title: Unvoiced: A Fairytale

authors: Sobótka, Ruth Keeling

subjects: dystopian fiction

abstract: Outside the apartment, the Catastrophe is raging. After the Emergency six years before, a combination of nuclear ruin, atmospheric deterioration, epidemic disease and internecine warfare has emptied the City streets. Only children, curiously immune to both the crippling illness and war politics, venture out through the urban pollution to collect supplies and conduct business, ostensibly in their parents’ names.

Anna, mother of two teenage boys, is holed up inside and attempting to stay sane. Formerly a lawyer and relapsing frequently with the new disease, she conducts online affairs under a pseudonym, promoting the underground spread of health-preserving vaccines. Her absent husband, Seb, has long been conscripted to the Front. Anna’s mothering of her children is inflected by complex interdependence and power inversions, honed through long years of domestic isolation. One of her two boys is a daughter, Honey, whose distorted childhood freedom of the street is now threatened by her oncoming puberty. Honey assumes the boyish identity, Jack, which allows her to keep leaving the house, but this places her at risk of infection as well as on-street conscription if identified as an adult. Jack’s relationship with her mother becomes strained, as she grapples with her own maturing body, her mother’s ill-health, the looming restrictions of adulthood and her delegated role as her mother’s Voice.

Meanwhile, in a setting as yet untouched by the Catastrophe, Southland Kiwi farmer Nick views the global situation pragmatically, with an agricultural eye. Only partially aware of the dystopia outside the still-locked borders of New Zealand, Nick’s isolated rural community seems far-distanced from such cataclysmic events. Now suddenly, a strange new disease begins spreading amongst the young cattle Nick is grazing on his family farm. Suspecting that some part of the Catastrophe has reached the far South, Nick begins to research online, and he becomes obsessed with the disasters occurring outside New Zealand. As he invests more in his online persona, the international Catastrophe and the people living through it become more urgent to him than the issues of his own farm and family.

Spanning the fractured global story of our times, Unvoiced: A Fairytale draws on a range of voices from our post-pandemic moment. This unfurling dramaturgy of disorder juxtaposes divergent perspectives, news-clippings, flashbacks and fever dreams to weave a twisted fairytale in five Acts. Its flickering reportage of tentatively connected storylines explores a near-future in which disaster-hardened adults become entrapped in worlds of their own making, while the younger generation become carriers of disease, sexual violence, cynicism and disabling propaganda. Personal and social trauma embeds in family narratives and becomes intergenerational. New forms of identity and relationships unfold in the digital landscapes which connect us loosely, shaping personalities and raising troubling questions about who and where we really are. Which parts of our lives are merely invented, and by whom? What do we really know about our world, and how do we know it? Is the Catastrophe already upon us, or has it been fabricated online, and within us, by paranoid and sickening minds? 

Through haunting fragments and unfinished stories, woven with wistful nostalgia for what we have already lost, Unvoiced: A Fairytale warns of the potential human devastation arising out of the nightmarish conflagration of war, politics, disease and climate catastrophe.

text: Unvoiced: A Fairytale Outside the apartment, the Catastrophe is raging. After the Emergency six years before, a combination of nuclear ruin, atmospheric deterioration, epidemic disease and internecine warfare has emptied the City streets. Only children, curiously immune to both the crippling illness and war politics, venture out through the urban pollution to collect supplies and conduct business, ostensibly in their parents’ names.

Anna, mother of two teenage boys, is holed up inside and attempting to stay sane. Formerly a lawyer and relapsing frequently with the new disease, she conducts online affairs under a pseudonym, promoting the underground spread of health-preserving vaccines. Her absent husband, Seb, has long been conscripted to the Front. Anna’s mothering of her children is inflected by complex interdependence and power inversions, honed through long years of domestic isolation. One of her two boys is a daughter, Honey, whose distorted childhood freedom of the street is now threatened by her oncoming puberty. Honey assumes the boyish identity, Jack, which allows her to keep leaving the house, but this places her at risk of infection as well as on-street conscription if identified as an adult. Jack’s relationship with her mother becomes strained, as she grapples with her own maturing body, her mother’s ill-health, the looming restrictions of adulthood and her delegated role as her mother’s Voice.

Meanwhile, in a setting as yet untouched by the Catastrophe, Southland Kiwi farmer Nick views the global situation pragmatically, with an agricultural eye. Only partially aware of the dystopia outside the still-locked borders of New Zealand, Nick’s isolated rural community seems far-distanced from such cataclysmic events. Now suddenly, a strange new disease begins spreading amongst the young cattle Nick is grazing on his family farm. Suspecting that some part of the Catastrophe has reached the far South, Nick begins to research online, and he becomes obsessed with the disasters occurring outside New Zealand. As he invests more in his online persona, the international Catastrophe and the people living through it become more urgent to him than the issues of his own farm and family.

Spanning the fractured global story of our times, Unvoiced: A Fairytale draws on a range of voices from our post-pandemic moment. This unfurling dramaturgy of disorder juxtaposes divergent perspectives, news-clippings, flashbacks and fever dreams to weave a twisted fairytale in five Acts. Its flickering reportage of tentatively connected storylines explores a near-future in which disaster-hardened adults become entrapped in worlds of their own making, while the younger generation become carriers of disease, sexual violence, cynicism and disabling propaganda. Personal and social trauma embeds in family narratives and becomes intergenerational. New forms of identity and relationships unfold in the digital landscapes which connect us loosely, shaping personalities and raising troubling questions about who and where we really are. Which parts of our lives are merely invented, and by whom? What do we really know about our world, and how do we know it? Is the Catastrophe already upon us, or has it been fabricated online, and within us, by paranoid and sickening minds? 

Through haunting fragments and unfinished stories, woven with wistful nostalgia for what we have already lost, Unvoiced: A Fairytale warns of the potential human devastation arising out of the nightmarish conflagration of war, politics, disease and climate catastrophe.

year: 2025

title: Contraceptive use in lesbian and bisexual women: Findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health

authors: Ellis, Sonja J.

abstract: Contraceptive use is a key part of sexual and reproductive health for women, yet few studies have explored contraceptive use patterns in lesbian and bisexual women born between 1989 and 1995. Analysing data from an existing cohort study of reproductive-aged women this study explores contraceptive use among lesbian and bisexual women in Australia. Findings of the study showed that lesbians were least likely to use contraceptives compared to heterosexual women and that bisexual women used short-acting hormonal methods at lower rates and long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) such as IUDs and implants at higher rates than their heterosexual peers. There was also a range of changes in contraceptive use across time including a decrease in use of both short-acting hormonal contraception and LARCs in combination with condoms while the use of LARCs on their own increased. The findings of this study also indicate that young lesbian and bisexual women are not only likely to use more than one type of contraception, but that their choice of contraception is dynamic and likely to change over time. This paper highlights the need for research that specifically explores the underlying reasons for patterns of, and changes in, contraceptive use among lesbian and bisexual women to better understand the contraceptive counselling needs of this group.

text: Contraceptive use in lesbian and bisexual women: Findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health Contraceptive use is a key part of sexual and reproductive health for women, yet few studies have explored contraceptive use patterns in lesbian and bisexual women born between 1989 and 1995. Analysing data from an existing cohort study of reproductive-aged women this study explores contraceptive use among lesbian and bisexual women in Australia. Findings of the study showed that lesbians were least likely to use contraceptives compared to heterosexual women and that bisexual women used short-acting hormonal methods at lower rates and long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) such as IUDs and implants at higher rates than their heterosexual peers. There was also a range of changes in contraceptive use across time including a decrease in use of both short-acting hormonal contraception and LARCs in combination with condoms while the use of LARCs on their own increased. The findings of this study also indicate that young lesbian and bisexual women are not only likely to use more than one type of contraception, but that their choice of contraception is dynamic and likely to change over time. This paper highlights the need for research that specifically explores the underlying reasons for patterns of, and changes in, contraceptive use among lesbian and bisexual women to better understand the contraceptive counselling needs of this group.

year: 2026

title: Maori internal and international migration at the turn of the century: An Australasian perspective

authors: Bedford, Richard

abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century there were two major national clusters of Maori: New Zealand, the ancestral home for Maori, and Australia, home to a much smaller Maori population from the early years of the nineteenth century. In the 2001 censuses of New Zealand and Australia, the usually resident Maori populations were, respectively, 526,281 (ethnic group classification) and 72,956 (ancestry classification). In this paper we examine four dimensions of Maori population movement between 1996 and 2001 using the census data from New Zealand and Australia: 1) internal migration between rural and urban areas in New Zealand; 2) internal migration between rural and urban areas in Australia; 3) migration into New Zealand of Maori resident overseas in 1996; 4) migration into Australia of Maori resident overseas in 1996. There has never been a comprehensive assessment of Maori migration in an Australasian context before, but in the light of developments in population exchanges between New Zealand and Australia this sort of analysis is critical if one wishes to understand contemporary Maori population dynamics.

text: Maori internal and international migration at the turn of the century: An Australasian perspective At the beginning of the twenty-first century there were two major national clusters of Maori: New Zealand, the ancestral home for Maori, and Australia, home to a much smaller Maori population from the early years of the nineteenth century. In the 2001 censuses of New Zealand and Australia, the usually resident Maori populations were, respectively, 526,281 (ethnic group classification) and 72,956 (ancestry classification). In this paper we examine four dimensions of Maori population movement between 1996 and 2001 using the census data from New Zealand and Australia: 1) internal migration between rural and urban areas in New Zealand; 2) internal migration between rural and urban areas in Australia; 3) migration into New Zealand of Maori resident overseas in 1996; 4) migration into Australia of Maori resident overseas in 1996. There has never been a comprehensive assessment of Maori migration in an Australasian context before, but in the light of developments in population exchanges between New Zealand and Australia this sort of analysis is critical if one wishes to understand contemporary Maori population dynamics.

year: 2004