Minister for Women, Meet Noor #SchoolGirlUnderBombs

Today I placed Noor outside the office of Senator Katy Gallagher, the Minister for Finance and Women.

That second title matters. Because if there's one group that should never be made abstract, it is women and girls. Yet the language Australia uses when it backs Trump and Israel’s military action in the Middle East is designed to do exactly that: “We support it.” “We’re not involved.” “We can’t comment on the law.” Meanwhile, schoolgirls and other innocent civilians are dying under the bombs.

Noor is #SchoolgirlUnderBombs. I made her as a simple prompt: a schoolgirl with a single book, placed in front of institutions where foreign policy is shaped, defended and normalised. She asks one question: how far away do children have to be before our “support” stops feeling like complicity?

There's a grim irony in placing Noor here. A Minister for Women should not have to be reminded that women’s safety is not a domestic-only issue, and that “support” for the use of force is not morally cost-free when it's women and girls who end up burying siblings, losing parents, losing classrooms, losing futures.

Australia tries to create distance between endorsement and consequence. We “support” the action, but we are “not involved”. We invoke “alliances” as if that ends the moral conversation rather than beginning it. But support isn't neutral. It's political cover. It's permission and alignment. It's accountability, whether Katy Gallagher and her Labor colleagues like that fact or not.

Noor stands outside the Minister for Women’s office to make a blunt point: if women and girls matter, they matter everywhere. Not only in speeches about equality and safety at home, but in the foreign policy choices we defend, excuse, and normalise.

Noor doesn't need a slogan like our politicians. Her book is enough. Her smallness is enough. The bombs above her say the rest.

If you want Noor in your town, I can send you a Noor poster. Take her to your local MP’s office, a minister’s office, an embassy or consulate, a weapons contractor, or any place where she can make a statement. Photograph her. Post her. Let her be seen.

Email me at gregory.andrews@lyrebirddreaming.com and I’ll send you the details.

Noor #SchoolGirlUnderBombs outside the office of Senator Katy Gallagher.