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Keywords: Fires

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Conjurer of the Infinite: Memories of Mama

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 15 February 2023
    1 Comment

    Mama was a master of the kitchen, revered for her culinary magic and domestic miracles. Her cooking was an unsurpassed conjurer of traditional Bosnian pita, a sublime miracle that drew the infinite from the minimal. Mama's death left a void of ignorance, indifference, and inability that hovered over the village, mourning the loss of an unassailable figure.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Light and darkness

    • Tony London
    • 18 October 2022

    Change of season is upon us, / hot unseasonal days have drained us, / human sponges squeezed by the hands / of humidity, but the nights are becomingcool, a relief for bodies and minds in need / of withdrawal and replenishment of deep sleep, but in all of this there is some wakefulness, and there are some choristers returned, in these dogwatch hours.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    #Kindness

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 02 August 2022
    4 Comments

    We all know the Internet can be a seething cesspool of vitriol, so the presence of heart-warming videos of people slipping $20 into someone’s coat pocket or randomly complimenting a stranger, even the ubiquitous handing out of flowers, is largely welcome. But is this actually kindness? If an act of kindness happens and no one is there to film it, did it really happen?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Independent triumphs: The changing of Australian politics

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 May 2022
    5 Comments

    The centre of the political system did not so much hold as desert. The vote was a furious, determined and tenacious shout from the estranged centre, a shivering of the timbers. The calibre of individuals elected — many from professions, many with public service outside the traditional party hierarchy of patronage and promotion, and most, women — has not been previously seen in this country’s politics.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    After the election

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2022
    1 Comment

    As the election campaign mercifully comes to an end, many of us have been musing on what the new Government should do when it comes into office. It is a difficult question to answer because both Parties have excluded any radical action to address the clear and pressing needs of Australians. Fires, floods and insurance costs highlight the need for immediate and shared action to address climate change. The simultaneous high cost of housing, the inadequate benefits available to the disadvantaged, and lack of accommodation for people in need testify to the need to address the growing inequality in Australian society. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ties that bind: How negative campaigns eclipse community focus

    • Julian Butler
    • 12 May 2022
    2 Comments

    Election campaigns can be defined by all sorts of things. Gaffes, negative ads, international incidents, public policy. It is trite but no less true to say that this federal election campaign has been much more about the first three rather than the last. The policy discussion has been edged into the election mix most seriously by various interest groups and by some of the macro party and independent candidates seeking election.  

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope against hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 March 2022

    Taken together the events of recent years suggest that we face a crisis, a time in which the working assumptions that have guided our personal and collective lives no longer hold. If we do not change we face increasing threats to the world that we shall hand on to our children. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Incarceration in a changing climate

    • Julie Edwards
    • 18 January 2022
    2 Comments

    The images are simultaneously striking and terrifying. A raging grassfire that is shooting flames into the sky and destroying nature around it and lapping perilously close to the fences around Central NSW’s Lithgow Correctional Centre. As local residents were evacuated and highways were closed to protect public safety when the fire raged out of control just before Christmas in 2019, 400 prisoners remained detained.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our hopes and fears for 2022

    • Barry Gittins
    • 14 January 2022
    1 Comment

    We’ve been in a pressure cooker, these past two years. More than a score of historians had memorably described 2020 as the sixth-most ‘stressful year ever’. Predictions and speculations look ahead; I looked at the past trends of the past two years and make these humble observations. With the stage set for dire times, here are six trends to look for in 2022. Here’s hoping.

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  • MEDIA

    Best of 2021: Facebook unfriends Australia

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 11 January 2022

    Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Public faith and Perrottet

    • Julian Butler
    • 01 November 2021
    15 Comments

    The elevation of Dominic Perrottet to the Premiership of New South Wales caused a flurry of commentary about his religious faith. In many parts of the media his politics and personality were framed by his Catholicism. I watched on with a degree of discomfort, and with a sense of possibility. Could some of the bigoted characterisations invite a richer conversation about the ideals and deeper narratives that enliven our public leaders?

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  • ECONOMICS

    Teetering on the financial brink

    • David James
    • 08 June 2021
    4 Comments

    An often overlooked fact about the financial system is that it entirely depends on trust. When trust starts to evaporate, especially between the big players such as banks and insurance companies, the whole artifice is put into peril. Trust in the system is now at an extreme low and that points to extreme danger.

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