The announcement for a Referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, calls for all Australians to be informed about the background and implications of this most crucial decision to recognise First Nations people in the Australian Constitution.

To contribute to that conversation, this panel brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics and students, to provide information and share ideas about the background, process and implications of the proposed Voice to Parliament. Panellists will be addressing this from different perspectives, including from a constitutional law, politics, and social justice perspectives. The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A session.

Our panellists:

• Professor Rodney Smith (School of Social and Political Sciences, FASS) His expertise is in Australian politics, elections and the parliament, and the referendum as a political process.

• Dr Lynsey Blayden (Sydney Law School) Her areas of research interest span constitutional and administrative law and include Australian constitutional, political and institutional history, constitutional theory and the role of institutions in protecting and enhancing individual, social and political wellbeing.

• Benjamin Narooz McGrory (School of Social and Political Sciences, FASS) Benjamin is First Nations Bachelor of Arts student currently serving as the SRC’s Indigenous Officer.

• Amy Davidson (School of Education and Social Work, FASS) Amy is a First Nations doctoral student, developing a best practices framework for conducting community-led research. Amy was previously a student representative of Indigenous Studies.

A Multi-perspective Conversation on The Voice To Parliament

Tune into our Social Sciences Week events to hear from our expert speakers discussing pressing social, economic, and political challenges and how we navigate social and judicial inequality, environmental impact and political agendas.

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Unsettling the Dominant Discourse and Practice of Transitional Justice

The forthcoming announcement for a Referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, calls for all Australians to be informed about the background and implications of this most crucial decision to recognise First Nations people in the Australian Constitution.

To contribute to that conversation, this panel brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics and students, to provide information and share ideas about the background, process and implications of the proposed Voice to Parliament. Panellists will be addressing this from different perspectives, including from a constitutional law, politics, and social justice perspectives. The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A session. 
Our panellists:
•	Professor Rodney Smith (School of Social and Political Sciences, FASS) His expertise is in Australian politics, elections and the parliament, and the referendum as a political process. 
•	Dr Lynsey Blayden (Sydney Law School) Her areas of research interest span constitutional and administrative law and include Australian constitutional, political and institutional history, constitutional theory and the role of institutions in protecting and enhancing individual, social and political wellbeing.
•	Benjamin Narooz McGrory (School of Social and Political Sciences, FASS) Benjamin is First Nations Bachelor of Arts student currently serving as the SRC’s Indigenous Officer.
•	Amy Davidson (School of Education and Social Work, FASS) Amy is a First Nations doctoral student, developing a best practices framework for conducting community-led research. Amy was previously a student representative of Indigenous Studies.

A Multi-perspective Conversation on the Voice to Parliament

Economist and former Greek finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, speaks at the University of Sydney. Yanis discusses his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, and its implications for Australia as the world enters a ‘New Cold War’ of geopolitical tensions between the United States and China.

Varoufakis argues that big tech has replaced capitalism’s twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power. This is Technofeudalism: the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself.

Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis will explain this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.

Australia & The New Cold War In The Age Of Technofeudalism

This special event was hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences and supported by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Sydney on 10 April, 2024.

Speaker: Professor Mike Savage, London School of Economics

Summary: Over the past decade, escalating wealth inequalities have become apparent across the globe. It is increasingly evident that this is driven not by anonymous forces like “globalization” or “capital”, but by elites who enjoy disproportionate power and influence. This lecture addresses the intellectual and political challenges posed by this trend. Most fundamentally, how should we define, measure, and track this wealth, given that its growth stems at least in part from elites’ ability to stay under public, scholarly, and regulatory radars? How does wealth inequality reinforce racial, gender and other divides, and how does it shape social mobility and life chances across numerous domains? And what strategies could effectively advance the growing public interest in taxing wealth as a means to address entrenched wealth inequalities? This lecture discusses how wealth accumulation is underwritten by legal devices such as the ‘non-domicile’ tax regime; shows the roots of this in British imperial history, and considers the prospects for tax justice.

Mike Savage is Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021), praised by Thomas Piketty as a “major sociological contribution to the ongoing global debate on inequality and the return of social class”.

The Racial Wealth Divide | Mike Savage, London School of Economics

From the Government and International Relations MA degree directors: Dr Harry Mayer, Dr Minran Lui, Prof Susan Park, and chaired by Dr Assel Mussagulova, get your questions answered about:
 
Masters of International Relations (MA-IR)
Masters of International Security (MInst)
Masters of Public Policy (MPP)

What units do we offer and where can it lead you?

Politics and International Relations: Prospects for Future Stability?

The School of Social and Political Sciences is home to one of the most successful academic groups in the world for research and teaching in the social sciences. From health security to economic policy, human rights and political participation, our work interprets and makes sense of societies, nation states and people.

Australia & The New Cold War In The Age Of Technofeudalism

School of Social and Political Sciences

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