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Vol 21 No 4

28 February 2011


 

  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drawing Julia Gillard

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 11 March 2011
    2 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drawing Julia Gillard

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 11 March 2011

    Eureka Street's political cartoonist Fiona Katauskas says she became a cartoonist 'accidentally'. 'I'm bloody glad I did. Cartoonists are lucky folk indeed — able to take all their experiences, beliefs, bile and passion, wrap them in a metaphor and get their fingers inky in the process.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The NSW democracy deficit

    • Tony Smith
    • 10 March 2011
    8 Comments

    If voters are disappointed with Labor now, they could be positively angry after the election. Because the Coalition is a shoo-in to win, the public is showing little interest in policy debates and the media have brought little pressure to bear over policy details and likely costs.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Private school education in purgatory

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 09 March 2011
    3 Comments

    Parents and teachers have absconded. A violent altercation is documented by students with camera phones. During a drug-and-booze-addled party, a girl is assulted and left for dead. A pricey education is no substitute for an ethical framework.

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  • CARTOON

    Cynical youth

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 09 March 2011

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  • RELIGION

    In defence of same-sex unions

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 March 2011
    53 Comments

    There are homosexual persons who enter into loving, faithful and committed relationships. It is difficult to characterise a law that gives non-discriminatory protection to such couples as 'so harmful to the common good as to be gravely immoral' as Benedict has previously done.

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  • RELIGION

    A spiritual reading of the Egyptian Revolution

    • Henri Boulad
    • 08 March 2011
    2 Comments

    It is an absurd confrontation. On one side, a man with empty hands; on the other, a well organised force equipped with batons, helmets and shields. I can still see the young man, like a lion, throw himself against the wall of shields, face tensed, eyes flashing, heart steeled.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Faith in the dark

    • Alex Skovron
    • 08 March 2011

    Once omnipotent night slid over the campsite to reveal nothing beyond a black more dazzling than any darkness could contain, all we could do was inhale an immense presence touching everything, which we called faith.

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  • MEDIA

    Loving addicts like Charlie Sheen

    • Jen Vuk
    • 08 March 2011
    9 Comments

    I sat glued to US actor Charlie Sheen's fall from grace, which came to a head yesterday with his sacking from high-rating sitcom Two and A Half Men. The drama played out by his family, more so than the actor's meltdown, brought back a painful episode from my own past.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Priests, sex and the media

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2011
    13 Comments

    Media coverage of the Church usually assumes priests form a homogeneous and disciplined body whose uniformity derives from fear of authority. Priests are more like franchisees than employees, independent and always ready to grumble. This does not amount to disaffection.

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  • MEDIA

    Footy sex scandal exposes child protection failure

    • Moira Rayner
    • 07 March 2011
    12 Comments

    The girl at the centre of the ongoing AFL sex scandal presents herself as a woman scorned. In truth she's a child in need of protection. Child protection laws once enabled police to ask a court to have a girl made a ward of state if she appeared to be 'in moral danger'.

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  • RELIGION

    A truce between science and religion

    • Ashleigh Green
    • 06 March 2011
    17 Comments

    Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design purported to explain why a creator is unnecessary. John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge University theologian and scientist, has shed light on a new complementary model of science and religion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hating hipsters and bogans

    • Ellena Savage
    • 04 March 2011
    14 Comments

    We wear op-shop outfits, read classics, watch Q&A and sip lattes. There are puerile vanities here, but who doesn't entertain such vanities? Bogans, of course. 

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  • RELIGION

    Australian Catholics facing disaster

    • Paul Collins
    • 03 March 2011
    46 Comments

    The troubles facing Australian Catholicism have been documented in a new report. When people focus on this most think of sexual abuse. In fact this is more a symptom than the actual core of the problem. 

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  • RELIGION

    The trouble with iPad Confessions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 March 2011
    9 Comments

    New communications technology is shaping Church practices, and in the process is raising more fundamental questions about them. The Church holds that faith should be expressed in bodily and communal ways, but it is increasingly difficult to argue this.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Reincarnated goats and the sacrament of change

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 March 2011
    2 Comments

    A hollow booming is the only result of the sickly goatherd's urgent knocking on the church door on the night before his death. The image makes a sad irony of the man's simple faith in the healing power of the ash he earlier swept off the church floor.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mass story

    • Brian Doyle
    • 02 March 2011
    19 Comments

    Not until yesterday had I enjoyed a Mass during which I heard reggae music, washing machines, and an argument about basketball. What could be more beautifully human and holy than sitting over food and telling stories and insisting on miracles, in the company of a child and a dog?

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  • CARTOON

    The current climate

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 02 March 2011
    3 Comments

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Old men behaving badly

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 March 2011
    15 Comments

    Old men are hard to top when it comes to abuse of power: Egypt's Mubarak is 82, Italy's Berlusconi is 74, and Zimbabwe's Mugabe is 88. There are good arguments for removing leaders once they reach 'a certain age', even in relatively benign democracies such as Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Asylum seeker's goodbye

    • Various
    • 01 March 2011

    It was hard to look back .. for hot desert sands were stinging her eyes .. quickly obscuring aging parents .. waving forlornly from the terminal ... It was hard to cry .. for the three year old .. abducted and murdered .. now decaying in a corner of the family vault.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stealing Libya's revolution

    • Michael Mullins
    • 28 February 2011
    3 Comments

    The revolution in Libya is about the aspirations of the country's youth, not Gaddafi. Yet he has been front and centre of international media coverage. In this way, western media are complicit in keeping him in power and disenfranchising the Libyan people.

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  • MEDIA

    Celebrating the carbon tax

    • Tony Kevin
    • 28 February 2011
    32 Comments

    At last, an Australian government has presented for public consideration an intelligently conceived framework for a national carbon emissions plan. Has Gillard broken her pre-election 'no carbon tax' promise? Does it matter?

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  • RELIGION

    In bed with Fred Nile

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 27 February 2011
    26 Comments

    In the past, Christian Democratic Party leader Fred Nile saw conservative Muslims as allies. Now he, like the Australian Christian Lobby, prefers to play sectarian wedge politics. Most homophobic Muslims would rather stay silent on gay marriage than support sectarian bigots.

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