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We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.
History has repeatedly shown us that what gets us through a crisis, what helps us to recover and rebuild, is responding to it with prosocial behaviour ― working together, starting with our communities at the local level, and from there building mutually supportive relationships at and across every level of society.
Despite last week’s decision by the Fair Work Commission to push up the national minimum wage by 5.2 percent, millions of Australians, in all parts of the country, will continue to live in poverty and on survival wages. The facts are that the Commission’s decision takes the minimum wage from $772 a week to $812, an increase of $5.70 a day, not a fortune but better than nothing.
Whoever is Prime Minister after the election on May 21, he will need to address the question of Indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution. This is the sixth election in a row when the question has been a live, unresolved issue during the election campaign. The patience of Indigenous leaders is understandably wearing thin. Trust is waning. There is still no clear path ahead. So where to from here?
With the world clearly divided between those vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who are not, ethicists, public health specialists and politicians have become more preoccupied by the prospect of booster shots.
The Queensland parliament, like the Victorian parliament four years ago, is committed to legislating for voluntary assisted dying. The bill being considered by the one-chamber Queensland parliament this week basically follows the contours of the Victorian legislation. But there are three major developments proposed that are very worrying in this new field of social experimentation.
A striking feature of the Australia’s path through Coronavirus has been the coming out of epidemiologists and social biologists. From being little known members of small institutes they became rock stars, invited to press conferences, deferred to by politicians, selectively chosen for comment by the media, but also resented by representatives of big business and defenders of individual freedom.
Clive Palmer is one Australian wanting to smash border restrictions during this time of pandemic. He is threatening to go back to the High Court seeking recognition of his right as an Australian citizen to travel freely between the States. In particular he claims the right to enter Western Australia where he has significant mining interests.
But it is possible the members of the Plenary could begin to hear a deeper voice speaking in their hearts. There may arise a new courage to start a process of truth and reconciliation, reporting the process of this journey to the second Plenary Council planned for Sydney, July 2022. We can only begin that journey if members of the Plenary Council come and are open to listening to that deep inner voice.
Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government reassured Australia ‘We’re all in this together’ but the truth is that the end of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus supplement payments will leave more than 2.6 million people in poverty.
We don’t want to admit the truth of who we are as a nation: there are Australians who are violent toward the people they say they love the most. Living among us are those who take what they want, out of entitlement, privilege and the naked use of power.
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