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Keywords: Grant Fraser

  • The politics of popular evil and untrendy truth

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2015
    1 Comment

    If you want to form government in Australia and if you want to lead the Australian people to be more generous, making more places available for refugees to resettle permanently in Australia, you first have to stop the boats. If you want to restore some equity to the means of choosing only some tens of thousands of refugees per annum for permanent residence in Australia from the tens of millions of people displaced in the world, you need to secure the borders. The untrendy truth is that not all asylum seekers have the right to enter Australia but that those who are in direct flight from persecution whether that be in Sri Lanka or Indonesia do, and that it is possible fairly readily (and even on the high seas) to draw a distinction between those in direct flight and those engaged in secondary movement understandably dissatisfied with the level of protection and the transparency of processing in transit countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The popular evil is that political

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hervey Bay boat arrival from Ireland

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 September 2014
    5 Comments

    Considering my indebtedness to the two Aborigines who met [my family's ship arriving in Hervey Bay from Ireland] 151 years ago, I owe it to all my fellow Australians to agitate these issues of law, morality and politics here in Ireland so that back in Australia, the homeland which, in my religious tradition, was known as the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Too much order with too little law 30 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 July 2014
    1 Comment

    'Undoubtedly there are many challenges confronting our elected leaders in dealing with violent crime and with pathological sex offenders. But long-term sustainable solutions must be based on respect for judicial independence and for the role of the legal profession.' Frank Brennan addresses the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties at The Irish Club, 175 Elizabeth St, Brisbane 8 July 2014.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On the way to Golgotha

    • Various
    • 15 April 2014
    2 Comments

    A path of varicose roots rising from sodden ground showed the way to a rock placed upon a rock; a face with random nails stuck like a half-crown of thorns in the roughly groomed clay; the eyes stared out from bulbous sacs, the mouth downturned like any mouth on any face ... I was frightened that he might choose me as a resting place.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Celebrating diversity on Australia Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 January 2014
    20 Comments

    This week began with Australia Day and ends with the Chinese New Year. The juxtaposition suggests pertinent questions about Australian identity, especially the ways in which Australians have alternately included and excluded those seen as outsiders. This is most evident in the relationship between Australian settlers' attitudes to Indigenous Australians, but it is also seen in Australian attitudes to Chinese and other Asian peoples.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor's light on the hill

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 November 2013
    7 Comments

    'There have been innumerable post-mortems and words of advice as to how the party with new structures, election rules, and policies can pick itself up, dust off, and win the next election. Sadly some of those post-mortems have come with more coatings of spite and loathing. It is no part of my role in the public square as a Catholic priest to offer such advice.' Frank Brennan's address to the Bathurst Panthers Club, 2 November 2013.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Journey to the margins

    • Marlene Marburg and Grant Fraser
    • 23 July 2013
    2 Comments

    They follow a star, stirring light in their hearts more than the sky, to the margins, where even goats lose their footing. They make a silent journey, growing in hope that the child within and the Child without will recognise each other.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dusty feet on the road to reconciliation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 July 2013
    8 Comments

    150 years ago the David McIver entered Hervey Bay carrying 404 immigrants, including my great great grandmother Annie. Some of the crew rowed to shore, where they were met and helped by two Aboriginal men. Who'd have thought that over a century later, one of Annie's great grandchildren would be a judge in the landmark Mabo native title case.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cronies of the nudge and wink

    • Grant Fraser
    • 14 May 2013
    3 Comments

    When ibis move, they do so in rosters of fastidious steps, each bird as polite as a grandad who is looking for the salt ... Stooped in twos or threes like patient skittles, they whisper quiet inventories of silvered figments and storied frogs.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rembrandt's denial of Christ

    • Grant Fraser
    • 30 October 2012
    5 Comments

    Peter, I gave you such handsome possibilities, had your face shining like a saint, and yet still, on this third occasion, you can only find a lie.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Problems with atheism

    • Various
    • 17 April 2012
    14 Comments

    The problem with being an atheist is the lack of possibilities, a world to come into being, a kingdom to be worked for, blood and sweated for, any hope of future travels curtailed with science.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Spider monk

    • Grant Fraser
    • 30 August 2011
    2 Comments

    Now he is pursed within the curl of his leaf, a monk at watch for those lost souls, whom he might trap in the sneer of his silken intentions.

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