Keywords: Great Depression
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RELIGION
- Rachel Woodlock
- 15 June 2018
14 Comments
Amid the shock and grief for Anthony Bourdain's death, one blue-tick Twitterer attempted to capture five minutes of shameful fame, declaring that religious people believe hell or purgatory is his afterworld destination. While all the great religious traditions generally proscribe suicide, they also contain nuanced views of the suicide's fate.
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RELIGION
- Rachel Woodlock
- 18 January 2018
9 Comments
Nur Warsame hopes to open a gay-friendly mosque, quite a feat, in a country where mosque applications often face fierce resistance from non-Muslim locals. Gay Muslims are mostly rejected by the Muslim community for being gay and stigmatised by the wider community for being Muslim. Many cannot reconcile the two identities.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 27 October 2017
2 Comments
Brenda Niall's biographies characteristically begin with simple and enigmatic stories, whose significance becomes clearer as the book develops. This exploration of her grandmother's life takes its point of departure in two of her possessions. The first is a wooden box made for Aggie Maguire by her brother as they sailed to Australia.
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AUSTRALIA
- Josephine Samuel-King
- 13 October 2017
37 Comments
Her suffering is just as severe as any of my dying patients endured. From time to time she contemplates suicide. I cannot assist her to take her own life and it is important that I cannot. My role, when all else fails, is to sit with her, to understand her powerlessness and mine in the face of her suffering, and help her find a way through.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 04 August 2017
14 Comments
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne recently called for an expansion of the Australian weapons industry. It would enable Australia to join the United States and Britain as a major exporter of weapons and further Australia’s strategic goals. The move has a logic: if you want weapons it is cheaper to make them than buy them; if you make them it is more profitable to sell them to others than to keep them all for yourself; if you sell them it is best to sell them to your friends.
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EDUCATION
- Dennis McIntosh
- 22 November 2016
24 Comments
I wondered why my daughter was able to get an education with a brain injury and I couldn't get one with a normal brain? So I decided to copy what we had done with her. In short, I started reading again and started patterning sentences. Do I care about Direct Instruction, or Noel Pearson and the Cape York Academy? No. I care about seeing children find the joy in learning and embracing with courage and confidence the opportunities an education can provide.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 09 November 2016
21 Comments
The US election, to no one's regret, is now over. It remains to wish Donald Trump well as he prepares to take up the office of president. It is tempting to see Hillary Clinton as Humpty Dumpty and ask how she can pick up the pieces of her life, when tarnished and wearied by a campaign so full of personal abuse, revelations of tawdry behaviour and a lack of grace. Yet it is not Clinton that lies broken at the foot of the wall. It is the polity of the US, shown to be bereft of the trust necessary for national wellbeing.
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INTERNATIONAL
- David James
- 09 August 2016
15 Comments
The main legislative catalyst for the GFC was the repeal, in 1999 by Bill Clinton, of the Glass Steagall Act, which had prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. This allowed the investment banks to indulge in the debauch of financial invention that almost destroyed the world's monetary system. Trump has made the reinstatement of Glass Steagall official policy. Should that happen, it could be the most beneficial development in the global financial system for decades.
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AUSTRALIA
- June Factor
- 03 August 2016
13 Comments
In 1940, Prime Minister Robert Menzies received a letter from a woman in Western Australia: 'I have heard on the wireless the news that Australia would be willing to receive internees from England. I beg to protest; we have enough of the scum here already, too many in fact ... I sincerely trust that a U-boat gets every one of them.' The 'scum' she rejected so emphatically were the German and Austrian refugees, predominantly Jewish, soon to travel to Australia as 'enemy alien' prisoners.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 25 July 2016
7 Comments
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the amendment to the Constitution which took out the adverse references to Aborigines. Following our recent election, we are assured at least six, and possibly seven, members of our national parliament who proudly claim an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage. They are represented in all parties and none. How good it would be if our elected Aboriginal politicians could come together across party lines and propose an amendment to the Constitution which recognises them.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brian Doyle
- 04 April 2016
5 Comments
His mum was the kind who baked more than one pie at a time and gave the extra pies away easily and casually. All I knew about her was the pies, because my friend brought in pies for birthdays and teachers' anniversaries and raffles and such at school. My friend said she was too cheerful, a remark I didn't understand. He said she was a different person after his dad died, but who wouldn't be after your spouse died at the kitchen table and got coffee all over the business section of the newspaper?
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ECONOMICS
- David James
- 19 January 2016
11 Comments
Low interest rates tend to change the understanding of risk; having high debt seems to be less of a problem because the cost of servicing it is lower. This cavalier attitude has been especially evident in Australian households, which have racked up more debt relative to the size of the economy than any other country in the world. The massive appetite for debt has been replicated across the globe. The world may have survived the era of casino money - just - but it is now facing another crisis.
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