The Weekly Round-Up: September 19th 2021
Welcome to the Weekly Round-Up — a series where we bring you five big stories from across the internet that you should know about. This week, we’re celebrating young Aussies getting their voices heard in parliament, talking to international students about what the recent changes to work conditions mean to them and are once more disappointed by Sussan Ley and Christian Porter.
Come across something throughout the week that you’d like to share? Get in touch with us via Instagram or Facebook to get a story featured in this space!
1. The Young Australians writing speeches to be delivered in parliament
Raise Our Voice’s latest initiative is already making waves in parliament! Through a program that’s getting young Australians to write a short speech about their visions for the future to be read aloud in Canberra by their local MP (including a new slew of Senators that have signed on), Raise Our Voice has created a unique opportunity for their voices to be amplified within the halls of parliament. In this piece, you can hear from Grace and Reya on what their visions for the future are. If you’re under 21 and haven’t submitted a speech yet, you have until the 21st of September to do so.
2. Australia Has a Massive Diversity Problem in Parliament — Here’s How We Can Fix It
While we’ve all been (rightfully) outraged at Kristina Keneally for her decision to take over Tu Le’s potential seat, it’s also important to remember that this is far from a one-off issue. As Millie Roberts for Junkee writes, it’s really just part of a much bigger trend of POC representation in Parliament being nowhere near where it should be. At the moment, people of colour make up only 4% of Federal Parliament despite representing over 20% of the Australian population — and that figure’s even worse for Asian Australians. That lack of diversity plays a huge role in people of colour’s views on our parliament’s legitimacy and the level of trust held in it, with good reason given the way this lack of diversity affects the kind of decision-making that goes on regarding issues particularly affect us. Keneally may have become a bit of lightening rod in this conversation but her move to Fowler is something that happens all the time all across Australia and effectively rigs the game from the start against people of colour. It’s time we start having serious conversations about how preselection practices affect who eventually makes it into parliament.
3. Whitehaven Coal’s Vickery mine given green light by environment minister
Time for our weekly check-in with federal environment minister Sussan Ley and — yep as expected, she is once again proving to be a total disappointment. Because Ley apparently does not feel the need to protect children and our future whatsoever (despite a federal court basically demanding that she do), Ley has approved Whitehaven Coal’s Vickery mine extension in New South Wales. It’s the second coalmining project she has approved in the past two weeks as she seems determined to do as much damage as possible ahead of the UN Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in the coming weeks.
“The Morrison government’s decision signals to the world that Australia does not appear prepared to act responsibly to protect children from climate harms,” says David Barnden, the lawyer who represented eight students in their case against Ley. What more is there to say, really.
4. Christian Porter’s cabinet position up in the air as Scott Morrison considers advice
Speaking of disappointing people we have to regularly check-in with, Christian Porter is once again in the news with his cabinet position being up in the air following the revelation that he had used a blind trust to help cover the legal fees of his defamation action against the ABC. In case you’re wondering why that’s an issue (or you’re a certain someone who really fundamentally doesn’t understand why everything you do is shitty and terrible every step of the way — hi Christian!), it’s kind of a big deal that we have no idea who has helped one of our MPs fund a fight against our public broadcaster that’s helped silence them by sealing certain court documents. While we’ll be happy to see him go if this does result in him losing his cabinet position, we can’t help but be disappointed (read enraged) that this is what ended up taking him down and not very serious allegations of sexual assault.
UPDATE: Christian Porter has now officially resigned from his cabinet position.
5. No more working cap for international students on COVID-19 frontline. Is that exploitation?
In the midst of the pandemic, the federal government lifted working caps for international students in essential sectors, allowing them to work above the usual 40 hours per fortnight if they worked in aged care, the health sector, hospitality, tourism, agriculture, at NDIS providers and supermarkets in lockdown areas. To a lot of students and activists, it’s an unfair policy that encourages international students to put themselves at a higher risk of catching COVID-19. With restriction on hours now being applied to these sectors regardless of when they started working there, its creating an incentive for more international students to enter these more ‘at-risk’ workforces while leaving them with little option to earn more money in other fields during a financially difficult time.
