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The news last week of former Pinochet era intelligence agent Adriana Rivas' arrest in Sydney spread like wildfire. Australia should embrace its moral and political responsibility to collaborate, through the appropriate legal channels, towards the Chilean quest for justice and memory.
Should the appeal fail, I hope and pray that Cardinal Pell, heading for prison, is not the unwitting victim of a wounded nation in search of a scapegoat. Should the appeal succeed, the Victoria Police should review the adequacy of the police investigation of these serious charges.
If the rest of Australia was as brave as those four women who told their stories, and confronted their fears regarding the full extent of what safety, autonomy and equality for Aboriginal women might truly look like — free from racism, sexism and a state which continues to benefit from our oppression — things could actually get better.
There are those who say we live in an era of outrage, but the outrageous and inhumane was always there; it's just that we are finally addressing it. It was demonstrated by the passing of the Medivac Bill, and the safe return of Hakeem Al-Araibi, that the voices of Australia, rather than the powerful few, are finally being heard.
During the debates about the bill regarding the transfer of people from Nauru or Manus to Australia for medical treatment, the Prime Minister stated it was 'unnecessary and superfluous'. Legally this should have been the case.
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.
The pantomime serves a purpose. Politicians denouncing Anning for his explicit support of fascism distracts from years of slightly more democratic, somewhat less in-your-face ethnonationalism. Sieg heils in St Kilda are bad, offshore internment camps are necessary.
Far-right extremists are savvy political actors. They know openly discussing their beliefs risks running afoul of anti-discrimination laws. Because of this, they have mastered how to speak in the negative and convey meaning through allusion.
If we say the man's lost his mind, we must, in fairness, acknowledge that he possessed a mind to lose. Bizarre as the notion now sounds, Latham brought consider intellectual firepower to the Labor leadership. His deep commitment to free market policies meant his hostility to Hanson always came as much from the right as the left.
'A year on, Paul would be well pleased. On seeing this full church, he would think, "I can still draw a crowd." On seeing the sanctuary, he would think, "They need one Jesuit and two diocesan priests to replace me."' Homily on the first anniversary of the death of Fr Paul Coleman SJ.
While we worked to find him a permanent place, he was put in a temporary one, far away from us. The decision-makers gave no thought to Mum's battling public transport and traffic, but it seemed like a nice place. We thought Dad was just being difficult when he begged us to take him home.
Some days I feel like a people trafficker, though I'm not making a zack out of the trafficking. Other days I see myself as a latter-day Oskar Schindler. But mostly I just feel trapped along with the 1000 refugees and asylum seekers I'm doing my not-very-successful best to get the hell out of an open prison called Bangkok.