perceive emoji differently depending on the gender of the<br />
speaker. Facebook recently released data about the way<br />
people laugh online with results suggesting women prefer to<br />
signal laughter via emoji while men employ a haha or hehe<br />
response. Likewise numerous articles have been published<br />
in the likes of The New York Times, The Age, GQ, Men’s Health<br />
and Cosmopolitan discussing male versus female emoji<br />
usage with a prevailingly negative attitude towards emoji use<br />
by adult males.<br />
Variation in emoji may not only appear along the lines of<br />
age and gender usage. SwiftKey, a third party emoji app for<br />
smartphones, released data earlier this year showing the<br />
most used emoji in different countries and cultural groups.<br />
According to SwiftKey, the French use four times as many<br />
love heart emoji as any other group, Canadians surprisingly<br />
score highest for use of violent emoji and Australians use<br />
double the global average for alcohol-themed emoji .<br />
The SwiftKey findings aren’t substantiated by any means<br />
but suggest that the ways groups differentiate themselves<br />
through language may be similar to the way they are<br />
distinguishing themselves through emoji. An example of this<br />
is the different meaning of the emoji for African American<br />
Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers.<br />
AAVE speakers use the emoji to reference a fixed<br />
cultural phrase keeping it 100 meaning to keep something<br />
real, honest or truthful. Outside of AAVE, use often<br />
translates to mean 100% or good job.<br />
Regardless of whether or not emoji do reveal and<br />
demonstrate cultural values, the perceived link between<br />
emoji and ideology was enough to prompt Russia to ban<br />
"gay" emoji for denying traditional family values in August.<br />
Likewise Hilary Clinton’s campaign was taken as an insult<br />
by many millenials who saw the request to reply in emoji as<br />
a statement on their generation’s ability to communicate<br />
effectively.<br />
If emoji are understood and used differently depending on<br />
social, regional, age and possibly even gender of the users<br />
then hopes it can serve as global language or lingua franca<br />
are likely unfounded. Emoji as a communication system is<br />
rapidly evolving. In the past ten years inclusion of a smiley<br />
face in professional emails has gone from a faux-pas to<br />
mostly accepted. If emoji continue to evolve and expand at<br />
current rates then perhaps it will eventually reach language<br />
status. For the moment, emoji are best treated as an<br />
expressive resource, one that while certainly isn’t universal<br />
has interesting potential for the future.<br />
Emma Simpkin is president of Linguistics Society<br />
(LingSoc) at Monash University. If you are interested in<br />
being involved contact her at lingsoc@monashclubs.org<br />
to find out more.
40<br />
ARTS & CULTURE<br />
By Kristin Robertson<br />
Where does your food come from?<br />
They say you are what you eat, but how well do you know<br />
what you’re eating? Do you know where your food comes from<br />
and how it is treated? Trade. Health. Environmental impacts.<br />
It can be a mine field. Here is a guide to help you eat more<br />
thoughtfully.<br />
Meats<br />
Key Imports<br />
Australians love their beef and the majority of the beef<br />
we buy in the supermarket is lucky enough to come from<br />
Australian cattle. Minor imports also come from New Zealand<br />
or Vanuatu; the only other two countries approved by Food<br />
Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). The Standards are<br />
strict, so much so that even imported canned meats – that<br />
predominately come out of the U.S. – must originally source<br />
the meat from FSANZ approved countries in order to be sold<br />
here.<br />
The Humanity Factor<br />
While inhumane issues do arise within Australia, the<br />
majority of cases involving mistreatment of Australian cattle<br />
happen abroad. At home the process of slaughter involves<br />
stunning the animal until they are insensible and can’t feel<br />
their major blood vessels being severed and drained. The<br />
RSPCA endorses this as a humane method of slaughter<br />
saying that the procedures are designed to be ‘low stress.’<br />
The biggest issue involved in Australian methods involves<br />
instances where the cattle are not properly stunned before<br />
they are killed. Due to supply and demand, cases like that<br />
happen more frequently than they should. Likewise supply<br />
and demand also sees that young cattle are slaughtered<br />
before they typically should be.<br />
It should also be noted that regardless of the cattle’s living<br />
conditions - whether factory farmed or organic – all meat<br />
that’s sold in the supermarket is killed in only a handful of<br />
registered abattoirs.<br />
Vegetables<br />
Key Imports<br />
While vegetable importing remains relatively small, there<br />
has been a steady increase over the years to cope with sales.<br />
In Australia most imports come from New Zealand and Italy<br />
(who mainly offer processed vegetables.) However, specific<br />
vegetables are frequently imported from particular regions,<br />
for instance imported onions are typically from the U.S.,<br />
asparagus from Mexico or Peru or garlic from China.<br />
Unfortunately, the growing number of vegetable imports<br />
poses a real danger for local farmers and their produce.<br />
Despite being more environmentally friendly and beneficially<br />
for local economies the low price of importing can make it<br />
difficult to compete.<br />
The Pesticide Factor<br />
Unless you are a backyard farmer, pesticide on our veggies<br />
is something we’ll all have come into contact with. It might<br />
be assumed that imported food contains more of these<br />
harmful pesticides however that isn’t necessarily the case<br />
with research from consumer advocates CHOICE showing<br />
that Australia is just as bad. CHOICE even claims that<br />
Australia is a bit behind in their pesticide precautions as<br />
compared to other countries.<br />
Organic eaters can be reassured by a study out of<br />
Washington University that found those who eat organic<br />
vegetables have half the amount of pesticide in their urine as<br />
non-organic eaters.<br />
Fish<br />
Key Imports<br />
Surprisingly, about 66% of the fish consumed in Australia<br />
is imported. This is because, despite having the 3rd largest<br />
fishing zone in the world, our seas yield lower harvests than<br />
other zones. Additionally, our seafood imports – mainly from<br />
China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and New Zealand – are<br />
relatively cheap.<br />
Aqua Culture versus Wild Caught<br />
There is quite a bit of debate surrounding whether<br />
aquaculture or wild caught seafood is better for the<br />
environment and for our own health.<br />
Health fanatics tend to argue that fish caught in natural<br />
environments provide more health benefits due to their<br />
‘natural’ diets and freer environments. Over half of the fish<br />
caught in Australia is wild caught; however, this can pose<br />
environmental issues since overfishing is more easily done.<br />
On the other hand, research shows that farmed fish is<br />
lower in mercury levels and that some fish maintain higher<br />
omega 3 fatty acid levels in farm environments. The major<br />
issue with farming seems to be the pollution of surrounding<br />
waters which threaten the nearby habitats.<br />
It’s a tough choice to make and so many recommend<br />
researching the fish you like to eat and making your choice<br />
accordingly.<br />
Eggs<br />
"Free Range"<br />
With no real restrictions on the labelling on egg cartons<br />
the difference between one carton labelled ‘Free Range’ may<br />
vary immensely from another. This means that while you<br />
may buy free range eggs for the sake of the hen, that hen<br />
might potentially be beakless and just as cooped up as you’d<br />
imagine caged or barn-laying chickens to be.<br />
The demand for eggs in Australia already reduces the<br />
amount of people able to buy free range eggs in the first<br />
place. Furthermore this demand sees "free-range" farmers<br />
using the lack of legal literature to release their chooks from<br />
spatially-challenged barns to spatially-challenged fields<br />
that only allows each chicken about half a square metres of<br />
space– if they are released at all. That doesn’t sound so ‘free<br />
range’ to me.<br />
How can we know the difference? If you want to ensure<br />
that the eggs you are buying are really free range look out for<br />
Australian Certified Organic, Humane Choice or Free Range<br />
Farmers Association logos on your egg cartons. Be wary<br />
of Egg Corp Assured logos; despite claiming that it seeks<br />
welfare for its flocks it has been reported that some suppliers<br />
that use the logo don’t truly give the chickens free range and<br />
still practice beak trimming.
ARTS & CULTURE 41<br />
When you go to Asia…<br />
"Feel empowered, feel gratitude, feel wonder.<br />
Come back and view the world through different lenses."<br />
BY Anna Zhang<br />
This summer, many of you will find yourselves visiting exotic<br />
destinations all over the world. More often than not, you will<br />
find yourselves in inexpensive South East Asia, where your<br />
Australian dollar will get the most bang for its buck.<br />
Whether you’re lounging on a beach in Bali, or exploring<br />
the ancient monuments of Angkor, you will most certainly<br />
confront poverty. At first, you may feel a lump in the back<br />
of your throat, as you struggle to come to terms with the<br />
injustices of the world. You may clutch your DSLR a little<br />
tighter, whilst simultaneously wondering what you can do<br />
to alleviate the guilt. The feeling that you may somewhat<br />
be responsible for the dire circumstances that many find<br />
themselves in. After all, you are part of an economic system<br />
that punishes those born with brute luck.<br />
But dammit, you’re here for a holiday. You’re angry that<br />
you are feeling guilty for something that you have not<br />
directly caused. You push the feeling of guilt away, and say to<br />
yourself, next time, I’ll come back to volunteer, or when I go<br />
home I’ll start donating to a charity. These promises ease the<br />
guilt, although, you know that once you get home, you have<br />
no intention of sacrificing your latte or flat white in order to<br />
change something you no longer see.<br />
The next time you go, your wallet is a little heavier. You’re<br />
ready to give 50 cents here and 50 cents there to every<br />
person that you see on the street. You might even pop<br />
into an orphanage, pull out your iPhone, take a few selfies<br />
with the children and teach them a song or two. As you’re<br />
heading back to your hotel, you quickly upload the photos to<br />
Instagram with the hashtag #makingadifference. You might<br />
even feel generous enough to link the photo to an Australian<br />
charity that your followers can donate to.<br />
Little do you know that in taking the photo, you have<br />
reduced those children to mere objects for your selfgratification.<br />
You have breached child protection policies,<br />
and may have placed those children at risk of danger by<br />
identifying their location, and perhaps, even their name. Your<br />
photo will portray these children as forever being stuck in the<br />
dire circumstances that you have captured them in – never<br />
changing. Only changing when someone like you comes to<br />
‘save’ them. You do not realise the damage that you have<br />
done.<br />
So next time you’re in Asia, here’s what to do:<br />
1— Take photos of beautiful buildings, trees, images of<br />
empowerment. Don’t take photos of people who haven’t<br />
asked for the photo to be taken (you’re not in a zoo). In<br />
particular, don’t take photos of children and upload them to<br />
your social media feeds. Children have a right to privacy.<br />
2— When visiting or volunteering with a charity, be<br />
conscious of the impact that you’re having. Children are<br />
not tourist attractions. There are many ways that you can<br />
make an impact, through campaigns and organisations<br />
such as, ‘Think Child Safe’ http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/<br />
thinkbeforevisiting/<br />
3— If you would like to have a prolonged impact on making<br />
a difference in the world, without sacrificing the luxuries<br />
that you have, consider reading "Effective Altruism" by Peter<br />
Singer (available at Monash Library), or donating to an<br />
effective charity that has been assessed by a meta-charity<br />
such as GiveWell (http://www.givewell.org/) or The Life You<br />
Can Save (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-<br />
Donate). Meta-charities assess charities in order to ensure<br />
that your hard earned donations go to making the most<br />
impact.<br />
But most importantly, cherish the culture, cherish the<br />
experience and learn about how lives are lived differently all<br />
over the world. Feel empowered, feel gratitude, feel wonder.<br />
Come back and view the world through different lenses. Take<br />
that energy and commit to never living life the same way again.<br />
Photograph courtesy of<br />
https://www.flickr.com/photos/archer10
42<br />
ARTS & CULTURE<br />
By Carina Florea<br />
Step inside The Ministry<br />
Monash Uni Student Theatre (MUST) in conjunction with<br />
Kin Collaborative Inc. presents, The Ministry; an immersive<br />
multi-disciplinary experience set to change the way you<br />
experience your surroundings.<br />
Back in 1949, when Orwell penned his classic dystopian novel,<br />
Nineteen Eighty-Four, the cautionary tale of a totalitarian<br />
future captured its readers and left one final warning, "don’t<br />
let it happen. It depends on you". Yet, despite his warning,<br />
countless parallels between Orwell’s imagined world and<br />
today’s society detail the pervasive influence technology has<br />
on our lives. None more real or immersive than the upcoming<br />
promenade production, The Ministry, which seeks to<br />
reimagine the world of Oceania right in the heart of Monash<br />
University.<br />
In anticipation for the opening of this production, we spoke<br />
to creator/Director Anna Nalpantidis about the inspiration<br />
behind the making of The Ministry and what exactly the<br />
audience can expect from the experience.<br />
While The Ministry draws a lot of inspiration from Orwell’s<br />
Nineteen Eighty-Four, it goes far beyond the boundaries<br />
of pages and screens into the realm of immersive theatre<br />
production inspired by the likes of UK based theatre<br />
company PunchDrunk. As Nalpantidis explains, "we are not<br />
so much striving to adapt ‘1984’ – rather we are inviting the<br />
audience on a journey where they will collect fragments of<br />
information and navigate connections between Orwell’s<br />
world and ours." Alongside Orwell’s influence, The Ministry<br />
draws upon influences such as the the NSA files and a variety<br />
of other dystopian novels, literature and films.<br />
As for the audience experience, you will be relieved to hear<br />
that it’s not a direct adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four.<br />
When asked about the possible inclusion of live rats in the<br />
show, Nalpantidis replied that the idea "got shut down pretty<br />
quickly".<br />
Blending dance, music, film and installation art, The<br />
Ministry strives to challenge audience members to step<br />
outside the role of being an observer and embark on their<br />
own journeys with the help of the talented MUST cast.<br />
Nalpantidis describes the experience as sensory, "you<br />
might smell things, you might taste things, you can touch<br />
things" and also that it’s about "finding that barrier between<br />
what’s real and what’s being performed." In regards to<br />
what exactly goes on in The Ministry, it’s all up to you to<br />
distinguish between spectator and actor and who’s watching<br />
or being watched.<br />
The Ministry is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and<br />
runs from September 17-26, located at the MUST space<br />
at Monash Clayton. Tickets are available through www.<br />
melbournefringe.com.au or call (03) 9660 9666. For more<br />
information, visit www.theministry.org.au
ARTS & CULTURE 43<br />
The Ashley Madison hack is no-one’s victory<br />
If you have stayed up watching late night TV, you may have<br />
seen a mildly amusing advertisement of a zombie couple<br />
living their monotonous life under the shadow of monogamy<br />
and matrimony. Then suddenly our heroine goes online - to<br />
ashleymadison.com. She closes her laptop screen, no longer<br />
undead, and suggestively places one finger on her lips. Life<br />
is short, have an affair. Websites such as Ashley Madison are<br />
controversial, to say the very least, as ultimately it aims to<br />
facilitate activities that many of us see as outright immoral;<br />
cheating on one’s spouse. With this in mind, the initial lack<br />
of sympathy to the victims of Impact Team’s hack into Ashley<br />
Madison and Established Men, was hardly unsurprising.<br />
The Impact Team issued a threat to Ashley Madison’s<br />
parent company, Avid Life Media, to shut down these two<br />
websites, or else the personal details of all users - names,<br />
email addresses, bank card numbers, home addresses and<br />
sexual interests - would be leaked. After failing to comply<br />
with Impact Team’s requests, they released a statement on<br />
Reddit, stating that they had leaked user information. What<br />
followed was frenzy.<br />
It’s hard to not feel at least the slightest bit of<br />
shadenfreude at the hack. Especially with the news that<br />
Josh Duggar, the former 19 and counting star and previous<br />
executive director of conservative lobbying group Family<br />
Research Council, which aims "to champion marriage and<br />
family as the foundation of civilization" had a paid account.<br />
This is not the only controversy unearthed about Duggar; in<br />
May this year, In Touch Weekly revealed that in 2006 Duggar<br />
had confessed to molesting five underage girls, including<br />
four of his own sisters.<br />
However things began to go sour even before the full leak.<br />
When the news came out that Impact Team had hacked into<br />
ALM’s sites, a Saudi-Arabian Reddit user going by the name<br />
ICouldBeStoned2Death posted a plea.<br />
"I am from Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality carries the<br />
death penalty," he writes. "I studied in [redacted] the last<br />
several years and used Ashley Madison during that time ... I<br />
am single; I used it because I am gay. Gay sex is punishable<br />
by death in my home country, so I wanted to keep my<br />
hookups extremely discreet. (AM promised that they had<br />
systems in place to ensure confidentiality.)"<br />
This brought up a couple of new perspectives on this hack.<br />
Despite the downright seediness of the website, not all AM<br />
users are similar to Duggar, and the hack could leave them<br />
in legal and mortal danger. We must also note that adultery<br />
laws are generally far harsher on women than men, as per<br />
this 2012 statement from the UN:<br />
"Adultery laws have usually been drafted and almost<br />
always implemented in a manner prejudicial to women,<br />
Provisions in penal codes often do not treat women and men<br />
equally and establish harsher sanctions for women, and in<br />
some countries, rules of evidence value women’s testimony<br />
as half that of a man’s."<br />
Homosexuality is illegal in 79 countries, and punishable<br />
by death in ten countries. As Ashley Madison has previously<br />
been perceived to be safer than LGBT specific dating sites,<br />
this could be concerning for users living in those companies.<br />
For similar reasons, committed or married couples in open<br />
relationships may have also used Ashley Madison in a<br />
manner where both spouses were aware of the other using<br />
the site. While of course there may be differing views on<br />
open relationships or polyamory, surely this is a personal<br />
matter for such couples that should not be discussed on<br />
such a scale, and this could unfortunately lead to unwanted<br />
attention, or a poor reputation for some people, even if they<br />
did not actually deceive their partners.<br />
Did Impact Team think about the spouses who would<br />
discover that their partner might have been unfaithful, in<br />
such a public manner? Sure, they have a right to know, but<br />
how humiliating must that be? Did they think about how<br />
domestic violence could come into play in these situations;<br />
and before you say ‘well they shouldn’t have been cheating in<br />
the first place’ do you really think anyone ‘deserves’ violent<br />
treatment? What about the mental health not only on people<br />
who wear using the site, but their family and spouses?<br />
Already there have been two suicides with links to the leak,<br />
and this could certainly become more of an issue as this leak<br />
continues to play out.<br />
The worst part of this incident is what it says about us.<br />
As a global society we have a streak of a morbid, mediaeval,<br />
fascination around shaming people and the Internet<br />
certainly shields us from our own un-empathetic actions.<br />
We do see mob like attacks on individuals on line, usually<br />
to discredit them and ruin their reputations. Sure, this is<br />
often when they do something awful, but how is this not<br />
the modern equivalent of the stocks and pillory? The Ashley<br />
Madison hack is a case where yes, very few people were doing<br />
the right thing, of course you can’t be fully sympathetic to<br />
sleazy cheating partners, but as mentioned earlier the ripple<br />
effect goes so much further than that. We cannot entirely<br />
blame the Impact Team for this, because we have given them<br />
the perfect audience.<br />
BY JULIA PILLAI
44<br />
ARTS & CULTURE<br />
By BRODIE EVERIST<br />
Gig Guide<br />
16<br />
Sept<br />
Live Jazz with The Rookies.<br />
The Rooks Return. 201 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy<br />
Free – 8:30pm every Wednesday<br />
23<br />
Sept<br />
Live Jazz with The Rookies.<br />
The Rooks Return. 201 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy<br />
Free – 8:30pm every Wednesday<br />
17<br />
Sept<br />
18<br />
Sept<br />
19<br />
Sept<br />
22<br />
Sept<br />
Louise Love/Je Wheeler/Little Adventures<br />
Bar Open. 317 Brunswick St, Fitzroy.<br />
9pm. $5 entry<br />
Little Adventures is a Melbourne-based duo that features<br />
the stunning vocals of Mel O’Neill encapsulated by<br />
the soundscapes and grooves of Luke Singleton. With<br />
support from accomplished songwriters Louise Love and<br />
Jillian Wheeler.<br />
The Melbourne Improvisers Collective September<br />
Series<br />
Uptown Jazz Cafe. 1/177 Brunswick St, Fitzroy.<br />
8:30pm.<br />
The Melbourne Improvisers Collective (MIC) is an<br />
organisation that presents regular performances<br />
throughout Melbourne displaying local, interstate and<br />
international creative musicians. This week features the<br />
Wayfinders and the Nick McCusker Quartet.<br />
Movement 9 – Funk, Jazz and Latin<br />
Vamos. 1st Floor 37 Little Bourke St, Melbourne.<br />
8:30pm.<br />
Movement 9 present a heady cocktail of jazz, funk and<br />
latin music, featuring the original compositions of Joe<br />
McEvilly. After launching their debut album WINGS in<br />
2013, they are bringing a combination of classic and new<br />
work to Vamos.<br />
Fistful of Soul W/ Fulton Street<br />
Ding Dong Lounge. 18 Market Lane, Chinatown,<br />
Melbourne.<br />
9pm. $10 entry<br />
Seven-piece soul outfit Fulton Street open for Ding Dong’s<br />
Fistful of Soul – featuring a heady mix of rhythm & blues,<br />
Motown & stomping Northern tracks brought to you by<br />
resident DJs, led by PBS Radio presenter, Vince Peach.<br />
The Senegambian Jazz Band with STAV.<br />
The Toff in Town. 2/252 Swanston St.<br />
7:30pm. $10+bf / $15 on door.<br />
Pulsing with polyrhythm, vocalist and virtuosic kora<br />
player Amadou Suso brings together a collective of<br />
musicians who merge traditional African percussion and<br />
song with improvisation. Vibrant smiles and passionate<br />
melodies, the culture is deep and the music is fresh.<br />
Opening the night is Melbourne’s soulful, moving and<br />
groovy: STAV.<br />
24<br />
Sept<br />
25<br />
Sept<br />
26<br />
Sept<br />
27<br />
Sept<br />
30<br />
Sept<br />
The Melbourne Improvisers Collective September<br />
Series<br />
Uptown Jazz Cafe. 1/177 Brunswick St, Fitzroy.<br />
8:30pm.<br />
The Melbourne Improvisers Collective (MIC) is an<br />
organisation that presents regular performances<br />
throughout Melbourne displaying local, interstate and<br />
international creative musicians. This week features the<br />
Antipodes Sextet and the Gareth Voigt Quartet.<br />
Vintage Roots – Pop Music with a Jazz Edge<br />
Paris Cat Jazz Club $25 9:30pm<br />
Vintage Roots re-interpret classic pop songs by artists<br />
such as Cold Chisel, John Farnham, Maroon 5, Justice<br />
Crew, Justin Bieber, Madonna, The Cure and lots more.<br />
Exploring a plethora of genres from the jazz idiom this is<br />
pop music like you’ve never heard before.<br />
Papa G and The Starcats W/ The Jungle Crooks and<br />
Scrimshaw Four<br />
Ding Dong Lounge. 18 Market Lane, Chinatown,<br />
Melbourne.<br />
The Starcats return to the Ding Dong Lounge for a superb<br />
night of their heavy grooves and catchy funk anthems.<br />
Monash Philharmonic Society Spring Concert <strong>2015</strong> –<br />
Americana<br />
The Patricia Turner Centre for Creative Arts, Firbank<br />
Grammar, 51 Outer Crescent, Brighton.<br />
7pm. $15/12/8<br />
Monash University Philharmonic Society proudly<br />
presents the Monash Philharmonic Orchestra, the<br />
Monash Symphonic Winds and the Monash Jazz<br />
Orchestra in the second major concert for <strong>2015</strong>,<br />
"Americana".<br />
Monash Academy Orchestra – Beethoven 9<br />
Robert Blackwood Hall. Monash University, Clayton.<br />
The MAO continues their <strong>2015</strong> season with a world<br />
premiere of New Work by Mary Finsterer, Liszt’s Piano<br />
Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major and Beethoven’s Symphony<br />
No.9 in D minor.<br />
Live Jazz with The Rookies.<br />
The Rooks Return. 201 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy<br />
Free – 8:30pm every Wednesday
ARTS & CULTURE 45<br />
2<br />
Oct<br />
3<br />
Oct<br />
Pilot<br />
Paris Cat Jazz Club. 6 Goldie Place Melbourne.<br />
8:30pm. $20 entry – tickets available.<br />
PILOT is a five-piece instrumental jazz/fusion band<br />
from Melbourne. Formed in 2014, their self-titled,<br />
independently released debut EP ranges from their<br />
trademark rock-infused jazz style through to forays<br />
into piano-based hip hop and beyond.<br />
Movement 9: Presents the music of Amy Winehouse<br />
Paris Cat Jazz Club. 6 Goldie Place Melbourne.<br />
6:30pm. Tickets $25.<br />
In collaboration with Elly Poletti, winner of two<br />
prestigious Bruce Awards for Music Theatre, Movement<br />
9 present a fresh and fascinating perspective on<br />
the music of Amy Winehouse. Reimagined and<br />
reinterpreted, they transport Amy Winehouse’s songs<br />
from the radio to the smoky clubs where her idols<br />
Mingus, Miles and Monk used to play.<br />
4<br />
Oct<br />
16<br />
Oct<br />
17<br />
Oct<br />
Little Adventures/Je Wheeler/Tommy Staples<br />
Whole Lotta Love. 524 Lygon St, East Brunswick.<br />
World-class DJ Tommy Staples takes over Whole Lotta<br />
Love with support from professional songwriter Je<br />
Wheeler and ambient duo Little Adventures.<br />
Elissa Rodger Band - Poetry In Motion<br />
Melbourne Recital Centre. 31 Sturt St, Southbank,<br />
Melbourne.<br />
7pm. Tickets $30/25.<br />
Upcoming jazz vocalist Elissa Rodger presents a<br />
collection of pieces celebrating the spoken word<br />
– featuring the works of E.E. Cummings, Theodore<br />
Roethke and fantastic lyricists alike.<br />
Clancye Milne Presents the Music of Gershwin<br />
Paris Cat Jazz Club. 6 Goldie Place Melbourne.<br />
6:30pm. Tickets $25.<br />
With a shared love of the Great American Songbook,<br />
vocalist Clancye Milne and composer James Mustafa<br />
present an evening of music, featuring the iconic<br />
compositions of George and Ira Gershwin.<br />
Want to have your gig advertised in<br />
the next gig guide? Send the details to<br />
bceve1@student.monash.edu<br />
Please include date, time, entry fee,<br />
address and a 1-2 sentence description<br />
of the band/music.
46 arts & culture<br />
By Josh Zuzek<br />
TV Junkies and Junk TV<br />
Are you a TV junkie? Or are you one of those socially<br />
backward people who still only watch their TV simply for<br />
enjoyment?<br />
Television has transcended mere entertainment.<br />
In 2011, Netflix was still a DVD rental service limited to<br />
America and Canada. No Australians were bombarded<br />
with commercials for Stan or Presto. Channel 10 wasn’t a<br />
complete joke. The world was a simpler place.<br />
Then came the boom.<br />
The inevitable competition to offer the best TV viewing<br />
experience has lead to an explosion in new shows, all for<br />
consumption and immediate social media critiquing.<br />
With it, good television has suddenly become the needle in<br />
the haystack that is the rapidly evolving world of network, pay<br />
TV and streaming services.<br />
As much as viewers have been treated to some fantastic<br />
new series over the past few years, there has also a great<br />
increase in shows that have failed to captivate their target<br />
audience.<br />
Unfortunately, there are a limited number of good actors,<br />
showrunners and – most importantly – original ideas for new<br />
TV series, and that talent can only be spread so far.<br />
Pessimists may argue that any good idea for a TV series<br />
has already been thought of; as Mindy Kaling humorously<br />
pointed out in The New Yorker last month, TV addicts have<br />
no trouble detecting obvious similarities amongst every new<br />
wave of shows that hit their screens.<br />
Compounding the problem, any new TV series not only has<br />
to compete against shows on other channels, but now also<br />
the alarming amount of content available from streaming<br />
services like Netflix, Stan and Presto. These services offer<br />
anything from the freshest of new release titles to old<br />
classics and children’s shows.<br />
With the greater accessibility to older shows thanks to<br />
streaming services, new series are swamped – making the<br />
decision to commit to an original series even tougher.<br />
Why would I commit to watching thirteen hours of a new<br />
"Immature, pathetic 30-something year old man is suddenly thrust<br />
into a position of great responsibility and must grow up fast" series<br />
when I have ‘Breaking Bad’ there in its entirety, especially<br />
with the constant (and slightly annoying) reminder from<br />
everyone I know that ‘Breaking Bad’ is the single greatest TV<br />
show ever created?<br />
Keeping up to date on the latest buzz show has become<br />
something of a social badge of honour for people too. With<br />
the aid of social media, TV viewing has become more than<br />
something done in your spare time – it’s become an event.<br />
Initially kick started by reality TV shows and sporting<br />
events, social media coverage of scripted dramas has taken<br />
off recently, to the point of ridiculousness – especially those<br />
not in on the fun.<br />
Devoted fans need to be in a certain frame of mind to<br />
watch their beloved ‘True Detective’, ‘Game of Thrones’ or<br />
‘Dragonball Z’ (admit it, you’d still binge watch Goku at the<br />
drop of a hat). No small detail can be missed, and every plot<br />
twist must feel like the rollercoaster ride they’re created to<br />
be.<br />
Instant reactions must be tweeted, and if you are so brave<br />
as to not watch an episode the moment its available, you<br />
must avoid social media like the plague until you’ve caught<br />
up again.<br />
Heavily dramatic shows can also leave the viewer feeling<br />
depressed – say following the death of a favourite character<br />
– angry, and always desperate for more - such is their<br />
intention. However, not everyone can handle going off to bed<br />
immediately following the ice-cold betrayal of their beloved,<br />
beautiful man in black... Did someone say spoiler?<br />
This highlights how there will always be a place for shows<br />
you don’t have to be totally invested in, sitcom reruns you<br />
happily allow to simply wash over you while you sit on the<br />
couch, paying just as much attention to your phone as you<br />
do to the TV.<br />
This is the space where reality TV resides, alongside<br />
lightweight dramas and good old-fashioned soap operas.<br />
It must also be noted that the proliferation of choice for<br />
viewers has undoubtedly brought some positives too.<br />
The race between programmers to beef up their content<br />
libraries has lead networks and streaming services to<br />
broaden their horizons, pulling away from the safety of<br />
repetition to search for new and interesting ideas.<br />
Indeed, series such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Orange is the New<br />
Black’ have proven to be unique examples – and immensely<br />
popular in their original American markets - in recent years,<br />
simply for featuring predominantly African-American and<br />
female casts respectively. While being embarrassingly long<br />
overdue, shows such as these – particularly ‘OITNB’ – may not<br />
have ever seen the light of day before the content explosion<br />
in recent years.<br />
Speaking to The New York Times in August, ‘Girlfriends’<br />
Guide to Divorce’ showrunner Marti Noxon commented on<br />
how the increase in programming over the past five years<br />
has lead to greater opportunities for shows featuring women<br />
and minorities, and even just shows with a more niche<br />
subject matter.<br />
"There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak<br />
to a smaller audience," Ms. Noxon said. "Now many of these<br />
places are looking to reach some people — not all the people."<br />
"That’s opened up a tremendous opportunity for women<br />
and other people that have been left out of the conversation."<br />
While some popular shows are watched primarily to<br />
stay up to date on current conversations, television is still<br />
ultimately a medium to entertain. After a hard days studying,<br />
working, or binge watching ‘Breaking Bad’, a viewer will<br />
always find something to fit the bill.
ART SHOWCASE<br />
47<br />
Sophie Hinz<br />
Sophie Hinz is a Melbourne based Visual Artist<br />
who recently graduated from Bachelor of Visual<br />
Arts at Monash University.<br />
You can find more of her work at<br />
cargocollective.com/sophiehinz<br />
Above:<br />
Glass, Concrete and mixed media on unstretched<br />
canvas, dimensions variable
48<br />
ART SHOWCASE<br />
SOPHIE HINZ<br />
Misfortunes of the mind, Mix Media on Canvas, 2014
ART SHOWCASE 49<br />
SOPHIE HINZ<br />
Top left:<br />
‘Untitled’, Glass, 2014<br />
Above:<br />
Eric Cross, Sophie Hinz collaboration<br />
‘Mountain’, Glass and concrete, 2014