Keywords: 2007
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Catherine Marshall
- 04 April 2016
2 Comments
When suicide bombers struck Brussels, I was travelling far from home, in southern Italy. The news evoked in me a sense of vulnerability, for within days I would board a series of flights from Reggio Calabria to Rome to Abu Dhabi and then Sydney. For a moment, it seemed the terrorists had achieved what they set out to do: spread fear and distrust far beyond the site of their attacks, across countries and continents and oceans so that eventually the whole world would be infected.
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MEDIA
- Catherine Marshall
- 03 March 2016
7 Comments
Chris Rock's hosting of the Academy Awards was a win-win culmination of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in which no actual person had to take the blame. Instead, a faceless institution named 'Hollywood' was rapped over the knuckles for its racism while the flesh-and-blood white faces that represented it could get on with the business of congratulating themselves. While all this mollification was going on, there was another, gargantuan prejudice saturating the air these celebrities were breathing.
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ECONOMICS
- David James
- 26 February 2016
8 Comments
It is not often that federal political parties exhibit courage. Labor's decision to change the rules on negative gearing is a rare instance. It targets what is most dangerous and unfair in our financial system. Expect howls of protests from powerful lobby groups if it ever looks like becoming policy. But these changes alone won't be enough to deal with the ills of the financial system. While they are designed to target the bias away from productive investment, they won't remove the attraction towards property.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 18 February 2016
5 Comments
The formative experiences of Australian early boomers include unprecedented access to university education and health care, immersion in feminist discourse, Aboriginal land rights campaigns, environmental activism, LGBT movements and pacifism. Quite remarkably, it mirrors some of the elements that engage millennials. While in some ways anti-boomer sentiment seems well placed, what it misses is that on social issues a 21-year-old might have more in common with a 61-year-old than a 71-year-old.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Fatima Measham
- 05 February 2016
9 Comments
The Bernie Sanders phenomenon in the US, like Corbyn in the UK and Podemos in Spain, demonstrates the rhetorical potency of renewal; of politics not as usual. It is the sort of thing that resonates with disaffected young people. While it is not entirely sensible to extrapolate developments in the US to Australia, it is worth speculating on the impact of our own changing demographics. Are the major parties equipped to take advantage of these shifts? Are they appealing to a new Australia that is already here?
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AUSTRALIA
- Mike Bowden
- 29 January 2016
9 Comments
The Northern Territory News and the ABC reported this month that the Central Australian Affordable Housing Company had been unsuccessful in its tender for continuing tenancy services to the Town Camps of Alice Springs. Despite being a product of the Intervention, CAAHC had developed a powerful model of community housing and had the support of the Central Land Council and the wider Aboriginal community. It appears that these are not attributes the NT government admires.
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MEDIA
- Jeff Sparrow
- 27 January 2016
13 Comments
Josh Bornstein compared the ABC to the victim in an abusive relationship, desperately trying to ward off the next blow by anticipating the criticism of its enemies. Certainly, enlisting Andrew Bolt to participate in a documentary on Indigenous constitutional recognition seems like a pre-emptive defensive move against the accusations of bias that are routinely levelled against the national broadcaster. For Bolt the arrangement is win-win; for the ABC it's yet another example of self-sabotage.
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ECONOMICS
- David James
- 19 January 2016
11 Comments
Low interest rates tend to change the understanding of risk; having high debt seems to be less of a problem because the cost of servicing it is lower. This cavalier attitude has been especially evident in Australian households, which have racked up more debt relative to the size of the economy than any other country in the world. The massive appetite for debt has been replicated across the globe. The world may have survived the era of casino money - just - but it is now facing another crisis.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Jim McDermott
- 07 October 2015
6 Comments
In July, an NRA article entitled 'Australia: There Will be Blood' described Australia's gun buyback as a 'mass confiscation' that left guns in the hands of criminals and everyone else defenceless. Meanwhile, America has experienced more than one mass shooting per day so far this year. My hope is that we are in that time of unsustainable stasis Malcolm Gladwell talks about, during which nothing seems to be changing, while beneath the surface stability is being eroded, leading to sudden, permanent change.
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EUREKA STREET TV
- Peter Kirkwood
- 30 September 2015
1 Comment
'They are people. They are not sheep for slaughter. They deserve to be treated like a human. And that's what Europe stands for.' Born and raised in Syria, Fr Rahal Dergham now serves as chaplain to Syrian and Iraqi Catholic Migrants in the Archdiocese of Sydney. In this interview he speaks about what Australia and the broader international community should be doing to address the present refugee crisis, the persecution of Syrian Christians, and the troubled relations between Syrian Muslims and Christians.
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AUSTRALIA
- Paul Jensen
- 21 September 2015
5 Comments
Malcolm Turnbull's main justification for challenging Tony Abbott was that the former PM was not capable of providing the economic leadership the nation needs. Abbott's leadership style emphasised strength rather than consultation, which is what he thought people wanted. What they actually wanted was revealed in a recent survey conducted by Swinburne University.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 21 September 2015
12 Comments
It's about eschewing hard facts and egocentricity to imagine the world through other people's eyes. I was prompted to think about empathy by the Abbott Government's decision to take 12,000 Syrian refugees. Whether or not the motivation was political, it's actions that count. Which was indeed the case with the Minister Dutton's display of negative empathy in his joke about the precarious climate plight of Australia’s friends who live in Pacific Island nations.
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