Annie Zheng
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
March 25, 1957 – US Customs seizes Allen Ginsberg poetry – On this day in 1957, United States Customs seized copies of American poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl on the grounds of obscenity. The poem, now considered a masterpiece of American literature, contains multiple references to homosexuality, illicit drugs and sexual practices. Customs seized the works as they were imported from the London printer, and the poem itself was subject to an obscenity trial later that year. Nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf at the trial, which subsequently overturned the imprisonment of a bookstore manager who had sold Howl and Other Poems to an undercover police officer.
 
Annie Zheng

Thomas Ho
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
Time flies when one is having fun, or when one is doing a law degree. To illustrate: for those of you in my year (Class of 2013), we were first-years when Christopher Hitchens passed away at the end of 2011.
 
Mortality is a compilation of Hitchens’ writings before his death. He has never failed to make us doubt ourselves on diverse subjects, from God and religion to whether women make better comedians than men. But here Hitchens tackles the bigger picture, as the title of his book succinctly summarises. What is mortality, after all? Perhaps when reduced to a question, it is simply this: what the heck am I doing here?
 
Hitchens seems to have a direct answer. He is here to argue for the things he stands for. One thing that Mortality impresses upon the reader is just how authentically and utterly Hitchens it is. True, this is not an essay on the Iraq War or why God is not great (well, it kind of is about that), but the writing in Mortality is full of the usual Hitchens wit: in response to some Christian’s strange criticism that God had given him oesophageal cancer because of his blaspheming, Hitchens replies that his throat is not the only organ he has blasphemed with. It is also a poignant read: Hitchens does not spare us the details of his suffering, such as when he describes his inability to talk. Such passages are also quintessentially Hitchens, as one admires Hitchens not only for his skilful prose, but also his bravery and unflinching honesty when he writes.
 
Mortality is a moving read. But what direction should it move us in? Certainly one should feel a little melancholy and in need of a little silence, now that Hitchens is no longer with us to challenge and enrich our world. But at the same time, perhaps a round of applause is appropriate as you put down Mortality: it has been a privilege for all of us to have had Christopher Hitchens around.
 
8/10
 
Thomas Ho

Agony Aunt
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
Dear Agony Aunt,
 
Can girls be creepy? I’m not looking for permission, but there’s a guy. He says he only wants to be friends. I want more. All the movies say that with enough hi-jinks and meet cutes, the guy will fall for the career driven girl who can’t keep a boyfriend. I’m afraid that in real life, that’ll just come off as unhinged.
 
In Need of Guidance.
 
Dear In Need of Guidance,
 
Yes. And of you are. Whilst I am the first to admit that I go through life with my personal soundtrack reverberating within my skull, you will not only come off as unhinged, but as desperate.
 
Back off, be friends, it will happen naturally, or it won’t. Remember that though a little bit of crazy can be attractive, you can never wash away the stench of desperation.
 
Auntie Ethel
 
Agony Aunt

Nicholas Baum
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
The LSS held a lunchtime seminar on applying for government jobs last Monday. Government Careers Officer Kirsti Halcomb presented the seminar. Steven Brnovic, a Senior Solicitor at the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office, and Ken Maddess, a Legal Trainee with the Office of Public Prosecutions, spoke.
 
Halcomb gave a well-structured, detailed and helpful presentation. Prior to studying the JD, Halcomb, had worked for some time in government service and sat on selection panels, so she has brought a wealth of experience with her. Students in attendance were grateful for the hard work that she had done in putting the seminar together.
 
Nicholas Baum

Andrew Michaelson
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
Lunch is tricky. Deciding what to have, how much to spend, choosing pie or sausage roll; it’s complicated stuff.
 
The more organized and forward thinking individuals among us Law Students often bring lunch from home. These can range from your enviable chicken and pesto sandwiches, to your delectable cauliflower couscous and tomato salads (or in my case a pack of sugar and peanut butter smeared on a playing card).
 
Not all of us are capable of such feats of preparation and unless we’re lucky enough to have an LSS BBQ or Level 1 catering to fall back on, we’re forced to buy lunch at Uni. Fortunately enough, we don’t have to trek up all the way to Union House to find a decent meal. There are many fine establishments in close proximity to the Law School. However, I’ve come to appreciate there’s really only two types of food-purveyor in the Pelham Precinct: those run by Blueprint Caterers, and everyone else.
 
I’m not sure how many of you are aware, but Blueprint Catering is more or less the Walmart of the University of Melbourne café scene. The company apparently has a deal with the University to manage its on-site cafés, granting it a considerable, almost hegemonic presence. Porta Via, Barretto, the Potter, these are all fronts for Blueprint.
 
I’m not exactly wild about the quality of Blueprint coffee, but I don’t blame its employees, they’re just doing their job and don’t have a say about what beans they buy. My main issue is with their company’s prices, and the fact that they’re everywhere. I’m not really a fan of a place that charges $9.50 for a sandwich. They dress it up, give it a fancy name like ‘Palermo’ (which is just a city in Italy; do you think they’re eating Aussie ‘Collingwood’ sandwiches over in Rome?) and then ask you to mortgage your house to pay for it.
 
For University staff, that may sound like a good deal for a convenient snack, but for us poor students, it’s not amazing. This would be okay if this was just one café, a lone pillar of corporate price structuring; but there’s like 20 of these cafes, and they all sell the same damn expensive coffees and sandwiches.
 
My tip: try Middlefish. If you have to break the bank for lunch, at least don’t make it a Palermo.
 
Andrew Michaelson is working on a range of Suburbs-of-Melbourne inspired sandwiches. Try a Frankston Panini (vegemite, tomato sauce and shards of glass) today!
 
Andrew Michaelson

Nicholas Baum
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
Voting for the three first-year representative positions on the Law Students’ Society committee opens today, with nominations closing last night. Ben Farrow, Erin MacMullin, Anthony Pitruzzello, Cal Samson, Kerry Riley, Alex Horton, Thomas Richardson, Alex Dworjanyn, Larissa Chan and Bridget
Meyer each submitted a poster, available outside the LSS office, and a 250-word profile, available online. Returning Officer Steph Milione said she hoped the election would be ‘conducted fairly and in good spirits.’
 
The standing rules prescribe only limited methods of campaigning, leaving voters at a loss as to how to meaningfully distinguish between candidates. No candidate was able to speak to De Minimis on the record this week, for fear of breaching the list of permissible methods of campaigning. The rules, introduced to avoid the harassment of students prevalent in student union elections, restrict candidates to their poster, profile, ‘lecture bashing’ of less than one minute and Facebook statuses.
 
One candidate, who asked not to be named, was concerned in particular with the restrictions on using social media. ‘Social media is easily the biggest influence on our generation today,’ the candidate said. ‘The standing rules are not effective for the modern JD student.’
 
These rules limit the ability of candidates to explain who they are and what their aims are if elected. This reduces student society elections to a popularity contest, cheapening the critical role played by the society in the law school. While reducing harassment is important, there are many other methods of campaigning that could and should be endorsed – more posters, more online information and seminars where students can speak. Last year’s committee considered and voted against a relaxation of these rules.
 
Committee sources confirmed late on Sunday that the students’ society has adopted a quota-based optional preferential system for electing candidates, as is used in the New South Wales Legislative Council. In previous LSS elections, a simple preferential system has been used, which in an election for multiple candidates can distort results. ‘A quota system is the only fair way to go about this,’ said third-year student Ben Murphy. ‘It removes the potential for manipulation of the outcome and means that all preferences will be counted fairly.’
 
De Minimis has not endorsed any candidates for this election, and wishes everyone running the best of luck.
 
Nicholas Baum

Melissa Peach
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
Amidst the excitement of the Hong Kong Law Fair last week, the Law School’s China-centric mentality became apparent. Sure, there are benefits to working in Hong Kong. There are great opportunities for foreign workers in an expanding market, and the lawyers are highly paid. In that sense, Hong Kong is a great place to be for corporate lawyers, especially as many Westerners look to the East for new profit sources.
 
But in our Hong Kong focus, let’s not overlook the rest of Asia. The perks of working in Hong Kong also apply to its southern neighbors. Like Hong Kong, wages for foreign legal counsel in Southeast Asia are high where economies are booming and attracting tons of foreign investment.
 
Indeed, they have persistently defied expectations to perform strongly and are shaping up to be global power-houses. This translates into a growing client base, where lawyers get to work on exciting and varied legal issues. As Southeast Asian countries grow and see a continuous influx of foreign investment, lawyers have more opportunities to work on cutting edge legal decisions where the law is oftentimes still developing. Lawyers who are patient, flexible and adventurous would do well here.
 
Yes, there are challenges – lawyers must navigate through a maze of government corruption and complex legal frameworks, as well as adapt to local cultures and Bombay belly. However, despite the challenges, there is enormous potential in Southeast Asia that many at the law school have surprisingly not woken up to.
 
Melissa Peach

Dean Edwards
Volume 3, Issue 4, (Originally Published on Monday 25th March 2013)
 
With tens of billions of dollars of government backing, privatised security and often hyperbolic media attention to boot, the offshore processing of asylum seekers has become one of Australia’s most controversial industries.
 
Last Tuesday, the Campus Refugee Rights Collective (CRRC) hosted a forum on the state of offshore processing today, with a panel discussion involving CRRC activist Duncan Wallace, eminent human rights lawyer and refugee advocate Julian Burnside AO QC and Melbourne University Professor Harry
Minas, who, in addition to being the director of the Centre for International Mental Health, made headlines last year when he quit a federal government advisory panel due to his sharp disagreements with the Gillard government’s asylum seeker policies.
 
More than 60 attended the packed session at the Student Union to hear the panel’s insight into the human, as well as financial, toll of Australia’s current migration policies.
 
Quoting the latest UN statistics that over 15 million refugees exist in the world today – with only around 80,000 being resettled internationally in 2011 – Minas said his strategy is “basically to undo everything the government is doing and to start afresh.”
 
“The real problem in Australia is a distraction. It has nothing to do with our capacity to support people,” Minas said. He noted that Australia had settled more 650,000 refugees over the past 50 years, adding that “they’ve enriched this country immeasurably.”
 
Minas drew parallels to Wallace’s comments that the current strategy towards asylum seekers mirrors in some ways the US ‘war on drugs’. “The government picks an issue of some kind that causes moral anxiety, then they generate consensus about a group of people constituting a threat,” he said.
 
Minas called the current government’s strategy “leadership that seeks to bring out the worst in people” by appealing to an “absolutely toxic bipartisan consensus.”
 
Burnside echoed Minas’ concerns, decrying the “spectacular costs that could be avoided if we decided to treat people humanely”.
 
Burnside pointed to an estimates that the current asylum seeker strategy could cost upwards of $15 billion over the next five years, enough, he noted, to wipe out every student’s HECS debts. He also referred to some offshore processing costs exceeding $450,000 per detainee.
 
With an affable style and lively sense of humour, Burnside also covered the history of his previous work to fight offshore processing on Nauru, while keeping to the theme that Australia must, in his words, “readjust our moral compass.”
 
“[Asylum seekers] are not illegal. They are nothing except good citizens,” Burnside stressed, stating that the current government is ‘getting away’ with actions it had contested in opposition to former Prime Minister John Howard, whose offshoring policies closely resemble those being proposed by the current Labor government.
 
Burnside noted that Labor and even internal divisions with conservative elements of the Coalition had opposed the Howard government’s plan to excise the Australian mainland from Australian territory for the purposes of the Migration Act. Today, the Labor government is championing such a reform.
 
“At least with the Coalition, you know you’re dealing with a wolf in wolf’s clothing,” Burnside said, adding that a government with plans to offshore its commitments to asylum seekers and refugees “is a party not worth knowing.”

Dean Edwards