keywords: Hung Parliament
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INTERNATIONAL
- Tony Smith
- 06 August 2019
6 Comments
The timing of the USA's announcement that it is withdrawing from treaties limiting the nuclear arms race came just a few days before the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The anniversary remains important because it serves as a reminder that nuclear weapons have been used and that they could be used again.
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AUSTRALIA
- Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
- 06 June 2019
17 Comments
The recent federal election showed us that refugees and people seeking asylum do not need to be instrumentalised for votes. Perhaps refugee policymaking could be separated from politics. Perhaps it could be evidence-based and humane. Alas, the prevailing frames and politics of border protection quickly came to the fore post-election.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brian Matthews
- 27 March 2019
6 Comments
Like Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in his works, Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains exemplifies among many other things 'the possibilities of human decency' despite the Manus prison's squalor. Like George Orwell in another time and place, he is buoyed by hope in irrepressible nature.
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AUSTRALIA
- Justin Glyn
- 06 March 2019
3 Comments
Last month, Parliament mandated a royal commission into the treatment of people with disabilities. Now we hear it will not proceed before hearing from all states and territories. People with disabilities are most in need of strong centralised protections. The federal government, while giving with one hand, has been taking with the other.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 30 January 2019
6 Comments
Think of how it grates with the non-interference doctrine of the UN. Such interference 'must be forcible or dictatorial, or otherwise coercive, in effect depriving the state intervened against of control over the mater in question'. Yet many countries, most purported liberal democracies, have very happily made Venezuela the exception.
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AUSTRALIA
- François Kunc
- 14 September 2018
11 Comments
Place and identity are fundamental for each of us. They are what our First Peoples had taken from them. In thinking about who I am, I have come to the conclusion that without understanding our First Peoples and their story as told by them I really can't understand myself as an Australian.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 10 September 2018
As leaders like Gough Whitlam and Patrick Dodson have attested, if we are to imagine and strive towards New Horizons for Justice and Solidarity, we need conviction, perseverance, capacity for compromise, relationships of trust, humour.
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AUSTRALIA
- Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
- 20 August 2018
13 Comments
This remarkable policy of what Dr Eve Lester calls 'planned destitution' combines the most extreme instincts of neoliberal, nationalist and authoritarian thinking. Fundamentally, it derives from the Minister for Home Affairs' far reaching powers to determine the rights and entitlements of non-citizens such as people seeking asylum.
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INTERNATIONAL
- 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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ARTS AND CULTURE
Winter fronts roll through, we have had our tongues out for rain, genuflected in case it may have helped, and now another scud rattling on the tin roof, gutters run over like a gushing bereavement.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Eliza Berlage
- 19 April 2018
China and India are rising global powers, thanks to a burgeoning middle class, huge export markets and military might. So why wouldn't they take the western retreat from the Pacific as an invitation to dance? But their support comes with a crippling debt levels and the potential for a favour to be called in down the line.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 02 March 2018
12 Comments
The downfall of Barnaby Joyce and his replacement by Michael McCormack as Nationals leader shows once again that maintaining the Liberal-National coalition has a considerable impact on the nation, and thus it deserves greater attention and transparency. Instead it is clouded in secrecy and often taken for granted.
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