Holly Cullen

@hollycullenfreo

International law academic living on Whadjak Noongar Boodjar, researching feminist strategic litigation in international law. Cats, cooking and crafts. Dockers fan for AFLW/AFL

627 Folgt2.328 Follower2.702 Posts

YouTube Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir hollycullenfreo.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 13

It's either Hunt for the Wilderpeople or this. I also love The Piano (I listened to Michael Nyman's soundtrack for the film this afternoon), but The Dish and Wilderpeople foreground Neill's humanity.

Movie poster for the film The Dish (subtitle: based on a true story), featuring Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton, the Parkes satellite dish, a rocket being launched, and an astronaut

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 13

Bluesky gets a lot of stick, but today I am pleased that we are more interested in talking about a creative, generous and thoughtful human than topics Number 2 and 3 on this list of trending topics:

List of trending topics on Bluesky (screenshot taken at around 4.45 pm AWST:
1. Sam Neill
2. Nigel Farage
3. Lindsey Graham
4. Climate Change
5. Fantasy Stories

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 4

This too.

Beach path with trees in the background. The sun is rising behind the trees.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 4

There are some pretty amazing fringe benefits for being a #Parkrun volunteer.

View of the Indian Ocean from South Beach, Fremantle. The water is blue and calm, the sky is blue with just a few feathery clouds.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jun 17

Update: it looks like Anna Henderson of SBS has also taken the fight to Hanson:

Screenshot of text from Guardian liveblog, 17 June 2026. Text of screenshot follows:
Hanson spars with SBS chief political correspondent, ‘you’re going to be without a job’

SBS chief political correspondent, Anna Henderson, asks Hanson what she believes should be the gestational limit for abortion. The part has promised to roll back abortion rights for women around Australia.

Hanson won’t put a time on it, and says she’s still accepting of people who need “to have an abortion for medical reasons”, including late-term terminations where the mother’s life was in danger. But she says abortions for sex selection (which experts say is predicated on misinformation) shouldn’t be allowed, nor should abortions “the day before the birth.

Then things get a little frostier as Henderson asks why Hanson wants to scrap the SBS, and says the broadcaster “is providing Australian news in 60 languages - not international news alone”.

Look, I can understand your question. You’re going to be without a a job.

I want them to be able to learn to speak English before they get here, to to get their citizenship, and that would help them assimilate into our society … where is the assimilation? We are a monocultural nation - not a multicultural. And our our language is English.

Henderson pushes back several times, calling out Hanson and says, “isn’t it part of your platform to integrate people from other countries into Australia, to help them become Australian?”

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jun 17

Hanson is DARVO-ing the media:

Screenshot from The Guardian liveblog, 17 June 2026, covering Pauline Hanson's address at the National Press Club. The following is the text from the screenshot:
Over to questions (finally), Tom Connell asks Hanson if she will front up to daily press conferences in front of all media.

Hanson says she won’t be a “football” and has already banned the Guardian and ABC from One Nation events.

She won’t explicitly say whether she’ll do daily conferences and allow everyone inside the tent:

I’m not going to be anyone’s football to kick around when you want to. I want truthful, honest reporting from the the media. You will have access to me.

Connell pushes back and asks if that access will include all media, Hanson replies:

Let’s see how it goes between now and the start of the the campaign. If you want to keep bashing me around, I don’t forget.

I’m like a bloody old elephant.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jun 7

I haven't posted a sunset photo for a while. Here's today, 7 June, South Beach, Fremantle WA. The second photo is of the storm clouds on the horizon (we're getting a LOT of rain tomorrow).

Post sunset at a beach. There are streaky clouds uplit with pink. Towards the right of the photo, you can see the masts of the ships at the sailing club. The water is grey-blue, lapping at the stones of a groyne.

Clouds over the horizon over the Indian Ocean. The water is dark and grey. The sky is pale blue, just after sunset. Barely visible beneath the layer of heavy grey clouds, there is rain falling. The clouds are far away from the shore.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· May 16

Pick a Bond from the photos you already have on your phone.

A middle aged man wearing black tie dinner attire - a black tuxedo jacket, white shirt, black bow tie, black trousers and well-shined black shoes.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Apr 27

Especially sleepy cats.

Othello the ginger cat sleeping on a pile of clean laundry.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Apr 27

@dylangriff10.bsky.social and I renewed our wedding vows today: for better and for worse, for all the steps of assembling IKEA furniture...

A white chest of drawers with six drawers, standing on a wooden floor next to a green painted wall

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Apr 2

Academic Selfie, with @alonso-gd.bsky.social after lunch on London's South Bank - great to meet in person and have a wide-ranging chat about international law and life in the Americas.

A man and a woman, both smiling and wearing glasses, with trees and clouds in the background.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Mar 18

And from the Anglesey Coastal Path. Spring is springing in Britain.

A gorse bush in bloom with golden yellow flowers against a blue sky with a few streaks of white cloud.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Feb 11

@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social is always worth reading, but this paragraph is so on-target:

Trump is so fixated on getting and owning that he does not understand the shiny gold thing is not the Nobel Prize and the building that housed the Kennedy Center is not the Kennedy Center, which was all its people and performances and systems and standing in the world, its meaning and honor and dignity he can never have. He is a deteriorating man living in a wrecked White House trying to shore up his defense against mortality and awareness of mortality by sticking his name on things and grabbing things and screeching things and proclaiming his own greatness. I see him as a falling man grabbing at everything he can on the way down, from buildings to medals to very large islands, but they cannot stop his fall, and a lot of them are slipping through his grasp.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jan 28

Full text of the relevant provision:

The authorities of the receiving State shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of the sending State. The consent of the head of the consular post may, however, be assumed in case of fire or other disaster requiring prompt protective action.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jan 16

Academic selfie, Project Silver Girl, Stage 1, edition.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Dec 24

Mulled wine jelly, the perfect Christmas dessert for a heat wave:

A purple wine jelly from a jelly mold with a Christmas tree design on top.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Dec 22

Academic selfie, glammed up for the 'WFH Christmas office party' at South Fremantle icon Running with Thieves.

Woman with graying light brown hair, wearing a brown and black zigzag stripe dress and a necklace with gold leaves.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Dec 13

@dylangriff10 @bsky.social once again showing why he is a BBQ master - hot smoked salmon ready to take to a Christmas party.

A flowered platter with two large bronze fillets of hot smoked salmon, decorated with lemon slices, resting on a bed of lettuce.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Dec 6

International law friends: you will be amused by this fly repellent machine seen at my local Parkrun.

Box for fly repellent fans called 'No Fly Zone'.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Nov 5

Academic selfie: I love it when a plan comes together (or a three year old necklace perfectly matches a new top) edition:

Woman in sunglasses wearing a red blouse and a black and red necklace that looks like a string of glossy spikes. She also wears red lipstick.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Sep 5

And here again, the Law Commission notes that the Australian Federal Court reached a different conclusion to the UKSC. The case is under appeal, with hearings last month and judgment reserved.

7.162: There are limited legislative precedents for a statutory definition of sex. As we explained in Chapter 3, of the more than 100 New Zealand statutes or regulations that contain a reference to ‘sex’, none define the term. The term ‘sex’ is not defined in any anti-discrimination statutes in the United Kingdom, Australia or Canada, whether at the federal or sub-national level. The United Kingdom Supreme Court has interpreted the word ‘sex’ in United Kingdom anti-discrimination law to mean “biological sex”, saying this means “the sex of a person at birth”. The interpretation of ‘sex’ adopted by the Court was largely based on statutory indicators that are not present in the New Zealand legislation. The Court was at pains to stress that its decision was one of interpretation, not of policy:

(footnote numbers deleted)

(text continued from previous screenshot)
It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of [the relevant United Kingdom statute].

7.164: In reaching a different conclusion about the meaning of sex in Australian anti-discrimination law, the Federal Court of Australia in Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2) similarly saw the issue before it as one of statutory interpretation and noted that it did not “need to determine the metes and bounds of the meaning of sex”.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Sep 5

The Law Commission reiterates the comparison later in the report, rejecting the idea that 'a narrow and biologically determined' meaning of sex would resolve the policy issues of anti-discrimination policy:

3.129: This is consistent with the approach in comparable jurisdictions we have analysed. For example, in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, the United Kingdom Supreme Court held that the terms ‘sex’, and ‘man’ and ‘woman’ have a biological meaning in the United Kingdom’s anti-discrimination statute but stressed this was a matter of statutory interpretation, not of policy, stating:
It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the words “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of [the relevant United Kingdom statute].
3.130: In reaching a different conclusion about the meaning of sex in Australian federal anti-discrimination law, the Federal Court of Australia in Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2) similarly saw the issue before it as one of statutory interpretation and noted that it did not “need to determine the metes and bounds of the meaning of sex”.
(footnote numbers deleted)

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Sep 5

Skimming through the NZ Law Commission report on human rights protections for transgender & non-binary people, and people with innate variations of sex characteristics. These two paragraphs compare the somewhat incoherent approach of the UKSC and clearer approach of Aus Fed Ct to defining sex.

3.119: In For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, the United Kingdom Supreme Court considered a presumptive rule in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (UK) that the gender recorded on a person’s Gender Recognition Certificate is to be treated as their sex. The Court held that this presumption was overcome by statutory indicators in the United Kingdom’s anti-discrimination legislation that the meaning of sex in that statute was “biological”. However, the Court stressed this was a matter of statutory interpretation and that the gender recorded on a person’s Gender Recognition Certificate might be determinative of their sex in other legislative contexts. In other words, the Court acknowledged that sex does not have a single uniform meaning in United Kingdom law.
3.120: The Australian decision of Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2) considered the impact of a person having changed how their sex was listed on the register of births in accordance with the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2003 (Qld). Under the relevant provision, the person’s sex as recorded on the register of births was to be treated definitively as the person’s sex. On that basis, the Federal Court had no difficulty in concluding that the plaintiff was of that sex for the purposes of Commonwealth anti-discrimination law.
(footnote numbers deleted from original text)

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Sep 5

It's 9.02. My cat just meowed at me to get into my home office and start working. Et tu, kitty?

A fluffy ginger cat reclines on a wooden floor, looking up at the camera with intense green eyes

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Aug 12

This is *exactly* what happened in the UK after Brexit - its advocates didn't know what to do with 'victory'. From this article: theconversation.com/how-the-neol...

Text from linked article: The Cold War: victory or defeat?

Slobodian writes interestingly about the 1990s and 2000s, when neoliberals might have been expected to be basking in the glory of having “routed their enemies, won the battle against communism, and conscripted international financial institutions to carry out their world-changing project”.

Instead, observes Slobodian, they “seemed to fear the Cold War had been lost”. The Soviet Union had collapsed and communism was defeated, yet “public spending continued to expand even as capitalism became the only surviving economic system”.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 31

One of the nicer aspects of #phdlife - getting new books in the mail. Thanks to Deakin Faculty of Business and Law for continuing support.

Two books on a desk: one titled The Right to Strike in International Law, and one titled Intersectionality and Human Rights Law.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 28

Minor update/correction: Indonesia, in oral submissions for the Advisory Opinion on Policies & Practices of Israel, used the term derisively:

Screenshot of text:
12. The role of the International Court of Justice is central to safeguarding the so-called “rules-based international order”.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 11

For the purposes of comparison ...

Photo of actor Paul McGann as the 8th Doctor in Doctor Who. He wears a dandyish 19th century type of outfit, including a paisley silk or satin waistcoat, a velvet frock coat and a cravat with a tie pin.

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 10

You know it's bad when The Australian and the Guardian have similar headlines:

Holly Cullen@hollycullenfreo· Jul 4

I have transformed from Super Conferencer back to Academic Everywoman, ready for a 4.5 hour flight home.