Mia Sanders

International students in New South Wales face higher living costs than in other states. Students at Western Sydney University (WSU) are campaigning for the NSW government to grant them transport concessions.

In Australia, more than 23,000 people reported being sexually assaulted last year, making it the fifth consecutive year in which recorded sexual assaults rose nationally.

The campaign for marriage equality has been fighting the delaying tactics and homophobic policies of Labor and Liberal governments for the past 13 years.

Capitalism’s constant drive for profits cannot be reconciled with Earth’s defined boundaries. Ecological destruction is not a side-effect of capitalism, it is built into the system: there cannot be infinite growth when the planet has finite resources.

The shine has rubbed off Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s apology to those men charged with historic gay sex offences, delivered in May.

In February last year, 39 universities signed up to “Respect. Now. Always”, a campaign to eliminate sexual assault and harassment on campus. But more than a year later, there are no new initiatives in place and students are asking why.

Everyone’s favourite racist, Pauline Hanson, was nurtured back into the public eye and inevitably the Senate as a paid “expert correspondent” on popular television programs like the Sunrise breakfast news program.

It is no coincidence that Hanson secured her Senate seat in Queensland, the state with the highest rate of youth unemployment. This, and the growing wealth divide between the haves and the have-nots, is the material reason why xenophobia and racism can grow quickly.

A new wave of feminists is appearing, but sexism and misogyny in Australia is alive and well and still thrives among the younger generation.