FARRAGO

Saturday 24 November of last year saw Victorians head to the polls to vote in the state election. What was initially forecast to be a close Labor victory resulted in a rare political landslide, with Daniel Andrews regaining the premiership with apparent ease.

Federal Minister for Education Daniel Tehan has axed plans to establish an independent taskforce  that would have investigated university responses to and reported mishandlings of complaints of campus sexual assault.

Queensland Liberal Senator James McGrath has announced plans to introduce a private member’s bill to abolish student service and amenities fees (SSAF) when parliament reconvenes in February.

Joseph Paglia and Luke Rotella interviewed founding Greens member Senator Janet Rice at the Greens’ election night party in Docklands about the party’s campaign in the 2018 state election.

Ryan is running in the state election for the district of Richmond. She doesn’t expect to win but she’s put herself forward on principle. She can’t let those who would threaten the existence of Victoria’s safe injecting rooms, which she was central in introducing, run uncontested.

If you vote below the line, you have to number at least five boxes, but your vote will be exhausted once you finish numbering the boxes. This means that you know exactly who you are voting for.

Welcome to Farrago’s coverage of the 2018 state election, occurring on 24 November.

This week in America, on the first Tuesday of November, a very different race will stop a very different nation. It is a race with much more at stake. It is a race to majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. It is, among other things, a race to be Governor in 36 states, to legalise recreational marijuana in Michigan and to give ex-felons the right to vote in Florida. This Tuesday, America votes in the midterm elections.

Hundreds of academics and students joined the national protest at the University of Melbourne to call for the end of offshore detention and the inhumane treatments and offshore detention of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru.

Queers are outraged about the proposed regulation of poppers—and the restriction of its recreational use. And rightly so. The arguments against these regulations are convincing—it’s your body and your choice to ingest whatever substance you like. But every new prohibition on social behaviours comes from somewhere and we should ask what made regulating poppers possible in the first place, to properly critique these immoral policies.