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Keywords: Witnesses

  • AUSTRALIA

    A royal commission for the land

    • Kate Galloway
    • 20 January 2020
    16 Comments

    For our society to function responsively to what is now a dynamically changing context, we urgently need differently oriented governance. This will, no doubt, be unpalatable for some — both in government and in the general public. But without re-setting how we are governed, our land and our society will suffer further destruction.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The crime scene that is Australia

    • Libby Hart
    • 11 November 2019
    1 Comment

    It's difficult to move in this landscape. Haunted and fragile and tragic, there's no place that is benign. A cursed house, the Greeks might say.

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  • RELIGION

    El Salvador reality upends justice romance

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 November 2019
    16 Comments

    Thirty years ago this month, the Salvadorean Armed Forces murdered two women and six Jesuits at the Universidad Centroamericana El Salvador. For me it was a significant stage on the journey from fascination with the romance and the rhetoric of the struggle for justice to recognition of the hard, unyielding daily reality that it involved.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kindness stories that are good for the spirit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 July 2019
    10 Comments

    Among writers familiar in Australia who write in this vein are Michael McGirr, Terry Monagle and the much missed Brian Doyle. Their writing does not merely describe but evokes and creates a world, and shapes a human response that respects its variety and mystery. These qualities are evident in Julie Perrin's Tender.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Boris, Brexit and taking it up to political bull

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 June 2019
    2 Comments

    An enduring memory of the 2016 Brexit campaign was the claim by pro-leavers that the EU was extracting some £350 million a week. The claim, ignoring EU subsidies, returns and contributions to Britain, was so outrageously proud and inaccurate, it stuck. Which leads us to a novel citizen's experiment on the issue of lying in politics.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth and justice after the Pell verdict

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 February 2019
    253 Comments

    Should the appeal fail, I hope and pray that Cardinal Pell, heading for prison, is not the unwitting victim of a wounded nation in search of a scapegoat. Should the appeal succeed, the Victoria Police should review the adequacy of the police investigation of these serious charges.

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  • RELIGION

    Philip Wilson's dead letter day

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 December 2018
    41 Comments

    The show trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson has backfired badly causing hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame. Section 316 of the New South Wales Crimes Act is a dead letter and it causes nothing but trouble to everyone involved.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Law works within darkened understanding

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 November 2018
    5 Comments

    Debate about the independence and the dignity of the law has always been present. Nevertheless most societies take pains to reinforce trust in those who administer justice. Some elements in our culture, however, put that trust at risk. They deserve reflection.  

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  • RELIGION

    Softening the pontifical secret

    • Kieran Tapsell
    • 19 November 2018
    14 Comments

    It is understandable that canonists would try to find a kinder interpretation for the pontifical secret, given that the cover up caused more children to be abused, but in the canonical system, you cannot get away from the plain meaning of the words and the interpretation placed on them by the Roman Curia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How we decide if asylum seekers lie

    • Douglas McDonald-Norman
    • 14 September 2018
    6 Comments

    In the five years I worked in refugee law, some of the most complicated challenges I encountered were questions regarding the 'truthfulness' or 'credibility' of an asylum seeker's claims. These subjective findings of credibility can make the difference between a person being granted asylum or being turned away.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Finding myself through First Peoples' stories

    • François Kunc
    • 14 September 2018
    11 Comments

    Place and identity are fundamental for each of us. They are what our First Peoples had taken from them. In thinking about who I am, I have come to the conclusion that without understanding our First Peoples and their story as told by them I really can't understand myself as an Australian.

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  • RELIGION

    Religion and human rights

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 July 2018
    4 Comments

    'I voted 'yes' in last year's ABS survey on same sex marriage. As a priest, I was prepared to explain why I was voting 'yes' during the campaign. I voted 'yes', in part because I thought that the outcome was inevitable. But also, I thought that full civil recognition of such relationships was an idea whose time had come.' — Frank Brennan, 2018 Castan Centre Human Rights Conference

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