Good morning and welcome to Five Great Reads, written today on what always was and always will be Aboriginal land (Cammeraygal land, specifically – this has always been a multicultural place).
Whether it is a day to commemorate survival; to protest ongoing injustice; or if it’s just another work day for you, I hope all First Nations readers are able to do what they need to get through today, and that everyone else takes a moment to reflect on the history of this land and considers paying the rent (my colleagues have a podcast about that for you to listen to). And if you’re reading this from outside Australia and have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a piece from Chelsea Watego on the meaning of 26 January.
This is Alyx Gorman, lifestyle editor of Guardian Australia, by the way. As always, if you want to follow the news as it happens today, please head over to our live blog. Now, on to the reads.
1. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy at 50
The Tent Embassy is “a place of Aboriginal resistance in direct line of sight of the halls of power in Canberra”, write Lorena Allam and Juno Gemes. Five decades on, they tell the story of its founding and the vital role it still plays today.
Notable quote: Michael Anderson, who was one of four young Aboriginal men who originally set up the camp, remembers a forced attempt to dismantle the embassy, six months later. “I’ve been in some brawls in my time … but it was nothing like what happened back then,” he says. “The record shows that there were about 36 policemen went to hospital and 18 of us went to jail. And so it was a bloody battle. It was one of the roughest I’ve been involved in.”
The embassy now: “It’s a place where people looked for networking into housing, into the health services, just to be listened to,” says Roxley Foley, who lived at there as a caretaker from 2016 to 2019. “The amount of old people we had travelling to that space as almost a pilgrimage, to heal something in themselves.”
How long will it take me to read? Three minutes, but you’re going to spend longer looking at the incredible archival photographs too.
2. GPs on the brink
The conditions faced by Britain’s GPs will mostly be familiar to Australians – the challenging pivot to telehealth, long waitlists, staffing shortages and risks of sickness. But there’s one key difference: a significant media and political campaign is being waged against them. Here Sirin Kale chronicles one doctor’s long, hard winter.
Key background: “A September survey of 1,000 GPs from the healthcare publication Pulse found that 74% had experienced increased levels of abuse post-pandemic,” Kale writes.
Notable quote: Dr Farah Jameel, BMA England GP committee chair, says: “This frustration is because the public is being led to believe that everything is fine, and GPs are lazy, and that’s why you can’t see them. That’s how the public is being stoked. And of course, if that’s what you believe, you would be angry, too. But if they understood the challenges, they might direct that anger at policymakers.”
How long will it take me to read? About 10 minutes.
3. Claudia Karvan on love and objects
Each week, we ask a prominent Australian about the item they’d save from their house in a fire, their most useful object and the possession they most regret losing. This week it’s Claudia Karvan, and it’s a cracker.
Notable quote: “Twenty years ago when I had a newborn, my close friend, who was in a relationship with a rock star (and still is), gave me a gift. She called it The Boyfriend … it never disappoints.”
That was great, I want more: You can read all our Three Things interviews right here.
4. The simple truth behind complex supply chains
In meticulous detail, Sofi Thanhauser plots out the trade deals, special zones and brutal treatments of labour that lead to the Caribbean basin becoming the US’s go-to region for cheap clothing manufacturing. She finds this “didn’t create wealth for workers but, in Honduras, it did lead to the rise of a class of oligarchs who would exert a powerful right-leaning force on the nation’s politics”.
Notable quote: “The global supply chain that brings us our clothing can seem intimidatingly complex,” Thanhauser writes. “But what if it isn’t? Clothing brands farm out the making of goods to whoever in the world can do it most cheaply, and then divorce themselves in the eyes of customers from the facts on the ground. That’s pretty simple.”
How long will it take me to read? About nine minutes.
5. How cinema lost its sex drive
It has been 15 years since John Cameron Mitchell (yes, Hedwig) released Shortbus: an indie comedy with a lot of real sex. It’s hard to imagine the same film being made today – ahead of a cinematic re-release in the US, its creator discusses why.
Notable quote: “Sex has largely been confined to porn,” Mitchell says. “Even nudity has been removed from films and television shows these days. There’s no sex, and certainly no real sex. So in a weird way, porn won.”
How long will it take me to read? Five minutes.
