SocietyApril 21, 2021

Egg Boy on the bubble, stubble and causing trouble

Alex Casey

Senior writer

Share Story

×

Share Story

×

Australia Week: Alex Casey has a chat with Egg Boy, aka Will Connolly, the Aussie teen who went viral after egging Fraser Anning in 2019.

To mark the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble, The Spinoff is casting an eye across the ditch all week – read our Australia Week content here.

It was the egg crack heard around the world. In 2019, after seeing Australian senator Fraser Anning’s appalling remarks about the Muslim community following the Christchurch attacks, 17-year-old Will Connolly picked up a single egg that, although he didn’t know it at the time, would change the course of his life. Phone in one hand, egg in the other, he confronted Anning at an event with a complimentary yolk-based hair treatment that quickly catapulted him to viral superstardom.

He only ever thought his 10 friends on SnapChat would see it.

Over two years later, Will Connolly still can’t go out in public without someone yelling “Egg Boy” at him. Now 19, he’s growing stubble in the hopes he might someday be considered an Egg Man, but in the meantime has raised over $100,000 for both the Muslim community in Christchurch and the people affected by the devastating bushfires in Australia last year. On the first day of the trans-Tasman bubble, I gave him a call to see what he’s up to, and if he’s got any plans to visit.

Egg Boy, have you done anything special to mark this special trans-Tasman bubble day?

It’s just been another day for me to be honest, but it’s pretty exciting. I’ve got friends who are travelling over to New Zealand, so I’m happy for them, but just a normal day for me.

And what’s a normal day for you?

Get up, meditate, go to the gym, phone calls and stuff.

Do you have… a job?

I don’t really have a job at the moment. I work with my stepdad doing odds and ends but I’m mainly working on this thing called Regeneration which came out of me raising a bunch of money after the bushfires. I linked up with Magda Szubanski and people from the University of Canberra who work with the military on these trauma and art programmes. We’ve used the money to train up local artists to run their own trauma workshops. It’s really awesome.

Were you involved in this kind of charity work before the infamous egging?

Not really, nah. I was always pretty world-conscious – imbalances in the world always really annoyed me and I always wanted to make a difference. The egging definitely empowered me in that way, it gave me the opportunity to interact with a bunch of awesome people and amazing communities that I wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t cracked the egg.

Just over a year ago you were here visiting Christchurch. What do you remember about that experience?

Words can hardly explain it. It was just such a touching experience. It was incredible to actually meet these people and hear their stories, what they had been through and how they had been healing and rebuilding. It was a massive emotional cocktail of darkness and light, I was so grateful to be welcomed and have that experience. It actually feels like I’ve only just got back from New Zealand – the day I got home was the day that lockdown started.

So you came straight out of quarantine into Melbourne lockdown?

Yeah. The first couple of months really got to me actually, I feel like I was in a pretty shitty place – just like a lot of people were. It made me realise that I couldn’t actually sit with my own thoughts as well as I thought I could, so I pretty much meditated in lockdown for hours a day for weeks. It changed everything for me, it was amazing.

It sounds like meditation is a pretty big part of your life.

A hundred percent. I actually started way back in Year 10 when I was just looking through YouTube and watched something about the benefits of meditation – that it gives you better control over your emotions and control over your life. I gave it a try and it really, really helped me and gave me some pretty profound experiences.

What kind of profound experiences are we talking here?

Just cool stuff like looking beyond the surface level of the now. It’s useful to look at yourself from a non-biased, third-person non-judgemental perspective – really allows you a greater awareness of who you are, what your purpose is. Definitely points you in the right direction.

Did meditation point you in the direction of egging Fraser Anning? It looked like a pretty mindful egging.

I suppose meditation allowed me to see through people’s facade, which probably helped me to do it. Like, just because somebody wears a suit, it doesn’t mean that they have any real authority, it’s just perceived authority. It doesn’t mean I have to respect him.

Egg Boy in a state of absolute zen, milliseconds before impact

What do you think is the true message of the egging?

I wanted to embarrass and shame him. I wanted to send a message that Australians don’t stand for the things he was saying. It was an Australian person that committed these crimes, and to have an Australian senator come out and say this stuff in support of him… I just wanted to give Australians the opportunity to get behind the opposite point of view and say “no, we are not about that”. It was also a way of showing this accumulated into support for Islamic people who have been used as this “terrorist” ploy to go and fight a fake enemy and get everyone scared. I wanted to give them some light and show them that we are there for them.

Did you ever consider using anything aside from an egg?

No, although an ostrich egg would have been pretty funny in hindsight.

If you had to egg someone now in 2021, who would it be?

I’ve been saying that I have one egg left for someone special, I just don’t know who it is yet.

New Zealand has a rich history of throwing things at the heads of politicians.

Yeah?

Including a lamington, mud and a large rubber penis.

I was not aware of that.

What do you think of that information?

Without any context, it just shows how pissed off people are with politicians and that they are bullshit. Not everyone – I have friends who are politicians – but just the whole vibe of them. It shows how much distrust there is in the whole system.

You’ve turned 18 since the egging – does that mean you are looking forward to voting?

I’m actually not looking forward to voting because I still don’t see any change coming from either of the two main parties here, so I really don’t know who I will vote for.

Was there anything else you’d like to say to the people of New Zealand on this special week?

Come on over to Australia, you’ll bloody love it. Everyone that I have met from New Zealand has been awesome, the people seem so much more grounded and extra loving as a population. I’m grateful for all the support in New Zealand, and hopefully I get to come back soon.

We’ve got plenty of eggs here too if you need – Kiwi eggs are really big.

I definitely wouldn’t need a Kiwi egg.

SocietyApril 20, 2021

Mind the gap: How Auckland Transport plans to tackle its diversity problem

Justin Latif

Guest writer

Share Story

×

Share Story

×

With less than 1% of Auckland Transport’s senior leaders of Pacific descent, Justin Latif asks what the council-controlled organisation is doing to turn that around.

“It’s just a battle to be heard.”

Kim* is of Pacific descent, has held a variety of roles across local government, and is very familiar with the challenges faced by Pacific staff in the public sector.

“I’ll point out things that might be against what they are thinking, but it’s put in the too hard basket. At senior leadership level it can be a very alpha-style culture. When engaging with Pacific communities they [the management] want to do a good job, but I don’t think they understand [the issues facing Pacific peoples].”

Auckland Transport (AT) has just released its Pasifika strategy, aimed at growing its Pacific workforce and improving how it engages with Pacific communities. This strategy comes a year after Auckland Council released its own Pasifika strategy, Ara Moana, aiming to improve outcomes for Pacific peoples in Auckland.

Currently 10% of Auckland Council’s total workforce are of Pacific descent, and 4% of its senior staff and leaders are Pacific. At the council’s development arm, Panuku, 6% of staff identify as Pacific, and 3% of its senior staff and leaders are Pacific. At AT, 6% of staff and only 1% of those in senior or professional roles have Pacific heritage, with two-thirds of its Pacific staff working in customer service or service delivery roles.

AT’s head of organisational effectiveness Antony Hall says the council-controlled organisation (CCO) has got to do more.

“If we want to be designing transport for Auckland, we need to have people who work here, who are Auckland and represent all of Auckland.”

And Hall believes this will in turn lead to better engagement with South Auckland’s Pacific-majority communities. He uses the Te Ara Mua Future Streets project in Māngere as an example where consultation between AT and the local community could have been better.

“I do think [Future Streets] is a good example [where] I don’t think we’ve spoken the ‘language’ of [all parts of] Auckland. The questions we need to answer are, ‘how do you know what communities are saying and how do you listen genuinely as an organisation?’ I think it all starts with having a diverse organisation.”

Kim says AT’s new strategy is heading in the “right direction” but the real test will be ensuring Pacific staff are also deeply connected to the communities AT is trying to engage with.

“It will come down to how they hire staff and whether they hire people who are brown and sound a certain way [like existing staff], or actually hire people who are more aligned to objectives they’re trying to achieve.

“You need people who actually come from these areas, who actually know the people, so you’re not just hiring their skills, but their networks, and that’s your connection to these communities.”

Kim says council staff need to be willing to engage with Pacific-majority communities in Māngere and Ōtara over a long period of time and even be willing to pay key leaders to “talk to the community”.

“Council consultations are very transactional, and it works for most communities. You put out a consultation asking for feedback in a place like Mt Albert and bang, you get thousands of responses, but it’s not like that for all communities.”

Auckland Transport’s Antony Hall and Lynette Reed (Photo: Justin Latif)

AT’s Lynette Reed has led the development of AT’s Pasifika strategy. She says staff within the organisation haven’t complained about being treated racistly but there is a recognition that Pacific staff are under-represented in senior management roles.

“We’ve discussed the challenges and pain points around representation and opportunities for leadership, and this is really the result of those conversations. Whether there’s an unconscious or conscious feeling … very few [of us] are in the senior leadership bracket.”

According to the Public Service Commission, the average wage for Pacific women in the public sector is $68,200 a year and $71,100 for Pacific men, while Pākehā women and men earn $84,100 and $94,700 respectively. The Human Rights Commission’s equal employment opportunities commissioner Saunoamaali’i Dr Karanina Sumeo says the wage gap between Pacific peoples and the rest of the public service workforce is “terrible”, but she commends AT for its “courageous” approach in addressing it.

AT’s strategy sets out a number of targets, including doubling the hiring of Pacific staff, doubling the number of Pacific staff in leadership roles, creating leadership pathways for 25 up-and-coming Pacific staff as well as ensuring AT’s senior leaders attend cultural competency training.

And council deputy chief executive Patricia Reade says, in a written statement, it is aiming to have 12% of its senior leaders to be of Pacific heritage: “Our People Workforce and Leadership Development programme requires council to look internally and ensure equitable representation of Pacific staff, particularly at senior leadership level. This is aligned to council’s goal of working to closely reflect the makeup of Auckland’s working age population in its senior leadership team,” (12% of Auckland’s working age population are Pacific).

Sumeo says the setting of targets is the most crucial aspect of AT’s strategy.

“Why I’m excited about AT’s strategy is that it looks like it’s got the buy-in from senior managers with realistic targets. Because what gets counted counts.”

But Sumeo warns that the greatest barrier to reducing pay inequities is the “it’s who you know” culture that exists within many large organisations.

“Yes, we can educate people about their rights, yes, we can change the way people recruit, but what I’m hearing from Pacific people in different sectors is that even when they have the experience and the qualifications, they are just never good enough.

“The inequity obviously relates to subjective, discretionary decision-making from individual managers. [These managers] are basically maintaining that privilege for their own networks. So we’ve got to let go of that ring-fencing of privilege – so that everyone has equal access to opportunities.“

*Kim is not their real name.

In the latest episode of When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks to Wellington city councillor Tamatha Paul and Auckland city councillor Efeso Collins about the battle for housing and climate action at local government level. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.