Not All Spaces Are for Us: A Response to the Anti-Poverty Centre’s Statement

The Anti-Poverty Centre’s latest public statement is less about accountability and more about damage control. It is a textbook exercise in deflection, whitewashing, and sanitising their image at the expense of the truth. While they attempt to reframe events to save face, the reality is this: they have caused significant harm to two people: including (effectively) sacking an Aboriginal person who dared to raise issues of racism and ableism and have yet to take responsibility for that harm.

On the Tax and Contribution Project

The claim that a workshop was “scheduled without the involvement or approval of the Anti-Poverty Centre (AC) co-coordinators and without any budget being supplied or approved” is outrageous. One of the authors of the AC statement sat in the meeting where the date, time, and venue were confirmed, the flyer agreed to, and the project direction locked in. Additionally, one of the co-ordinators was included in emails about the date and venue that had been booked.

An AC contributor engaged me personally to undertake some of this work, and I did so in good faith. Therefore, to now publish a statement suggesting I acted outside agreed parameters is a blatant misrepresentation. I have the receipts: emails, texts, and meeting notes - that show otherwise. What this demonstrates is not confusion, but a deliberate rewriting of history by some people who were not even in the room.

And PS: they never paid me for the work I did on this project, which included writing two op-eds for them. But yeah, no mention of the free labour they elicit from people, hey?

On Schwartz Media

The AC’s justification for continuing to platform Schwartz Media is flimsy and insulting. To say there were “a range of views publicly expressed by both Palestinian and First Nations activists” ignores the fact that a clear moral picket was established by Palestinian and First Nations people in 2023. APC members have attended meetings in keffiyehs, but when push came to shove, solidarity was abandoned for convenience. That is not principled activism; it is gammin solidarity.

The reality is this: AC dragged their heels. Despite the committee, including myself as co-convenor, calling for this to be resolved, delays were repeatedly engineered. Delay, defer, delay again. This is how moral clarity gets buried under process and excuses.

On Racism and Ableism

AC’s statement proudly notes that “steps were taken” in response to racism and ableism claims. What they do not say is that their “solution” was to cease paying the Aboriginal person who raised these issues. The problem wasn’t addressed: the person was. Silenced. Punished. Removed.

Note in this email below, the committee member is proposing that the work of the Aboriginal contributor be paused because that person has made an “allegation of misconduct” against a coordinator of AC. The AC actually decided to effectively stand down the Aboriginal person who raised the issue of racism. This is an example of one of the many flawed “steps taken" by AC.

And let’s not forget, while this was happening, one of their members took it upon themselves to actively target and attempt to further criminalise a criminalised woman (me). This is the reality behind AC’s talk of “duty of care.”

Frankly, there was one truth in that email above - I do think they should be worried about “partnerships with other organisations,” because if I was the Reichstein Foundation who funded the AC to do this piece work, and found out that there were people engaged to undertake activities on this project who were not paid, and worse, plunged deeper into poverty because of it, I’d be kinda filthy on them.

The Broader Pattern

This statement by AC avoids responsibility at every turn. It minimises, reframes, and outright misrepresents events in order to present AC as a neutral, principled actor. But what we see clearly is an organisation that:

• Punishes dissent.

• Silences First Nations and disabled voices when they don’t fall into line.

• Practices solidarity when it’s convenient and abandons it when it costs them something.

• Plays out the same tired script of white woman tears and self-preservation when challenged.

  
  

I feel really shame job admitting this to you guys in this blog post, but I actually thought I was one of them. I thought I was accepted, part of the Anti-Poverty Centre crew. But the truth is you only belong in spaces like that if you stay useful, agreeable, and never push too hard.

As an abolitionist, I approached this issue with them believing there was room for repair, that conflict could be a generative process, that myself, members of the committee, and AC itself, could come out the other side wiser, more connected, more accountable. I even did some of that repair work myself in the early stages, in good faith, thinking people wanted a positive resolution.

But I learned the hard way that wasn’t true. And then my liberty felt at risk, because for some on that committee, vengeance mattered more than solidarity. The space was not safe. And walking away has been painful: a reckoning that not all spaces are for me, and that AC is no better than the very institutions (and big NGOs) it loves to rail against. Different language, same logic.

I’ve been involved with AC for a long time. I carried real affection for many of the people there. I vouched for them, individually and collectively, in the communities where I live and work. And now I feel not just disappointed, but embarrassed that I let myself be fooled by the performance of radicalism. Because beneath the slogans and the posturing, it turns out they’re just another organisation protecting themselves first, truth last.

In closing

Their statement is not accountability. It is PR spin. And it reveals the Anti-Poverty Centre to be no different from the mainstream organisations they critique: all radical language until someone dares to disagree. Then it’s harm, exclusion, punishment and erasure.

The truth is simple: AC caused harm. Two people have been materially and personally damaged by their actions. No amount of wordsmithing in a statement can erase that. Until they face this reality, anything they say about “solidarity” or “justice” rings hollow.

{And before anyone wants to fly at me for this blog post, let me be clear: as a criminalised woman, I am used to having to keep receipts for everything I say. I have a 17-page document: every text, every email, laid out in a neat timeline that covers the tax project, the so-called “misconduct” issue, and my eventual resignation. I have material proof that much of what AC has published in their statement is a misrepresentation of the facts. Members of that committee would have been wise to ask for details before putting their names to a statement so riddled with inaccuracies. And I know better than most: you can’t just launder your reputation with a statement and expect to come out clean. Further, this blog post is an attempt to set the record straight. As a criminalised woman it matters when facts about me and my work are misrepresented in the world. I live with precarity. This is how I keep myself safe.}