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Search Results: Darwin

  • AUSTRALIA

    Border control gulags have had their time

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 October 2015
    28 Comments

    Anyone hoping a Turnbull government will be more accommodating of boat people than an Abbott government will be sadly mistaken. But that is not the end of the matter. Now that the government has firmly closed the entry door to Australia, there is no warrant for maintaining the chamber of horrors in the Pacific which was set up as a 'circuit breaker' deterrent. Turnbull needs to admit that a purposeless chamber of horrors is not just harsh; it is cruel, and it is unAustralian.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grace and quiet rage in David Gulpilil's country

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 September 2015

    Gulpilil measures the distance to Ramininging from Darwin by the number of river crossings, and defines its rough edges by the points at which traditional values clash with the imposed or inherited Western trappings. Through him we meet a man who found Christianity while in prison, and who now on Easter Sunday leads an epic reenactment of the Passion through the town's dirt streets. In the degradation of his trial and execution, says Gulpilil, Jesus is neither God nor leader; 'He is black. He is one of us.'

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  • Reshaping the public space: Lessons for Australian refugee, Aboriginal and climate policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2015

    Pope Francis's concerns are not narrowly dogmatic or pedagogical but universally pastoral. He knows that millions of people, including erstwhile Catholics, are now suspicious of or not helped by notions of tradition, authority, ritual and community when it comes to their own spiritual growth which is now more individual and eclectic. He wants to step beyond the Church's perceived lack of authenticity and its moral focus on individual matters, more often than not, sexual. He thinks the world is in a mess particularly with the state of the planet — climate change, loss of biodiversity and water shortages, but also with the oppression of the poor whose life basics are not assured by the operation of the free market, and with the clutter and violence of lives which are cheated the opportunity for interior peace. He is going to great pains to demystify his office. He wants all people of good will to emulate him and to be both joyful and troubled as they wrestle with the probl

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remembering Veronica Brady

    • Morag Fraser
    • 02 September 2015
    8 Comments

    Veronica was one of Phillip Adams' 'favourite Catholics'. He likes larrikins, mavericks, with a mind of their own. Last week I sat in my car and listened to the replay of an interview Phillip did with Veronica some years back. I could not predict what she was going to say next, even as I recognised certain characteristic speech habits. There is the touch of the nun-teacher there, but don't mistake it for complacency.

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  • The politics of popular evil and untrendy truth

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2015
    1 Comment

    If you want to form government in Australia and if you want to lead the Australian people to be more generous, making more places available for refugees to resettle permanently in Australia, you first have to stop the boats. If you want to restore some equity to the means of choosing only some tens of thousands of refugees per annum for permanent residence in Australia from the tens of millions of people displaced in the world, you need to secure the borders. The untrendy truth is that not all asylum seekers have the right to enter Australia but that those who are in direct flight from persecution whether that be in Sri Lanka or Indonesia do, and that it is possible fairly readily (and even on the high seas) to draw a distinction between those in direct flight and those engaged in secondary movement understandably dissatisfied with the level of protection and the transparency of processing in transit countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The popular evil is that political

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A euthanasia parable in the outback

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 August 2015
    3 Comments

    Dismayed by the prognosis that he has only three months to live, Broken Hill cabbie Rex abandons his work, home and mates and sets out for Darwin to seek the help of prominent euthanasia advocate Dr Nicole Farmer (a fictional Dr Philip Nitschke). The story is as much about the journey as the destination, although there are those who would argue that its pat 'choose life' message just feels too easy.

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  • RELIGION

    'The Australian' gangs up on Pope Francis

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 10 July 2015
    37 Comments

    In a series of articles, The Australian newspaper has strongly criticised the new encyclical Laudato Si', with editor-at-large Paul Kelly charging that the Pope has 'delegitimised as immoral' pro-market economic forces. This is wrong. Pope Francis is not opposed to the free market in principle, but insists that it be well regulated to ensure social justice for all involved.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When life and death break into the game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 July 2015
    8 Comments

    Because football and other large sports are an image of life, they are safe spaces in which loss is never final and youth is never lost. But occasionally, as in the death of Philip Hughes and Phil Walsh, real life breaks into the image. Death and horror have to be grappled with.

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  • The challenge of education for social justice

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 July 2015
    3 Comments

    I suspect Pope Francis had some of our Jesuit alumni in mind when he wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: 'A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth... True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty'.

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  • Call off the Cardinal Pell witch-hunt

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 June 2015
    23 Comments

    As we await Cardinal Pell's appearance before the Royal Commission, many Australians are baying for his blood. It is time for those of us in the Church to stop paying undue deference to those who exercise ecclesiastical power in a fashion at odds with contemporary notions of transparency and equality. It's also time for all commentators to play the ball, and not the man.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In memory of Leo

    • Diane Fahey
    • 24 March 2015
    8 Comments

    'If I'm deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I'm a Tamil.' On the day I hear of Leo's death I pass a tall maple, its star-like leaves, blood-red and flame-red, irradiated. The Australian government refused the visas applied for by Leo's family so that they might attend his funeral. As three Tamil men at a microphone sing a long hymn in Tamil the Basilica fills with an undertow of sound.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Long-grassers seen as blight on Darwin's iconic foreshore

    • Mike Bowden
    • 28 November 2014
    7 Comments

    Darwin has a group of homeless people who live rough in the vicinity of the beautiful and iconic Esplanade, close to the city centre. The Vinnies SOS van has been servicing their needs for many years, but the decision has been taken to move it several kilometres away, out of the sight of the residents and tourists. This contrasts with Pope Francis' installation of showers for the homeless on the edge of the tourist mecca of St Peter's Square.

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