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AFP Instagram Story - 31/03/24: Register.

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AFP Instagram Story - 31/03/24: Register.

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ABC News Instagram Post - 05/04/24: Patterning Features

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ABC News Instagram Post - 05/04/24: Patterning Features

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ABC News posted this to comment on the growing awareness on pollution across the world. Specifically they reference the initialism 'CSIRO,' which stands for 'Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.' This initialism is able to increase the ease of communication, along with creating an easily identifiable organisation. While many are familiar with the organisation CSIRO, most would not necessarily be familiar with the full name. Therefore the use of the initialism is both efficient, and also vastly more understandable to all individuals.

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X Australian Trending Hashtag - 07/04/24: Cultural Context & Purpose

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X Australian Trending Hashtag - 07/04/24: Cultural Context & Purpose

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This hashtag trending on Twitter refers to the AFL game between the Western Bulldogs and Geelong Cats. In Australia, there is a heavy emphasis on sports, in particular AFL. AFL is a common point of discussion, especially between popular teams, and more-so when controversial calls occur; the prevalence of a hashtag trending reflects this. Australians tend to have an interest in AFL, and particularly the teams they support, and players. The ability for a hashtag to trend in Australia on a particular game depicts the widespread inerest and desire for discussion on the game. Further, this conversation on sports allows for a community to build and bond over shared interests, and share their thoughts directly (use of hashtag) to a community who wants to hear about them. This may lower social distance between people, as they build a relationship on shared interests, or otherwise allow people to easily access information they are seeking. The use of a hashtag may permit for ease of communication, where a significant portion of those discussing the game will be able to directly reference what they are talking about without necessarily requiring further context to the discussion. Additionally, it will allow people to find thoughts on the topic by simply finding the hashtag, rather than seeking it in less efficient methods.

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AIHL Instagram Post - 07/04/24: Politeness Strategies (Purposes & Intents)

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AIHL Instagram Post - 07/04/24: Politeness Strategies (Purposes & Intents)

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The Conversation Article - 05/04/24: Patterning Features

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The Conversation Article - 05/04/24: Patterning Features

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The use of alliteration in the titles of some column, such as ‘fiction fanatic,’ entertains audiences. It additionally reflects sound harmony when spoken aloud. This is a fairly informal language feature, used to add a poetic function to the text, potentially engaging viewers to continue reading their article.

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9 News Article - 06/04/24: Patterning Features

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9 News Article - 06/04/24: Patterning Features

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The shortening of noun 'university' to 'uni,' permits for ease of communication. The use of this shortening is primarily used within Australia and the UK, and is a colloquialism. The efficiency, primarily when speaking, allows for individuals to easily communicate their thoughts without taking unnecessary time. In Australian society, shortenings and colloquialisms are extremely common, and frequently used regardless of the setting. This attitude towards non-standard language is widely accepted, and often use occurs in typically more formal settings, such as in this article posted by 9News. As it is a news source you would expect a certain level of professionalism and formality, but despite that, the shortening of this noun is accepted to be used due to the widespread acceptance, and use, of similar language in most settings.

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While a majority of this text is formal, achieving other purposes, several interactions and statements depicted are of a more informal register, and encourage solidarity. This text covers the story of Rainbow Lodge, and of several men who have been to this residential support program.

'The officer smiled: “About time, Robbo.”'

In this, a police officer uses the shortening and hypocoristic use of suffixes in the nickname 'Robbo.' This is able to affectionately address Claude Robinson, at this time a former prisoner and an individual struggling through significant substance abuse issues. By being kind and supportive of him as he seeks help for these issues, the officer is able to encourage solidarity. He builds a sense of encouragement and unity with Robinson by clearly indicating that he is supporting Robinson through his life, especially through using this more friendly nickname, thereby encouraging solidarity between the officer and Robinson.

'“Here, we will hold you accountable,” says Robinson. “We take our obligations to the court and to the community really seriously. But we’re not going to cease working with you.”'

The use of collective pronoun 'we,' and possessive determiner 'our,' by Robinson both work to encourage solidarity. These place Robinson within the group, depicting that the team at Rainbow Lodge are one unit with aligning goals and desires for the community, and for what their support program aims to achieve. Through the use of these, it creates an inclusive statement across the entire group. This establishment of a clear shared purpose of working with the community of individuals leaving prison, supporting them through a number of services, and providing them with a residence, encourages solidarity among the workers at Rainbow Lodge.

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Every year, almost 20,000 people leave prison in New South Wales, but less than 3 per cent of them get a bed in a supported accommodation program. The residents of Rainbow Lodge are among the lucky few - but one slip-up could land them back inside.

At midnight on January 26, 2009, Mark Doyle was released from Junee prison in southern NSW.

He'd completed a two-year stretch for a string of break-and-enters.

The 41-year-old walked out with only the clothes on his back and a clear plastic bag containing his release papers.

No-one was there to greet him.

Doyle, a softly-spoken man who suffers chronic rheumatoid arthritis, took in the night sky.

A veteran of the NSW prison system, he's known inside as "Doyley".

His crimes, never violent, have always been in support of a lifelong drug habit.

The prison at his back, he hurried along the long country road that leads to Junee train station, darkened paddocks to either side.

He made the last service to Sydney. Among his documents was a voucher for 14 days' accommodation at a grim, fluorescent-lit hotel near Central Station.

Checked into his room and sitting on the bed, he watched daylight creeping into his room.

The elation of being freed from prison evaporated. Doyley was lost, and lonely.

"I had nothing," he says.

Hours later, he was using heroin again. "I was out on the street within weeks."

By autumn, he was back inside.

Doyle's story is no aberration.

The crimes perpetrated by a large portion of the prison population are to fund drug use; four out of every five of those with a history of injecting drug use are under the influence at the time they commit the offence that puts them away.

Laurence Boney estimates his drug addiction has seen him in jail every single year of his adult life; he's only 29 years old.

Last August, after leaving Wellington jail, near Dubbo, he too was accommodated at the same hotel where Doyle had been put up 14 years earlier.

The establishment was, by now, notorious among ex-prisoners as a drug-den.

"When I first walked in there," he says, "the first thing people ask, do you want to buy anything?"

The menu was the usual: "Heroin, ice, oxies, endos."

The hotel is one of dozens contracted by the government to provide emergency accommodation.

Of course, they are not all riddled with drugs. But none offer what ex-prisoners say they need to remain sober, and to avoid reoffending.

"That's failure," Boney says. "You'd rather be on the streets."

New South Wales spends more than $2 billion a year jailing offenders, but only a fraction of that money on supported accommodation programs that keep them from returning.

Just 2 per cent of the 20,000 people who exit jail every year get a bed in such a program. Half of those who miss out end up homeless.

Meanwhile, the state's recidivism rate has been climbing steadily for more than a decade. Is it any wonder why?

'We take the men no-one else takes'

Mark Doyle and Laurence Boney are among the lucky few.

They both later obtained a place in a residential program in Sydney called Rainbow Lodge.

Doyle is now three months into his stay; Boney graduated in December.

Run from a two-storey Edwardian house in inner Sydney, the lodge's name is no hackneyed nod to hope and redemption: It is named after Alfred Ernest Rainbow, a pioneering judge who had spent his career campaigning for jail reform. The lodge opened in 1964, the year after he died.

Today, it's a 24-hour-a-day professionally supervised home. With ten beds, it's also the largest of its kind in NSW.

Caseworkers provide assistance with the footings of life: obtaining 100 points of identification, reopening bank accounts, registering for Centrelink.

When they're ready, the men are eventually helped to find their own home.

But Rainbow Lodge's mission is far broader.

It seeks to empower its residents to chart a new course, away from the habits of a lifetime. They attend life-skills workshops and cooking classes and make regular visits to nearby gatherings of Narcotics Anonymous. The lodge aims to build "personal accountability".

Its gate is not locked, and the men can leave any time; they themselves must make a daily choice not to breach their parole conditions. The participants are allocated chores on a weekly roster - from cleaning the bathrooms to cooking nightly meals - and they're told it's all, or nothing.

Sitting down together for dinner every night is mandatory.

The program is arduous, and only one in two succeed in completing it. But to meet the residents and to hear their stories, is to understand why.

These are men damaged by their past, then by their mistakes, then by the prison system itself.

They're also people with nowhere else to go.

I asked the lodge's manager, Claude Robinson, about Rainbow Lodge's central philosophy.

"We take the men no-one else takes," he says.

Robinson should know. He was once one of them.

'A desperate crime'

Eighteen years ago, the 36-year-old, short and stocky, mouthy and shrewd, his upper arms inked with imperial dragons, was released from Goulburn jail to the lodge.

It was the spring of 2006, and he'd just completed a four-and-a-half-year sentence for robbery and drug supply.

He signed his paperwork in the office kitchen, and was shown upstairs. He was given room 4B looking east past a vast grey ironbark.

Robinson had suffered a tragedy while inside prison - his parents had both died. But for the first time in a long time, he was hopeful.

Now, he wasn't just free; he also had a $60,000 inheritance.

"I remember that last six months in Goulburn," he says, "vividly thinking that this was the moment that I'd waited for my whole life, that I was going to have an opportunity to change things".

But five weeks after the money came through, he quit the lodge, overcome by the lure of heroin.

"The reality was, unfortunately, that within six weeks of getting out, I'd shot up all that money, in the Astoria Hotel in Kings Cross."

Every day, full of remorse, he promised himself he'd stop. "I'd wake up with my girlfriend and go, I'll stop using when there's $20,000 left, when there's $10,000 [left].

"And then I woke up that last day, and there was no money left. And I was just filled with such dread and terror."

His thoughts splintering, Robinson careered through the door of a nearby Centrelink office with a plan.

He explained to the man behind the counter that he needed the government to front him his next welfare payment, because he was on the run from parole, and otherwise he'd be forced to mug somebody.

"I was so insane," he says, "I thought they would go, 'oh, that's a really good idea'."

When the man laughed, Robinson jumped the counter and robbed him.

"A desperate crime," Robinson says. "I still think of that man ... all he did was go to work that day. I had no right to do what I did."

By the time he made it back to the Cross, the shame caught up with him.

Robinson passed the man's money and phone to his girlfriend, and kissed her goodbye. He walked over the road to the plain-clothes police who had been looking for him, and handed himself in.

Fourteen days later, at Sydney's central remand prison at Silverwater, Robinson approached a prison officer he knew, and asked to see the drug and alcohol welfare unit.

The officer smiled: "About time, Robbo."

'These are men who have been let down'

In March 2007, Peter Townsend was delivering an intensive drug and alcohol program at Long Bay jail called Ngara Nura, when he had a new offender join the program who caused him no end of frustration.

"Claude Robinson was a pain in the arse," Townsend says.

"There was just constant misbehaving ... endless talking back and giving officers shit."

But there was something about Robinson that made Townsend persist, and he fought to break through to him.

"I saw in his bastard-mindedness a willingness to make change in his life," he says.

Townsend's colleague, Annabel Mayo, says Robinson stood out as bright, and determined: "He hadn't been defeated by the experience of incarceration." (Townsend and Mayo both now serve on the Rainbow Lodge board.)

Within two-and-a-half years, Robinson got clean, left prison and gained formal qualifications as a community services worker.

He took a job as a youth counsellor, first with the City of Sydney, then with Parramatta Mission, before winning more senior roles at the Salvation Army and Taldumande Youth Service on Sydney's northern beaches, where he was responsible not just for 65 young people, but also a $2.8 million budget.

In 2015, he returned to Rainbow Lodge, this time as a board director.

Six years later, he was appointed its boss.

He is clear-eyed about the assignment: the care of broken men.

"These are men who have been let down by the people we are brought up to believe should love and protect us," he says.

Many of them neglected or abused as children, the lodge residents' long histories of drug use and crime can usually be traced to chaotic, dangerous childhoods.

A 2019 Queensland study found between 25 and 60 per cent of prisoners are likely to have had contact with child protection services or been hospitalised for mental illness.

"Then, as a society, we have criminalised their trauma response, which is drugs and alcohol, and put the emphasis back onto them," Robinson says.

"The community has abdicated its responsibility for letting them down as children."

Mayo says returning prisoners to society is a "messy business", that few can do well.

"Sometimes, the obvious conventional responses, Claude understands immediately that they are counterproductive."

Townsend believes Robinson has transformed the organisation.

"I think he is visionary."

'The things that I've seen ... I wouldn't wish on the worst enemy'

One of Robinson's initiatives was the introduction of weekly psychological therapy for each resident.

In addition to the ordeals of childhood, by the time they reach the lodge, the men also have to process the long and dangerous stretches of incarceration behind them, where violence is routine.

Michael Pitt, 44, came to Rainbow Lodge in April after pleading guilty to several counts of aggravated break and enter. He has spent the past 30 years in and out of jail.

"The things that I've seen in there," says Pitt, "I wouldn't wish on the worst enemy."

"It's a different ball game in there," he says.

"You can't slip, anything could happen at any time. Someone could have a bad phone call. Someone could just bump into you."

The reason for Pitt's vigilance - even at Rainbow Lodge he adhered to his two-hour-a-day jailhouse workout routine - was made out by an explosion of violence at Silverwater prison, just six days before he got out.

The trigger was the disappearance of a bottle of milk.

Its owner, hearing talk of who had swiped it, feared he would appear vulnerable should he not retaliate.

"He grabbed this blade, and went and stabbed him five times," Pitt says.

"He was screaming, blood was everywhere. It was horrific."

Corrective Services NSW confirmed the victim, having been stabbed by a "makeshift shiv", spent the next two nights at Westmead Hospital.

"Little things like that, getting stabbed over a milk. It's not right," Pitt says.

Pitt went to the man to render first aid, but trying to help can be dangerous.

Another Rainbow Lodge resident, 47-year-old Ben Walker, knows this all too well.

In November 2021, at Goulburn prison, he says he stood up for a "weaker kind of inmate" being forced to divert his "buy-up" - weekly grocery money deposited by his family - into the hands of a gang of other prisoners.

They didn't enjoy Walker calling them out for their bullying. He shrugs: "They took it very personally."

A few days later, while in the yard, he noticed a change. "I saw the moves happening. I saw them going to where I knew the blades were being held ... and I knew exactly what their intentions were."

Two men approached him. He says he was stabbed in the temple by one of them - who Walker then knocked out, likely breaking his jaw - then in the ribs by a second man who attacked him from behind.

The three were put in segregation cells beside each other.

"Every time they brought the lunches around," Walker says, "I would yell out to him, you know, 'how you going with chewing that lunch?' He'd try to say to me, 'yeah, not a problem'. But I knew," Walker laughs, "I knew he couldn't chew properly."

Corrective Services does offer a "Violent Offender Treatment Program". Pitt, however, says it makes little difference.

"We get worser and worser," Pitt says.

"Then we come out here, and they expect us to go good."

Little political appetite for reform

In NSW, the percentage of people returning to prison within a year is more than 42 per cent.

There is evidence that long-term reintegration programs like Rainbow Lodge can reduce recidivism by more than two-thirds, yet the political class has shown little appetite for reform.

Year after year, the state's corrections budget climbs. It is now in excess of $2 billion. But only a small fraction of this money - $3.7 million, according to the government's published contracts - is set aside for community-run supported accommodation programs.

Last year, Rainbow Lodge's share of this money was $832,670. Funding is a persistent anxiety.

For years, Robinson says, successive NSW governments have declined to fund any First Nations-focused reintegration programs proposed by the lodge.

So, in early 2022, when the NSW District Court introduced the Walama List, a new long-term trial of culturally informed sentencing, Robinson saw an opportunity.

The Walama program aims to reduce the over-representation of First Nations people in jail.

Eligible participants, having pleaded guilty, enter into a 12-month conversation with Indigenous elders and the presiding judge, exploring the reasons for their offending, in the hope it might prevent the committing of future offences.

When the scheme was finally launched, however, no money had been set aside to provide accommodation, or cultural programs, for those participants granted bail.

Robinson seized the moment. He went cap-in-hand to Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek, obtained $15,000 of Commonwealth funding, and transformed a storage shed on the property into a double room.

Next, he knocked on the door of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, promising to create an infrastructure of "culture and community" at the lodge to support the Walama List men. Six months later, the foundation wrote out a cheque for $980,000.

The money changed everything.

Robinson has since hired a roster of Indigenous elders to deliver workshops and daily support to the Walama men, as well as Rainbow's other First Nations residents.

Lodge workers now transport new arrivals from jails across the state.

They often do so in the company of Trent Hagan, a Walama participant who, for his fatherly attentions, and his long stint at the house, has been dubbed "the mayor of Rainbow".

In addition to weekly cultural connection workshops, once a month, Robinson also brings to Sydney from the NSW north coast a transformational four-day program called "Healing the Warrior". Many of these Indigenous services are run by respected men who have themselves survived time in jail.

For Nathan Schmalz, a Torres Strait Islander who has been trapped in the criminal justice system for the better part of 20 years, this proved the breakthrough.

'I don't want to go backwards'

Schmalz is something of a test case for the Walama List experiment.

Anthony Brookman, a prosecutor, has described his crimes as "among the most serious".

Last year, he pleaded guilty to more than two dozen offences, from stealing cars to committing a serious assault.

Four weeks after he was first bailed to Rainbow Lodge last November, he disappeared for six hours.

The staff called the police, and when they arrived at the lodge, Schmalz ran. It appeared certain he would be returned to jail.

But on December 4, the 38-year-old appeared at court for his breach hearing, and was given a second chance.

"Here, we will hold you accountable," says Robinson. "We take our obligations to the court and to the community really seriously. But we're not going to cease working with you."

Since then, Schmalz has stayed the course.

He has begun working for Prisoners Aid NSW, transporting and recycling polystyrene, and has remained sober.

He credits his new-found discipline to the connections he has forged with the elders employed at the lodge.

"They have got lived experience," he says. "At Rainbow Lodge I was around people that understood my path, the journey that I'd been on, the struggles that I'm going through."

By last month, Schmalz's commitment had sufficiently impressed Judge Warwick Hunt that he agreed to vary his bail conditions, allowing Schmalz to move into his own flat for three nights a week.

For the first time in two decades, Schmalz is beginning to feel like the chaos might be disappearing from his life.

"Six months ago, I was in a box," he says. "If someone said to me then that I'd be in society and have a job, functioning normally, I would have told them to go jump."

Tension remains, however. He still has a long way to go on the Walama program, and much to prove. At its conclusion, the judge may yet sentence him to another term of jail.

"In the past I've had no regard for anything," Schmalz says. "And now I do, I'm accountable, I sit there and think about what my choices are, and the consequences of my actions."

"I don't want to go backwards."

What does it take to repair a damaged life?

According to the state's regular audits, Rainbow Lodge is meeting every target that's been set for it.

A recent in-depth study found those who complete its program are half as likely to be charged with new criminal offences.

Nathan Schmalz's journey, at the lodge, and through the courts, seems a stark illustration of why it might be working.

Yes, the obvious: stability of accommodation, help with the basics of life, the patience of professional staff.

But perhaps more than anything else, it demands the return of dignity to those who would otherwise be cast aside.

"That connection of one human to another sometimes is all we need," Robinson says.
Watch the Four Corners documentary from 8:30pm on Monday June 3 on ABC TV, Be the first to hear about our next big investigation: subscribe to the Four Corners Email Linton Besser on lintonbesser@protonmail.com or if you require more secure communication, please choose an option on the confidential tips page newsletter and follow Four Corners on Facebook. ABC iview and YouTube.
Credits:

Reporting: Linton Besser and Ronan Sharkey

Photography: Brendan Esposito

Additional photography: Sissy Reyes, Linton Besser

Digital production: Dan Harrison

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Rainbow Lodge takes the men no-one else will - but one slip-up could land them back inside

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The residents of Rainbow Lodge have committed multiple crimes and been in and out of prison for decades. For many, its program is their last chance to take responsibility for their actions and prove they're ready for the outside world - but one slip-up could land them back inside.

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How the rise of autism and ADHD fractured Australia's schools

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The Guardian - How the rise of autism and ADHD fractured Australia’s schools - 29/04/24: Non-Discriminatory Language 

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The Guardian - How the rise of autism and ADHD fractured Australia’s schools - 29/04/24: Non-Discriminatory Language 

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The use of non-discriminatory language, such as ‘students with a disability’ (rather than disabled students) and ‘different abilities and disabilities,’ reflects formality. The use of these words articulates many facets of the debate over whether special schools should still exist, maintaining respectfulness and expertise. This guarantees the writers are being inclusive towards all individuals, maintaining consideration of who may take offence from the discussion and demonstrating a great deal of expertise on how to appropriately discuss this topic in a courteous manner.

Additionally, use of jargon and acronyms further reflects formality. The use of acronyms ‘ADHD,’ and ‘NDIS’ displays a clear understanding and expertise on the topic they are discussing. While they both contribute to ease of communication, they’re ensuring the discussion is precise and concise, demonstrating significant clarity. Due to the controversial nature of the topics, with many differing opinions on how to handle students with a disability within schools, the use of formal language is necessary. Ensuring the use of precise language that depicts a considerable understanding on the topic will likely cause more people to respect the writer and appreciate their credibility. The thoughtfulness to the writing may also prevent those with opposing views to be immediately inflammatory towards them, and rather consider all sides of the debate.

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Every morning before school, Emerson Cook would ask his mum to check the weather. If it was raining, she knew her then five-year-old would be anxious.

"He was always worried about rain," says Alicia Cook, Emerson's mother. "And if the weather forecast was rain, I would be anxious too.

"Every day in the pit of my stomach was the worry about going to school."

At the time, Emerson's anxiety was put down to a flood evacuation that had taken place at his small private school in Launceston, Tasmania. But what Alicia didn't know was that Emerson's worry was an early sign of what would later be diagnosed as having anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism.

Alicia would try to coax Emerson into class, but more often than not he would refuse.

In an attempt to get her son the support he needed, Alicia moved to an inner-city public school in Melbourne.

Here, the problem worsened. At times Emerson tried to escape to come home, climbing the school fence, and Alicia would regularly receive phone calls asking her to collect him.

"You just live in a constant state of anxiety," she says.

Despite his diagnosis, Emerson was ineligible for individualised support funding in school because he had advanced language skills, and after "trying everything" - including a third school - Alicia made the difficult decision to pull her son out.

"It was just causing everyone so much distress that we had no choice," she says. "It was devastating."

Almost a million students like Emerson

There are now almost a million school students in Australia needing extra support because of a disability, equivalent to one in four enrolments.

And while some families have given up on the system, most are attempting to make it work, with almost 90% of students with a disability still enrolled in mainstream schools.

The number of students with disabilities has been growing at lightning speed, jumping almost 40% since 2017. Social or emotional disabilities have grown at almost 10% a year. This compares with enrolment growth of 1% a year over the same period.

In classrooms today, an estimated 4% of seven- to 14-year-olds now have a primary diagnosis of autism, while between 6% and 10% of children have ADHD.

Experts point to the National Disability Insurance Scheme as a key driver of the growth, along with changes to how schools assess disability for reporting purposes.

Research from Children and Young People with Disability Australia shows that less than a third of students with a disability feel supported to learn at school. About half report feeling welcome and included, while 70% say they have been excluded from events or activities at school.

At the same time, teachers report being overwhelmed. Resources are stretched to their limits.

Many families are in upheaval, quitting jobs to home-school, or shifting schools to try to find somewhere that works.

"Inclusive education" - the idea that students with a disability should be involved and supported in a mainstream school environment - is considered the gold standard. It is supported in principle by all state and territory governments.

But is it working? Are schools and teachers coping? Are children with disabilities learning?

The teacher's dilemma

For Amy Harland, a teacher and assistant principal in Port Macquarie on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, the statistics present themselves daily in the classroom.

Some of the classes in her low socioeconomic school now have more than two-thirds of students registered as having a disability that requires the school to make an "adjustment".

"If you've got a class of 30 students and two-thirds of those students have got a disability, teachers are having to adapt and change their routines for every lesson," says Harland, who is speaking in her role as an executive member of the NSW Teachers Federation because teachers are not allowed to speak freely to the media.

"That could be a visual timetable, a choice board, a feeding plan. It could be extra support in the classroom. It could be a myriad of things."

"You are going to have to manage a range of different abilities and disabilities within the one classroom," she says. "In a year 6 classroom, you could have to differentiate activities from a kindergarten level to potentially a year 7 level.

"You might have a student who might be on the autism spectrum and they find the classroom noisy and they might have headphones, or they might have a specific card that they flash to the teacher that says 'I want out' and need a sensory break.

In the same classroom you could have children with attendance issues or other challenging behaviours, she says. "You have got mental health issues ... kids who have friendship issues - because that is the nature of being a child. You could have kids who are [in] out-of-home care.

"You will have a whole range of disabilities, formally diagnosed and imputed, and you could have some of those kids that come with IFS [integration funding support] or partial attendance programs.

"It can be confronting. The classroom and the behaviours are becoming more and more challenging and the time that teachers are being given hasn't changed."

The support and resources just aren't what they need to be.

Harland says teachers are expected to develop behaviour support plans and personalised learning and support plans, as well as document the adjustments they make over the course of at least 10 weeks to register students for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students, which is linked to federal funding.

"[Non-teaching hours] for primary school teachers hasn't changed since 1989, but the amount of paperwork we have to do, especially around students with disabilities, has increased," she says.

"The support and resources just aren't what they need to be."

In online forums, teachers speak anonymously about the significant pressure they face managing children with disabilities. Some claim they have been asked to do tasks that should be done by support workers, such as toilet training.

One says: "It is hard work and I never feel like I am giving any of the kids what they need.

"Inclusion, while a nice sentiment, simply isn't practical. Everybody in this picture gets a raw deal."

Another says: "The biggest challenge is that the government is putting kids who need support in mainstream schools without actually funding those supports.

"It's becoming very obvious that 'inclusion' is less about the kids as it is saving the government money."

Staff exposed to 'real violence'

Troy Wright, who advocates for student support officers in his role as assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association in NSW, says these workers are also feeling overwhelmed by the frenetic pace of change over the past five years.

He points to the 34% increase in workers' compensation claims in the NSW Department of Education in the last financial year as a clear sign that something is wrong.

Many of these claims relate to workload and stress, but others relate to a growing number of physical injuries, he says: one recent claim related to a student learning officer having their finger bitten off by a student.

"Our members are being exposed to real violence," he says.

Administrative staff, too, are grappling with extra workloads as schools move from being places of just education to "an all-purpose therapy centre", Wright says, requiring them to coordinate NDIS-funded allied health workers who visit the school.

A school in Taree recently reported needing to coordinate 80 allied health workers needing access to the school for appointments with students.

A review of the NDIS last year recommended that more disability supports be provided outside the scheme, including in schools. There is widespread concern among the states and disability advocates about how this will work in practice given the strain the education system is already under.

'Are you giving up on our child?'

Sophia* was just six when she received her first suspension. The lanky seven-year-old who loves jazz ballet and gymnastics attends a public primary school in Adelaide's eastern suburbs. But over a six-month period Sophie missed 44 days of Year 1 because of multiple suspensions and, finally, an exclusion.

The suspensions followed incidents where she would become dysregulated and disturb the class, or hurt other students. Sophia has level 2 autism.

As Sophia's behaviour escalated over the first semester of year one, the school encouraged the family to see a different specialist to have her medicated - which was against their paediatrician's advice.

After one incident in which Sophia lashed out at other students and was suspended, the school told her parents to take her to the emergency department. Unsurprisingly, after a six-hour wait, they were sent home.

Her mother, Doreen Salon, recalls on one occasion she was unable to leave work immediately and had "begged" the school to look after Sophia until early in the afternoon.

"They said to me, 'Your child is beyond the school now. I need you to pick up your child now.'"

At one point the school suggested that they could involve the police if she wasn't collected, because they had no capacity to look after her.

"I said, 'Why would you say that? ... Are you giving up on our child? Are you wanting to kick us out? What does that mean?'"

Salon says that it felt as if the school "just wanted the problem to go away".

"They said they didn't put in an application [for funding for an ongoing support worker for Sophia] because they knew they would not be funded.

"I said to the school, 'How can we advocate for my child? She needs help'. And they said to me, 'Why don't you write to your local MP?'"

Julie Phillips, who advocates for families pursuing disability discrimination cases against the Victorian education department, says that in the absence of adequate funding, schools are resorting to crude measures to manage the pressure with suspensions and exclusions used repeatedly against children with a disability.

While most states refuse to release suspension data publicly, an analysis of the available statistics by Guardian Australia shows disabled children are receiving about half of the more than 200,000 suspensions handed out by government schools each year. This includes those given to thousands of primary school children.

Many students with a disability are also being put on part-time hours, and there are widespread complaints about informal suspensions - where a child is sent home from school on an ad-hoc basis.

Then there is the use of seclusion and restraints, which occur largely without departmental oversight. This could involve isolating a deregulated child in a room by themselves, or the physical restraint of a child.

"Suspension is always going to be the easiest option because it is less time and less money," Phillips says.

"But the problem is that the research says that suspensions worsen behaviours of concern and increase disengagement, so we are getting this cycle where it is just getting worse."

After Sophia's exclusion, the school secured a 10-week placement for her at a special school for children with behavioural difficulties. It proved to be a circuit breaker. She's now settled back into the mainstream school and assisted with a support worker 12 hours a week.

Looking back, Salon says she doesn't want to demonise the school and thinks their advice at the time was perhaps the "best they could do".

"Perhaps they just wanted to avoid another difficult situation on top of the many other things they had to juggle," she says.

"But we did really suffer as a family because we didn't know where to go to help Sophia. And the school, to us, seemingly didn't know how to help."

'Where are these kids meant to go?'

Marita Nicholas is on the frontline for families trying to make mainstream schools work for children with a disability. Based in Mansfield in regional Victoria, Nicholas is an autism practitioner and advocate for families, and much of her time is spent trying to navigate the education system for children with high needs.

Her clients, all school-age children ranging in age from eight to 18, are categorised with level 2 autism - those needing "substantial support".

"There is not a single person on my list who hasn't had to change schools because it is not working out," Nicholas says.

"The thing about kids on the spectrum is they need consistency and certainty, and their school lives are completely inconsistent and uncertain."

Nicholas, a former teacher who has been working as a conduit between families and schools for four years, says the eligibility criteria for disability funding are "onerous" for schools in Victoria, with a two-term wait for a child who needs support.

The process involves 10 weeks of observations and record-keeping before requisite meetings with the education department to determine whether or not funding will be made available.

Nicholas also points to the lack of appropriate physical infrastructure in schools, with not enough space for children with disabilities to take breaks.

She says most of her clients have experienced suspensions and expulsions and that informal part-time schooling arrangements are commonplace. She has observed that under-resourced teachers and principals often feel they have no choice but to expel or suspend a child, often under pressure from other parents.

"The principal to make that decision to expel will make a lot of people very happy and leave one family devastated.

"So it is about the competing interests, but that brings you to the next point - if you are going to make those decisions, where are those children who are not fitting in? Where are they meant to go?"

Louise Rogers is one of the founders of the organisation School Can't, a parent-led group supporting families with children who have struggled with school and end up not wanting to go at all.

The group avoids using the term "school refusal" as it carries the suggestion of a behavioural problem rather than it being a symptom of stress.

A survey it conducted in the lead-up to a 2022 Senate inquiry into school refusal found a significant link with disability and school avoidance.

For children struggling with "school can't", 73% had a neurodevelopmental disability diagnosis, and another 10% suspected or were seeking a disability diagnosis. Autism and ADHD were the most significant.

School refusal problems can lead to significant upheaval for a child and their family, with many resorting to home schooling or distance education, which are both becoming increasingly popular in Australia.

A recent report from Autism Awareness Australia found that 35% of families were refused or discouraged against enrolment for their autistic child, while 16% of autistic children reported being "very unhappy" at school.

A record 40,000 children are now being home schooled in Australia - double the rate before the pandemic in 2019.

School attendance and retention rates remain on a trajectory of long-term decline. The Year 12 retention rate for full-time students is now just 79% - the lowest in the past 10 years.

"There is an increasing number of people who are saying school is too stressful and this is too hard," Rogers says.

She believes schools have struggled to differentiate between stress behaviour and misbehaviour in how they respond to children with disabilities.

"It is an inclusion issue for a lot of kids ... but it is also about a cultural element. It is ableism in our society as a whole and the way we treat people who are different."

'No place for Alfie'

Nathan Bell, a Toowoomba father was faced with this reality when, two weeks before the school holidays, he and his wife, Molly, were called into a meeting with the principal at their local Catholic school regarding their five-year-old son, Alfie.

Alfie, who suffers from a neurodevelopmental disorder, had been attending the school three days a week.

"We were completely ambushed," Bell says. "They said there was no place for Alfie next term, because they did not have the capability to supply the ongoing support.

"The principal said they thought he was better suited to the special school in Toowoomba and offered to advocate for him to attend that school."

Bell already knew that Alfie didn't meet the criteria for the special school - his disabilities weren't severe enough.

"It was a pretty solid meeting. My wife was in tears. We just felt we were in the too hard basket. It was disappointing and heartbreaking."

Bell later discovered that a teacher had often used what was called "Alfie's cave" by his classmates - a room where he was separated from the rest of the class.

"If they got overwhelmed he would go in there," he says.

"The teacher was put in a situation where she couldn't offer the support for Alfie in a classroom where there were 28 other kids.

"Kids with disabilities ... need to be included in the classroom.

"It is not just one school's problem. It is the education system that needs to change."

Bell had begun exploring home schooling when he received a call from the principal of their local public primary school, offering Alfie a place in a supported class.

"They are great," he says. "They have welcomed him with open arms and he is excelling."

Alfie now spends the morning in a special support unit and joins the mainstream class in the afternoon, attending school full-time.

Parents have 'unrealistic demands'

Craig Petersen says he believes most schools are getting it right and the vast majority of students who need adjustments for a disability are well managed. But the president of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council says resources are always stretched, and that there is a shortage of school counsellors, student support officers (SSOs) and psychologists.

While he stresses schools are inclusive as they can be, Petersen points to the unmet demand for specialised support places for students with more complex needs as evidence that many parents are looking for more specialised settings. He says this will often occur when schools have done "everything they possibly can for that child".

"In many cases we have got parents who are very distraught because they are struggling themselves. When we have done the best we can in a mainstream class or a mainstream school, the parents are desperate for us to access a specialist system for them," he says. But there are "just not enough places".

Petersen also feels parents sometimes have unrealistic demands about what funding they can access to support their child in school.

"A parent might say 'we want an SSO full-time', but we just can't. We don't have the funding for it and there is sometimes a disconnect between expectations.

"Advocacy groups may give well-intended advice but it is not necessarily accurate advice about what can be reasonably done for their child."

Advocate Julie Phillips agrees the sector is underfunded - but believes inclusive education in Australia has been "set up to fail" by education departments.

"There is a view, that is shared by me, that the underfunding is deliberate to funnel kids out of mainstream schools into special education settings because these settings are cheaper for government," she says.

"But the research is overwhelmingly in favour of inclusive education.

"When it is done properly it creates better outcomes for kids with disabilities and kids without disabilities - that is the first and most important reason, the second reason is that with the high levels of general discrimination against people with disabilities in the country, there are clear benefits to having children with disabilities and children without disabilities growing up side by side."

The final report of the disability royal commission was split on the issue of special schools.

Three commissioners recommended phasing out segregated education by 2052, while three others disagreed. All agreed that there needed to be "a transformation" in culture, policy and practice in education in order to achieve an equal and inclusive education for people with disabilities.

Cherry Baylosis from Disability Advocacy NSW believes it is premature to discuss phasing out special schools given what she sees as "a broken [education] system that is buckling under pressure."

" In an ideal world, all schools would have the resources that they need to provide inclusive education," says Baylosis.

"Realistically the idea of phasing out segregated schools, and ... placing [students with disabilities] into mainstream education without the adequate resources will be potentially quite dangerous if the issues that we're talking about are not addressed."

What would a truly inclusive classroom look like?

It's important to differentiate between children with profound disabilities and those with developmental diagnoses who have high functional abilities but are struggling in the classroom, says Andrew Whitehouse, head of the Autism Research Team at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth and a member of the federal government's national school resourcing board.

"It is the second category that has exploded in numbers and has created significant challenges within the school system," Whitehouse says.

"There are a growing number of children who are struggling within the school system due to developmental disabilities. This is not a marginal issue ... this is now education, and it is difficult to think of an issue that affects people more on a day to day basis in the education setting than disability."

"If we are to truly create inclusive classrooms, we have to have everything on the table, from teacher training, all the way through to the basic architecture of buildings.

"There are many children with disabilities who are educated in the same classrooms as their peers that are not receiving an inclusive education because the classrooms, the teachers, the level of support is not set up for that.

"That is not a fault of any single part of the system. That's an issue with funding at the top, all the way down to simple architecture at the bottom."

He is hopeful that upcoming negotiations on the new national schools reform agreement will prioritise the issue, saying there was a need for a "coherent vision" for how we educate children with disabilities in Australia.

"Kids are struggling with this, parents are struggling with this, teachers are struggling with this, and education systems are struggling with this. The incentives to change have never been stronger.

"We have forums to make this happen, we have the education ministers meetings, which are designed explicitly to address truly thorny and wicked problems such as this. So we have the forum to do it, we have the collective will to do it, we just have to do it."

"It's heartbreaking to see children who, with some additional support, some changes to how we provide either teaching or how they are managed outside the classroom, could be included, but are excluded from classrooms because all stakeholders feel that's the best option.

"It is very, very rarely the best option."

Linda Graham, director of the Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology, believes there needs to be "a systematic, seismic shift" in the way Australian schools approach inclusive education.

"[Children with disabilities'] are not getting reasonable adjustments and the support that they need," she says. "Rather than [expelling] the kid, we need to do so much better proactively implementing inclusive practices so that kid is supported."

'I'm so proud of him'

Back at home in Launceston, Alicia Cook wonders if Emerson will ever return to mainstream schooling. Having been forced to restructure her small business to home school him, Alicia is still trying to make peace with her son's school experience and the sacrifices that have come with it.

"I'm filled with grief," she says. "Because I had imagined our lives would be different. And I have to accept that Emerson is unlikely to have some of the childhood experiences that I had hoped for him, like going to school camps and doing sleepovers, and all of those things, and I just have to accept that there's going to be a different path for him."

"It is really hard. But from my perspective, kids like Emerson that are doing this, they are actually saying that the system is not working, and they have the courage to actually stand up and say it's not right.

"And I'm so proud of him for doing that."

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How the rise of autism and ADHD fractured Australia's schools

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Almost a million Australian schoolchildren now have a disability - that's one in four enrolments. Parents, teachers and advocates say education is at crisis point

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Australia and the Nutbush: the quest for the origin of a cultural phenomenon goes on

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The Guardian - Australia and the Nutbush: the quest for the origin of the cultural phenomenon goes on - 05/05/2024: Cultural context 

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The Guardian - Australia and the Nutbush: the quest for the origin of the cultural phenomenon goes on - 05/05/2024: Cultural context 

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For 50 years, Australian primary school students have been learning the steps to a dance that will carry them through social events and weddings and allow them to locate other Australians across crowded nightclubs anywhere in the world.

Nowhere else do they do the Nutbush. But while almost every Australian knows the steps, no one knows who created the dance.

Two professors - Panizza Allmark from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and Jon Stratton from the University of South Australia - have narrowed down their search for the choreographer to a teacher's conference in New South Wales in 1975.

"What we seem to know is that there was a committee in the New South Wales education department that devised the idea of the Nutbush," Stratton says. "Whether they devised the dance itself, we don't really know. But what's interesting is that nobody has come forward."

The conference was held two years after the song Nutbush City Limits was released by Tina Turner. It is part of the reason behind Australia's special love for the soul singer, who died last year.

Line dances were reckoned to be a good way to get children up and moving in physical education classes; the steps to the Nutbush are similar to the Madison, a line dance popularised in the US in 1960. But Allmark and Stratton say the Nutbush remains a uniquely Australian dance.

"One of the key differences is that the Madison has calling, somebody who stands out the front and says what particular aspect of the dance you're going to do next," Stratton says.

"In the Nutbush, there's nobody saying 'lift your leg up, turn to the left, turn to the right, kick this way'."

It was also "much cooler" than dancing a traditional line dance to a country song, says Allmark.

Other songs have hit high rotation in primary school PE classes: the Macarena, 5,6,7,8 by S Club 7, YMCA by the Village People and the Grease megamix. But none have reached the popularity of the Nutbush. In 2023 the Mundi Mundi Bash set a new world record for the largest Nutbush dance with 6,594 dancers.

"It's cool, but slightly daggy, but it's also inclusive," Allmark says. "It's intergenerational - parents, grandparents and children all learn the Nutbush."

Record-breaking number perform Tina Turner's Nutbush at Mundi Mundi bash - video

While the origins of the dance remain murky, Stratton said the phenomenon wasn't "totally unusual".

"These things just evolve," he says. "There are other tracks now that people use to do the Nutbush; it could be that in a generation or two someone will be asking why it's called the Nutbush."

A spokesperson for the NSW education department says it is looking into the matter. Similar theories have been floated in Queensland but a Department of Education spokesperson in that state says it has no records relating to the origin of the Nutbush.

Catherine Amesbury, the deputy principal of Burgmann Anglican school, says the Nutbush brings "joy and access" to students who may otherwise not engage with physical education or dance in the classroom.

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"When it comes to students dancing, it's often polarising," she says. "They come with a preconceived idea that they either had ability and mastery of dance or they don't.

"The Nutbush allows students to feel psychologically safe because it's so familiar. It takes away that potential of embarrassing yourself. It also allows a connection and a sense of belonging because you've got a group of people or moving in rhythm together to a pretty catchy tune.

"A sense of accomplishment is there, despite it being so simple."

Amesbury was taught the Nutbush during teacher training at the University of Wollongong in the 1990s, specifically with the aim of building connection with future teachers and students.

"It was a skill that we needed to be able to teach kids, and so they slowly introduced [the Nutbush] as a simple introductory activity for us to feel comfortable, then switched it up saying this is how you can make kids feel comfortable," Amesbury said.

It is not just schools that have reached for the Nutbush: a community legal centre in Brisbane used the dance to build a sense of belonging among staff and to have standing breaks during the workday.

"It came up over coffee one day; [a colleague] said, 'I'm thinking of doing the Nutbush every day because I feel like I never get up from my desk, would you like to join?'" says Mollie O'Connor, a Brisbane- based lawyer. "And we were all keen to do it."

The opportunity to step away from the desk and "be a bit silly together" was the start of building more connections with colleagues, she says. While the practice left with O'Connor's colleague, she said the potential of a Nutbush, or movement-related, revival in the office isn't off the cards.

"I don't know if it'll look like a Nutbush, or maybe a little walk by the Brisbane River, but I feel like my office is the kind of place where people are open to things like that," she said. "It definitely gets your heart pumping."

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Australia and the Nutbush: the quest for the origin of a cultural phenomenon goes on

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The line dance has been taught in Australian schools for almost 50 years - but where did it start? Now researchers have narrowed down their search

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7.30 - Interview with Assistant Commissioner Lauren Callaway - 07/05/2024: Formality (Jargon)

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7.30 - Interview with Assistant Commissioner Lauren Callaway - 07/05/2024: Formality (Jargon)

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Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Lauren Callaway speaks to 7.30

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Sarah Ferguson presents Australia’s premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.

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Yahoo News - Expat praised for breaking down 'unhinged' Aussie slang: 'Nailed it!': SAE

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Yahoo News - Expat praised for breaking down 'unhinged' Aussie slang: 'Nailed it!': SAE

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This is an example from Yahoo News, discussing Alexandra, a Canadian who moved to Australia, and her TikTok videos on Australian slang.

This is a multimodal text, with discussion on Alexandra and her TikTok videos, along with the said TikToks embedded into the article. It focuses on Australian slang, and the responses to Alexandra’s videos. Brianne Tolj wrote this article in May of 2024 featuring one of Alexandra’s videos made in May of 2024, quotes from other of her videos, and commenters from a variety of her videos. These videos are targeted largely towards tourists, with many Australians engaging with the content additionally, and the article is likely targeted to Australians but individuals internationally may also view it. This article respectfully addresses Alexandra, among other expats, with a friendly and objective tenor, largely due to the wide social distance between Tolj and the TikTok creators and commenters.

Significant usage of Australian colloquialisms are featured in this article. This includes colloquialisms such as the interjection ‘G’day,’ verb ‘pissed,’ and noun ‘drongo.’ These language features are quoted by Tolj from Alexandra’s TikToks. Additionally, Australian commenters further use features of Standard Australian English such as the adjective/noun ‘Aussie,’ along with hypocoristic use of suffixes in ‘Shazza.’

These highlight the emphasis on informality within Australian society, and a love for colloquialisms from Australians as a key, unique aspect of Australian culture. The colloquialisms quoted by Tolj display the love by Australians, and non-Australians, for the language usage that makes Australian English distinct and unique. For Australians, this uniqueness in language ensures that Australian society is kept separate from the UK or American societies by creating this national identity among all individuals in the country. This familiar use of colloquial language by Australians supports the respectful nature of Australians to everybody. This same representation of identity is seen by the commenters' use of Australian English.

These language features are likely used by the individual writers, in the case of the commenters, and speaker, Alexandra, as a way of promoting in-group membership among Australians by utilising the common language choices. Further, Alexandra - considering her audience consisted of a considerable amount of non-Australians - the use of colloquialisms which were quoted throughout Tolj’s article were being explained, suggesting that a potential purpose of hers would be clarifying, and additionally building rapport with Australians and non-Australians alike by creating engaging content. Tolj’s role was to write this article explaining Alexandra’s influence on TikTok, and other expats, by quoting the colloquial language and explanations from Alexandra’s videos, along with the responses. In turn, Tolj was giving a clear breakdown of these videos, and her potential purpose could be to establish expertise on this relevant topic in a fun, objective manner.

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Expats have always been vocal about their culture shock over Australian wildlife, supermarket products, and work-life balance, but there is one thing that always seems to confuse them the most - our slang. One American woman living in Sydney revealed last month she had been forced to change her own name - Devyn Hales - after moving Down Under.

"My name is Devyn but I go by Dev now because apparently my name means packaged meat in Australian," she said. However, one Canadian woman may have cracked the code, with hundreds of Aussies praising her "spot on" breakdown of our "unhinged" lingo.

Alexandra, a Canadian woman who says she has lived in Australia for the last 12 years, posted a TikTok earlier this month which shows her detailing the slang tourists need to know before they belly up to the bar.

"Slang you need to know before your first night out in Australia. So we'll start easy, G'day means hello, 'ta' means thank you, 'yeah, nah' means no, 'nah, yeah' means yes and 'yeah, right' means ok," she begins the video before moving onto the more "complex" jargon.

"Your mate is your friend, but if someone says 'hey, mate' then they're probably not your friend," she continued. "If someone says that they're 'spewin' that means that they're pissed off but if someone says that they're 'pissed', that actually means that they're really drunk."

Alexandra goes on to warn that being labelled a "yobbo, a drongo, a bogan or a derro" is "bad", but being called a "ripper" or "sick c***" is a term of endearment. At rapid speed, the well-versed Canadian then continues to explain after pub "kick-ons" and hot chicken feeds, and encourages anyone who is offered a "slab" or some "goon" to take it.

The clip has since gone viral with almost 400,000 views and hundreds of comments, many from Aussies who said the 32-year-old "nailed it". "This is the best reference of the Aussie slang," one person said, while another exclaimed Alexandra was "one of us" and didn't need a citizenship test.

"You are too good at this, which makes me think you really are an Aussie called Shazza just putting on an American accent," someone else joked. "Ok, as an Aussie, this was impressive," a fourth commented.

However, a handful of Aussies claimed they had never uttered "90 per cent" of the phrases mentioned. "FYI, no one says G'day," one person argued, to which others responded it probably "depends on where you live" across the country.
Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

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Expat praised for breaking down 'unhinged' Aussie slang: 'Nailed it'

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A Canadian woman has detailed the Aussie slang tourists need to know before their first big night out. Find out more.

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@dttw_aus TikTok - Australian English: SAE

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@dttw_aus TikTok - Australian English: SAE

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This is an example from a TikTok account, @dttw_aus, which is a business who provides migration assistance to those looking to move to Australia.

This is a spoken text from TikTok, posted in May of 2024. This video is made within Australia and features an unidentified man as the only speaker. The audience largely consists of Australians, but non-Australians were likely to see and appreciate the content. The social distance between the speaker and the audience is wide, where the speaker does not know who is in the audience. Due to the humorous nature of the video along with the wide social distance, the tenor is amusing and well mannered.

In this video, the man is displaying the typical features of the way Australians speak, including Australian English being non-rhotic, and often seen assimilation and vowel reduction. In the TikTok, he is displaying the typical, more American pronunciation of phrases or words, then the Australian equivalent. The verb phrase ‘I want to’ undergoes a process of assimilation and vowel reduction to become ‘I wanna’ in the Australian accent. Additionally, the non-rhoticity of spoken Australian English is displayed; the noun/verb ‘order,’ is said to be pronounced as ‘ordah’ (as transcribed on the whiteboard).

These language features display the typical elements of spoken Australian English, presenting it in a humorous manner. By doing this, the business is able to build rapport with the Australian audience and show to non-Australians a funny depiction of the country and its people. For Australians, this fairly accurate representation of the Australian accent and common features of how Australians speak, is entertaining, but also displays a fair portrayal of a vital aspect of Australian culture and identity. The unique Australian accent is special to many people in the country, and allows them to be part of a speech community of fellow individuals who share characteristics. This, in turn, may appeal to the value of egalitarianism as all Australians are equal in how they speak, and are ordinary within the country.

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Australian English Lessons #lol #wtf #ozzie #australia #fyp #hilarious #stupid #funny  #english #language #lmao

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@dttw_aus
Australian English Lessons #lol #wtf #ozzie #australia #fyp #hilarious #stupid #funny #english #language #lmao
♬ original sound - Migration Assistance | dttw

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@ozziemcguire TikTok - Morning walk in Australia: SAE

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@ozziemcguire TikTok - Morning walk in Australia: SAE

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This is an example from a TikTok account in the name of @ozziemcguire, which depicts a man, who goes by Ozzie McGuire, going for a walk in the morning in Australia having interactions with many others.

This is a spoken text showing McGuire walking around in Australia in the morning. He is the primary speaker, however it does show several other unknown speakers talking with him, however they are unknown. This TikTok video was posted in July of 2024. The tenor between McGuire and the individuals he is interacting with on his walk is very friendly and respectful, but has a very wide social distance as he is unlikely to know these people on a personal level. The interactions between the individuals perform a phatic function.

McGuire uses several typically Australian colloquialisms when greeting people, such as interjection ‘g’day,’ interrogative ‘how’s it going,’ and noun ‘mate.’ These are used in conjunction with more typically greetings from McGuire and the other people, such as interjection ‘hello.’

The colloquialisms used to greet the people McGuire passes depict the very friendly and welcoming nature of Australians, especially in more regional places. The emphasis on friendliness and kindness in Australia is reflected, and is a key part of Australian identity. This further depicts the laidback nature of Australians, and the value of egalitarianism as all individuals are treated equally, reflecting the Australian identity.

McGuire’s purpose is likely to maintain social harmony by using this friendly language to greet individuals passing by. The usage of these language features performs the phatic function by establishing social connection, but doesn’t necessarily build rapport as the social distance is not decreasing from the greetings McGuire or the others use.

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Morning walk in #australia #aussie #australian #fyp #learnenglish 

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@ozziemcguire
Morning walk in #australia #aussie #australian #fyp #learnenglish
♬ original sound - ozziemcguire

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The Guardian - ‘Un-Australian:’ Australia swimming coach in hot water for backing Korean rival - 26/07/24:  Australian Identity

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The Guardian - ‘Un-Australian:’ Australia swimming coach in hot water for backing Korean rival - 26/07/24:  Australian Identity

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Australian swimming boss Rohan Taylor says public support for a South Korean athlete from one of his coaches ahead of two of his team members is "unAustralian", but he will speak to the swimmers involved before deciding whether the coach's expulsion from Paris is necessary.

Coach Michael Palfrey is part of the Dolphins but has also coached South Korean men's 400m freestyle world champion Kim Woo-min.

In an interview with Korean television on Tuesday, Palfrey said he hoped Kim would win gold on Saturday. "I really hope he can win, but ultimately I really hope he swims well," Palfrey said, later declaring: "Go Korea."

Taylor - Australia's head coach responsible for all coaches on the team - said the comments were disappointing, and Palfrey has already accepted his mistake.

"A coach on our team promoting another athlete ahead of our athletes is not acceptable," Taylor said in Paris ahead of tomorrow's ceremony. "Promoting an athlete who's not Australian is just unAustralian, to be honest."

But Taylor he said did not want to make a decision on whether Palfrey can remain with the team until he has spoken to the athletes involved.

"Getting to the people that it's affecting is really important to me because I want them to know the wellbeing is in place, the support's there. Ultimately, we're here to perform at the Olympics in two days, so everybody's focused on that and I want to make sure that continues to be the focus."

Kim will face Australian duo Sam Short, who won the 2023 world title in the event, and 2022 world champion Elijah Winnington. Short and Winnington are both considered gold medal contenders in the event.

"There will be three or four of them in the race that think they can win it," Palfrey told South Korean media. "I think it's going to come down to that last 100 metres. We need Woo-min to lift, that's what I'll be saying to him. He's got to race tough.

"I think Woo-Min can definitely be amongst the medals but the hard thing for him is that those [Australian] guys have already posted fast times. He's got to find another level. Hopefully at this meet, he can go faster."

Palfrey is one of eight Australian swim coaches in Paris; the University of the Sunshine Coast head coach is overseeing Zac Incerti, Abbey Connor and Alex Perkins. But he has previously hosted several Korean swimmers in Queensland, including Kim, Hwang Sun-woo, Lee Ho-joon, Lee Yoo-yeon and Yang Jae-hoon.

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It has been reported that Swimming Australia approved Palfrey's prior involvement with Korean swimmers, but indicated that staff with links to international swimmers needed to end those relationships before the Olympic trials last month to avoid any conflicts of interest. There is no suggestion that Palfrey did not comply with that directive.

Taylor said the issue of Australian coaches working with foreign swimmers has been under consideration since the Doha World Championships in February, and would be addressed after the Paris Games.

"We are leading a leading nation and we do have a lot of really strong IP in coaching and resources and we are investing in that and we want to protect it."

The men's 400m freestyle will be the opening medal event of the Paris swim meet, on Saturday evening.

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'Un-Australian': Australia swimming coach in hot water for backing Korean rival

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Michael Palfrey said he hopes Kim Woo-min wins 400m free as AOC investigates 'deeply concerning' remarks in Paris

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Target - NAIDOC Week: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

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Target - NAIDOC Week: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

# data[].attributes.body
Mode: written

Text Type: a written newsletter on NAIDOC week in Target

Setting: An article written prior to outline week on Target’s website, and likely part of a newsletter

Field: NAIDOC week

Function: Referential function

CC: importance for maintaining Aboriginal cultures within Australia.

‘NAIDOC’ an acronym referring to the National Aborigines and Islanders day Observance Committee

‘Samuawgadhalgal,’ ‘Cassowary Clan,’ and ‘Gubbi Gubbi’ proper nouns reflecting the identity of individuals from their tribes

‘Blak’ an adjective

These features used display code switching, between standard Australian English and Aboriginal languages, such as that of the tribes compared to the rest of the text explaining Target’s initiative for NAIDOC week.

These further display politeness by addressing individuals clearly by who their tribe is, which is integral to their identity as Indigenous individuals

They are likely used to address individuals politely, ensuring they feel respected and that their identity is being celebrated

It places expectations upon everybody to understand the tribes, and acronyms that refer to Aboriginal cultures, therefore placing importance on diversity and multiculturalism within Australia.

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For a second year in a row, Target and Kmart are proud to have been named the official National NAIDOC Week poster distribution partner with the National NAIDOC Committee. National NAIDOC Week 2024 will be held from Sunday 7 July to Sunday 14 July.

Target and Kmart are proud to be appointed by National NAIDOC Committee as the Official National NAIDOC Week Poster Distribution Partner for 2024.

This year's National NAIDOC Week Poster features artwork by Deborah Belyea, proud member of the Samuawgadhalgal, Cassowary Clan, whose bloodlines stretch to the people of the top Western Torres Strait islands of Saibai, Dauan, and the Bamaga-Saibai community of Cape York. Titled 'Urapun Muy', Deborah Belyea's artwork is a heart-warming piece that pays tribute to First Nations culture, while the fire represents the sharing of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next, aligning to this year's NAIDOC Week theme, 'Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud'

This year's artwork by Deborah Belyea will be on display in the windows of all Target Deadly stores in celebration of NAIDOC Week. To read more about our Deadly Stores click here.

In the second year of our NAIDOC Week Art Competition, we had some amazing submissions from our First Nations team members.

Target Deadly Stores will feature window displays of the Official NAIDOC Week poster artwork, alongside our very own team member's artwork and story.

This year we celebrate proud Gubbi Gubbi man Cameron Letondeur from Target North Lakes. See their artwork and story below.

CAMERON LETONDEUR - TARGET NORTH LAKES

Cameron's artwork embodies the importance behind maintaining cultural knowledge and traditions in Indigenous communities, symbolising the ongoing responsibility to preserve and pass down knowledge to emerging leaders. This piece narrates a deep story about community and country.

The fire burning at the bottom signifies the eternal flame ancestors handed down. The orange shades across each meeting place represent flames kept alive through culture, land, and spirits. The blues symbolise the creeks and river systems running through the land, while the yellows, greens, and reds represent the lush forests and landscapes. The U shapes indicate people coming together to keep the cultural fire burning.

CAMERON LETONDEUR - TARGET NORTH LAKES

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For a second year in a row, Target and Kmart are proud to have been named the official National NAIDOC Week poster distribution partner with the National NAIDOC Committee. National NAIDOC Week 2024 will be held from Sunday 7 July to Sunday 14 July.

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NITV Female Rangers News Segment: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

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NITV Female Rangers News Segment: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

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Mode: spoken

Text Type: news segment from NITV

Setting: Western Australia

Field: Environment and sustainability, along with traditional Aboriginal practices.

Function: Referential

Noun ‘Country,’ with no determiner before it to refer to it, shown in the sentence

‘we do maintenance run’ which elides either a determiner, or plural ‘maintenance runs’

‘salties,’ referring to ‘salt water crocodile’

Country: Refers to the land that is not owned or possessed by anyone particular. It is a shared place of Australia.

Salties: connection to the flora and fauna in Aboriginal culture

These language choices are used to inform the audience on the jobs the female rangers are doing in Kununurra, and further expresses their cultural identity.

Attitudes towards language aren’t expressed, but rather the language used is indicative of the way Aboriginal people typically speak.

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An important message brought to remote areas: a conversation can save a life | Nula | NITV

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ABC News Aunty Fay's State Funeral: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

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ABC News Aunty Fay's State Funeral: Aboriginal Australian Englishes

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Mode: written

Text Type: A news article

Setting: ABC news website, June 2024, referring to Aunty Fay’s state funeral

Function: referential

Writer: writers from ABC News

Audience: ABC News readers

CC: Respect for elders and traditional ceremonies

‘A Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung elder’ declarative sentence

‘smoking ceremony’ noun phrase

‘mob’ noun

‘who's your mother, who's your father’ interrogatives

‘Traditional Owners of the lands’ declarative

Reflects the importance of traditions in Indigenous cultures, and celebrating the lives of people in Aboriginal communities.

‘Traditional Owners of the lands’ displays a use of Standard Australian English, which aims to portray significant respect for Aboriginal communities throughout the country.

Largely these are used to respect Aunty Fay, and the people surrounding her, particularly her friends and family, being polite

Additionally, it will perform an informative function by teaching the audience on her funeral, and further on her culture.

It intends to celebrate the lives of Indigenous peoples, and use the correct language for the traditions of Aboriginal people in order to respect their culture. Therefore, there is importance on using the correct terminology to refer to the practices of Aboriginal people.

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Aboriginal community leader Aunty Fay Carter farewelled in state funeral service

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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan lauded decades of accomplishments by Aunty Fay Carter, who died in May aged 89.

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SooshiMango YouTube - Our mothers went back to their home town: Ethnolects

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SooshiMango YouTube - Our mothers went back to their home town: Ethnolects

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Greek-Australian English

Use of discourse particles ‘eh,’ ‘ah’

Removal of determiner ‘a’ (eg. [..] was old man)

Elongation of vowels (eg. ‘a’ in Australia)

These convey their history and personal culture, as demonstrated by significant influence from their first language. This includes their socioeconomic status, and family life.

Additionally, they are able to convey a strong connection to family, as demonstrated by the conversations the characters were having, including using the noun ‘cot.’

For speakers of this ethnolect, they are likely used due as English is not their first language, causing them to use language features that better suit their first language of Greek. In this case, it is used because that is what is easiest, and may fit them within the community of fellow speakers.

In this video, it is comedically playing upon the stereotypes of Greek-Australians to build rapport among those who have families that speak this ethnolect.

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Our mothers went back to their home town