#australia
Australians band together to protest shark cull.
More than 170 sharks were caught during a heinous and cruel cull policy in western Australia. Of those, around 50 sharks were murdered. And it was all legal as Australia embarked on the killing spree after a handful of fatal attacks took place in the country over the past two years.
Conservationists rightly charged the government of going against…
olson kundig
The New South Wales government has quietly amended its public health restrictions, lifting the ban on protests in the state. There was no official announcement—they didn’t want to admit it—but we had won.
The victory came a week after 300 students and staff mobilised at Sydney University, once again facing down the police. Scenes of University of NSW education officer Shovan Bhattarai being thrown through the air and injured by riot police, and even a professor of law, Simon Rice, in his suit, being tripped and shoved to the ground and arrested, made headlines. Videos of the police violence and student defiance were viewed nearly 100,000 times. Outrage at the heavy-handedness was widespread, and the pressure on the government was mounting.
These incidents came after another brilliant show of defiance in early October, when 500 protesters stormed into Sydney’s Taylor Square before running past police lines to march down Oxford Street, the symbolic site of Sydney’s Mardi Gras, to oppose transphobia and homophobia. This was despite the state Supreme Court ruling the rally “unauthorised” the day before. The police shoved, kettled, arrested and fined protesters, but the overall mood was of joyous rebellion and victory as people showed they would not be cowed. The rally drew an outpouring of support.
READ MORE: How we won back the right to protest in NSW
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Diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing have never been worse. In early October, Foreign Minister Marise Payne visited Tokyo to attend a meeting of the “Quad”—the four countries most concerned with the rise of China in the Asia Pacific: Japan, the US, Australia and India. The meeting discussed how the four nations might reduce their dependence on China for the supply of certain minerals and technologies, as well as how they might combat disinformation campaigns from authoritarian governments. China’s vice foreign minister denounced the meeting as “an anti-China front-line” or “mini-Nato” which reflected a “cold war mentality”.
The meeting came towards the end of a year marked by a tit-for-tat struggle between Australia and China. In May, China put up tariffs on Australian barley and suspended beef imports after Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 that was widely seen as an attempt to blame China for the pandemic.
READ MORE: Canberra and Beijing: economic ties, geopolitical tensions
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On 30 July, Melbourne recorded 721 cases of coronavirus. The growing crisis pushed Premier Daniel Andrews into implementing a statewide lockdown that involved shutting down non-essential industries and curtailing a range of social activities. Now, as much of the world grapples with a second wave of the deadly virus, Melbourne has recorded zero daily cases for nearly two weeks.
Most Victorians are celebrating the easing of restrictions, pleased that their sacrifices have paid off. That they overwhelmingly abided by the restrictions reflects a strong sense of social solidarity, and countless lives have been saved as a result. So while it is true that the second wave was a product of the Andrews’ government’s neoliberal approach to managing the quarantine program, it must now be judged by its response to that wave. On the whole, the government has been overwhelmingly effective.
Despite this, Andrews has for months now been the target of vicious attacks. In the topsy-turvy world inhabited by the political class, the true calamity of 2020 is not the deadly virus that has killed more than a million people globally, but the measures that have successfully prevented that from happening here in Australia.
READ MORE: The evidence is in: lockdowns work
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Annie Wegner and her mother pose in front of a fine motor car (Mount Blackheath, Australia, 1930).
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Two children play in the morning light while chooks scratch in the garden (Blackheath, Australia, 1930).
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if your a dirty slut from australia kik me bigdriver
and tell me how slutty you are
The red shadow of planet Earth is broadcasted across the moon in this image taken on May 26 near Sydney, Australia. On that crisp, clear autumn night a perigee full moon (the moon at its closest point to Earth) slid into the umbra. Its total phase lasted only about 14 minutes which is generally short for a lunar eclipse. The composite of 6 exposures also shows the wide range of brightness variations within Earth’s shadow against a faint background of stars.
Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Ward (Barden Ridge Observatory)
Throwback to the time my poor German teacher had to explain the concept of formal and informal pronouns to a class full of Australians and everyone was scandalised and loudly complained “why can’t I treat everyone the same?” “I don’t want to be a Sie!” “but being friendly is respectful!” “wouldn’t using ‘du’ just show I like them?” until one guy conceded “I supposemaybe I’d use Sie with someone like the prime minister, if he weren’t such a cunt” and my teacher ended up with her head in her hands saying “you are all banned from using du until I can trust you”
God help Japanese teachers in Australia.
if this isnt an accurate representation of australia idk what is
Australia’s reverse-formality respect culture is fascinating. We don’t even really think about it until we try to communicate or learn about another culture and the rules that are pretty standard for most of the world just feel so wrong. I went to America this one time and I kept automatically thinking that strangers using ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ were sassing me.
Australians could not be trusted with a language with ingrained tiers of formal address. The most formal forms would immediately become synonyms for ‘go fuck yourself’ and if you weren’t using the most informal version possible within three sentences of meeting someone they’d take it to mean you hated them.
100% true.
the difference between “‘scuse me” and “excuse me” is a fistfight
See also: the Australian habit of insulting people by way of showing affection, which other English-speakers also do, but not in a context where deescalating the spoken invective actively increases the degree of offence intended, particularly if you’ve just been affectionately-insulting with someone else.
By which I mean: if you’ve just called your best mate an absolute dickhead, you can’t then call a hated politician something that’s (technically) worse, like a total fuckwit, because that would imply either that you were really insulting your mate or that you like the politician. Instead, you have to use a milder epithet, like bastard, to convey your seething hatred for the second person. But if your opening conversational gambit is slagging someone off, then it’s acceptable to go big (”The PM’s a total cockstain!”) at the outset.
Also note that different modifiers radically change the meaning of particular insults. Case in point: calling someone a fuckin’ cunt is a deadly insult, calling someone a mad cunt is a compliment, and calling someone a fuckin’ mad cunt means you’re literally in awe of them. Because STRAYA.
Roland Tings is back w a fresh LP, Salt Water. Tings definitely elevating his trademark bouncy house energy for his 2nd full length. Written while living on the Great Ocean Road, oz. Stream below. Get it here/now
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