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There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
Will former Governor General John Kerr's correspondence with the Queen shed light on what really happened in 1975? It may very well, and historians like Jenny Hocking were willing to challenge the National Archives of Australia's refusal to access such records in High Court.
But insecurity breeds insecurity. In the face of insecurity we can feel insecure. Our identity as persons can be shaken by the insecurity of our circumstances. This is not inevitable. Nor is it necessarily lasting. Some people will be temporarily or lastingly paralysed by anxiety; others will be more resilient.
At the fringes of the legal system, there are areas of work you probably won’t read about in law school career guides. Many of these deal in trauma or poverty. They are substantial, but they aren’t celebrated or pursued by the mainstream of the profession. They generally attract neither money nor prestige, and in many cases the ‘market’ fails to provide paid jobs of any sort, irrespective of need.
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen the government pull out all the stops in an attempt to convince the Australian public to download the COVIDSafe App. There are plenty of issues with the app itself, including its technical flaws, and valid concerns around data privacy, security and the normalisation of surveillance. But the other fascinating aspect of COVIDSafe has been the commentary surrounding the app.
The new ASIO Powers Amendment Bill 2020 is being rushed through Parliament in a time of pandemic, guaranteeing that it will lack even the minimal level of scrutiny normally accorded to legislation dealing with ‘national security’.
I’ve been left wondering at the amount of oxygen being given to a particular branch of ‘pandemic analysis’, one that sees cost-benefit analysis taking centre stage, with all the disturbing suggestions that follow.
But just as the frighteningly precarious nature of our lives has been thoroughly exposed, so too has the inequality of it all. Even in a pandemic, we aren't all suffering equally. Even in a pandemic, structures of privilege continue to operate.
While the federal government has set a zero net emissions target by 2050, along with the states and territories and local councils in some areas, the steps that are taken to get there are vitally important. Yet there seems to be no signs of a rapid move away from fossil fuels.
The question remains, however, is there a straight binary trade-off between granting the state power (to organise lock-downs, track its populace and coerce the people) and keeping its people safe?
Most people would agree that certain measures are necessary to both protect those who face the greatest health risks and so that our health systems don’t get overwhelmed. However, these astronomical limitations on civil liberties raise concerns.
The internet and the online spaces are indeed becoming our lifeline for expression and assembly. This lifeline is under threat and deserves much more protection than it currently has under international law. We now have an immediate opportunity to remedy that.
The opacity of the Australian public service, and its disposition to secrecy, has left journalists in a bind. Leaks constitute the oxygen of the secret state, but publishing that material remains a dangerous affair.
145-156 out of 200 results.