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Vol 21 No 1

17 January 2011


 

  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Eureka Street's founding vision

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 28 January 2011
    4 Comments

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making flood reconstruction fair and sustainable

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 28 January 2011
    18 Comments

    The levy announced yesterday is progressive, precisely the type of approach that social justice principles and practicality dictate. But it is a one off response and another example of why we need to fix Australia’s taxation system for the long term.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Eureka Street's founding vision

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 28 January 2011
    1 Comment

    Eureka Street’s founding publisher Michael Kelly is one of the Australian Jesuits who had long discussed a journal of intelligent comment on topical issues in church and society. The models included long-running Jesuit publications overseas including America in the USA, established in 1909, and the The Month in Britain (1864-2001).

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Inside and outside the Facebook fishtank

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 January 2011
    3 Comments

    A lot of people say they committed Facebook suicide – deleting their profile – after seeing the new American documentary Catfish. 'Even I've scaled back,' says co-director Ariel Schulman. 'If a "virtual relationship" affects you emotionally, then it's not virtual at all.'

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    China's 'incremental' democracy

    • Mark Chou
    • 27 January 2011
    8 Comments

    Last week's media coverage of Chinese President Hu Jintao's Washington visit focused on Senator Harry Reid's offhand remarks. Reid called Hu is a 'dictator', describing his government as 'different' to that of the US. But China is on a path towards a form of democracy that may be no less democratic than many western nations.

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  • CARTOON

    Australia Day

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 26 January 2011
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons about Australian identity from 'The King's Speech'

    • John Warhurst
    • 25 January 2011
    18 Comments

    Some advocates of monarchy have jumped on the film The King's Speech as evidence that Australia needs a monarch. Monarchists often argue like this when they want to personalise the constitutional debate by concentrating on a member of the Royal family with attractive features.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On the waterfront in Genoa

    • Helen Koukoutsis and Jennifer Compton
    • 25 January 2011

    A young man, made of ebony, from Senegal or Somalia or the Côte d'Ivoire, sat down beside me gracefully… I gave him the twenty euro that I had to hand. Stammering, ill at ease, he asked me what I had in mind.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Oprah's self-serving Australian adventure

    • Michael Mullins
    • 24 January 2011
    15 Comments

    Australia Day is supposed to make us feel good about ourselves as a nation. This year, the scheduling of the four-part TV event Oprah's Ultimate Australian Adventure ensures there's every chance we will feel good about ourselves, but as individuals.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Wattle Day should be our national day

    • Paul W. Newbury
    • 23 January 2011
    37 Comments

    Indigenous antipathy to Australia Day is deeply entrenched. Wattle as a symbol offers an alternative because it is native to this place, and it is not a memorial of our ties with Great Britain. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian politics could use a dash of vitriol

    • Edwina Byrne
    • 20 January 2011
    16 Comments

    The speeches of the Tea Party movement, for all their faults, are notable for their vivid symbolism and appeal to values. When was the last time you heard an Australian politician invent their own intelligible metaphor?

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  • RELIGION

    Stories of rebuilding after the floods

    • 20 January 2011
    9 Comments

    When the media focus on expressions of anger and try to identify people to blame, they encourage people to remain paralysed by grief and to break connections precisely at the time when they need to be strengthened.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The back to school blues

    • Brian Matthews
    • 20 January 2011
    3 Comments

    BACK TO SCHOOL shout the billboards and shop window displays and it's still only mid January. I suppose this infuriates present day kids as much as it used to stir my juvenile ire. For former teachers, 'Back to School' arouses other, less youthful associations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Unmarried misery

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 January 2011
    1 Comment

    Although Mary is an infuriating ninny, we get to know her well enough to appreciate that gasping for breath beneath her wine-swilling garrulousness are deeply felt insecurities and a desperate desire to be loved.

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  • MEDIA

    Coke selling sexism

    • Ronnie Scott
    • 19 January 2011
    6 Comments

    It scratches a weird, deep itch when we're made to want to buy something in a way that feels intelligent and fresh. Coke manages to scratch that itch frequently. But the new Diet Coke ads feel lazy, cheap, sexist, and patronising.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Australia through American eyes

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 January 2011
    15 Comments

    Do Australians hate Americans? No, because Americans invented basketball. What do Australians eat? Yeast paste. It tastes like someone ground up a penguin and then left it in the rain for a month before adding rubber and dirt to it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    God understands more

    • Chris Wallace-Crabbe
    • 18 January 2011
    1 Comment

    It all takes place because of some geological fault. I think God understands more things than he is given credit for.

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  • CARTOON

    Unforeseen side-effects of the floods

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 18 January 2011
    2 Comments

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard, Bligh and leadership in a crisis

    • Moira Rayner
    • 18 January 2011
    22 Comments

    I am bloody tired of journalists comparing one woman against another, as if there were a competition to find the 'real' woman leader, a winner and losers. That isn't how women tend to use power: it can be shared, and used for the common good. We saw Bligh and Gillard doing it, and didn't get it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Addicted to disaster porn

    • Michael Mullins
    • 17 January 2011
    10 Comments

    Durng the past week, we've been treated to wall to wall television coverage of the Brisbane and Queensland floods. Some would argue that television, and indeed the media in general, is all about fulfilling the human need for gratification, prurient or otherwise. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Diary from the eye of the flood

    • Susan Prior
    • 17 January 2011
    12 Comments

    According to predictions based on earlier floods the ground floor of my house was was going to be inundated, so all our worldies were brought upstairs. We waited. It rained. Then on Tuesday morning something interesting started to happen.

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