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Keywords: John Falzon

  • AUSTRALIA

    Cruelled by the Budget

    • John Falzon
    • 15 May 2014
    4 Comments

    'You don't help young people, or older people, or people with disabilities, or single mums, into jobs by making them poor. You don't build people up by putting them down. And as even the OECD acknowledges, you don't build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality. You don't create a strong country on the backs of the already poor.' Statement by John Falzon

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What's killing the charities regulator?

    • Michael Mullins
    • 31 March 2014
    5 Comments

    The Federal Government is moving to abolish the body set up to protect and regulate the non-profit sector. Vinnies CEO John Falzon describes the action as 'ideological', while Melbourne Catholic education chief Stephen Elder sees it as an opportunity to spend more time raising money and delivering services. The Government must explain the policy imperatives driving it to dismantle such an extensively considered piece of legislation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    You don't have to be a communist to stand up for the poor

    • John Falzon
    • 27 March 2014
    16 Comments

    I reject the dystopian vision of an Australia where people experiencing poverty are made to endure expenditure cuts while the people who have the least need for assistance enjoy overly generous tax concessions. From time to time someone comes out of the woodwork and accuses me of being a communist but that's the least of my worries. What worries me is the myth that people living in poverty are to blame for their own situation. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2013: Australian democracy needs an intrusion of the excluded

    • John Falzon
    • 16 January 2014
    1 Comment

    Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Christmas story's whisper from the edges

    • John Falzon
    • 17 December 2013
    13 Comments

    Recently Pope Francis blasted the so-called trickle-down economic theories in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Some will scorn his message as naive at best and dangerous at worst, while others will regard it as an urgent enkindling of hope in the face of degradation and despair. The Christmas story hints that another kind of world is possible.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope Francis' field hospital

    • Michael Mullins
    • 23 September 2013
    11 Comments

    Pope Francis says in his recent interview that the wounded won't come to God if their pastors throw the rule book at them. Likewise the federal government will do nothing to increase employment participation if it chooses to demonise people through its punitive Work for the Dole Scheme. It's cruel and pointless to condemn people for not being able to walk up stairs while refusing to build a ramp.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australians are not doing it tough

    • Greg Foyster
    • 02 September 2013
    19 Comments

    Throughout the election campaign, both major parties have pledged to address 'cost of living' pressures. But a quick comparison with the economies of other industrialised nations confirms that Australians have nothing to complain about. If prices rise by 5 per cent but incomes rise by 10 per cent, households are better off, even if the cost of a petrol reaches a new pinnacle.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian democracy needs an intrusion of the excluded

    • John Falzon
    • 19 August 2013
    24 Comments

    Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humiliation at the heart of homelessness

    • John Falzon
    • 18 June 2013
    13 Comments

    Recent ABS data reveals NT has both the highest rate of people experiencing homelessness and the highest imprisonment rate of any Australian state. Former Spanish PM Zapatero said 'a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members'. Successive Australian governments have systematically humiliated citizens on the basis of cultural background or health or social status.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor goes from Robin Hood to the Sheriff of Nottingham

    • John Falzon
    • 17 May 2013
    9 Comments

    You don't build someone up by putting them down. You don't help someone into employment by pushing them into poverty. By keeping the unemployment benefit low, successive governments have deliberately humiliated people rather than improving their chances.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex separated from religious song

    • Various
    • 07 May 2013

    They're hooked, no longer hear the church's gong, the stories or the insights that beget it, Real need for intimacy drives them on, a bare heartbeat from chaste religious song.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hearing the unheard at Christmas

    • John Falzon
    • 21 December 2012
    17 Comments

    The greatest power for progressive social change lies with the forming of connections between the excluded. This Christmas I invite you to join me in saluting the people who experience exclusion and who are best placed to teach all of us how best to change society for the better. 

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