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I'm fifth generation Australian, but I don't have a word to describe the emotional malnutrition I feel at our leaders' lack of vision. Maybe there are words for such feelings in Yamatji, or Eora, or Noongar, but most of us wouldn't know. This was a place with more linguistic individuation than Europe, before our boat-people ancestors arrived, but they didn't take the time to learn its words or hear its stories.
The Greens' Senate balance of power was endangered by the prospect of a landslide Coalition victory. Now, not only will the Labor-Green Senate majority benefit from a revitalised Labor, but the major government policy changes to heartfelt Green concerns about carbon pricing and asylum seekers should ensure the Greens poll strongly in their own right.
'Those who can't do, teach,' declares the unkind truism. Germain is the proverbial failed writer turned English teacher, who has grown jaded and cynical to the point of sociopathy. Education, like art, should enhance humanity, not diminish it — Germain's ultimate failure as a teacher is in neglecting his students' human reality.
Gone are the days when Australians believed everyone deserved a fair go: the principle that 'might is right' has replaced the ideals of equity and justice in the national psyche. It is not surprising that after engaging in costly military actions over a decade Australians are more fearful now than when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
Letting languages disappear is a crime against humanity, asserted a recent article. But reader comments shouted that if a language could not keep up – or rather, if the language was not English – it should die, die, die, as though it were a simple matter of natural selection.
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?
'Women in Bougainville have no choice but to be political,' I was told by a community leader. From housekeepers to businesswomen, they all seem to be pretty fierce feminists. Even random women I meet at cafes and pubs tell me about the work women do in their communities.
Suppose that in France under Hitler's occupation, a bloodied man arrived at our doorstep asking for shelter from a Nazi mob. The claim made by the presence of the endangered and injured man would precede questions of fairness and relative need.
Officially, the ban on journalists interviewing or filming asylum seekers in detention is for the detainees' protection. But it also stops them from sharing their stories with the public. Surely asylum seekers are capable of determining who is and is not acting in their best interests.
Often the reconciliation debate is framed around matters of the perpetrator's reaction, rather than that of the victim, who holds a superior moral currency. Could it be ever feasible for Australia's Indigenous community to countenance unconditional forgiveness?
The girl at the centre of the ongoing AFL sex scandal presents herself as a woman scorned. In truth she's a child in need of protection. Child protection laws once enabled police to ask a court to have a girl made a ward of state if she appeared to be 'in moral danger'.
Harry Wetnose the Bigeye Tuna will probably never adorn any T-shirts. Nevertheless, the endangered Bigeye Tuna is in big trouble and could do with some help. The way we relate to fish raises some important questions about what it is to be a responsible person in the world.