Events

The first webinar in the Australian Centre’s 2025 Critical Public Conversations series: Settler Nationalism and its Discontents.

The NSW Builders Laborers Federation played a central in the fight against the racist Aborigines Protection Act and in broader struggles for self-determination and land rights in 1960s. Strong and effective anti-racist action by the BLF was led by socialist construction workers who gained leadership of the union in 1961, including growing number of Koori members, who had recently migrated to Sydney from rural reserve communities. This presentation will explore both key moments in the struggle and the anti-racist ideas that animated these union activits, including a rejection of “White Australia” nationalism and support for global struggles against colonialism and war.

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If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au.

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THE SERIES

Settler Nationalism and its Discontents

In 2025, the Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series we will explore the fragility, incoherence and contradictions of contemporary settler-colonial nationalisms. We seek to understand the associated politics of race, sex/gender and identity, to analyse the connections between settler colonialism, settler nationalism, and neoliberalism.

Across the series, CPC25 will track the violence of settler nationalism within and beyond so-called Australia. This is a critical juncture. Neoliberalism is dead, but the new is not emerging. The climate catastrophes of colonialism and capitalism loom. Old imperial alliances are revived; new reactionary ones emerge. The nation and its borders are obsessively reasserted.

Sovereign Indigenous people have always been on the frontline of resisting the violence of settler nationalism. CPC25 will foreground trans/national solidarities against settler trans/nationalism, making space to explore resurgent projects of Indigenous Nation-building alongside other possibilities for living otherwise. The series will diagnose the disorders of ‘the nation’ in its present moment. In highlighting the empty, incoherent and contradictory nature of settler colonial nationalism, the series seeks to contribute to its unraveling.

In celebration of Women in Mathematics Day, the School of Mathematics and Statistics has the pleasure of presenting a public talk by Professor Barbara Holland. The talk is open to anyone from the public, including teachers, school students, and families. RSVP is not required to attend.

Title: Learn to be a killjoy: How to think like a statistician

Abstract: People love to see patterns. People love to tell stories. Most people that is. Statisticians have a different way of looking at the world. In this talk I will introduce three guiding principles so that you too can become a killjoy.

1. Garbage in Garbage Out. Statistics tries to generalise from data to answer questions about a population of interest. With your “stats hat” on the first questions you should ask are: Where did the data come from? Did it select itself? Are some of the data missing?
2. First rule out the boring explanation. As a statistician a big part of your job is to ask the killjoy question “But couldn’t that just be due to chance?”
3. Correlation doesn’t imply causation. Of course, we all know this, but why is it so hard to know when things cause other things? Is that glass of wine with dinner good for us or not?