Keywords: Public Institutions
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 June 2018
35 Comments
Just in time to arrest ponderous musings about Western Civilisation, up jumps Denniss' cheeky funeral oration for the neoliberal settlement. His target is the assumption that an economy based on unregulated competition between individuals will benefit society. He does not spend time arguing with the theory, but points to the results.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 20 June 2018
60 Comments
The dispute about the Ramsay Centre Foundation for Western Civilisation had everything for those who like pub brawls. The question least discussed but most intriguing is precisely what is meant by Western Civilisation. Protagonists praised or damned its ideological associations, but rarely troubled to share their understanding of it.
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MEDIA
- Fatima Measham
- 20 June 2018
20 Comments
There is political hay to be made in convincing the right that the ABC has a leftward bias. The strategy counts on short memories. When Labor was in power, it would routinely complain that, in being too stringent with government, the ABC was aiding the Coalition. This only suggests that the ABC does its job, no matter who is in charge.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Using memoir as a kind of litmus, Atkinson challenges the myth that traumatic events are socially 'out of character' and asks us to look at how by its very nature, patriarchy demands the abuse of its most vulnerable citizens.
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RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 22 May 2018
33 Comments
General apologies don't go far enough. Compensation is necessary, but also not enough. The reputation of the church would now be higher if there were more obvious signals of accountability by those in charge. The offer of resignation made as a group to Pope Francis by the entire Chilean hierarchy is a breath of fresh air.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 12 May 2018
2 Comments
On the surface budgets are exercises in financial accountability. At a deeper level they are best understood as a yearly ritual; one of the ways in which rulers acknowledge and try to manipulate truths about state power. We should evaluate these less on their stated intentions but with what the show of competence and generosity reveals.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Roanna Gonsalves
- 09 May 2018
4 Comments
A thread of male entitlement binds the American literary world to a shepherd's world in India's Kashmir valley. Days ago, the American author Junot Diaz left the Sydney Writers Festival amid allegations of sexual abuse. In India there is another, more sinister and tragic manifestation, woven with the use of rape as a weapon of war.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 02 May 2018
31 Comments
The banking royal commission has already come to resemble the earlier child abuse royal commission. To observers who share a personal and public-spirited interest in the decent functioning of institutions, the similarities invite reflection on why two apparently different forms of institution should behave in such similar ways.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 19 April 2018
2 Comments
In recent months comment on international politics has been about taking sides and falling into line. Against such strident calls, two apparently unrelated pieces of speculation passed with little response: the prediction of a further cut to aid, and the assertion that China wanted to establish a military base in Vanuatu.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 03 April 2018
48 Comments
Archbishop Fisher's Easter warning was in part responding to the findings of the royal commission and in part to some of the submissions to the Ruddock panel on religious freedom. Being on the panel, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on particular submissions at this time. But I was shocked by the Archbishop's shrill tone.
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RELIGION
- David Holdcroft
- 23 March 2018
16 Comments
As Australia moves to a post-Christian state, there are numerous tendencies to see limits on the expression of religion as some kind of necessity. But religions remain legitimate voices in the political process and life of the community, and the space that permits the hearing of these voices is one of the marks of a healthy democracy.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 14 March 2018
16 Comments
At the heart of Pythagoras' contribution was wonder at a world in which human intelligence could understand and handle such different phenomena as music, architecture and the stars through mathematics. The cult of numbers in a cruder form remains characteristic of public life today. The most revered numbers are economic.
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