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Keywords: Fires

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Black Saturday gibe mars Murray's might

    • Philip Harvey
    • 16 April 2010
    6 Comments

    In one poem Les Murray would reduce the causes of the Black Saturday fires to differences in forest management between 'hippies' and 'rednecks'. Utilising poetry to play the blame game demeans our understanding of the complexity of that disaster.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The crucifixion of Christine Nixon

    • Moira Rayner
    • 09 April 2010
    79 Comments

    No firestorm of blame would be raging in the media were Christine Nixon not a woman, a decent and strong woman, a prominent woman and an ethically sound woman of an age and with the experience to possess a raging integrity of her own and, by her very being, to offer ruthless men a soft target.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church as advocate in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 February 2010

    'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    One year after Kinglake burned

    • Susan Fealy
    • 09 February 2010
    1 Comment

    Black stumps, capped with snow — no, capped with lime, beside the road, tree ferns, fanning their wing in the sun. A sign: children crossing. The road is so large. The CFA building, those three letters almost the three sides of a cross.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2009: When Leonard Cohen prays

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 January 2010
    1 Comment

    The world of pop music is dominated by prettiness and skin-deep perfection. In that context, Cohen's greatness is not instantly discernable. Lately a Buddhist, he has spent his latter years in study of religion — 'But cheerfulness keeps breaking through.' February 2009

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2009: Fatal firestorm's distant witness

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 05 January 2010

    A year ago, on the day of the National Apology, the emotion was palpable over the seas. But it was hard not being there, standing on the same dirt as your fellow countrymen. It is similarly difficult to be away from home during a time of natural disaster. February 2009

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lessons from Greek and Australian 'quench-fires'

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 September 2009
    3 Comments

    In Australia it would beggar belief to see elderly nuns directing garden hoses against the fires that threaten their convents. But that is what happened last week in Greece. Australia and Greece resemble each other in many ways, but not in the way they cope with fire.

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  • EDUCATION

    Parable of the long-suffering teacher

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 August 2009
    5 Comments

    Students are more proficient in technology than their teachers and are accessing information their elders would not have known. They wonder, if they can already function as if they have finished school, then what's the point of school? It's a fair question. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Flame blame is a shame

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 August 2009
    11 Comments

    The Black Saturday bushfires had the same relationship to previous fires as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima did to other bombing raids. Defects of communication and organisation, while regrettable and costly, were irrelevant: there's no assured safety for those who live near bushland.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Strategies for a new era of firestorms

    • Paul Collins
    • 21 August 2009
    5 Comments

    There were many mistakes made on Black Saturday and the Interim Report of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission points them out. For now the commissioners avoid the 'bigger fire questions', but in the end these will have to be faced.

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  • RELIGION

    The meddling priest and the Redfern prophet

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 July 2009
    9 Comments

    Last week, Pope Benedict gave Kevin Rudd a copy of his new encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Rudd gave the Pope a copy of the National Apology. I wonder what the radical Redfern priest Ted Kennedy would have made of this exchange of literary gifts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Predicting Black Saturday

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 May 2009
    1 Comment

    It's frightening how precisely experts predicted the weather and its impact on the seemingly inevitable Black Saturday fires. A new documentary questions the adequacy of the response, given the veracity of these warning signs.

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