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Keywords: Mark Scott

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Australian love story

    • Barry Gittins
    • 15 February 2022
    11 Comments

    Did you make the annual obeisance to St Valentine’s Day traditions [read purchases] on the 14th? Last year, Australians were projected to spend $1.1 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts as St Valentine’s Day was lauded and backed by marketers, glamorising Romantic ardour and infatuation, glorious, all-consuming passion, and a thirst for intimacy and transcendence.

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  • MEDIA

    Best of 2021: Facebook unfriends Australia

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 11 January 2022
    1 Comment

    Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Tampa legacy 20 years on

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 September 2021
    23 Comments

    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.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Our economy needs democratic oversight, not the unleashing of animal spirits

    • John Falzon
    • 06 May 2021
    23 Comments

    In a recent speech to business leaders, Prime Minister Morrison made the remarkable claim that ‘we are going to meet our [climate change] ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of capitalism.’ This is straight from the neoliberal playbook, the doxa that the role of government is to get out of the way to make room for those animal spirits so as to pander to the fantasies of the wealthy few.

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  • RELIGION

    Hands-on faith

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 May 2021
    17 Comments

     The laying on of hands has been associated with controverted change in Western religious societies. Central in religious societies, it became neuralgic in cultures seeking to mark out clear boundaries between religion and such domains as politics, science and medicine and demography. To appreciate the significance of the action, it is worth reflecting on its history.

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  • CARTOON

    The Prime Minister and his cabinet

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 07 April 2021
    1 Comment

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  • MEDIA

    Unfriending Australia: Facebook takes action

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 February 2021
    2 Comments

    Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.

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  • CARTOON

    Everything old is new again

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 19 January 2021

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  • CARTOON

    On the rocks

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 01 December 2020

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The shadow of responsibility: Australian war crimes allegations in Afghanistan

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 November 2020
    21 Comments

    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.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    We don't have the luxury of dealing with one crisis at a time

    • Marnie Vinall
    • 12 November 2020
    4 Comments

    Since the pandemic started to show its teeth on our shores in March, there’s been a trend to wave away any other matter other than COVID-19 with an examination of, ‘Just one crisis at a time — we’ll get to climate change after we’ve got the economy back on its feet.’ The only problem is we don’t have the luxury as a nation to solely focus on one crisis at a time.

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  • RELIGION

    Patchwork quilt church inhibits national action

    • John Warhurst
    • 05 November 2020
    67 Comments

    There is a good reason why the term Australian Catholic Church is frowned upon in official circles. It does not exist. Instead, it is a patchwork quilt of fiefdoms called dioceses. It lacks an energising central authority which, when it needs to, can generate and shape a national church response.

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