Search Results: Tasmania
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 21 November 2014
4 Comments
Winning the prestigious Man Booker prize has given Richard Flanagan's 2013 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North precious new shelf life. I've long considered Flanagan an alchemist - giving everyday words an unmistakable verve and turning a phrase until it takes flight. But he's also a proud Tasmanian storyteller who now has the world's ear.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Kristy Chambers
- 08 October 2014
8 Comments
I attempted to manage my mental health with good intentions, stern self-talk, guilt and cigarettes. Finally, exasperated and desperate, I started taking an anti-depressant medication, and when it actually worked, I was stunned to feel happy. But like any new relationship, the honeymoon period is brilliant... and temporary.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 26 September 2014
6 Comments
A Bone of Fact is one part love letter and two parts plea bargain. That’s how Walsh can take a stab at Catholicism one minute and the next admit that in the 'thrall' of Michelangelo’s Pieta he loses all faculties. And for someone who’s gleamed much from betting, gambling gets short shrift.
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EDUCATION
- Dean Ashenden
- 06 May 2014
9 Comments
The Commission of Audit has planted so many landmines across the political landscape that two have been scarcely noticed. One is planted directly under Gonski, the other under the federal role in schooling. Christopher Pyne's brazen effort to get rid of Gonski served only to show that he is not to be trusted. Abbott must be wondering whether this minister could carry the day with the kind of scheme recommended by the Commission.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 16 April 2014
18 Comments
The great Tasmanian Catholic warrior Brian Harradine did wonderful work in the Senate, the chamber Paul Keating described as 'unrepresentative swill'. He successfully negotiated significant improvements to the lamentable Howard Aboriginal land rights package. Seven years after the Wik debate, Democrats deputy leader Andrew Bartlett said: 'The agreement he reached on the Wik legislation was one of the few cases I would point to where John Howard was bested in negotiations'.
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AUSTRALIA
Tony Abbott's 'We warn the Czar' statements were ludicrously over-the-top, though clearly he was responding to a Washington appeal to friendly allies to say something. I hope Australia will not continue to overplay its hand in the Security Council. There is no point in gratuitously offending Moscow on an issue that is outside our strategic area of interest and raises no human rights concerns whatsoever.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Matthews
- 28 February 2014
7 Comments
Joe Hockey's idea of an age of entitlement is shallow and facile. Announcing the end of an 'age' is just another way of obscuring the truth that you haven't the faintest idea what the hell is going on, or that you suspect what's going on but not how to influence, redirect or stop it. So you fall back on this persuasive notion of a great shift in the times. The next 'age' for those whose entitlement is disappearing will be marked by unpleasantness.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 24 February 2014
25 Comments
I was able to mix with other writers bemoaning Australia's refugee policy including the obfuscation about the death of an asylum seeker on Manus Island and Julie Bishop's latest diplomatic initiative asking Hun Sen to accept refugees from Australia for permanent resettlement in Cambodia. I came away wondering how passionate refugee advocates could be so sanguine about doctor administered death even for children.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 12 February 2014
18 Comments
Malcolm Turnbull assures us that something will come along to fill the gap left by the demise in Australia of Toyota and SPC Ardmona. But new sources of employment do not magically appear because they have been foretold by economic doctrine. Only about a third of those who are about to lose their jobs in car making or food processing are likely to find new jobs on equivalent incomes. Another third will probably never work again.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 16 December 2013
30 Comments
Until now, there was some doubt whether the Parliament's constitutional power to make laws with respect to marriage would be broad enough to include laws with respect to same sex marriage. The High Court has put this matter beyond doubt with all six sitting judges affirming that 'marriage' for the purposes of defining the constitutional power of the Parliament could not be confined to marriage in the traditional Christian sense.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Lorraine McGuigan
- 19 November 2013
2 Comments
Laid out with care this woman lifted from a dry river-bed. Here is death but also preservation: turned-up nose, high cheekbones, long lashes fringing her sunken eyes ... Beside her a child staring, close to tears, hands bunched into fists ... a six-year-old girl and this ageless beauty. Rising between them the dust of centuries.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 12 November 2013
5 Comments
'Having thrown off the shackles of compulsion endured by pre-Vatican II Catholics, we relish that we come to the table not because we are forced, not because of social expectations, not because of the mindset of the mob, but because we are graciously called and freely responding.' Frank Brennan's Camino Address, Parish of Our Lady of the Way North Sydney, 12 November 2013
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