New Uni, New City

If I thought moving to a large university in a big city was going to surround me with free-thinking, revolutionary-minded individuals like myself, I was to be sadly disappointed. To start with, The Vege Patch was not a community garden, just a café.
Well, there were posters. Red Herrings, those posters. Announcing the “Curtin Resistance Movement.” Concerned with feminism, socialism, equality, and the environment. Right. I’ve found my people. The poster made mention of connection with the guild, so I go immediately to join the guild. I ask the young girl there if she knows anything about groups, clubs, political societies, that sort of thing. She looks at me like I’m an alien, and in that you-total-freak voice only teenage girls can do, puts me in my place: “Um… most people join the guild for the discounts?” I’d been told.
The bookshop confirms what was becoming more and more of a sinking realisation: Perth is perhaps the most right-wing city in Australia. Right-wing ideology is fundamentally distrustful. With the focus on the individual rather than community, inequality flourishes and trust is lost. To enter the bookshop, you have to leave your bag at the door- and they don’t take responsibility for its contents. As you peruse the shelves, rent-a-cops walk around behind you. There are no pretences about giving you space to browse; they don’t trust you and make that incredibly clear. It’s weeks before I can bring myself to submit to the indignity of shopping there, and when I finally do, for the first time in my life, I have thoughts of shoplifting. Just to rebel. Or maybe to escape 45 minutes of waiting in line to pay.
Trust is almost a crime at this university. I leave my desk at the library to search for an item on the bookshelf, and am immediately told off by an employee for leaving my laptop unattended. I suppose it’s not my choice to trust strangers now- I must go along with the way it’s done here. Strange, in Japan you could leave your laptop anywhere and nobody would take it. People tend to live up to the trust placed in them. Which makes the likelihood of something being stolen in this university very high.
I hadn’t given up my desire to join the Curtin Resistance Movement, and found a contact email address on the guild’s website. My email request to join went unanswered.
I am very relieved to discover a Centrelink at Curtin university. As a full-time student and single mother, I am required to submit fortnightly forms to Centrelink to confirm that I am still studying. One late form, and my benefits are cut off. Centrelink like to make it hard for me- the fortnightly form is called an application for payment. I have to re-apply every fortnight. I voted labour in because I believed they’d bring a new approach to Centrelink, but it’s only gotten worse. So I go to the Curtin branch of Centrelink, only to be informed that this branch is only for students who are not single parents. Single parents must go to a regular branch. I can’t believe my ears. When I ask for an explanation, I’m informed that it’s because Centrelink needs to ask us more questions. What kind of questions? “How can you possibly afford to study AND feed your child on $650 a fortnight?” Actually, that’s a very reasonable question. I ask myself that very question every day. If they ever figure it out, I hope they let me know.
I head down to a “regular” Centrelink. It is half an hour before one person is called from the front of our queue. It seems they’re deliberately punishing us for daring to claim benefits. The line is full of people bonding over the shared outrage of the humiliating process. It’s A FORTNIGHTLY FORM. Just have someone there to take them off us, for Christ’s sake. Do we really have to spend half our day here to hand in a form? The young man behind me tells me he’s been banned from every other Centrelink office except for this one, for swearing about the amount of time he has to wait in line. “What happens if they ban you from this one, too?” I ask. If he can’t personally hand his form into an officer, his meagre payments will stop. There are no options for posting, faxing, or emailing these forms. Later in the day, there’s a social event at my son’s school, and I’m hit with the contrast between my conversations with my fellow Centrelink queuers and the wealthy parents of my son’s classmates. One of them is nearly in tears because she had to leave her mansion on the waterfront in Cottesloe behind, and now has to live in a mansion on the waterfront in Attadale. I try to be sympathetic.
I’m sitting in a lecture on International Political Economy, and the professor is praising the virtues of free trade and decrying protectionism- this is a HUMANITIES subject, not economics, so I’m slightly shocked by his stance. I raise my hand. “But isn’t protectionism about PROTECTING Australian jobs, wages, and workplace standards? It’s supposed to help us not to have to compete with nations that can sell things ridiculously cheaply due to human rights abuses and slave labour.” To my right, a boy is staring at me. “I’m a communist,” he whispers dramatically. The boy, it turns out, hails from South America, and wants to create an Australian Socialist Republic. All on his own it would seem. The next week, he slips me a book with the air of a smuggler. It’s Marx’s Communist Manifesto. I stifle a giggle. I have a copy at home as well. This boy has the fervency of an American Evangelist, this book is his bible. Oh Lord. I think I found my resistance movement after all. And he’s a cross-institutional enrolment. Figures.