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Vol 29 No 2

27 January 2019


 

  • ECONOMICS

    Breaking down Hayne's humanistic report

    • R. P. Lim
    • 07 February 2019
    2 Comments

    Hayne's report brings into play ideas surrounding collective humanistic values and goals, and natural law principles based on commonly understood ethics and moral standards. What is striking is how the financial services industry has dehumanised consumers, and those within the industry providing the services at the frontline.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In praise of unsmiling Hayne

    • Moira Rayner
    • 07 February 2019
    9 Comments

    An academic friend of mine made a dilligent and well-argued case that Hayne had failed in his task to 'tackle bank structure'. With the greatest of respect, this was not the job Hayne had to do. To imagine otherwise is to misunderstand both the law, and what it is 'meant' to do in the hands of those who are judicially trained.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In dialogue with China's avant-garde

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 06 February 2019
    2 Comments

    The exhibition stands as a celebration of the work of Xiao Lu and her contemporaries, who continue to clothe their lived experiences in images, acts and utterances, and in so doing communicate with others about the state of their lives as women and artists, their society and their nation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't sit and watch antisemitism rising

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 06 February 2019
    21 Comments

    In the wake of the St Kilda riots, while I sit petrified, third generation to Holocaust survivors, I can't stop thinking about my grandfather, who lived and came to Australia. In 2018 there was a rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia compared with 2017, which also saw a rise on previous years.

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  • CARTOON

    The compassion of Peter Dutton

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 05 February 2019
    3 Comments

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Take me back to Ulan-Ude's frozen wastes

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 05 February 2019
    2 Comments

    As the week progressed and the temperature headed beyond 40 degrees, my vigour flagged like that molten candlestick. I longed to return to the chill of Ulan-Ude, where our eyelashes froze to white feathers and the snowflakes fell in limpid perfection and the cold shook us so viscerally, so expansively, from our spiritual slumber.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Banks remain protected species

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 February 2019
    10 Comments

    Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial sector has named, shamed and excoriated banks, regulators, insurance companies and other financial services businesses to the extent that you would think they are now extremely vulnerable and universally unloved. That would be a mistake.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A half way to live

    • Peter Bowden
    • 04 February 2019
    1 Comment

    Distant she said. Superficial was his word. Words to describe all that they cared, after the years gone by, long gone, and two children now almost reared. Twenty they were, those changing years. Love replaced by void, even fears. A house, a high hill, ambitious pride. A façade, an emptiness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Art, economics, science, and all that jazz

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 February 2019
    9 Comments

    The Five Quintets is a long, conversational poem of almost 350 pages. In an age that focuses on detail, its topic is vast: the nature of Western modernity and its future. In a secular age its perspective is unobtrusively but deeply religious. It is therefore unlikely to make the best-sellers list. But it is an important and rewarding work.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate indifference is an Aussie tradition

    • Greg Foyster
    • 31 January 2019
    9 Comments

    One of Australia's foundational myths is of white settlers weathering nature's worst. It's actually in our national character — the story we tell about the nation — to dismiss climatic extremes like heatwaves. Maybe one missing part of taking climate change more seriously in Australia is a shift in culture to respect the heat.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cultural change beyond royal commissions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 January 2019
    17 Comments

    Experience suggests that royal commissions disclose only a fraction of unacceptable behaviour committed, and that the cultural attitudes that entrench it outlast the proposed reforms. The reasons for their comparative ineffectiveness can be illuminated by reflection on reforms of the 19th century.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The prayer-poems of Mary Oliver

    • Carol O'Connor
    • 31 January 2019
    10 Comments

    Mary Oliver, who died recently, came to realise it's not just kneeling and kissing the ground that needs to be encouraged, but that the natural world itself, which fed and sustained her creatively and emotionally for a lifetime, is now endangered. We are in danger of wrecking creation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reckoning is due after Afghanistan endgame

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 31 January 2019
    18 Comments

    John Howard promised to 'stay the course' in Afghanistan. So too did Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. So complete was the political consensus that parliament didn't even debate the Afghan intervention until nine years after it began. Now that there's no longer a course on which to stay, we're due some accountability.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Venezuela beset by American dirty tricks

    • David James
    • 30 January 2019
    14 Comments

    If you wish to peer into the heart of darkness, the nexus between big oil and big money is a good place to start. Those who control the energy market and the financial markets control the world. The latest victim of this brutal intersection is Venezuela, a country that has made the mistake of having the biggest oil reserves in the world.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Lecturing Venezuela

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 January 2019
    6 Comments

    Think of how it grates with the non-interference doctrine of the UN. Such interference 'must be forcible or dictatorial, or otherwise coercive, in effect depriving the state intervened against of control over the mater in question'. Yet many countries, most purported liberal democracies, have very happily made Venezuela the exception.

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  • CARTOON

    That sinking feeling

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 29 January 2019
    4 Comments

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The misanthrope on New Year's Eve

    • Geoff Page
    • 29 January 2019
    3 Comments

    Half past ten, I'm off to bed. One more whizz around the sun. Ho hum ... What's the point? If it were the solstice, maybe. All that nonsense on TV. And fireworks, celebrating what? The triumph of chronology? This year maybe I will die ...

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need leaders who are smarter on data

    • Kate Galloway
    • 29 January 2019
    1 Comment

    Transitioning to a networked world replete with data is a challenging task. Our parliamentarians have a duty to appraise themselves of the basics of human rights, data ethics, and the technological frameworks that will deliver good governance. Until then, we will be left lurching from one technology omnishambles to the next.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Brazil President slights indigenous rights

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 25 January 2019
    2 Comments

    During his speech at the World Economic Forum, Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro was adamant that throughout his tenure, the country would be open to global investors. Absent from the equation were the indigenous people of Brazil, who represent a major obstacle for the planned exploitation of territory and natural resources.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons from the case of the lucky refugee

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 25 January 2019
    6 Comments

    Rahaf Mohammed is very lucky to have been granted residence by Canada so quickly. In my nearly 30 years of working with refugees in various capacities, I have never heard of anyone being granted residence as quickly. The speed of the process, and also the way she conducted her case on social media, bear deeper consideration.

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