Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Search Results: consent

  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia in a sorry state as Gonski faces failure

    • Ray Cassin
    • 17 April 2013
    6 Comments

    If the states give Gillard's Gonski education proposals the thumbs-down, as is expected to happen at Friday's COAG meeting, it will not be the first time since Labor's return to office in 2007 that Australia's creaking constitutional arrangements have made fundamental reform impossible.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex and power in the case of Cardinal Keith O'Brien

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 March 2013
    2 Comments

    Catherine Deveney was right to point out that power, not homosexuality, was at issue in the case of Cardinal O'Brien, who resigned amid accusations of sexual misconduct. A new film by American director Steven Soderbergh also reflects on relationships based in power, and the ethical obligation of the party with the greater power not to act against the interests of the other. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    A Jew and a Palestinian walk into a cafe

    • Lyn Bender
    • 21 November 2012
    47 Comments

    The world was silent when Jewish people suffered incursions and massacres and the 'final solution' in death camps. A vast number of my own family were murdered during this time. Now the boot is on the other foot. Israel holds the position of power in the Gaza conflict, yet the world is largely silent about its atrocities.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Painful lost years for unmarried mothers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 06 November 2012
    23 Comments

    The phrase 'enforced adoption' conjures up visions of babies being wrenched from a wailing mother’s arms, or babies being spirited away in the dead of night. Of course it wasn’t like that: girls signed the requisite consent forms. But the idea of force is there, because the notion of choice rarely was.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Law and justice for abuse victims, Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2012

    'Even without the political static which is drowning us all out down there in Canberra, there is real doubt whether the Gillard bluff 'Don't get on a boat because you might end up in Nauru' can do what the Howard bluff could not deliver.' Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's Law and Justice Oration at the Law and Justice Foundation 2012 Justice Awards Dinner, Parliament House, Sydney.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Mabo 20 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 October 2012

    'Though land rights and self-determination provide no utopia for the contemporary indigenous Australian community, they have belatedly put right an ancient wrong. The cost and inconvenience are unavoidable. Terra nullius is no longer an option.' Full text is from Fr Frank Brennan's keynote speech at the Central Queensland Law Association Conference, Mercure Capricorn Resort, Yeppoon, 27 October 2012.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Dangers of gay conversion

    • Luke Williams
    • 19 October 2012
    36 Comments

    My first encounter with gay reparative therapy (GRT) was the day I summoned the courage to ask a friend about the cluster of scars on his wrists. The Australian Psychological Society recognises conversion therapy as harmful to individuals' mental health. Yet GRT of minors is unregulated, and in the case of Christian ex-gay groups often run by unqualified laypeople.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Groundhog Day for refugees

    • Lyn Bender
    • 26 September 2012
    8 Comments

    In March 2002 I spent hours with Afghanis, Iranians, Palestinians and Iraqis on hunger strikes; desperate people who felt they had no power except to use their bodies to convey their message of despair. I am not the only health professional to predict that the resurrected Pacific Solution will create the same destructive circumstances.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Historical perspectives on Slutwalk

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 31 August 2012
    15 Comments

    The post-war migration policy favoured single men as labour for the burgeoning heavy industries. By the mid-1950s thousands of lonely male migrants populated the cities, and many local women found them threatening. Like those women, Slutwalk participants defend their right to walk the streets wearing what they want without being harassed.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Justifying garden-variety torture

    • Max Atkinson
    • 12 July 2012
    6 Comments

    Any discussion of the morality of torture must distinguish two kinds of justification. The first is concerned with cases so exotic they have nothing to do with the ordinary affairs of mankind, such as the nuclear bomb ticking away in a New York basement. A real-life justification must provide a rationale for a wide range of common garden cases. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Euthanasing the disabled

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 29 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Earlier this month a Canadian Supreme Court effectively legalised physician-assisted euthanasia. While there is a general perception that those opposed to euthanasia do so on religious grounds, many people with disabilities oppose euthanasia because they believe it is bad policy that denies their right to live. 

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    How to tame free speech extremists

    • John Wright
    • 05 June 2012
    11 Comments

    'I still believe in global warming. Do you?' These words graced a Chicaco billboard above an image of 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski. It was removed, not because it broke any law, but because it was deemed to have 'gone too far'. In a society that supports free speech, who decides how far is too far?' 

    READ MORE