Keywords: World Mental Health Day
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AUSTRALIA
- Chelsea Candy
- 02 July 2019
50 Comments
By close of business on Thursday, the Australian Christian Lobby had raised over $2 million for Israel Folau's legal fighting fund. I can't help but wonder about the priorities of the Christians supporting the fundraiser. As a former community lawyer, I can think of many ways $2 million might be spent to help those facing a battle with the law.
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MEDIA
- Ros Lewis
- 21 February 2019
8 Comments
Gillette's video on toxic masculinity provoked an uproar among a surprising number of men. As a woman of the baby boomer generation, a survivor of intimate partner violence and of rape and attempted rape as a young woman, I have been waiting for a long time for the issues conveyed in the video to be a focus of conversation.
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AUSTRALIA
- Mary Dalmau
- 07 December 2018
16 Comments
While it is said we read to know we are not alone, it is also true that libraries and bookstores are communal places, providing a safe environment for all and filling vital, societal roles. Of all my interactions over the years with readers, customers and library patrons, two instances remain strong in my memory.
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MEDIA
- Sheila Ngoc Pham
- 19 September 2018
Humans are inherently social creatures with a need to converse, yet we live in isolation and mental distress in greater numbers than ever before. Does the ready desire for argumentation online that some thrive on come from wanting to feel, well, something — anger, certainly — rather than passively watching the world whir by?
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INTERNATIONAL
- Michael Kelly
- 27 August 2018
3 Comments
Some days I feel like a people trafficker, though I'm not making a zack out of the trafficking. Other days I see myself as a latter-day Oskar Schindler. But mostly I just feel trapped along with the 1000 refugees and asylum seekers I'm doing my not-very-successful best to get the hell out of an open prison called Bangkok.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 02 August 2018
16 Comments
Indifference to human life is what made Australia, and it still permeates its approach to crises. As with many things, Indigenous experience provides the lens with which to see things clearly. First Nations people know the fatal measure of our indifference. It manifests in many other areas too.
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AUSTRALIA
- Celeste Liddle
- 17 July 2018
16 Comments
Through last week's Sunday Night report on Channel 7, we were treated to another round of fear mongering. Never mind that just last year police admitted that the so-called 'Apex Gang' did not exist. As an Aboriginal woman, I'm tired of being told by politicians and newspapers which other people of colour I'm supposed to scared of.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kate Mani
- 12 September 2017
6 Comments
This Thursday will mark 70 years of Australian peacekeeping with a commemorative service and dedication of a new peacekeeping memorial. Dr Rosalind Hearder believes stereotypical perceptions of war and peace can leave Australians with a misguided understanding of peacekeeping. 'It's not the same experience as combat. But that doesn't mean it is easier. The long-term effects can still be damaging.'
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 30 August 2017
6 Comments
'There was one controversy in which Lionel Bowen was involved that does provide good lessons for the contemporary Catholic considering the desirable law or social policy on a contested issue - lessons for the citizen weighing what is for the common good. Back in 1979 there was debate in the Parliament on a motion which was framed to stop Medicare funding of abortions. Bowen, a strict Catholic, was strongly opposed to the motion. He did not think the motion was about abortion. He thought it was about money.' Frank Brennan's 2017 Lionel Bowen Lecture
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INTERNATIONAL
- Cristy Clark
- 19 June 2017
7 Comments
Last Wednesday, five Michigan officials were charged with involuntary manslaughter for their role in the unfolding health crisis in Flint, Michigan - a crisis that has included at least 12 deaths from Legionnaires' disease, in addition to the possible lead poisoning of a whole population. The people of Flint were aware that something was wrong from the moment their water was switched over to the Flint river in April 2014. They just couldn't get anyone to listen.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 14 June 2017
3 Comments
World Refugee Day is a time for remembering. We remember we live in a world of millions of refugees, and that many of our fellow citizens arrived as or are the children of refugees. We may remember refugees, but in their own lives they are dismembered. The tiles we take for granted in the mosaic of our ordinary lives have been hacked out of refugees' lives. Many people lost parents, siblings and children in the persecution and terrors they endured. With each loss part of themselves also died.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Isabella Fels
- 02 May 2017
8 Comments
In my late 20s when I became seriously unwell and diagnosed with schizophrenia, Coca-Cola was like an ever flowing fountain of happiness for me. How I loved sipping it. I would even quickly down it with my meds. I could feel life getting better and speeding up. Having Coke was magic. But lately, with all the publicity surrounding the dangers of drinking fizzy, sugary soft drinks, I am trying to cut down. It is not easy trying to fight an almost lifelong addiction.
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