Adelaide Student Politics

This is an interview I did with Kristian Moliere and Viron Papadopoulos to promote their upcoming documentary, Electioneering. The documentary was filmed during the 2007 University of Adelaide student elections. It will be screened on August 6th at 8pm on SBS.

HM: Where did the concept for the mY Generation series come from?

KM: It was an initiative that was driven by Screen Australia and SAFC where they wanted to do a television series that used young directors – not necessarily young as in age, but emerging film directors – to direct television. The concept came up through discussions with SBS to do a show that’s directed for and about Generation Y. Generation Y is not a huge demographic for SBS and they obviously want to create more demand for what they do at that age group. The only shows that are really Gen Y focussed at the moment are the Monday night programs which is the South Park, Drawn Together, those kind of programs, and there’s not a lot of cross-over of Gen Y from there to other documentary initiatives and documentary programmes. Maybe sport and Top Gear are the only other things that they’re going to look at. So that’s where it came from. It was a joint initiative between SBS Independent, Screen West and the South Australian Film Corp.

So we [Smoking Gun Productions, run by Kristian and his partner, Shane McNeil] did three episodes, and the other producers from a company called WBMC, and they’ve done three episodes. We were involved with SBS looking at all the submissions for the programs in both states and selected the winning teams. We had probably 20 submissions from directors around Australia and we would look, and we were really trying to find programming that was Gen Y focussed, but wasn’t your normal sort of Gen Y. It wasn’t just looking at the internet or – what other things did we get? Y’know, the usual sort of things people talk about that aren’t particularly Gen Y specific. Sexuality, we got a lot on that, and then really obscure topics. We got a lot of episodes on emos. We wanted to broaden the topics we wanted to look at but weren’t your standard Gen Y programs. We had one on Student Politics, but it goes much broader than that, Viron can talk about that, about Gen Y’s focus on politics and how they relate to other issues. The other’s about a hip-hop group, an ethnic hip hop group that challenges racial stereotypes by doing parodies of them [the episode Fresh off the Boat], and we found a lot of really interesting Gen Y aspects to that, not just because of their age, but how they relate on a world scale, that the Gen Y…I won’t go into that too much, but Gen Y’s not particularly racist as a demographic because their world’s so small. They’re used to talking to people from all cultures, all regions, all walks of life on the internet, and their world is quite small. So they don’t have that same sort of level of discrimination that myself as a Gen X’er can have.

HM: Considering how much [Electioneering] focussed on students’ and young peoples’ apathy towards politics, do you reckon that producing something on student politics will get young people to view it?

VP: Yeah, I think so. I think really what the doco’s about is following someone’s story and the drama in that story, so that’s what people’re going to latch into rather than…the issues and that kind of subtext, that’s there as a part of the story of the people. People never tune in to watch apathy, people are going to tune in to watch banners getting burned and people screaming at each other and somebody’s aspirations, whether they commit to being a re-elected president, whether they’re being meant or not, and what happens afterwards. That’s what people are going to tune in for.

KM: One of those things with student politics, when we were doing our research for it we did find that Gen Ys are not politically active any more. Their political…how they view politics is much broader than just what’s happening on a local level, or even on a campus level. They’re really quite politically aware, just on bigger issues.

VP: So much so that it actually…it’s one of those interesting things, they’re so politically aware that it’s almost like there’s this kind of…it becomes background noise, it becomes overwhelming, and then it’s rejected. What’s Labor, what’s the Liberals, what’s the difference, should I care, there’s bigger issues out there in the world than what’s happening here locally either on a federal level or on a state level. The big differences between the political parties just aren’t there any more. Politicians aren’t as highly regarded or as well regarded as they used to be, like if you go into the ‘50s. There’s much more parodying of politics and politicians in the media in general, so they’re not so highly regarded as they once were, and…

KM: Or trusted

VP: Or, yeah, or trusted, I don’t think they were ever really trusted, I think that’s, like, one of the commonalities

KM: I think at some point they were

VP: More than now, yeah

KM: More than now

VP: Like a Menzies or a Curtin, if you go [for] that aura, but now there’s just…because there’s so much media about it, because there’s so much information, there’s too much, it’s an overload, and people turn off. And that’s where it comes from, it’s not just because they’re lazy or disinterested – there is an interest there – but because of the way the politics is fed to Gen Y – on the net, on the radio, on the news, I mean, to people in general, it’s something that’s turned off from because there really is the feeling that you can’t make a difference, there really isn’t a lot of point engaging, because ‘what is my vote, what is my participation in this gonna change?’ is really the feeling. There’s a pretty strong feeling of cynicism, yeah, more than apathy, the apathy comes about from the cynicism. But it’s a healthy kind of cynicism, and this is one of the interesting things about the students in Electioneering…the research I did shows that Gen Y’ers, if they can make a difference to something immediate to them, they will, so they’re more likely to be vegetarian for political reasons or get involved in a community activity or something like that where they can make an immediate effect, or volunteer where they can make an immediate effect and see the effect they’re making and act politically in that way. Or just use less electricity. That’s environmentalism, but it’s political as well. So at Adelaide University, the students, the student politicians are doing that, they’re trying to make a difference where they can make a difference, in an environment where they can get elected and start to try and make changes and bring about real change that’s tangible there at Adelaide University, be it saving Unibar – or not, as the case may be – so that’s kind of what it’s about. Then, outside of that small group of student politicians, and it’s a small niche, like, it’s a little clique. Outside of that, the greater student population views them in the same way they view politics and most politicians, like, what difference will you really make at the end of the day

KM: Other than furthering your personal careers and getting into the major political parties?

VP: Absolutely, hence the cynicism. And then you have the apathy, it’s like, you’re just doing this for yourself, you don’t really care, you won’t really make a change, so I’m not going to spend five minutes voting, I don’t care. I mean, voter numbers are…I think it was, like, two and a half thousand last year. I went to Adelaide Uni, I put on the 1996 Adelaide Uni O’Ball, I was an O’Camp Leader, I had some involvement, I wasn’t a student politician but, I kinda got involved along the way, sort of swept along with other friends who were involved.

HM: How different was the politics then?

VP: I wasn’t involved in the politics, so I couldn’t tell you. Friends said ‘put your hand up to do this’, other friends had done it, and I thought that’d be cool to give that a shot.

KM: I was at Adelaide, I graduated in ’91, so fifteen odd years ago, and I never voted in student elections. I was as apathetic about student politics as a lot of the people we’re seeing now, and I’m sure Shane, the other producer, was at Adelaide Uni ten years before me, same sort of deal. And you look back and think, well, that really hasn’t changed all that much. What’s peculiar about this group? And that’s what we had to bring out in the documentary. The original draft of the documentary that SBS saw went through some changes because they couldn’t see the difference between when they were students and the students now. Always, student politicians for us, we’d run the other way as soon as we saw them.

VP: One of the big differences now is VSU. I think that’s the single biggest difference between then and now. And that’s a product of the times, and a product of the politics that are done. And that may change given what Kate Ellis is trying to do with the Labor Party but last year, what I think made the hugest difference at Adelaide Uni for me was the impact of VSU. When I was at university, the student union was really, really vibrant, there was stuff going on left, right and centre. The amount of crafts facilities, there was a dark room, you could make your own t-shirts, all that stuff was available to you, and having gone back to Adelaide University, that’s all gone. It just seems to be, like…

KM: The campus culture has just gotten stripped, and it’s just a place where you study.

VP: Very much so.

HM: You said you came from Adelaide Uni; was that why you filmed it there?

VP: No. I was looking around for a story for my business partner, and he came across an article about Adelaide University on the net, I think it was in AdelaideNow. It was about Alex Barratt getting the sack and all the furore surrounding that, and I thought ‘well, there’s something going on there, there’s action happening and there’s gotta be some sort of carry on from that. So I interviewed Chin Woon Cheah and David Wilkins to find out what it was like last year, and it sounded really interesting, everyone promised screaming matches and banner burnings and fights and friends becoming enemies and enemies becoming friends and they delivered. [laughs]

KM: And SBS saw that footage, that was one of the things that put them onto the episode and got them really excited, they saw, in particular, I think one comment David made in that was the one that hooked them.

VP: That he was only nineteen, and yet he was the figurehead of a four million dollar organisation and he still had trouble paying his bills on time and didn’t know how to use his washing machine. And he was the figurehead of this four million dollar organisation and had to make decisions about which way that organisation was going to go, how to steer it.

KM: That actually played against the stereotype of Gen Y, because if you couldn’t work out how to use your washing machine and you couldn’t balance your bills then why the hell aren’t you focussing on yourself, and here’s this guy worried about a four million dollar organisation. And not himself, so we could really see that the stereotypes were going to fall if we did this sort of story.

HM: Was that the most interesting part of it for you guys, or were there other points that stood out among it?

VP: There was just so much, half an hour doesn’t do it justice.

KM: How many hours did you shoot?

VP: Too many. Way too many.

KM: Eighty hours?

VP: More than that. There were so many storylines going on. Seeing back room machinations, seeing deals made, the backflips, the double crosses, the dirty dealings and the amount of paranoia and distrust, I think, was the most interesting thing for me. ‘Cos no-one really trusts anyone, and it’s hard… and I think, fair enough. Student politicians are investing so much of themselves and so much of their time. The ones that are really serious about it, so much of themselves and so much of their time into doing this thing. And going out in election week is just so awful, trying to get people to vote. It’s just a horrible thing to put yourself through.

KM: It’s essentially begging. It’s one step away from begging.

VP: It is.

KM: You can see them on their knees in the episode, begging for votes.

VP: There’s bigger stuff at play, I mean, it isn’t just Adelaide University. A lot of these guys have aspirations beyond university into Liberal and Labor party politics, and this is where they prove themselves to their peers outside of university. So it does mean a lot to them to get through this and win. It is like sport in a lot of ways. It was also really interesting to see a guy like Xan come along and just, not really give a toss and get elected purely on popularity and romp it in. That was great. The most memorable thing for me was at one point, somebody thought that the documentary was actually a ruse, and I was just there to get information from behind the lines of the other groups. Cos I had access to everyone…pretty free reign through all the meetings and that kind of stuff, which was great. I was really careful not to betray any confidences, but when one person was grilling another about where they got their information from, the finger was pointed at me as the one who’d spilled that info. I don’t know what they were thinking. Perhaps that the documentary wasn’t real and it was just to get behind enemy lines.

KM: Pretty elaborate!

VP: That’s the kind of level of paranoia that’s at work though.

KM: That’s when it’s getting really tight and tense though, it’s not in the cold light of day that they think those sort of things. ‘Cos it really got intense.

VP: Very, yeah.

HM: After looking at it as it came together, and filming it all during election week, were you surprised to see the Unibar go?

VP: I was and I wasn’t. I think the Unibar going, as far as an issue goes, was…I could see both sides of the argument. I could see why you’d go one way and why you’d want to go the other, so I think it’s sad that it went, and I think it’s sad that the Uni put the Union in a really black and white either-or kind of choice, I think that’s the worst of it. That shouldn’t have happened I don’t think.

KM: I only watched the footage that Viron cut but it almost felt like there was no choice by the end of it. You watch David’s decision making process, and he’s really trapped, there was nothing he could do. The decision he made was the right decision in those circumstances. But viewed by the rest of the student population - who didn’t have our level of access, who didn’t have our level of insight, weren’t seeing all of what was going on in the background – it appears like a massive backflip.

HM: After the elections, rumours came out that David knew about the potential sale of the Unibar and the reasons for it and he had indicated his support for it to the university during the elections or the week before. Did you see any of that?

VP: No. No, all I saw was what you know, which was everyone trying to question him on when, in fact, he knew, and whether what he was doing was a cynical ploy. When did he actually know? But only David can really answer that, whether you believe him or not is up to you, I guess.

KM: All the major participants in the documentary have sat and watched it with us, and they never came back to us with issues of fact.

VP: I know some of them are really nervous about it coming out, but so am I. (laughs)

HM: Beyond the obvious generational link, do you see other similarities between this, Fresh off the Boat and Age of Avatars [the two other films produced by Smoking Gun Productions for this series]?

KM: I think they cover different aspects of Gen Y that we could see, I mean, Avatars is just a great one from our point of view, because we didn’t grow up with the internet as Gen X’ers. It was really quite eye-opening to watch how that documentary unfolded and to really understand that for this group of Gen Y’ers, the internet was really very much part of their real world, and is not something over there, it’s very much part of their world, and they don’t categorise it differently like I would. So their online persona and their offline persona are one and the same, they’re just another aspect, so the fact that they’ve been talking to someone they’ve never met is not unusual, they don’t see anything unusual about that. That episode also brings up a lot to us about the nature of friendship and the nature of their social circles. Gen Y has had a lot of [people] – not all of them, naturally – [who] come from broken homes where the divorce rate was a lot higher. So their social circle becomes more friend based than family based comparative to us.

HM: Did you have a $4.50 beer while you were there?

VP: I did, yeah.

(Viron leaves.)

HM: Do you have any suggestions for anyone who’s at uni already and looking to get into the [film] industry?

KM: Yep. The best thing to do is get involved with projects. Get involved with organisations that are entry level organisations. It’s really just trying to find a way of bridging your tertiary education with the professional world. There’s organisations like the Media Resource Centre that have great initiatives for student film makers to make projects, to get equipment, to have their projects then screened in curated programs and short film programs. Meeting a lot of like-minded people along the way. Because really it’s just taking steps to make a funded short film, to make a feature film. There’s not a lot of quick steps unless you’ve got a lot of money and you can make a feature film like Murali did with 2:37. That’s just a one-in-a-million chance. First of all make a film, and secondly have it be that good people want to see it. So, places like the Media Resource Centre, there’s a lot of professional organisations that you can join as associate members and get involved in seminar programs. So for writers there’s the Australian Writers’ Guild, for directors there’s the Directors’ Guild of Australia, for producers there’s the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia. The SAFC [South Australian Film Corporation] have regular newsletters, you can go to the SAFC’s website and put yourself down so that you get the newsletter and find out what’s going on in the organisation. There’s sometimes opportunities to work on films. The worst jobs you can get are the runner jobs or the driver jobs, but to get a job as a runner means that you’ve got an industry position. And if you’re really good at doing runner, the next time that the same head of department comes along, they’ll pick you to do something else, or to do the runner job again. If you’re happy starting from the bottom, you can get in and work at those sort of things. But get involved with some of the entry level organisations. It’s really, really hard. Since I’ve left uni, I’ve been making short films for close to

20 years, music videos and things like that. This is my first fully funded feature film we’re making at the moment, and it’s really taken concentrated effort for ten years to get to that sort of thing. It’s a process. If you’re persistent, and you’re really passionate about it and you’d be miserable if you weren’t a film maker, keep going.

HM: What do you think are some of the particular Gen Y aspects of Electioneering?

KM: I had a different opinion before I started than when I finished. I actually got quite attached to the group of politicians. I liked it that they were really passionate about their politics, and it was something I was a little surprised about. Because we get told that Gen Ys will only do something if it affects them personally. They’re not interested in anyone else, they’re ruthlessly ambitious and all these type of negatives. And these guys were really quite passionate about student politics and trying to make a difference and trying to help the student body and just being battered for it. Not getting any credit for doing those sorts of things. So I think those generalisations of Gen Y don’t actually hold up. They are a good tool to categorise a whole generation, but how can you possibly categorise everyone the same way? So that’s what we got from making this: that you just can’t do that. Gen Ys are not that easy to categorise.

If you miss the episode, you can still catch it at the website. Go there anyway to find out which student politician you are most like!