In a multi-part series, Resolved delves into the murky waters of the asylum seeker’s debate, exploring the reasons why people get aboard leaky boats bound for Australia, in the hope of a new life.

We will be chatting to two guests from a Christian, refugee activist group known as Love Makes A Way.

Interview Transcript:

Nick: Welcome to Resolved. Now what would motivate you to sell all your possessions, flee your homeland, board a leaky boat and effectively risk life and limb to come to Australia?

Yes, today we’re delving into the deep waters of the asylum seeker debate and joining us in the studio to discuss this are Matt Anslow and Jody Lightfoot from Love Makes A Way, Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

Matt: Thanks for having us.

Jody: Thanks for having us, Nick.

Nick: Why are people getting on boats, what’s the story there?

Matt: That’s a great question, and in some ways, it’s the question that frames this whole debate about asylum seekers and refugees. People, ultimately get on boats because that’s how bad things are for them.

We can debate about people getting on boats and how dangerous it is, but ultimately, people will get on boats and they will seek asylum in safe countries like Australia, not because they’re economic migrations, but because they are people who are in desperate situations, whether it’s a situation of persecution, some kind of oppression, or even the danger of being murdered or killed, for their faith or who they are or whatever it might be, people are in those situations and they will always get on boats as a result.

Jody: A friend of mine shared with me a metaphor and if you imagine for a moment that you live in a complex and in that complex, there are a hundred apartment buildings and each of those apartment buildings have a family. Suddenly, a fire engulfs the complex, it blocks the exits and you call out for help and the fire brigade come. The problem is, the fire brigade only have one ladder and that enables them to help one family escape safely from the flames.

Now this is the situation of asylum seekers in that, the UNHCR has capacity to resettle less than one percent of all asylum seekers and so they have the choice, the remaining nighty nine percent to stay and be engulfed by the flames or to jump and many asylum seekers are risking everything for the chance of a life for their families.

So the short version of that is people get on boats for the same reason people jump from burning buildings, they’ll actually die if they stay.

Nick: So, what do you say to people who run this claim that they’re queue jumpers, they’re skipping this process and for every person we take illegally, we’re taking less person through the proper means?

Jody: There’s this narrative that it’s not actually legal for asylum seekers to come by boat. The truth is, under the refugee convention, it is legal for asylum seekers to come to Australia, regardless of what the means are and ninety percent of people who have come by boat have been found to be genuine refugees.

The queue is also a myth, there is actually no queue. One of the things Australia could really do is just increase our humanitarian intake and that’s sort of action as well as other actions can actually create an incentive for people not to get on boats and create safer pathways to Australia.

Matt: Part of the problem at the moment is that Australia links its humanitarian intake with arrivals via boat or whatever, which ultimately limits the amount of people that we take from the so called “queue”. But as Jody said, all commentators who know about this issue, argue that there is no queue, there is no orderly process and there is no sense that if you arrive first in a refugee camp in another country, seeking to come to a country which has signed the refugee convention, there’s no guarantee that because you get there first, you will be settled first. It doesn’t work like that.

People have lived in camps for years and years, some families for more than one generation, just waiting to be settled in another country. I mean the queue, as Jody said, is a myth and one that we need to continually uncover because it keeps coming up.

Nick: When this topic of asylum seekers is raised, people seem to have a very strong reaction, one way or the other. Why do you guys think that is?

Matt: I think that in Australia, we have been unfortunately sold a kind of myth about strangers, about people from different places, people who are different from us. That leads us to be afraid. The reaction that a lot of people have to asylum seekers where they express vitriol, or anger, or outrage, or whatever it might be, I think that it’s actually based in fear, not in anger per say, I think that the anger is a symptom of the fear that we feel.

Part of that, I think, relates to our history. I have a friend in Brisbane, a very wise, sage type figure named Dave Andrews and he has suggested, many times, that we are afraid of asylum seekers coming here and taking what we have or whatever because that’s we did! I mean, the history of Australia is such that we disposed a people of this land and somewhere in our psyche, somewhere in our national spirit, or whatever we might call it, we’re worried that there might actually be people who will come and do the same thing.

In a sense, until we resolve our national history, maybe we’ll never come to terms with that, I don’t know. But I think fear is at the base of how people react to this.

Jody: And I guess the flip side of fear-based reactions, you’d have people operating in a different narrative, if you believe that people are genuinely seeking to come to Australia to have a chance at life and then we see them placed in indefinite detention, places that experts have called factories of mental illness, including children, then that’s going to illicit a very different response based on a different emotion.

Nick: Do you think that there’s been an intentional agenda to dehumanise these people and if so, to what end?

Jody: Mark Blyth has got a book, it’s called The History of a Dangerous Idea and it talks about the history of non-violent movements, and one of the key takeaways of the book is that whenever a country or a group of people seeks to oppress another group, whether it be slavery, or systems of apartheid, what happens first is the dehumanisation of that group and that dehumanisation seeks to create a sort of justification that allows that oppression to continue.

The dehumanisation of asylum seekers, as labelled as illegals, or queue jumpers, or whatever it might be, that’s almost created a justification for us to have a system like indefinite detention. I think there has been quite an intentional campaign to create those fear-based narratives, and I think part of our role is to create narratives that talk about the incredible diversity that asylum seekers can bring to Australia where we celebrate and welcome them as people.

Matt: Yeah, I think my answer to the question of whether the dehumanisation of asylum seekers is intentional is kind of a 50/50. Of course, there is a sense that people are making choices, conscience choices to dehumanise a certain group of people. Why do they do it? I’m not really sure and I wouldn’t be bold enough to judge their motivations.

I suspect it does have something to do with wrangling political support and gaining political power through fear and I mean that’s a tactic that is not related to just this issue, but a broad range of issues in world history. Fear is an incredibly powerful way to get people to be loyal to you if you say that you have the solution.

I also think that there’s an element which it’s not necessarily intentional, like I genuinely believe that our politicians who are leading the charge on the rhetoric of fear on this issue are actually themselves victims of something bigger, like a kind of bigger structure, a bigger set of attitudes that have manifested themselves in the Australian community. They are at the whim of this kind of structure as much as everyone else.

Nick: How do you respond though to people that react with this vitriolic hatred towards asylum seekers? What can you say to take the heat out of the topic? Can you say anything to really take the heat out of the topic with some people?

Matt: Look, I think sometimes the answer is no. I mean, that’s the unfortunate truth, isn’t it? I mean, it doesn’t matter what you say to some people, in that moment, you are not going to change their minds. That’s the reality, and we need to just come to terms with that and be at peace with it.

But I think in the longer term, after that conversation happens or whatever it might be, I think there are possibilities, I think people are able to change their minds. I don’t think fear is the strongest emotion, I don’t think hatred is stronger than love, I think people can change their minds.

It’s not so much about what you say, even though that is important, I think it’s about how you say it. Very rarely are people convinced by arguments at the time, I think it’s when they go away and think about what has been said. But that only really works if you have treated that person with respect and that’s part of the conversation that we want to have with the politicians, part of our actions with Love Makes A Way comes out of our philosophy on these things.

You can’t say that we want to love asylum seekers and then express hatred for politicians, like that doesn’t work. I mean, apart from that being hypocritical, you’re never going to transform the whole system by doing that. You need to speak to politicians and speak of politicians in such a way as to suggest that “yeah, they are doing the wrong thing, the policies are wrong, they are evil policies”, but the people behind them, they’re not evil people. They’re people that are caught up in this larger structure that is causing them to do things that I don’t even think, deep down, they think are right.

Jody: What we like to do is try and share facts. We hear a myth being perpetuated about asylum seekers and we think “if people would just know the facts, then we’ll be able to change hearts and minds”, but what we know through a lot of research is that people are changed through stories.

Whether it’s through developing personal relationships with asylum seekers through initiatives like “Welcome to my place”, or if it’s hearing why you personally care and I guess in your own personal story of why you care about asylum seekers, it really goes into who’s delivering the message to whom.

One of the roles we can play in our communities is that “I’m going to be a really effective messenger for my communities, my identity groups, like Christians, my family”, but I’m not going to be able to influence other communities and other identity groups in the same way and so, if we have multiple messengers and each of us communicating stories about asylum seekers and humanising them, then we can really begin to shift the story in Australia and how we think about them.

Matt: And part of that is trying to find situations for people to actually meet asylum seekers. I mean there’s not that many, so in terms of people who have just recently come to Australia, seeking asylum, there’s not that many, I mean a few dozen-thousand is actually a very small number.

But if people can meet them or at least hear their stories in person, I think that makes a huge difference, because you realise we’re not talking about things, we’re talking about people.

I think that’s pretty transformative for people.

Finding a job is an incredible challenge for any young person, but how hard must it be for young people to land a gig in the creative industries!

On this week’s episode we speak to one young person who has managed to break into the Sydney television comedy circuit and discuss with him his tips for making it big on the small screen.

Nick: Hi, welcome to Resolved. We’re glad you could join us! On today’s show, the creative industries. How can young people break into it? Well to help us resolve that question, we have the highly talented Alex Gabbott in the studio. Alex, welcome!

Alex: Hello Nick!

Nick: Your collection of work is incredibly impressive, ranging from online viral sensations including Rage of Thrones and the Hilltop Hobbits, to working on several advertising campaigns including Boost, Ben and Jerry’s, McDonalds, Dick Smith Foods and SBS. I guess the first question that leaps to mind is how did you get started in all this?

Alex: I went to North Sydney TAFE and I learnt how to do Television. So I learnt multi-camera television, from there I went to Macquarie University afterwards and then I got a job in the real world afterwards and that’s where I say I learnt the majority of what I know.

Nick: What drew you to creating content as opposed to another endeavour in life?

Alex: I’ve never really been a fan of doing boring things and I found that doing entertaining is something that can keep me interested and make me feel like I’m contributing something important to the world.

Nick: A lot of the content you’ve produced seems to be aimed at the small screen, Television, YouTube and online rather than the big screen, is there a reason for why you’ve gone for the small screen over the big?

Alex: Well I think because Australia doesn’t really have a big screen industry, there’s like a couple of players but there’s no real avenue in Australia other than reality TV or doing comedy online. Those are the two big industries and radio, of course. The small screen enables you to actually just get out there and do stuff. You can’t just go out there and make a movie, there’s a lot of preparation that has to happen with that, but you can easily go and get a camera and just film just a stupid thing and add some special effects onto it and go “Haha, there’s my comedy!”. You can easily do that, you don’t need a lot of preparation. The more you do it, the more you get better at it.

Nick: Now anyone that knows you quickly recognises that you always exude an amazing amount of creative energy. What fuels that creative fire of yours?

Alex: Well always knowing that there’s something else you can do. There’s always another thing that’s out there waiting for you and I’ve always been someone who’s wanted to do lots, and lots, and lots of different things and never just keep doing the one thing repetitively because I’ve found that when I do the one thing for a long period of time I just get bored with it. I want to do a lot of things and the only way to do a lot of things is just by going out there and doing those things. Like one day, I decided to do some illustrations, so I just started drawing and that’s exactly how it starts.

When I do something, I try and do it to the best I can possibly do and that’s a little life lesson for you, always do the best you can because people will know when you don’t. Well they will. Have you seen YouTube comments? They’re terrible!

Nick: How have you gone in the court of public opinion? YouTube comments, for instance?

Alex: I’ve gone good, actually. I don’t know why, but I’ve still got like email notifications of every comment I get. It’s like a gamble, it’s like a 50/50. Is it a good comment, is it a bad comment? Here’s what I’ve found in YouTube comments: about a third of them are good, a third of them are bad, another third of them are just unrelated.

Nick: What motivates and drives you to make the content that you make and is your joy more complete when others watch and enjoy the content you produce?

Alex: What drives me is getting people to then view what you’ve done. I get a lot of enjoyment out of people’s reactions and I think that’s a lot of what drives me. Getting that next laughter. Getting that next appreciation of what you’ve done.

Nick: How did you react when Rage of Thrones reached two million views?

Alex: I was actually more happy when it got a million views because that gets you an extra digit on the end, it’s like “Yes, I’ve made it, I’m up there with cats!”, but to be honest, I was actually doing some more Axis of Awesome stuff when we hit two million views, so I was so tired that I didn’t even register! I was like “Yes! Back to work”, which is kind of a curse, you’re so successful that- I should not use the word successful in describing myself…

Nick: Now, it’s interesting, you didn’t want to use the word successful to describe what you’ve achieved, what’s the reason behind that?

Alex: Well, it’s half because it feels a bit wanky to be going around and calling yourself successful. It feels weird to call yourself successful, even if it’s true, even if you have two million views on YouTube.

Nick: What obstacles did you have to overcome to get to where you are today?

Alex: I didn’t do too well in high school. I went well creatively, I made a kick ass visual arts short film, but I think the problem with that was it was mainly explosion-based and not sort of theory-based, so I’ve had to overcome trying to get meaning out of the work I do as opposed to just making a visual extravaganza, so I’ve had to do that all throughout High School and TAFE and even university, just trying to figure out how to tell a story the best.

I’ve always disliked when you see short films and even films and it’s a nice story, but there’s nothing unique about it, it’s very stale, it’s very boring and I’ve always tried to make everything I do have a bit of flavour, a bit of spice. Unfortunately, in my early career that came at the cost of a good story and good characters, so after I graduated uni I got right into the art of storytelling and I just had to concentrate on the theory of the story and how to get characters working, which I’m only just getting now, it’s very hard.

Nick: Does the increasingly convergent nature of the media industry limit opportunities for young people, wanting to make a break in  the industry, or is it a gateway into the industry?

Alex: I think it’s a good thing actually because back in the day, there’s always been the same amount of jobs and creative opportunities, but in the past they used to be a more of a throw away thing. Like you know radio host, their work often drifts into the ether and no one hears it again, but these days, everything is sort of recorded, everything is there for you to see. And although the media industry has evolved, it’s actually grown more things, this convergence is causing more and more avenues to open up, you can go on YouTube and upload a thing there, now there is a problem with that because there is so much to see, you have to really stand out and really shine to get noticed.

You could also do the opposite and make something that’s really bad and just has one glimmer of awesomeness that causes the thing to go viral, a ten second clip of a cat can get more views than your twenty-minute short film, but I think overall that it’s because the industry is getting bigger there are naturally going to be more and more entries into that industry.

I’ve seen and worked with some people that have just used their webcam and iMovie to go and make a little, silly video but they’ve worked out how to edit that properly and how to get the most, in this case, comedy out of the video that they’re doing, even though it’s terribly made, even though I cry every time I look at it, there’s still a lot of originality in there, because it’s your voice doing that.

Nick: Do you feel that you have had to make sacrifices for this industry, be it early morning starts, late nights, relationships, how’s that all gone?

Alex: I was working on an ABC show last year, at the ABC building in Ultimo and I spent seven days a week there for two to three months, just non-stop. I would go home occasionally but I did sleep there a couple of times, so the hours do take a toll on you, but if you find yourself in the position I’m in, it’s always good to schedule it like blocks.

Once you’ve done these big blocks, it’s always good to divide it up with lots of smaller jobs because you can regain that mental capacity to think about what you’re doing,  cause if you just do block, after block, after block, after block, it’s really taxing on you and you won’t be able to get the best out of you.

Nick: So time management skills are essential if you want to be successful in this industry?

Alex: Yes, because otherwise you’ll find yourself overdue with all your products and under-due with all your sleep.

Nick: What would your advice be to someone looking at making it in the creative industries? What skills does it take and how do you break in?

Alex: The way to break into the industry is just doing stuff, doing the best you can and keep doing that. That’s the only way to do it. If you do something sub-par, people will notice and you’ll notice and you’ll feel unsatisfied and of course, you won’t be doing the best work you can.

Another piece of advice I would give is to always contact people. Sending someone you like an email saying “Hey, I like your stuff!”. People appreciate that and they’ll will want to work with you on things. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but the amount of times it does work is mind boggling.

Nick: So having the confidence to go out there and put yourself forward is part of what’s necessary to make it?

Alex: Yeah, because if you don’t put yourself forward, no one else is going to. That’s what I find.

Nick: Do you find that other creatives, people that have been successful, are keen to see younger creatives succeed?

Alex: In Australia, yes. I’m sure overseas there’s lots of spiteful people who go “No, I want all the success for myself!” but Australia is such a small industry, it’s ridiculously small! Everyone in the industry knows everyone else, because there’s about twenty people there.

I think in Australia, it’s different, because everyone wants everyone to succeed. Very communal, very sharing industry in Australia.

Nick: If you could give me one word to describe what you do and why you do it, what would it be?

Alex: Awesome.

Nick: Awesome?

Alex: Yeah, I think awesome is probably an apt term, because you do want people to be in awe of what you do. Even if it’s only some.

Nick: Alex Gabbott, thank you for your time!

Alex: Oh Nicholas, that’s alright, any time, like seriously, I’ve got a lot of spare time, I do nothing at home really.

Nick: And you can see Alex’s full range of work at his website, alexgabbott.com

Alex: There’s also a “www” in front of that and a full stop! Don’t forget the full stop.

When you look at the state of Australian and world politics, you sometimes can’t help but despair at the parlous state of affairs we find ourselves in. Is it any wonder that so many are politically disengaged?

Yet, for some young people, politics, civic representation and student activism is their passion. What would motivate someone to get involved with party politics? Well, we’re going to find out exactly that in this week’s episode.

Interview Transcript:

Nick: Welcome to Resolved, great to have you with us! Now in recent weeks we’ve seen coordinated protests around the nation, several Federal politicians have been heckled on our university campuses and a national TV program hijacked by student protestors.

So what is going on in the world of student activism? With me in the studio to discuss this is Ben Gilholme from NSW Young Labor. Ben, welcome.

Ben: Thanks for having me, Nick.

Nick: Now you’ve been involved with Young Labor for some time now, what drew you to student politics and to the Labor Party?

Ben: I’ve always been in student politics, if you can believe that, so in primary school we had a mock youth parliament. I kind of worked with my school on addressing some of the issues around there which was fantastic and tried to follow it into high school, became the SRC leader for four and a half years.

I say what drew me mainly was my family, my grandparents mainly had some good political discussions that got me to think about things in the process and so, around about the age of fifteen, a mate of mine talked to me about a few things and introduced me to the Labor Party, in many ways. I had a look at everyone else’s policies, in the process and Labor just met what I was sort of thinking, at the time and still is.

Nick: Now you’re a passionate Christian?

Ben: Yep.

Nick: Have you ever felt that you’ve needed to compromise on your faith in order to maintain your involvement in the Labor Party?

Ben: Well I would say, being a person who took Christianity seriously around about mid-teens, being a person whose been actively in the Christian faith, as well as being active in the Labor Party, I’d say I haven’t.

At the end of the day, for those people who do have a faith and are part of a political party, it’s just a matter of looking at whether they still meet the values of what you joined at the time and whether they still meet how you work in your faith, as well.

Nick: How do you reconcile the Labor Party’s platform, which is supportive of changing the Marriage Act with your Christian convictions?

Ben: I’d say, in the process, that the Marriage Act is one of the things that sort of splits certain people in the party because they do have a particular faith, like those who have a Catholic, Anglican background. Like Deb O’Neill, who’s a strong (Roman) Catholic in the Labor Party, who’s made it quite clear that she’s not supportive of gay marriage. But, in that process, she’s not saying she’s completely off the table to helping those recognise what they know as a relationship either. I mean, I share the same view as Deb on that.

As a Christian, I personally say that if gay marriage was to come through in the first place, we’d have to change the definition of a marriage itself, which is not very popular. I’ve always been a person that’s said that I’m not a supporter of gay marriage, but guaranteeing that there’s a little bit of discussion on amending the Act on civil unions, because clearly there’s an opportunity for their rights to be recognised, as well as the sanctity of marriage remains in that process, as well.

When the party talks about those things, sure, I may disagree on those things, but, at the end of the day, it is purely working as a team, not just going “Oh, you don’t agree with me, I’m just going to leave the party”, type of thing.

Nick: So you think it’s important for Christians who are in the Labor Party to stay there and fight the good fight for the beliefs that they have, rather than going to say the Christian Democrats or faith based parties?

Ben: Well, that’s exactly right because, at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, your faith is your faith and you’ve got to stand by it.

Nick: In what ways does your faith in Jesus relate to your support of the Labor Party?

Ben: Education, Health has been built on Christian values and that’s what has built us into a great nation now and I mean, that’s also been the case in many different countries as well. The fact that the party itself shares my values when it comes to education is a big supporter for me. That’s exactly why I joined the party, to look at things like education, look at health and look at others things that Christians have built towards.

Nick: There’s a perception within the community that much of the Christian church seems to be partisanly (sic) aligned with Conservative parties such as the Liberals, the Nationals, the Christian Democrats, Family First, you name it. Is this perception true and what can Labor do to attract Christians back to their cause?

Ben: So to address the first part of that, I would say, sure, there might be a few people in churches who are being in the background of a Liberal or Christian Democrat and that’s their choice, clearly. But in that process, I’d say there’s a lot of swing voters in churches as well.

I’d probably say there’s over fifty percent that are still swing voters in the process and it’s not because there’s a particular policy on the Liberal side, it’s just a matter at the election time, whether people are actually willing to actually look at the policies on both ends.

As for Labor, again, it comes to them at the election time, making sure their policies are known to people and not just talking in legal jargon, but spoken in a way that people will understand, that this is going towards education because we need to put funding towards it. People will understand that.

Nick: One criticism often levelled at the Labor Party is that it has abandoned its working-class roots, the Howard Battlers, as the Liberals like to call them. Is there any truth to this claim and is Labor more concerned about inner-city elites than the working-class?

Ben: Well I have to say no to that, just because (a) I’m from Campbelltown. I’ve always, and I mean, always worked with both sides of politics here and Labor has always put the best interests first.

We had a Labor Government who has provided infrastructure across many different parts of Sydney, a perfect example of it is the widening of the M5 down near Campbelltown. We’ve seen many upgrades throughout the process and we were putting forward different things like the NBN, because we knew at least those in rural and regional NSW got the infrastructure they needed and deserved.

Nick: Politically speaking, what areas do you think young people are passionate about and why?

Ben: I think young people have many different areas of which they’re interested in. It’s not to say they have one particular area they focus on and lock jaws into. At the end of the day, people will go to what they’re interested in mainly.

So people might like trains and that may lead to transport, or they like how their teacher has taught them over a particular way and so, in which case, they might be encouraged to go to Education and just getting in the conversation itself is a rewarding process, in the first place.

Nick: What vision do you have for Australia?

Ben: Well, there’s a few different things that any person could do if they had abundance of resources at their disposal. I think, if I was in the Abbott camp, one of the things I’d be looking at possibly is still trying to find a way of the Gonski reviews to continue on because one of the things that we have known for many, many years is that public education hasn’t been able to compete with the private sector and that’s because there’s lack of resources going towards where it needs and infrastructure needs as well.

And not only that, I’d be look at, possibly, a different way to look at competing on the global scale, as well as changing the way we do manufacturing here, to encourage more investors to come here, rather than do nothing and still stick with the 1960’s model of manufacturing.

Nick: Now one question that we like to ask people on this show is where they see themselves going in the coming years. Ben, where do you see your political career leading you? Premier? Prime Minister?

Ben: Well, I have to say, political career is one of those things that you’ve got to take into consideration with people that you’re around. So who knows, if I get offered a position to join a parliament, I’d say I’d have to talk with my spouse, at that time and so I’d say I’d consider it, but I wouldn’t say I’d go straight into it.

Nick: Fair enough. Ben Gilholme, thank you for your time.

Ben: Thank you.

Every young person just wants to get into uni, get through their course and get out of the place as quickly as they arrived, right? Well not for the two people we’ll be speaking to in this week’s episode.

Join us as we speak to two young academics who are seeking to make a career for themselves in the ever challenging world of modern academia.

Interview Transcript:

Nick: Welcome to Resolved, we’re glad you could join us this evening. Well by the time most university students reach their final year of study, many start thinking about what they’d like to be doing in the following year, the prospect of freedom from books, tutes, referencing being an absolute God-send for most.

But what if your dream job sees you actually stay on the university campus? To discuss this, we’re joined by Travis McKenna who is lecturing and tutoring at the University of Sydney and on the line from Wagga Wagga, Hannah Hogg, a lecturer and tutor in professional writing at Charles Sturt University. Welcome to you both.

Travis: It’s lovely to be here.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Nick: Now for many students, their final year at university means it’s their sixteenth year of study, longer if they’ve taken a gap year. What do you both find attractive about the academic life? Hannah, I’ll throw to you first.

Hannah: I think for me, it was discovering, throughout my own time as a student that I’m really passionate about what I do and I love to learn as much as much as I love to complete a subject. It was not as much about the end goal for me, as it was about the actual learning process and so it seemed like a fairly natural development to then go on and teach what I have learnt and to have an incredible opportunity really to pass on to undergraduate students the sorts of things that I was educated in and I also really like the fact that it’s quite a flexible job, in some ways. Everything is different every single week and that’s quite enjoyable, on some levels.

Travis: For my part, the thing I found most attractive about the academic life was how easy the pathway seemed to be, in the sense that I finished Honours and before I really knew it, I was filling out applications for Ph.D’s and that kind of thing and in some senses it happens so quickly and maybe this is not a great advertisement for the academic life, but often in the form of scholarships or tutoring money and that kind of thing, you’re often seeing money that, as a student, you’ve really not seen.

In fact, that was my first impression of academic life. Some people find their niche very quickly, others don’t. That’s one of the problems maybe, that often young academics are pin holed very easily.

Nick: Students can be quite horrible to their lecturers and tutors, how have you guys found the transition from life as a student to that as a lecturer and do you have any amusing stories or anecdotes to share about life as academics, so far?

Hannah: I actually teach visual arts students, who are not boring in the least, they’re a very entertaining bunch to teach and I’ve had a lot of laughs with them over the course of the semester, and as in the manner of the content changing each week, the classes change each week as well. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get next.

In terms of the transition from life as a student to that as a lecturer, I think I found it easier, because much in the same way as Travis, you do go into undergrad and then honours, and you sort of progress and you find that they offer you work as you go along and you step up into it gradually, and it is a massive step to go from doing some research assistant work and some marking work into being a subject coordinator with a hundred students, but at the same time there’s also quite a lot of support within the faculty and to be working in a faculty with many of the lecturers who taught me has certainly made it easier, I think.

In terms of the funny moments you have with students, I’ve had classes where they’ve started singing randomly in the middle of the class because an advertisement that I’ve just shown them that reminded them of vocal exercises they’ve done in other classes. There’s a lot of fun, in that way.

Nick: Now you’re both under twenty-five, finished your undergraduate studies, considering or are already engaged in postgraduate degrees, whilst lecturing or tutoring on the side. What have you done to ensure that the work that you love doesn’t become tiresome or a chore? How do you prevent yourself from burning out?

Travis: It depends, obviously on what you do but a lot of my work is in the realm of philosophy and historical theory and that kind of thing and it’s very nice, in that respect, that it’s a discipline without many boundaries.

If you kind of look on the page for a Department of Philosophy, generally around the world, and you look at what people’s research areas are, mostly you’ll just get “Philosophy of…” and then various nouns listed. You often kind of have a carte blanche to kind of look at what you like and be taken reasonably seriously which means you never really feel like you’re forced into looking at what you want to be looking at, which I found different in the Department of History.

They tend to be a bit more conservative and I would want to talk about “Postmodern approaches to Histories” and “Philosophies of Histories” and people would kind of look at me and shrug and say “Well that’s very interesting but when are you going to get in an archive and do some proper history?” which I was never, even remotely interested in.

So, it depends on where you’re situated and how easy it is to make sure that it doesn’t become a chore. I would say mostly the key to it is, being in a department and in a community of scholars where you can just do what you like.

Hannah: I would absolutely agree with Travis on that one. I have set topics every week, but at the same time, there’s also room for me to do the sort of things that I like with that and I’m certainly teaching within a faculty that I’m very passionate about.

I like what I teach and that helps a lot and I think staying current with what you’re doing within your work, to make sure you are addressing things that are relevant to current society and to broader issues and that you are staying on the leading edge as a lecturer and as a researcher, to make sure you are doing the things are interesting to you, it really helps in terms of not letting it become tiresome.

And I think in terms of burning out, it’s just a matter of setting boundaries and sticking to them. I certainly commit to having a day off every single week and that helps a lot, because it’s not the sort of job that you walk away from at the end of the day, you do tend to take it home with you a little, as anyone who has worked in education would know.

Travis: I’ve found, one of the nice things, in the Faculty of Science at Sydney Uni, a lot of people when they get even into the honours year are kind of accorded their own space in which to work; offices and stuff. But I found that was the one thing that helped me stay sane, when I finally got my own space to work; a postgrad space.

I did a lot of my work from home before I had my own space, simply because going to the Library and kind of hoping to find a desk, or a computer, or something; it was all too cluttered and I found that drove me nuts because obviously, I’m less productive at home, I have my laptop, I have Football Manager 2014, I have all the nonsense that I spend my time doing and I would get less done and it would bleed into the evening hours and I’d feel unfulfilled.

Whereas, if you have a space that you can go to, it keeps you sane. You go there, you spend nine-to-five there and you can say “Look, I’ve had a productive day, I’ve had an unproductive day, but either way my day is finished!” and it’s six o’clock and I’m home and I can have a glass of wine.

Nick: One criticism often levelled at universities and academics is that they are part of some intellectual, bunyip aristocracy and are often out of touch with the concerns and issues faced by the everyday Australian. How do you guys respond to views like that and does it have any basis in reality at all?

Travis: I think it’s a very real accusation that can be levelled at a whole range of academic disciplines and I don’t necessarily think that’s a problem. Working in philosophy is one where you are almost constantly accused, or you feel very constantly on the defensive trying to justify the value of what you do.

Abbott and such before the election were targeting someone from the University of Sydney philosophy department, as well as other people whose projects sounded variously inane. The explanation, at least, that I give is that thinking about things philosophically is far deeper at the core of everything we hold to be useful.

I mean, the scientific method is a set of philosophical principles and to that end, thinking generally and thinking about things doesn’t happen in a vacuum and so academics, while not beholden to this need to be producing things that are directly useful to people are kind of involved by proxy in this enterprise where they’re kind of doing stuff that’s useful.

It’s kind of like the idea that Nick and I might have a conversation about what it means to be moral and we might come across completely different things, but the fact that we’ve had that discussion somehow makes both of us more enriched and we think about things better. I think it’s that kind of thing.

That being said, I don’t think universities help themselves sometimes. I think it’s very easy for career academics, the people who publish the papers and the people who publish completely inane papers and there’s papers that just shouldn’t be published and this kind of branching out of variously more specialised journals, it seems difficult to stop.

What we can do to arrest it? I haven’t the first clue. I think it lies somewhere to do with the corporate structures of American universities are driving this kind of growth. Whether we can arrest that, I haven’t the first clue. Hopefully, otherwise I think academia will become irrelevant.

Hannah: We do have a responsibility, in some ways, to open up a dialogue about what we’re thinking about which seems like such an intangible thing in some ways, but certainly working within the creative arts, we come across the same kinds of criticism that they come across in philosophy. But at the same time, what we do creates further engagement with artistic expression, not just within academia realms but within broader society as well.

A lot of my lecturers are quite heavily involved in other writing corporations and such things, generally and they’re promoting that in general society, not just within the academic world and I think that helps to perhaps ground what we do in relevance to wider social discourse and I think that’s a really important part of it and certainly within some of the other fields I’ve worked in like sociology, it’s an incredible privilege to be a research assistant on a project that’s looking at intimate partner violence and how people in rural areas gain support in those situations and I think it would be difficult for someone to say “that’s not relevant” or “that is not of use to people in general society”, I think it certainly is.

Nick: Hannah Hogg, Charles Sturt University is one of the leaders when it comes to distance education both in Australia and the world, do you think the move to distance education impacts upon the quality of education offered to students?

Hannah: Well, I’m actually off the land myself and I studied by distance in part, although for me it was usually integrated in with internal studies and I think there are some wonderful positives that do come out of distance education and I think it’s excellent for people who are potentially living in remote areas and that’s certainly something that Australia has in droves.

Really, it’s quite a common thing for us to have students from all over the countryside and for them to have the opportunity to engage in academic study in the same capacity as those who live in regional areas and in the cities is a wonderful thing.

It’s harder in some ways in that it does require a lot of self-discipline and a lot of self-motivation and I certainly know of quite a lot of students who say that they would struggle to do an entire degree by distance education and I completely respect them in that having done some myself, it is quite difficult.

But I think that the opportunities it gives to those who are passionate about their study and are committed to getting that degree and to going through the hard yards of being a distance education student, I think is really wonderful for them to have that opportunity and I think that if CSU did not have such a strong distance cohort that Australia, broadly, as a country, would suffer for that in some ways. There are certainly students out there who quite simply would not get this opportunity if distance education didn’t exist.

Nick: Now the Federal Government has announced in the Federal Budget that it will deregulate university fees to ensure our education sector doesn’t fall behind, don’t quite understand the logic of that, but hey, we’ll leave that to the side! This has led to student protests in all our capital cities, government MP’s being heckled and a major TV show held to ransom, on-air by a bunch of screaming students.

Are students as angry on-campus as they are on TV sets or is this all a media beat up? Travis, I’ll through to you first.

Travis: Uh, yes, I think they are and I think they have the right to be angry. There are a lot of issues that really complicate it, I mean higher and higher standards of education are now required for lower and lower standards of work. You need a Bachelor’s degree to be an Administrative Assistant it seems nowadays, at least in a capital city and to that end, to be told, we are kind of feeling too entitled in this respect by, quite frankly, an older generation who did receive education for free with very few strings attached is unsettling.

I think it’s the temptation to reduce this entire generation to a caricature appears too strong for a lot of the media to resist and that’s unsettling because it narrows the political discourse to something that’s two dimensional and unsatisfying.

I know on the University of Sydney campus people who had a huge involvement in the Julie Bishop thing and the ministers being heckled, and as well who were involved in that Q&A uprising or whatever you want to call it but if I can say something about it, it would be this: the attitude of students that I have spoken to and I don’t mean to speak for students everywhere is that it was represented exactly by what Tony Jones said after Q&A had been interrupted, “now, democracy can continue” or something like that and I think this is infact where a lot of the anger lies, the idea that five or six older generational people, all of whom received a free education, some of whom, government ministries, in a highly produced and controlled environment talking about things in a moderated discourse somehow is tangible to democracy itself and that we can’t interrupt that for our anger and emotion is, I think one of the more infuriating and more condescending attitudes taken towards students in this time and I think the push back against that is “well, we have to yell, we have to heckle, we have to do, because otherwise we probably won’t be listened to”.

Nick: What do you both think of the argument, advocated by some that the near universal access that young people have to a Bachelor’s degree nowadays has cheapened the value of the qualification, is there any truth to that at all?

Travis: Well, yes, but what needs to be fixed first to provide any real solution to young people is that the labour market is the thing that needs to be fixed first. We have a situation where Bachelor’s degrees are seen as very cheap and you can’t just stop people from getting Bachelor’s degrees, because that will obviously have real consequences. There are situations like pharmacy, government deregulation of the pharmacy education industry leads to too many Pharmacists and an oversaturation, I mean these are not things that happen in vacuums, governments are responsible for what a Bachelor’s degree is worth and it’s irresponsible for the government then to say “well look, we’ve messed up and we have to cut a generation off from education to fix it”.

Hannah: I think part of it, from my perspective, is as a student we have even more of a responsibility now, perhaps this is not the ideal situation to be in, but we are forced into it in some capacity to consider when we choose whether or not to do a degree, whether or not that is the most viable option for us in terms of getting into our chosen career and I think that in pursuing a Bachelor’s degree, we do need to consider that quite carefully, perhaps more carefully than we did in the past.

I think there was certainly an attitude within older generations that your Bachelor’s degree was essentially a ticket to the world, once you’ve got it, you can get a job and you can be secure in that, it’s the thing that will get you where you want to go and it seems as though that is not as much the case anymore, it seems a lot harder.

I certainly know of a lot of new graduates who are excellent students and are really, really skilled in their fields who have struggled enormously to try and get steady, full-time work. They’re just not getting the jobs and there’s certainly a lot of competition for jobs as well and perhaps the fact that there are so many people now who do have a Bachelor’s degree means that there isn’t as much division in the applicants for positions, that a lot of us do stand on an equal footing and there’s not as much to differentiate you from the next person which could in turn make it harder to get a job, perhaps.

Nick: What challenges do you foresee educators and students facing in the coming years?

Hannah: The rise of technology actually, is sort of a blessing and a burden, at least for someone who teaches English as a literature major. We have, I think, a unique challenge as compared to some faculties in trying to still get our students to engage with classic literature and with actual, tangible books, when everything is available online and answers are expected to be quick and snappy and available through a quick Google search and that’s certainly changed the delivery of our subjects in particular, I think.

There’s certainly a lot of positives that come out of technology. It’s wonderful to be so connected and to have so many resources available to us as lecturers and as students but it also does raise some interesting things, in that we are still trying to get our students to engage with the arts on a broader sense as well and to still engage with seven hundred page novels and things, when perhaps, what they’re used to is a Twitter post or something like that.

Nick: Alright, that’s about where we’re going to have to leave it. Travis McKenna and Hannah Hogg, thank you both for your time.

Travis: Thank you very much for having me.

Hannah: Yes, thanks for having us.

Please note: All opinions expressed in this interview are the personal opinions of interview participants and should in no way be taken as being reflective of the official position of any academic institution mentioned.

Can a person of faith be a journalist or would such an affiliation impinge upon the professional integrity of a journalist? Does loyalty to a higher power mean that a journalist’s ability to seek out the truth is nuzzled or muted?

In this week’s episode, we chat to former Sydney Radio Announcer, turned church minister Dominic Steele to find out whether the two are compatible!

Interview Transcript:

Nick: Well welcome to Resolved. On today’s show, can a Christian in good conscience work in the secular media or do the demands of the profession preclude itself from believers in Jesus? Can a journalist be a Christian or does it compromise their ability to objectively cover the news of the day?

With me in the studio to discuss his life in the media and in Christian circles I’m joined by Dominic Steele. Dominic, welcome to the program.

Dominic: Hey Nick, thanks for having us.

Nick: Dominic, tell us about how you came to work in the media?

Dominic: I’d always been passionate particularly about working in radio. My first go at work experience working at 2SM when I was in Year 10. At that stage, 2SM was the number one station in Sydney. I worked as a volunteer at 2SER FM and Radio for the Print Handicapped and then got my first gig working in media at 2MO Gunnedah in North West NSW and then came and worked at 2UE down here in Sydney.

Nick: So just to verify, at the time you weren’t a Christian?

Dominic: Oh no, I wasn’t. I didn’t have a personal relationship with God, I wasn’t going to church, so I don’t think at that time, when I started at 2UE that I could describe myself as a Christian. It was actually during the time that I worked at 2UE that I actually began a personal relationship with Jesus.

Nick: And what was it that sort of spurred you on to pursue that relationship with Jesus? How did that work?

Dominic: Humanly speaking, there were two people involved: there was a girl who wouldn’t go out with me because I didn’t have a personal relationship with God and I wanted to have a relationship with her and she wouldn’t have a relationship with me because I didn’t have a relationship with God and that rocked me, because there was something in her life that was more important than me and at the time, there was nothing in my life that was more important than her.

When we, we didn’t go out, when the relationship was over she sold me her car and moved to London and it had one of those fish stickers on the back of the car. You know the stickers that bad drivers have on the back of their cars? Anyway, I had to decide what to do with this sticker and I was showing the sticker to one of the other guys, a guy called Russell Powell and I said to Russ: “Here’s my new car, pop-up headlights, sunroof”, everything that I’d wanted in a car and he said: “What’s the sticker?” and I said: “I’m trying to work out what to do about that” and it just seemed like to take the sticker off was the final statement in “get lost, God” and I kind of knew in my bones that God existed and I actually think, all of us know that. You look at the mountains and that speaks that there’s a mountain maker. You look at a new-borne baby and that says there’s a God and just the idea that you, complex individual that you are came about by accident, I just think is a bigger leap of faith than to believe that there is a creator, so I knew in my bones that God existed and I wanted to have a relationship with him but I just didn’t know him.

As I talked to my friend from the radio station, Russell, over a period of months, talking with him, going along to his church, listening to the Bible being explained, I gradually became convinced that it was true: that Jesus existed, that Jesus had died to pay for my wrong, to pay for the way I had rejected God and had risen again from the dead and as the one who had risen from the dead had a claim over my life and so, there was a day, where I prayed, apologising to God for the way I had lived in rejecting Him and saying: “I now want to live in a personal relationship with you, recognising you as my personal God and Jesus as my personal Lord” and thanking him that Jesus’ death had paid for my sins and so I’d say that that was the day that I trusted Christ, that was the day that I became, if you like, a Christian.

Nick: How did becoming a Christian impact upon your work?

Dominic: It changed some of my focus, in that I think I was pretty driven in the media industry. Up until then I thought the only thing I was living for, really was to be famous on the radio, to do the radio well. I then came to see that there was actually other things outside the media industry, outside being on the air.

One of the things, I think, you go into the media and actually, lots of people who go into the media come from pretty much the same place. I never knew how important home loan stories were to Australia until I got a mortgage. Intellectually, I kind of knew but I didn’t know what a different it makes, a quarter of a percent interest rate rise until I got a mortgage. I didn’t know how education stories were important until I had children at school.

I was editing the breakfast news on 2UE at 21 and I had such little life experience, really. I now think, twenty years later, that I’m just about old enough and wise enough to take on some of the editorial responsibilities that I had twenty years ago and I think I was living in a world where people totally denied that there was any kind of spiritual existence to life and the only people of any kind of spiritual thing that they came across were Fred Nile and we weren’t actually meeting credible Christians.

So I think for me, becoming a Christian was, on one level it’s like having a child or taking on a mortgage, it was adding another dimension to my life, that helped me to have a broader perspective, it actually helped me realise that more people go to church every Sunday than go to football games in Australia. You think about the enormous amount of column inches that get spent on football coverage in Australia and yet more people go to church in Australia. Whatever the football code, all of the football codes, more people go to church.

So, to say “Can you be an effective journalist in Australia and be interested in football?”, well, to say “Can you be a Christian and be an effective journalist”, it’s basically as stupid a question as that!

Nick: Now you’ve subsequently left the industry and are now the Senior Minister of Village Church Annandale and Christians in the Media, why the change in professions and how did you handle the transition from being a voice that all of Sydney heard on their radios to becoming a Christian pastor?

Dominic: Well, I don’t actually see myself as having left the industry, I mean next month I’m hosting the Sunday night program on 2CH and next month, I’ll be sitting in your chair and interviewing people. But you’re right, I’m no longer doing it as a full-time gig and there are some things-

I was thinking about it the other day, that when the twenty fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre came up, people were talking about “What were you doing when this happened?”. Well, what I was doing was reading the news, announcing that it was happening and that was a big part of my life, at the time.

I guess what happened was I was working at WS and reading the news and at that stage, our radio station was very significant in Western Sydney. We were rating forty five percent in South West Sydney, but I was going through a period of working through that there were more important things in life than traffic jams and potholes on roads and more important things spiritually. So I was actually working out that in my own life, the things that I cared about were people coming to know Jesus and growing in Christ and I wanted to be doing that, full time, helping people.

Actually, one of the things about radio is that you do it and it’s gone, it’s been broadcast, it’s finished and yet, actually, if you speak the words of God into people’s lives then that actually changes their life into eternity and so has eternal implications and so, I was beginning to do that in a part time way and seeing more and more that that is what I was interested in and so, over a period of time, transitioned from doing the radio full-time and doing Christian ministry in kind of bibs and bobs, to doing Christian ministry full-time and doing radio in bibs and bobs, around the edge.

Nick: Why Christians in the Media as opposed to say Christians in plumbing? Are there challenges that Christians face in the media that they wouldn’t face in other professions?

Dominic: I think so. Why Christians in the Media? Firstly, I noticed that there were very few Christians in the media world. In fact, what Christian churches have done down through the centuries is sent missionaries out to lost tribes in Africa. Well, you could call the editorial floor at Fairfax, or the editorial floor at the ABC a lost tribe and so, rather than go and be a missionary to Africa, I set out as a missionary to the lost tribe of the media.

I think the percentage of Christians has traditionally been lower in the media industry than in many other segments of the community of Sydney and the people who work in the media were people that I cared for, they’re my friends, they’re the people who I’ve loved for years, and years, and years and so, of all the people in the world that I most want to see know Jesus, trust Him, be in a relationship with Him, it’s my friends in the media.

But you’re right, as well, in your question. There are specific issues that you confront in the media, that you don’t confront as a Christian plumber or as a Christian shop assistant. There are some jobs, actually where really, the way your Christian faith impacts the way you do the job; the Christian faith says: “be honest, have integrity” but actually, you’d hope that the boss of the accountant would be saying: “be honest, have integrity”.

I found, as a Christian in the media, there is often in many editorial, decision making processes an almost unspoken bias against Christian faith. It’s rarely articulated, I don’t actually think it’s deliberate really. But, I remember noticing it one day, years ago. I was reading the news on 2UE. There was nothing happening in Australia, it was Christmas Eve. Everything had stopped and I knew, because I was Christian, that at midnight, a zillion people would be getting up out of bed, going to midnight church services, on Christmas Day.

I stopped off at St. Andrew’s Cathedral and recorded the (Anglican) Archbishop of Sydney’s address in the 8PM service, knowing that there’d be another address at the midnight service and we played some audio of that in the midnight news and we led with it and we led with the sound of church bells and things like that.

Over on 2GB they were running “oh, the union movement says something about the government that says…” and nobody could have given a fig at midnight on Christmas Eve, going into Christmas Day. But you could see that I actually understood what was going on in people’s lives in a way that that editorial guy at the other radio station didn’t because it just never, ever occurred to him that people would go to church. But if a fifth of Sydney is getting out of bed, to get up to go to church at midnight, that’s a genuine news story!

Nick: Do you think Christian parents have traditionally feared the prospect of their children becoming journalists or screen and radio producers and what’s at the core of that fear?

Dominic: I think probably they did, twenty years ago. I actually think that’s no longer the case, really. I think, just by the fact that our group, Christians in the Media exists it actually says: “it’s possible to be an authentic Christians in the media”. I don’t hear that as much as I did twenty years ago.

Nick: How do you think churches can better reach out to media workers and what is Christians in the Media doing to help out with this?

Dominic: There’s two issues that media workers face: one is an intense cynicism and the other is shiftwork and bizarrely actually, shiftwork is probably the bigger one. I think churches, generally, are not very good at reaching shift workers, whether they’re shift workers in the hospital, shift workers in the police force, or shift workers in the media and often it’s because structures of a church are all organised based on the premise that you work 9 to 5.

One of my friends is a shift worker. He’s joined a church because it meets on Saturday nights at five o’clock. He works all day Sunday and he has for the last ten years and he’s just delighted to find a church that meets Saturday night at five o’clock that he can take his kids to. Now that church, I don’t think they probably set themselves up to be “that particular shift worker church” but they’ve ended up being “that particular shift worker church”.

On the question of cynicism though, I think that just in the way you teach the Bible as a preacher, you’ve got to show people that you’re aware of what’s going on in the world, that you’re aware of the nuances of how that’s going to land in your workplace, you’ve got to anticipate some of the pushback that people listening to you are going to get if they were to repeat what you’d said in the workplace, the next day.

You’ve just got to work harder at understanding where the people who are listening to you are at. I think it’s possible for a minister to end up in a bubble of information, a bit detached from the world and I think you’ve got to work hard at not doing that.

Nick: So with all that in mind, safe to say that faith in Jesus doesn’t preclude someone from working in the media?

Dominic: I’m absolutely clear that faith in Jesus doesn’t preclude someone from working in the media, in fact, I think it makes you a better worker in the media. I think it makes you a better worker all round. I stopped stealing things from my employer when I became a Christian. I’m not talking about major things, but there were integrity lapses. When I crashed the car, I fessed up to it immediately, do you know? There’s just things that poor  behavioury-type (sic) things.

But I actually think that media outlets would be healthier with a variety of staff who have different perspectives. I’d want to see young Christians in the media, I’d want to see young Agnostics in the media, I’d want to see young Buddhists in the media. Not just a blinkered consensus that Atheism is correct.

Nick: Dominic Steele, thank you for your time.

Dominic: Thanks very much for having me, Nick.

More details about Dominic Steele’s ministry work can be found at the Village Church Annandale and Christians in the Media websites.