No media witch-hunt on Wilson
Not owning but belonging to the land
So-called 'witch-hunt' holds Wilson to account
The global push against refugees
"The papers and politicians are not telling us to be afraid of white men who are radicalising. Why?"
"Trouble is, the disruption that Trump is mainly responding to is caused by globalisation, not free trade. The two are very different."
"His comments sound more like a young student set to fail religion class than the leader of one of the world's most populous Catholic-majority countries."
"What if, rather than owning land, we could belong to it?"
I am a survivor of sexual abuse. It was me who first made a complaint to NSW police that Wilson knew what Fletcher had been up to, who wrote an opinion piece for Fairfax asking what Wilson knew, who appeared on ABC TV naming the Archbishop. By extension, it must be me who initiated the witch-hunt and stirred up public hysteria.
There are severe limitations in the western ways we tend to think about land. Land is conceived in terms of ownership and property — ideas that are implicated not just in colonial histories, but in extractive industries and concentrations of wealth. In this model, land is a fulcrum of power.
In May 2018 Archbishop Wilson was convicted of concealing a serious indictable offence relating to the sexual abuse of a teenage boy by a priest in his diocese. Wilson is the highest ranking Catholic cleric to be convicted of such an offence. The Church's response to this episode should be of particular interest.
Such gatherings only serve to feed the display of power and displace reality. In truth (dangerous word to use these days), the gathering was treated with an unwarranted seriousness that gave it a credence it never deserved.
Their resilience speaks of a strong Buddhist culture in which the boys were used to struggle, found meaning in attending to the welfare of others rather than their own, and drew strength from meditative practices that set their perilous predicament within a broader human horizon.
Cometh the time, cometh the exploitable prejudice. With millions of globally displaced persons, states are retreating from the business of actually treating the condition as one of dysfunction inflicted by war, famine and poverty. It has morphed from a matter of humanitarianism to one of social ill and unease.
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.
The same sense of grievance and outrage that drove Jack and his rebels 500 years ago has sent Trump to the White House, propelled the United Kingdom out of the European Union, resurrected the poisonous 'Irish question' and legitimised Senator Pauline Hanson. She, with Cade-like empty bravado, claims to be for the 'battlers'.
We already know most Australians will support a referendum that would recognise Indigenous Australians within the constitution. What we now need is to examine how the constitutional reform procedures can themselves be reformed to support Indigenous political advancement. This includes reforming electoral laws and processes that limit Indigenous political participation.
The arguments for exemption ignore or deny the harm to children that can arise from failure to report. They claim the law would be ineffective because few paedophiles go to confession, and might not confess if the seal did not apply. Such conjectural arguments ignore the basic principle that all harm to a child must be forestalled.
The constitutional position of bishops is best illustrated by the Wilson case. The media releases of the hierarchy revealed their impotence. They explained their inaction by pointing out that only the Pope could force a bishop to resign and were reduced to conveying the impression of working behind the scenes to influence Wilson's decision.
To mark two years as president of the Philippines, Duterte has taken on his biggest sparring partner yet. God now joins the likes of Barack Obama and the UN as targets in Duterte's ranting. It would be laughable if he hadn't spent his presidency turning the country into Revelations, where even priests are being gunned down in the streets.
We can speculate on the reasons for the recent rage against plastic bag bans. We don't like change. We don't like being told what to do. We don't like having to think about alternatives and solutions. But at the heart of it, being mad about this particular inconvenience is about refusing to accept one's part in improving the collective lot. This is the one planet we have. There is no Plan B.
Grieving the death of a tree seems a common experience, but I had rarely heard about it. We share stories of the loss of loved ones or pets, but not of specific trees. Are we less comfortable acknowledging the depth of this relationship? Does it challenge our cultural understanding of the natural world and our place within it?
Researchers from Oxford concluded that consumers have significant power to 'deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers' by excluding animal products from their diets. Interestingly, this report comes at a time when the uptake of veganism is growing significantly, both globally and in Australia.
Movements of time — Farewell to ancient granite. Greetings to gleaming streams and striating ribbons of colour.
'In the Beginning Was the Word' opens with Angelina D'Costa, 'five years to the day after she stopped being a Catholic', entering a church, determined to confront a popular priest who is known to have covered up for another priest who abused children; only to be moved to submission by the familiar beauty of the Mass.
She was in her eighties then. And I was thirteen. Now eighty, I've retrieved that memory of hers and hold it as I would my own.