Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done.
The New York Times editorial on 15 August was all about tragedy in describing the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. ‘Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.’
In times of unexpected or inexplicable crisis, humans all over the globe regardless of race, religion, lineage or historical evidence, will often turn to myth, the occult, each other, to their until then untested and unimpressive leaders, or to a hoped-for apparent miracle to explain what seemed otherwise beyond explanation.
The question being asked, however, is one that puts the cart before the horse. The question of ‘What do you want to see in the national curriculum?’ presupposes the answer to another question: What even is the purpose of schooling?
The discussion in Australia as to how such atrocities are to be approached is telling. The call for responsibility has varied by degrees. Most tend to some variant of the rotten apple theory: a few particularly fruits that may be isolated and extruded from the barrel. Culpability can thereby be confined, preserving the integrity of other military personnel and, importantly, political decision makers.
Recent weeks have seen the deaths of former NSW Liberal Premier and federal Finance minister, John Fahey, and former Labor federal minister, Senator Susan Ryan. They were both exemplary public figures who not only made a major contribution to Australian public life but did so in a way that drew praise from all sides of politics.
People ask why it took the death of George Floyd to make so many Australians stand up. His experience mirrored that of so many Aboriginal people who have died while in custody. His dying words ‘I can’t breathe’ echo through our hearts, because this isn’t the first time a Bla(c)k man has uttered those words while being brutally arrested for a crime most white people would get a slap on the wrist for.
The Morrison government despises the working class. There is no other explanation for its behaviour. For all the ‘lifters and leaners’ or ‘workers and shirkers’ guff that we’ve seen over the years from this and past governments, the truth is that, according to the neoliberal worldview, whether you’re in paid work or on social security, you’re despised unless you belong to its own big money elite.
Politicians love to remind minorities to integrate. Minority kids by and large resent these calls, because they are desperate to integrate. South Asian kids like me and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor were among those wishing to be Australian or British. Our idols were Bruce Springsteen and Jim Kerr, not Abu Bakr Baghdadi or Osama bin Ladin.
For years, we've positioned ourselves as an international champion of moral righteousness, of sovereignty and of self-determination, and as Timor-Leste's liberator. But we can't have it both ways. Taking unearned Timor Sea wealth is another in a long line of Australia's failure to do the right thing by Timor-Leste.
We can tell the Morrison government has no interest in Indigenous affairs because, apart from some money for suicide prevention programs (albeit less than half that requested), its budget showed a series of cuts. There is a lot of unfinished business to be addressed before it makes sense to adopt a voice to Parliament in the Constitution.
25-36 out of 200 results.