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Keywords: Sorry Day

  • AUSTRALIA

    Accidental white heroes of Aboriginal culture

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 25 May 2012
    5 Comments

    A Yankunytjajara elder has damned a current 'songlines' anthropological  study, declaring that 'white do-gooders need their boundaries defined'. Anthropologists, like missionaries, have a mixed record, but are credited by many Aboriginal people for doing more good than they intended or anticipated.

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  • RELIGION

    Re-balancing authority in the abusive Church

    • Brian Lennon
    • 18 May 2012
    47 Comments

    Church structures are riddled with patriarchy, clericalism and deference, and these were at the centre of the abuse problem. Repentance, then, means changing these. Lay people in particular, who are less subject to Vatican strictures, need to bring to the table their skills and knowledge to drive this change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths and truths of Australian bigotry

    • Larry Schwartz
    • 23 January 2012
    12 Comments

    Too often I've opened my front door and found myself tempted by some sales pitch. So today I'd answered warily, spoke through the screen door and tried to keep the encounter brief. 'I'm sorry, but we're not interested.' The salesman knew better: 'It's because of the colour of my skin,' he replied.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2011: Breast sandwich

    • Mary Manning
    • 04 January 2012
    2 Comments

    'I'm Shareena,' she says. 'I'm your radiographer for today. For your breast screen.' An old man looks away from the waiting room television when he hears the word breast. His eyes linger over my sensible tailored shirt and I wonder if I have left a button undone. Published 19 April 2011

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  • RELIGION

    A Catholic Social Teaching perspective on the Intervention

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 November 2011
    1 Comment

    Text from the 4th Annual Gerald Ward Lecture 'How do we design a dignified welfare safety net without becoming a Nanny State? — Lessons from Catholic Social Teaching', presented  by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the National Library of Australia, 18 November 2011.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Jesus' desert odyssey

    • Jane Jervis-Read
    • 19 October 2011
    6 Comments

    Every night the devil gave birth to roast chickens and jacket potatoes and gallons of wine which it swilled and gobbled, sucking the oil from its fingers. It shrugged when the man and dog refused the steaming food. They always refused it, for they knew where it came from.

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  • RELIGION

    What difference does it make now that Mary MacKillop is a saint?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 October 2011

    Mary visited Rome as a young religious woman when she was being persecuted by local bishops for being too independent. She got a good hearing from the Pope and great assistance from Fr Anderledy who became the Superior General of the Jesuits. If only Bishop Bill Morris could have received the same sympathetic hearing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'We will decide who comes here'

    • Peter Gebhardt
    • 27 September 2011
    2 Comments

    It might be an epitaph on a tombstone, or an ancient call to prayer ... Forget the ancestral trespassers, the heritage forbears, the gin and bitters people. They didn't ask, they just used their guns.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My father's good death

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 September 2011
    3 Comments

    The day my father died I was at the beach. Strangely, that morning one friend and I had been discussing death. My phone had been switched off, but as I walked away at the end of an almost perfect day, I turned the little time-bomb on again. It exploded almost immediately.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Favourite body parts

    • Jordie Albiston
    • 13 September 2011
    6 Comments

    Thank you feet, for putting one after another along shorelines and long paths ... Sorry for all the concrete, landmines and shoes. To hands, many thanks, for touching many things ... I hope you enjoyed the feel of another's occasional flesh.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remembering Bonegilla's refugee riot

    • Bruce Pennay
    • 18 July 2011
    8 Comments

    50 years ago this week, migrants and refugees from Eastern Europe rioted at the Bonegilla migrant reception centre outside Albury-Wodonga. The Federal Immigration Minister said such behaviour was not tolerated in this country, but investigation prompted public sympathy for the demonstrators.

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  • RELIGION

    Human rights and Christian lawyers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 July 2011
    5 Comments

    When I appeared on Q&A with Christopher Hitchens, a young man asked whether we can 'ever hope to live in a truly secular society' while the religious continue to 'affect political discourse and decision making' on euthanasia, same-sex unions and abortion. Hitchens was simpaticao. I was dumbstruck.

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