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‘People ask me what my style is. I don’t know. It’s just colourful. It depends on the mood of the day.

‘It’s kind of like a piece of art for me. I don’t do drawing – I don’t know how to do that kind of thing but I can dress up so that’s my hobby.

‘The best place to get some unique things is at markets. I travel around and find little shops and handmade and vintage shops and that’s where I get my good stuff. These handmade overalls are from Osaka in Japan. I don’t like to go to shopping centres. I haven’t been there for a long time. I don’t really buy brand new stuff except really, really amazing stuff that’s unique.

‘I try to wear something different every Saturday when I run my market stall. I’m a part of my business so I think I’m just one piece and I’m with my stall so I always try to think about what I should present today.’

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‘I’m one in a long line of people who’ve been assaulted of late. Everyone has been a target – transgender, gay, lesbian – people who look different. I’ve heard of punks getting assaulted, goths getting assaulted – it’s insane. I’ve heard of racist attacks. There are people who are going out here on a Friday or Saturday night that would have never, ever come to Newtown previously. It’s the lockout laws in the CBD that have caused this.

‘The most upsetting part was I knew this was coming. Me and my band Love Maul were supposed to play at the Town Hall Hotel. I noticed there was a group of young men following me around yelling out “faggot”. One of them kept deliberately bumping in to me. I warned the security guards and they did nothing. I went upstairs to find our drummer and as I’m walking through the smoking area, my pony tail got yanked really hard and they yelled “faggot” again. Long story short, one of the guys grabbed me by the shirt, pushed me and then I got king hit. The next thing I can remember, my head’s down low and I’m just getting repeatedly punched in the face. But then they let the guy leave. People who were downstairs have told me he was ushered out by security on to the station concourse and told to leave.

‘They didn’t even call me an ambulance. I had blood coming out of my eye, my ear, my nose, my mouth – there are cuts all through it. The fact that a performer can be assaulted like that; someone who’s there to make the pub money, they didn’t care. They just didn’t care.’.

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‘When I think about the difficulties that all parents face in raising their children and try to imagine parenting in the prison-like environment of a detention centre, it’s impossible to fathom the challenges that mothers in detention must face.

‘We’ve all heard the damning reports about mental, physical and sexual abuse, medical neglect, children suffering from psychiatric disorders and attempting suicide, but I don’t think any of us can really know how hard it is to parent in that kind of environment. I do know that in order to leave your homeland and culture and risk everything for the chance of a better life for your family, takes incredible determination, resilience and courage. Surely, people with these qualities are people we should be welcoming to our country.

‘I’ve just finished co-directing a film that speaks directly to mothers in detention both in Australia and on Nauru. We hope that the film may give those women and their families some small comfort that there are many Australians who know what’s happening to them, who care and who are actively working to change the situation.’

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‘I was born with a mild-moderate hearing loss in both ears and got hearing aids when I was 10 and that’s when it began. I felt like it was a problem. I was really embarrassed about wearing hearing aids and would never wear them in public. I also had this idea that somehow by having a hearing loss I was not going to be as smart because I wasn’t able to hear everything.

‘My way of dealing with it was to ignore it. I refused to wear my hearing aids in public. I didn’t even wear them to uni. I thought that wearing hearing aids was ugly and not cool so I didn’t wear them. I felt people would judge me.

‘It wasn’t until last year when I started to wear them that I had one person say something to me. He saw them and asked me if I’d had an operation. I told him they were hearing aids and that they help me to hear. He then told me what I needed to do to fix it was to eat lots of vegetables and drink lots of milk! I was in shock. I didn’t even know what to say!

‘I realised if I was going to change people’s perspectives, I was going to have to put them out there and not be ashamed anymore.

‘Hearing loss is this sort of invisible disability. It’s not something people can see so people don’t necessarily talk about it so then we keep internalising it.

‘The only barriers are people’s perspectives. There is nothing stopping you from communicating with a deaf person. We’re all humans after all. We’re all people who can find a way to communicate.’