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Keywords: Dysfunction

  • AUSTRALIA

    How the illicit drug trade helped the spread of Covid

    • Stephen Lawrence
    • 16 November 2021
    3 Comments

    A truth that virtually dares not speak its name is that the spread of Covid 19 into regional New South Wales was largely a product of the illicit drug trade. Understanding why and how this occurred points in the direction of much needed social policy. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pragmatism: obscuring ideology in Australian politics

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 09 February 2021
    30 Comments

    The celebration of pragmatism in Australian politics obscures the role that ideology has always already played. In fact, one of the more stealthily ideological moves in Australian politics, generally made within that swirl of commitments people call ‘centrism’, is the de-politicisation of policy — the attempt to present policy as responsive to natural imperatives rather than to specific values and ideals.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Actually, my illness does define me

    • Tim Hutton
    • 01 October 2020
    9 Comments

    For many people, illness has a narrative: a clear beginning, middle and end. If we’re lucky, the ending is actually a fresh start where the illness is gone and our hero is returned to normal life, changed but stronger because of their ordeals. In the lives of those with chronic illness, however, those lines are blurred; our descent into illness may have been gradual and there might be no end in sight.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gerard Manley Hopkins on advocacy and pests

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 November 2019
    5 Comments

    Hopkins' words highlight how difficult it is for poets or lesser human beings to focus consistently on the particularity of each human being, let alone of each being in the world. Yet this is a necessary condition for recognising the claim that each person and the world make on us. It is no wonder that we sometimes falter in our commitment.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need better care to relieve birth trauma

    • Nicola Heath
    • 06 November 2019
    2 Comments

    In our foetal-centric antenatal model, the health and wellbeing of the person giving birth are secondary considerations, stemming in part from a belief that suffering is a defining characteristic of childbirth. But what if a 'safe delivery' meant not just a healthy baby, but a healthy mother too?

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  • RELIGION

    Cultural questions for getting back on mission

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 October 2019
    11 Comments

    For Catholics who are interested in the Australian Church, its future and the Plenary Council, this is essential reading. Given its focus on governance, it may also be of interest to a wider audience. Many of the strains of dysfunction it finds in Church governance are similar to those in public life in Australia and internationally.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Truths for Trump on South African farmers

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 28 August 2018
    2 Comments

    In the 17 years since, farm murders have dropped dramatically. At face value, this is a triumph in the fight against violent crime, and a resounding riposte to people like President Donald Trump and our own Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott, who have seized on the issue in order to sow racial hatred among their own constituents.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The global push against refugees

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 July 2018
    16 Comments

    Cometh the time, cometh the exploitable prejudice. With millions of globally displaced persons, states are retreating from the business of actually treating the condition as one of dysfunction inflicted by war, famine and poverty. It has morphed from a matter of humanitarianism to one of social ill and unease.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    No end to the cruelty as Manus centre closes

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 October 2017
    16 Comments

    The closure of the centre is not the end of it. The men are to be moved to purpose-built accommodation in the town of Lorengau. There is both fear and reluctance. The cruelty, in other words, is merely being displaced.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Youth justice system needs reform not repression

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 April 2017
    7 Comments

    We need only to imagine ourselves as a child subject to the practices described in these accounts, to find them scarifying. The recurring images of children lying in the foetal position, in solitary confinement, hooded or surrounded by guards say it all. When we set them against the results of research into the biological and psychological development of children, detention, prolonged lockdowns, isolation and a culture of punishment are destructive and counterproductive.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bad sports and politics

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 April 2017
    4 Comments

    Recent adverse coverage of sporting organisations has revealed once again what looks like widespread organisational dysfunction. Sport is such a major part of Australian life that we should all be interested in what goes on within the multi-million dollar organisations that run it, whether it be the big football codes, cricket, tennis or the Olympic sports. The stakes are huge and the issues, including self-interest, interstate rivalries and personality conflicts are eerily familiar in public life more generally.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rethinking and reconstructing youth justice

    • Terry Laidler
    • 24 March 2017
    12 Comments

    Many of the kids in the juvenile justice system have been abused, come from dysfunctional families or state care, or have untreated behavioural or mental health problems. Warehousing them in punishing idleness and expecting passive compliance, let alone any recovery, is fanciful. I have begun to think about how we could respond to these kids in a holistic way, with a strong emphasis on prevention and diversion. These proposals relate to current the system in Victoria, but generalise easily.

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