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As the government drafts legislation to stem the rising tide of misinformation circulating online, the nation debates: will these measures sufficiently regulate online content and curb potential harms or threaten freedom of expression? This moment is a critical test for the integrity of Australia's public discourse.
On 8 November, the High Court ordered a stateless Rohingya refugee known only as NZYQ to be released from detention. He could not be granted a visa because he was found gulity of sexually assaulting a minor, and he could not be sent anywhere because he is stateless. Until 8 November, he was stuck in indefinite mandatory detention.
The Personal Wellbeing Index in Australia points to an all-time low in life satisfaction, particularly among young people. Could it be that the path to living well lies not in grand pursuits of wealth and fame but in the smaller, modest moments of joy, peace, love, and hope?
It didn’t bother me to watch the coronation. I was always going to, not least because I remember the last one. Despite astrologers' claims that the date of the coronation of King Charles III was a bad omen, the day was a moment of celebration for many; a chance to watch some history and hear some pretty decent music.
While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.
It has now been over a month since the Taliban seized Kabul. As attention inevitably shifts elsewhere, the painful question arises: What's next? Is this another 'back to the future' moment? The signs are grim. Over the last two weeks, the Taliban have issued a number of edicts which demonstrate that their attitudes to women have not changed.
I am a refugee from Afghanistan, and I belong a minority ethnic group, the Hazaras. We have been persecuted for a long time because of our ethnicity, religion and values. In 2012, I was forced to leave Afghanistan. I was 17. Back home, my father was a medical doctor. The Taliban accused him of working with international armed forces in the country at the time. One day the Taliban took him away, and nobody has seen him since.
The capacity to story our experience is a powerful tool for reflection and understanding. As adults we learn that no story is pure and we are capable of telling ourselves spin, but the shaping of experience into story is the bread and butter of our lives. Narrative, it has been said, is a primary act of mind.
Already the ideological die-hards of neoliberalism are working out how the pandemic might be manipulated to lower wages and to snap back to the old economic normal. So now is when collectively we need to take over the framing and the forming of the future. Not to snap back but to spring forward.
For millions of Australians of varying degrees of religiosity, prayer will play a key role in dealing with the novel stresses associated with this novel virus. Religions bring us not just closer to our creator but also to each other, especially in times of crisis. And you don’t have to be devout to feel the blessing.
Was I a settler? What did it mean to be a settler? I began asking my non-Indigenous friends around me what their thoughts were on the matter: did they identify as settlers? Some reacted with intrigue and were open to discussing it with me, and others reacted with strong distaste. ‘No’, they would say, ‘I just don’t like the word — it doesn’t describe who I am’.