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Vol 22 No 4

27 February 2012


 

  • AUSTRALIA

    Wayne Swan, Clive Palmer and the gospel of wealth

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 09 March 2012
    10 Comments

    Mining in Australia has assumed the mantle of the untouchable, so much so that taxing its proceeds is deemed by some to be unpatriotic. What matters to Swan is maintaining the idea, however illusory, that Australia remains an equal country. 

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Flattening the Church

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 09 March 2012
    9 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Flattening the Church

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 09 March 2012

    Prominent lay Catholic leader and public servant Robert Fitzgerald argues that, as lay people now run most of the Catholic educational, health and welfare institutions, this leadership needs more formal recognition from the Church and should be extended further into parish and diocesan roles.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Women chained to the human dairy farm

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 08 March 2012
    4 Comments

    Women have fought the long, hard fight, marching into battle with a baby tugging on one heel and a man hanging off the other. And while the man has largely loosened his grip, the baby never will. Many women are still forced to submit, if not to patriarchy then certainly to maternal instinct. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The truth about airborne asylum seekers

    • John Menadue
    • 07 March 2012
    9 Comments

    The High Commissioner for Refugees has warned Australians about 'populist explanations ... and fears that are overblown'. He clearly had the Coalition in mind. One-liners and slogans don't make for credible refugee policy. Neither does recycling failed policies of the past.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When cancer is funny

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 March 2012
    2 Comments

    We follow 27-year-old Adam from his diagnosis through the hazards of chemo to still more hazardous surgery. He is aided along the way by the world's worst doctor and a therapist too inexperienced to be of any help. Some cancer stories are as funny as they are tragic.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Feminism by the numbers

    • Barry Gittins
    • 07 March 2012
    5 Comments

    Various pontiffs and potentates block annulment and divorce. So Harry pushes himself to the head of the queue, rogering the wee chasm twixt church and state. When Anne, too, non-delivers the baby boy jackpot, he manfully sweeps Jane off her feet and Anne's head off her shoulders. Still counting sacrificial sheep? 

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  • CARTOON

    Miner outrage

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 07 March 2012

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Benefits of Australia's UN Security Council bid

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 07 March 2012
    5 Comments

    Critics of Australia's bid to join the UN Security Council have either a narrow view of what constitutes Australia's national interest, or a view of Australian taxpayers as shareholders who should expect a financial return on every investment.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cold showers for unprincipled Labor

    • Zac Alstin
    • 06 March 2012
    15 Comments

    Labor must have anticipated the negative response to its axing of the solar hot water rebate scheme, yet it went ahead. Does this suggest determination, arrogance or desperation? One thing's for sure, the decision contributed to the impression this government has lost its way.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Church transparency key to protecting children

    • David Cappo
    • 06 March 2012
    21 Comments

    The Protecting Victoria's Vulnerable Children Inquiry has set a new benchmark. A particular challenge to churches is the recommendation regarding mandatory reporting for clergy and church personnel. Any equivocation on this would be viewed with disdain by the community.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Last of the cat poems

    • Karl Cameron-Jackson and Mike Hopkins
    • 06 March 2012
    5 Comments

    With fresh blood in your mouth you are no longer cat, house-trained to please. Now you kill wantonly, revel in the fear you invoke in others. Man was created, just like you, to run free in the killing-fields ... Is this what God meant you to be? To revert to what you once were?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Infanticide and the spectre of eugenics

    • Michael Mullins
    • 05 March 2012
    25 Comments

    It's alarming that two Melbourne academics are arguing for the legalisation of infanticide. It is worth recalling that in 1939 academic argument led to the Victorian Parliament legalising eugenics, of which infanticide is a form. Fortunately it was never practised due to embarrassment over the Holocaust.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sex, lies and adoption

    • Lyn Bender
    • 05 March 2012
    25 Comments

    The Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoption has revealed heinous practices. The father of my children was adopted at birth, and as a psychologist I now counsel many who have been part of the adoption triangle. The role of fathers in cases of forced adoption is often overlooked.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    We need a pulpit perspective on Papua

    • Susan Connelly
    • 02 March 2012
    8 Comments

    No one has been held accountable for the human rights abuses that occurred in East Timor, and this has resulted in a further vacuum of human responsibility in West Papua. The Australian Government has neglected the situation, but so too have the churches.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Picking the scab of colonisation

    • John Falzon
    • 02 March 2012
    7 Comments

    The wound of colonisation is not yet healed. The so-called Stronger Futures legislation, which will extend and deepen some of the worst aspects of the NT Intervention, is built on the falsehood that the wound does not exist or is an Aboriginal problem. But it is an Australian problem. It is our problem.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Getting intimate with the da Vinci robot

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 March 2012
    3 Comments

    Invisible hands parted my gown and stroked my spine with stuff that was exquisitely cold. 'Put your bum in there,' he said, 'wriggle round till you're comfortable then lie back.' I knew very well that when I lay back, securely anchored by my bum in the space provided, the adhesive would hold me in its grip.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Polite parents of violent children

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 March 2012

    As with Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap, an act of violence involving children acts as a catalyst to exacerbate the adult characters' prejudices, insecurities and resentments. Aided by alcohol, civility is gradually stripped away as a polite gathering degenerates into bullying and abuse.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Empathy after Labor's knife fight

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 March 2012
    19 Comments

    The battle between Rudd and Gillard supporters was a nasty affair and it is hard to see that good will come out of it for anyone. But its defects provoke reflection about the qualities that might enable public conversation to contribute to an enhanced sense of human possibility.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sydney and Melbourne archbishops of art

    • Rod Pattenden
    • 29 February 2012
    3 Comments

    Culture in Australia is big business. The role of director of an art gallery involves all the flash of celebrity and the smoky mirrors of politics. Now that the Art Gallery of NSW has announced the appointment of its new director, the pressure is on for Melbourne's NGV.

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  • CARTOON

    Cottoning on to K. Rudd

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 29 February 2012

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Catholic writers' agnostic appeal

    • Lucas Smith
    • 29 February 2012
    7 Comments

    The priests are ineluctably compromised: one has capitulated to state pressure to marry; the other has fathered a daughter and drugs himself with alcohol. But the author's achievement, and a mark of his faith, is his ability to 'distinguish ... between the man and the office'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Jesus and his kids

    • Various
    • 28 February 2012
    3 Comments

    they say what's with the whole guy on the cross thing, man, that's macabre, that's sick, you people look at a guy dying of torture every day, you hang him in your churches and houses and offices, you carry a dying guy in your pocket, that's just weird, and I try to say he's a dad ...

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard's guts and glory

    • Moira Rayner
    • 28 February 2012
    49 Comments

    This rough, tough former workplace lawyer came, as we knew she does, into her own when she was on her feet, fighting for her political life. Now for the first time since she put on the prime ministerial stilettos in 2010 we can sense the steel core within those blue suede size 36 heels.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    All democracies great and small

    • John Warhurst
    • 27 February 2012
    5 Comments

    From strata communities to federal politics, citizens of democracies exhibit similar characteristics. These include limited knowledge and interest, suspicion of office-holders, and assertions of self-interest. Those who stand for election deserve more credit than they often get because they are a small minority.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dysfunction in the Church and the ALP

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 February 2012
    13 Comments

    As an institution stricken with dysfunction, the ALP shares a bleak outlook with unions, churches and other organisations that are similarly sustained by shared ideals and belief systems, but are struggling. They've lost their nerve and no longer know how to be authentic.

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