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Search Results: privacy

  • AUSTRALIA

    Stepping on to mandatory data retention's slippery slope

    • Fatima Measham
    • 25 March 2015
    6 Comments

    Mandatory data retention was a bad idea when it was originally floated during a Gillard Government inquiry. It is a worse idea now, and is set to become law for political reasons, not because it has been properly scrutinised. There are important questions that we should be asking, and we should not let ourselves be put off from doing this if we don’t know the difference between data and metadata (there is none).

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Edward Snowden's lessons for a secure Australia

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 February 2015
    2 Comments

    Snowden is both passionate and highly articulate, wanting nothing less noble than to see the delineation between those with power and the people over whom they wield it redrawn. The real meat of the matter is not the revelations themselves, but how in their light governments and societies desiring security will move to decide just how much freedom they are willing to surrender in order to acquire it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ritual procrastination as part of the grieving process

    • Jim Pilmer
    • 05 December 2014
    10 Comments

    Personal grief, complicated by group dynamics, is a volatile mixture. Phillip Hughes' death reminds us that personal stories highlight the huge variety of needs and perceptions surrounding a death in the workplace. When do we tidy the desk of the colleague who won't be back? There is a time, but maybe it's not yet. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The case for remaining single

    • Ellena Savage
    • 03 October 2014
    9 Comments

    In the few times I have felt distressed by the prospect of some kind of eternal singledom, I have reminded myself of how difficult and suffocating romantic love can be, especially in the belittling shadow of celebrity couplings. My accumulated life data tells me that no-one is a perfect partner, even with 'hard work', and there are many more things to love than some perfect other individual. 

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  • RELIGION

    Vatican perspective on Australia's refugee brutality

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 June 2014
    3 Comments

    Very few Vatican documents on world events are exciting. But some can be helpful when local response to these events is febrile and anxious. The Vatican guidelines on ministry to forcibly displaced persons provide a helpful mirror to reflect the public Australian response to asylum seekers. It offers a long view of Catholic reflection on refugees and a broad perspective on the human reality of having to seek protection.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Silence won't answer the Woody Allen abuse allegation

    • ZoĆ« Krupka
    • 05 February 2014
    22 Comments

    On Saturday Dylan Farrow accused her adoptive father, the filmmaker and actor Woody Allen, of sexual assault for the second time. She first made these allegations when she was seven years old. There is a real ethical concern when allegations that have been denied in court continue to be raised publicly. We need to be able to forge a difficult balance between making space for ongoing doubt and fuelling public vilification.

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  • RELIGION

    The insubstantial Bishop of Bling

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 October 2013
    13 Comments

    Springtime draws attention to the sweet harmonies and scratchy discord between style and substance. Ducks escort their young across green lawns, and peck at anything that dares approach them. Young things in suits or summer dresses sit sozzled in Cup Day mud. Meanwhile in the Catholic Church, Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was suspended from office for his profligate spending during a time of austerity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    School sport's level playing field under threat

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 September 2013
    14 Comments

    Five of Sydney's prestigious GPS schools have boycotted competition with another member of their association, The Scots College, because it is accused of undermining the spirit of competition in school sport by offering inducements to lure students with sports star potential. This undermines what the GPS code of ethics calls 'the spirit of the amateur' that promotes character, resilience and teamwork ahead of winning.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Turnbull's electronic voting pitch is on the right track

    • Edwina Byrne
    • 12 September 2013
    3 Comments

    Malcolm Turnbull's justification for calling for the introduction of electronic voting is that roughly six per cent of voters failed to correctly fill in their ballot papers on Saturday. Electronic voting would stop this senseless waste. Ignoring the fact that electronic voting would disenfranchise the roughly 5.9 per cent of voters whose democratic wish is to draw male appendages on their ballot, Turnbull has a point.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parochial Australia needs to grow up

    • Fatima Measham
    • 16 August 2013
    15 Comments

    Hot-button topics such as economic management and asylum seekers are best seen from a wide lens, yet we seem determined to keep the rest of the world out of the frame. It is a sea-girt mentality that our politicians don't care to take apart because it is too hard to convince the average voter that there are in fact other people on the planet. Such denialism will inevitably leave us ill-prepared for significant challenges.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Crime kids served celebrity gods

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 August 2013
    1 Comment

    'God didn't give me these talents and looks to just sit around being a model or being famous. I want to lead a huge charity organisation. I want to lead a country, for all I know.' In 2008–2009 a group of teenagers stole $3 million of jewellery and clothes from the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and other Hollywood stars. Coppola portrays this as an outcome of materialism centred on celebrity worship.

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  • RELIGION

    Reshaping the Church with Bishop Robinson and Pope Francis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 July 2013
    26 Comments

    Robinson's recent book on the culture of the Catholic Church critiques the factors that have contributed to clerical sexual abuse of children. Robinson desires institutional changes, yet institutional changes are insufficient unless relationships and attitudes change. In this there is a happy conjunction between Robinson's project and the way of proceeding of Pope Francis.

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