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Keywords: Draconian

  • MEDIA

    Campaigning journos are failing Assange

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 24 October 2019
    7 Comments

    Assange's latest court appearance coincided with the launch of the Right to Know campaign, backed by the major press organisations in Australia as well as the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. To its immense credit, the MEAA has consistently defended him. But many prominent Australian journalists have not.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Family first' rhetoric neglects single mothers

    • Kate Galloway
    • 01 March 2019
    7 Comments

    There is one type of family that consistently is omitted from pro-family government rhetoric: that of the single mother. Instead of making life easier for single-mother families, the government has imposed additional requirements as a pre-condition to their receiving the payments they need to support themselves and their children.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The myth of polarisation in modern Australia

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 10 December 2018
    12 Comments

    Why do so many pundits decry the divisions in Canberra at a time when, objectively speaking, the parties have never been closer? The short answer is that they're responding to a genuine polarisation — not between Labor and Liberal but between both parties and the rest of society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Embracing moral squeamishness

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 November 2018
    10 Comments

    What might be effective is to strengthen support within their own and the wider community in order to help vulnerable people understand themselves and the feelings that might drive them to paranoid ideas and violent action if left unattended. If that is moral squeamishness, it at least offers some hope of effectiveness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The many failures of our wild welfare regime

    • Amelia Paxman
    • 23 October 2017
    9 Comments

    Increasing the feelings of shame of being unemployed and restricting freedoms doesn't create more jobs and only grinds down a vulnerable group who are subsisting on a meagre payment. But the government is yet to show any meaningful concern over the significant risks of these draconian welfare policies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Draconian citizenship mindset means no one's safe

    • Fatima Measham
    • 06 July 2017
    10 Comments

    The Guardian has revealed that two men holding dual Australian citizenship were sent to Christmas Island under section 501 of the Migration Act. The law enables the minister to detain or deport non-citizens who fail the 'character test'. The detention of these citizens was without question unlawful. The error was identified and they were released. It looks like a happy ending, but you'd have to squint hard.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Businesses need to get serious about gender diversity

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 03 May 2017
    4 Comments

    Whether to have targets or quotas is a hard question to answer. Quotas have been employed by several European countries to great effect. But in Australia companies are encouraged to set themselves targets, which are optional. Businesses are moving towards targets at a glacial pace, with women in senior executive roles increasing by 2 per cent per annum since 2012. As long as it is up to businesses to create a diverse workplace, they need to put in the effort.

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  • RELIGION

    'Equal laws and equal rights ... dealt out to the whole community'. How close 161 years on?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 December 2015
    1 Comment

    'Tonight, gathered here in the Southern Cross Club in the national capital, gathered as Eureka's children. We affirm that there is room for everyone under the Southern Cross. I hope you will return to Canberra carrying the Southern Cross flag when we proclaim the Australia Republic on 1 January 2020 which will be two elections after Australia last had a monarchist leader of a major political party. Tony Abbott is the last of his type. Whether the prime minister honoured to witness the proclamation is Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten or another matters not.' Annual Dinner for Eureka's Children, Southern Cross Club, Canberra, 3 December 2015.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Magna Carta's spotlight on today's political arbitrariness

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 17 June 2015
    3 Comments

    It was far from democratic and arose from circumstances of pure opportunism, but the Magna Carta was created as a break on arbitrary rule and power. Therefore contemporary moves to undermine such principles as the rule of law are prescient. Australia's parliament commemorates its birthday even as it extends the reach of national security laws and endorses a draconian refugee policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian citizenship as a political plaything

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 29 May 2015
    4 Comments

    The Federal Government plans to legislate within weeks to strip certain dual nationals of their Australian citizenship. Extending the already existing draconian ministerial power to overturn review tribunal decisions into the area of citizenship is unwarranted. Such an important determination should require the testing of solid evidence, not merely a minister's assessment of the 'national interest'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Just like the original TPV only nastier

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 01 October 2014
    14 Comments

    Last week, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison proposed migration law changes that he said would speed up processing of the backlog of refugee claims, and allow asylum seekers to 'get on with their lives'. In fact they do nothing of the sort. The new temporary protection visa (TPV) denies family sponsorship, travel to visit family, and more.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mexican border reflections on Australian asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 15 August 2014
    30 Comments

    We Australians confront none of the complexities of sharing a land border with a poor neighbour. Most Americans, I find, consider our policy morally repulsive and just stupid. They cannot believe that we routinely lock up children, that we recently held 157 people on a ship in the Indian Ocean for almost a month, and that we are now going to send up to 1000 asylum seekers to Cambodia.

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