Australian hip-hop duo and members of the One Day crew Spit Syndicate have a bit of a bone to pick with the civically-minded Australians who recently protested Sydney’s lockout laws or anyone who feels the NSW capital got handed a raw deal.
Taking to Facebook, they opted to eschew the usual meditations on the lockout laws, their intended purpose, their ultimate effect, and what they’ve done to the city of Sydney, because many have writhed about it “in far more eloquent ways than we could“.
Instead, the pair took the chance to remind us all that we likely wouldn’t have to deal with the lockout laws in the first place if we took a look at Australia’s drinking culture and “our skewed concepts of masculinity entwined with aggression and violence”.
“We have a problem,” the acclaimed duo write in a post to their official Facebook page. “It’s a problem which manifests itself in domestic violence, coward punches, the widening gap between how men and women are treated, paid and valued.”
“We’re long overdue to have this conversation. The lockout laws are culturally regressive and overwhelmingly ineffective. Moral panic whipped up by conservatives with the help of the Murdoch press, seized upon by gambling magnates and property developers set to make a killing.”
We all agree that demonstrations like the Keep Sydney Open and Reclaim The Streets rallies were awesome displays of what can be achieved when passionate (primarily) young people band together around a common ideal, there’s no arguing that.
Much has been written about the current lock-out situation in our hometown of Sydney and the crippling effect it has had…
Posted by Spit Syndicate onMonday, March 28, 2016
However, in their post, Spit Syndicate members Nick Lupi and Jimmy Nice urge fans to make sure there’s enough passion and civic duty to go around for what are “far more important issues that Australians should be up in arms about”.
“Indigenous disadvantage and the failure of governments/mainstream society to give enough of a fuck to try and fix it, our truly abhorrent treatment of asylum seekers… the far right dinosaurs who stymie any attempt to bring Australia’s social policies out of the dark ages, to name a few.”
Before signing off, Lupi and Nice remind fans that their “comments above about skewed concepts of masculinity & aggression do not mean you can’t give the finger to gronks” – phew.
