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Keywords: Mark Green

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Syrians counting on Australian aid

    • Mark Green
    • 30 September 2013
    2 Comments

    The conflict in Syria has led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today. And the need for a peaceful solution is great. I hope that Australia's successful aid program remains a priority for our Government. We must not ignore the needs of those lying at our gates simply because their communities do not hold trade or economic interests for us.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Optional voting dims democracy

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 18 March 2013
    14 Comments

    Is voting about giving the finger to politicians you can't stand, or determining which candidate is the one most suited to being given power? In a democracy, we maintain that the best candidate is the one who is most preferable to the most people. If some of us refuse to say who they prefer, we can't work out who is the best candidate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconciliation in Australia and East Timor

    • Mark Green
    • 14 February 2013
    4 Comments

    I was in Dili on Apology Day 2008, and wept as I listened on the radio to the Apology offered by Kevin Rudd. The previous year, I had arrived in Dili to take up a post with an aid and development program, and was accosted by a very angry young man. 'What are you doing here? Have you come to make us like your Aboriginal people?'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Learning to sail both ways

    • Graham Kershaw
    • 12 February 2013
    1 Comment

    Don't you seek a centre, an object of devotion? Don't you seek a primal source of light? In the evening, on verandahs, in the dark, in the rain ... Don't you go inside quickly and drink yourself blind? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Life in the Ramadan fasting lane

    • Pat Walsh
    • 05 September 2012
    2 Comments

    The fasting rule is interpreted flexibly. You are free not to fast if you have to travel, are pregnant, old, little, sick, or basically have a good excuse. Ironically, Ramadan can also involve an enormous amount of cooking, late night and pre-dawn binges. Households buy up. Restaurants offer discounts. One hotel lobby was decked out like Mecca.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Perils of the Greens' moral vanity

    • John Warhurst
    • 07 August 2012
    13 Comments

    The Greens have been accused of self-righteousness leading to an unwillingness to compromise. Yet the most inflexible party in the current parliament has been the Coalition, led by Tony 'Mr No' Abbott. Getting the balance right between flexibility and maintaining what you stand for is an important lesson for all political parties in parliament.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Olympics silver whining

    • Various
    • 07 August 2012

    Our species believes it progresses without limitation. We shout when a swimmer wins silver, 'That's no inspiration'. As humans pound forward, no 'burden of care' limitation ... We deserve only winners, our species the sole inspiration.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The eloquence of God

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 04 July 2012
    2 Comments

    'And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory, full of grace and truth' (John 1:1, 14). In the second-last conversation I had with Peter, we agreed that that text should be the Gospel for his Requiem. There is a sense, I’m sure, in which every poem that Peter wrote was an instance of the Word becoming flesh.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rain on the Queen's parade

    • Brian Matthews
    • 22 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Constant rain, sullen skies and a scarcely articulate commentary did not deter the massive and sodden crowds or diminish the momentum of the Queen’s recent Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Only the bigger picture and the jaundiced eye of history could assign the event its comparative place in the great panoply of royal extravaganzas.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaky surpluses and dirty nappies

    • Jen Vuk
    • 09 May 2012
    4 Comments

    You could you call it coincidence that the week I'm asked to write on budgets, ours blows out. I call it life. Such is the cyclic nature of our 1.5-incomes-and-two-kids lives that just when we think our savings are safe, a new enrolment fee is due, the kids' jeans are suddenly a size too small and I've run out of nappies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Catholic writers' agnostic appeal

    • Lucas Smith
    • 29 February 2012
    7 Comments

    The priests are ineluctably compromised: one has capitulated to state pressure to marry; the other has fathered a daughter and drugs himself with alcohol. But the author's achievement, and a mark of his faith, is his ability to 'distinguish ... between the man and the office'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dreams of pulling Australia out of its slump

    • Ian C. Smith
    • 31 January 2012

    Although most are probably long dead, they seem happy, even excited. Perhaps they will toss triumphant hats. The wind might favour their team, even steal tossed hats, but not hope.

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