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Author: Michael Mullins

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Aung San Suu Kyi, refugees and bikies

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 November 2010
    7 Comments

    The release on Saturday of Burma's democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi, and last week's Australian high court decisions regarding refugees and bikies, each contain salutary lessons for governments that attempt to rule by popular fear.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Islamic values could control bank greed

    • Michael Mullins
    • 08 November 2010
    10 Comments

    Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi dismissed Islamic banking as 'incompatible with Australia's Western values'. But Western values that uphold a banking system that treats its customers with disdain – as the Commonwealth Bank did last week – need to be questioned.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous jobs another forsaken moral challenge

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 November 2010
    2 Comments

    At the time of the Apology to the Stolen Generations in February 2008, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd committed Labor to halving the gap in employment incomes within a decade. It is now looking like another great moral challenge that Labor has given up on.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Packer's brave new world of media self-interest

    • Michael Mullins
    • 25 October 2010
    2 Comments

    There is credible speculation new part-owner James Packer will use his influence to kill innovation at Network Ten. The authority should respond by enforcing broadcast licence conditions, to ensure Packer's return to significant media ownership is in the public interest and not his self-interest. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mary MacKillop's lesson for Murray-Darling irrigators

    • Michael Mullins
    • 18 October 2010
    7 Comments

    Tony Windsor is proving himself to be a politician of integrity and tact, but has his work cut out for him in the case of the Murray-Darling Basin irrigators. Mary MacKillop was a champion of rural and regional Australians. It is worth considering her strategy in the context of the irrigators' struggle for survival.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's feminist saint

    • Michael Mullins
    • 11 October 2010
    5 Comments

    Sexual abuse was part of the mix of challenges facing Mary MacKillop and her sisters, but it was only one of many elements of disfunction within the Church and society of the time. Historian Father Ed Campion has described MacKillop as 'a heroine to modern Australian feminists'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope-hate in broken Britain

    • Michael Mullins
    • 20 September 2010
    12 Comments

    Social commentator Frank Furedi wrote that the Pope's UK visit provided Britain's cultural elite with 'a figure that it is okay to hate'. We might regard the angst as a manifestation of the growing pains that are to be expected in a world of emerging pluralism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pork-barrel politics rolls regional Australia

    • Michael Mullins
    • 13 September 2010
    5 Comments

    Deals struck between Prime Minister Gillard and Independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott saw hospitals in their electorates receive preferential treatment ahead of regions with greater needs. Pork-barrelling has always been part of politics, but that does not make it any less of a scandal.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The politician who can't be bought

    • Michael Mullins
    • 06 September 2010
    14 Comments

    Newly-elected Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie is basing his quest for power on ethical conduct. There’s nothing new about politicians talking about doing the right thing. Wilkie’s point of difference is that he quickly follows his words with action.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we're slow to help Pakistan

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 August 2010
    4 Comments

    The Australian public is being delivered a profoundly misleading subliminal message that, because the Taliban are active in the region, they are tied up in providing relief for flood victims. We need to forget politics for a while and think about the part we can play in helping Pakistanis through their crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Technophobe Tony's broadband back-step

    • Michael Mullins
    • 16 August 2010
    20 Comments

    Broadband policy is the only major point of difference between Labor and the Coalition in the lead up to this Saturday's federal election. The minimalist approach mooted by the Coalition fails to appreciate fast broadband's nation-building potential.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Atheist 'Real Julia' courts Christian vote

    • Michael Mullins
    • 09 August 2010
    17 Comments

    Gillard was photographed looking up to Cardinal George Pell with an admiring glance, and attended a fundraiser for expenses associated with October's Mary MacKillop canonisation in Rome. She offered $1.5 million in government money, but much more than that in flattery to Catholic electors.

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