Does 'state/[hostname]/status' publish to the mqtt broker with a retain flag and can this be turned off if so?

[Puzzlr]

I am trying to establish if the status topic publishes with a retain flag? I do not think the documentation is explicit about this, but in mqtt-explorer I see a yellow "publish" icon in the data window that shows the JSON string. So I think this is a yes.
I am trying to write some HABApp code (a python module that interacts with openHAB) to connect to the Faikin module. HABApp has a class that combines read and publish toppics into one instance to simplify the code. It throws an error however if one topic has the retain flag and the other does not.
Since it is only "nice to have" if Faikin could be set to not post with a retain flag I would like to clarify this. If it is not possible I can stop my endeavours to try to get it to work and use the second best option of instantiating two seperate write and read classes for the topics.

[revk]

I think all my state messages have retain set - this is a feature of the RevK library.