Progressive culture since 1954
The truth is, there remains much capital – both political and monetary – to be made from security theatre and ‘law and order’ policy, particularly at a time of acute public anxiety around the social and economic consequences of COVID-19.
For every extra day of lockdown, for every extra quarantine measure, and for every additional restriction placed on Victorians, it is the corporations pushing insecure work and forcing workers to turn up to work who must bear ultimate responsibility.
Since the recent transference of Sydney ‘Glitter’ cycle film from screen to stage (Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom), revisiting the critique of the ‘dumb semiotics’ of Australian cinema in Philip Brophy’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert can widen our sense of how the Australian Dream road-movie is travelling.
While other important labour protests around that time, such as the 1917 New South Wales Strike, were set both inside and outside of Australia’s largest cities, the Victorian police strike offered Australian newspapers the opportunity to capture disruption unfolding in an urban setting, where the vast majority of protests take place today.
This time I really did want to be offended. I wanted to be as bold in my rage as Sophia, as reactionary in my justified rebuke. But all I felt was a cold sweat and a sense that everyone else in that plaza was only sorry they hadn’t done it to me themselves. I knew that wasn’t true, but every time something like that happened, it felt like gospel that someone – anyone, everyone – wanted to hurt me.
If a nation is willing to detain and torture innocent men, women and children, for years on end and indeed indefinitely, all to protect its borders, it’s crucial to ask: what is the Australian border? Why is it so important, and so fragile that it needs this incredibly violent, elaborate and expensive protection?
Please stop walking, and look at us/Raise your head and look at us/Raise your hands and look at us/Look at the life lost in our abode/Look at the tears our eyes have lost.
Despite decades of advocacy, renters’ struggles remain socially marginal, with little scope for renters to self-represent, demonstrate collective power, and exert political force. As the pandemic exacerbates the quotidian struggles of renters and people in precarious housing, it is increasingly clear that a militant collective response is required.
If we use current literary prizes as indicators of literary merit and as generators of reading lists, Australian poetry becomes a near ghost, dancing around the edges of the industry and only sometimes allowed in. A future that truly celebrates and champions excellence in Australian poetry is something to fight for and look forward to.
The battle to save Kelly’s Bush – a public open space on the banks of the Parramatta River at Hunters Hill – is legendary, and was the catalyst that launched Mundey on a path that would bring him international fame, and guarantee him a place in the history of Australian urban political thought.
We’d like to thank everyone who entered this year for their thoughtful and incredible work. We received an impressive and high quality range of poems, and each and every writer deserves congratulations. We’d also like to thank our judges, Evelyn Araluen and Gayle Allan (Trinity College), for their hard work and dedication to the decision-making process.
Sarah Burnside reviews new books by Penny Wincer and Ambelin Kwaymullina and a new essay by Judith Brett, with a focus on care.
As an immigrant from the Middle East, whenever I watch a Hollywood movie set in the Global South I anticipate the reduction of the East into a set of stereotypes in direct opposition to the West. Where the Western self is rational, mature, civilised, the Oriental other is irrational, childlike, savage.