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Vol 29 No 13

30 June 2019


 

  • CARTOON

    NAIDOC Week 2019

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 08 July 2019
    2 Comments

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The west's fossil fuels problem is strategic, too

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 08 July 2019
    5 Comments

    When discussing climate change, it's easy to depict the world's reliance on fossil fuels as primarily a technological problem, to be resolved by new methods for harnessing renewable energies. But that's only part of the story, as the example of Saudi Arabia shows.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Fool Britannia: On bad mannered Brexiteers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 July 2019
    31 Comments

    As a celebratory anthem, Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', was played, the Brexit MEPs, all 29 of them, turned their backs, thus insulting the Parliament, the young and talented musicians, and Beethoven himself. They clearly did not realise they were demeaning themselves by acting in this fashion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Loathsome 'Handmaid' erases race

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 08 July 2019
    11 Comments

    The main character has a black partner, and her best friend is a black lesbian. Yet there is no exploration of race politics. We are supposed to believe that a world which is both incredibly class-driven and misogynistic is also non-racist. Even though we know through intersectionality theory and basic world history that this never happens.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Counting stars

    • Marilyn Humbert
    • 08 July 2019
    4 Comments

    Her forearm itches, brick wall rough against her back; she counts stars, a rosary, alpha, beta, epsilon, earning the master's cut, enough for her next hit of smack.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Working for a shared Australian identity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 July 2019
    5 Comments

    The NAIDOC theme returns to the other side of the relationship between First and later Australians — that of unity within a single nation — and invites cooperation in a project that matters to all Australians. At stake is not simply the fulfilment of Indigenous hopes but shared pride in an Australian identity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What you notice when you’re not really there

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 04 July 2019
    8 Comments

    I've waitressed at yacht clubs, fire stations, homes. I've seen 16 year olds on their birthdays, old couples on their anniversaries, a surprise wedding. I've watched grandmothers ferrying food to their grandkids, and heard the cadences in people's speech all over Victoria. I learned a lot about people when I wasn't 'really' there.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Nuts and bolts of an Aussie Green New Deal

    • Cristy Clark
    • 04 July 2019
    5 Comments

    A Green New Deal in Australia would mean a stronger commitment to a government-led rapid transition to renewable energy and cleaner transport, with clear programs to support transition to well-paid green jobs in places that previously relied on resource extractive industries. This isn't necessarily as expensive as it sounds.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A close encounter with our ill health system

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 03 July 2019
    10 Comments

    When I found myself facing the prospect of thyroid surgery, I had two options: either I could get it done for free through Medicare or privately at a cost of $11,000. I've been reflecting again on that choice in light of the recent criticism of 'celebrity' brain surgeon Charlie Teo. Australia's healthcare system is not as egalitarian as we think it is.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    You say risotto, I say rah-zotto

    • Sue Stevenson
    • 03 July 2019
    10 Comments

    In Anglo Australia it wasn't the done thing to pronounce a word using its non-English sound. A word incorporated into the language was spoken as its spelling would sound to us. If you did speak a non-English word as it was spoken in its language of origin you were ... well, a bit of a wanker. But things are changing.

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  • EDUCATION

    A student's view of mobile phone bans

    • Ann Maria Sabu
    • 03 July 2019
    4 Comments

    I did not need to put in much effort to imagine what such a ban would feel like. I have already experienced more rigid when I studied in Dubai and in India. I used to witness more interaction among students and more studious class environments in these places than what I do now in a private Victorian secondary college.

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  • CARTOON

    Good ole Aussie know-how

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 02 July 2019
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Folau funds could have served a greater good

    • Chelsea Candy
    • 02 July 2019
    50 Comments

    By close of business on Thursday, the Australian Christian Lobby had raised over $2 million for Israel Folau's legal fighting fund. I can't help but wonder about the priorities of the Christians supporting the fundraiser. As a former community lawyer, I can think of many ways $2 million might be spent to help those facing a battle with the law.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesian democracy is at a crossroads

    • Nicholas Bugeja
    • 02 July 2019
    7 Comments

    Indonesian democracy has proven resilient to challenge and made inroads into combatting problems that have beset the country for decades. But a crossroads approaches. A failure to manage religious radicalism and intolerance, corruption, and other social tensions may imperil or destabilise this democratic epoch.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lost in place

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 July 2019
    4 Comments

    The power of this experience of place prompts reflection on the way in which young people who live in areas marked by multiple disadvantage relate to place. Many say they hate the areas in which they have grown up. This would be an understandable response to a world in which they have found neither opportunity nor beauty.

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  • ECONOMICS

    NZ's riposte to modern economic myths

    • David James
    • 02 July 2019
    5 Comments

    While money can be transacted for things that are bad — air pollution, road deaths, cigarette ads — as long as more transactions occur, it creates the illusion the economy is growing, which, ipso facto, is good. Thus, Japan's GDP rose sharply after the tsunami disaster. New Zealand's initiative will track better what is really happening in the country.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Drowned children point to larger migrant stories

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 01 July 2019
    4 Comments

    To what extent has society reacted to the deaths of these two children? Awareness stops with the available imagery. Drowned children on western shores are processed differently in our psyche to the children killed in drone attacks, their absence of identity compounded by statistics which dissociate humanity from numbers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After Rilke: Visitation of the Virgin

    • Wally Swist
    • 01 July 2019
    4 Comments

    Windswept Judean hills. Not by the sheer vista below could her abundance ever be measured; striding, with each step she believed no one could transcend the largesse she carried.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Spit decisions: DIY tests endanger DNA data

    • Jacinta Bowler
    • 28 June 2019
    6 Comments

    When One Nation puts forward a policy to DNA test Aboriginal people, DNA databases are solving crimes abroad, and commercial ancestry kits are as popular as ever, it's important to ask what we're giving away when we get our DNA sequenced. You'll only ever have one set of genes and once that data is out there it's very hard to get it back.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    A guide to pragmatic climate action

    • Chris Middleton
    • 25 June 2019
    10 Comments

    In addressing these issues as priorities, I would argue for not focusing on big ideological statements or on a one-size fits all climate policy, but rather invest in the resilience and adaptability of a capitalist/consumer system to meet our environmental concerns.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Winner-take-all election narrative doesn't wash

    • John Warhurst
    • 25 June 2019
    14 Comments

    We are expected to believe that all those perceived Labor failures, plus the massive anti-Labor Clive Palmer campaign and the attraction of some positive Coalition policies, only shifted a little over one Australian in every hundred, though more in some states like Queensland and some individual seats. That analysis can't be right.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    First trip to red earth

    • Bernard Appassamy
    • 18 April 2019
    2 Comments

    The isolation is familiar — like the Mauritius I grew up in, but these swans also capture a different Australia to the one I have known until now. What appears spectacular to a tourist travelling in an air conditioned car remains brutal for the locals, as evidenced by the drought and near ghost towns forced to reinvent themselves through tourism.

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