Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
We have gotten so used to a revolving door of political leaders that the prospect of a leadership challenge each time things get a little hot has become normalised. I never thought I would say this, but as an Aboriginal feminist with hard-left personal politics, last week I almost found myself viewing the Howard years in a favourable light.
Singapore has one of the world's lowest mortality rates, with a general life expectancy of above 80. Singapore's women outlive men by about five years, making the country second in the world for how long its women live. It seems the Singapore state has decided to punish women for it.
On the face of it, Miquela is the same as any other ‘influencer’. But behind her normcore sunglasses, Miquela is dead. Orchestrating her content is Brud, an LA-based tech startup masterminded by Sara DeCou and Trevor McDefries. The more interesting question is not who Miquela is, but why she matters. Because Miquela holds up a mirror to how we construct our own online personas.
Even if all of the families that have been coldly, clinically, 'legally' torn apart can be reunited, much of the damage done is likely irreparable. Social workers and scientists have spoken out on the permanent damage inflicted on children separated from their parents. But who will speak on the scar left on the national conscience?
As I watched the debacle over the ill-advised Meanjin cover last week, I couldn't help but reflect on Aboriginal languages and how, when our words or histories do come to the forefront, they're continually disrespected or treated as a massive threat to the white patriarchal status quo. Meanjin is only the latest example.
For Japanese Australians, the connections with Australia's war-time history continues to be particularly fraught. Whether they are early or more recent migrants, Japanese Australians have many narratives and expressions of complex identities that are now gaining voice.
If the powers that be are not keen on protests while Australia is on the international stage, the answer is simple: stop demonising Indigenous people and using our children as cannon fodder. You're not listening if you continue showcasing us on your terms while dismissing our political voice, denying our presence and erasing our history.
The spectacle would be funny if so many people didn't partake in and enjoy it. It feels cartoonish, like a Wolf of Wall Street where 30 Jordan Belforts compete to be the top salesperson. Instead of Wall Street glitz, the fortune we compete for is made by selling raffle tickets for charities.
While no-one expects nuanced discussions on Twitter, the name-calling does none of the participants any favours. What does become apparent in the conversations around Clive Hamilton's The Silent Invasion is how entrenched 'yellow peril' rhetoric is in the way people talk about 'the Chinese'.
Huang's article 'What Australia gets wrong about Chinese New Year' caused an uproar, with many comments about the Mandarinisation of Chinese culture. I had a moment of pleasure imagining telling my mother that, according to this writer, she's doing Chinese New Year wrong. My mother has an excellent range of Cantonese epithets.
The world continues to laud Singapore as a model for governance, while ignoring the serious human rights violations that occur within it. The silence of countries like Australia and others in the region ensure that the Singapore state will continue intimidating its opponents into silence, or obscurity.
Over 250 languages were spoken across Australia at the time that English arrived with British colonisation. Since then, English has been a strict marker of the contours of Australianness. Were it reframed as a lingua franca rather than the mandatory language, the linguistic diversity in this nation would have more room to breathe.