Palestine remains embroiled in the quagmire of politics and legitimacy
Truth lies at the heart of communication
Funding shake-up leaves out key SA homelessness services
India travel ban: citizenship comes a distant second place
'The conversation about the treatment of women in Parliament has revealed the hollowness of the appeal to merit. No person is self-made.'
'Given everything we learned last year, we ought now not to speak of "common sense" without an articulated sense of the common good.'
'My garden and I have come full circle together, for the first time in perhaps a decade or more.'
'The idea is to move on from merely consulting with Traditional Owners and incorporating Indigenous cultural values into management practices, by returning water rights to Aboriginal people.'
At this point, the media cycle is mostly internal, and while the media is talking to itself, Scott Morrison is talking to a rapidly growing base with significant resources. The devil isn’t in the headline here, the devil is in the detail, in the appeal itself.
A state government has an obligation to do what is possible within the limits of state resources to help its people, to make the state an inclusive place where all have access to essential services and housing. However, over the last few weeks, with the announcement of the funding restructure for homelessness services, this idea of a fair go seems to have dissipated.
The Morrison government will use the federal budget to set an agenda which will focus on those policies which will deliver it victory at the next election and reconnect — at a policy level — with its traditional supporter base. The reconnection with parts of its base could spell trouble for charities that undertake advocacy activities.
The relationship between Israel and Palestine is one of coloniser and colonised not a relationship between two states. While the specific recognition of a Palestinian state by the Labor Party was covered broadly by the media, the legitimisation of the two-state paradigm remains.
There are larger and unchanging questions about why we communicate and about the effect of our communications on the way we live. World Communications Day is an opportunity to think about these basic questions.
While the ban is unique in its severity, it is not divorced from a broader tendencies as to how citizenship has been appraised during pandemic times. Public health and safety have been prioritised over the standard liberties associated with citizenship.
The debate about the future of work, and therefore UBI, was hijacked by a reductive media narrative around ‘the robot question’ and this has made it hard to recognise the complex nature of the changes underway.
The Prime Minister has recently denounced ‘the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics‘. In doing so, he raises a number of important questions. The claim of ‘commodification’ of human beings and their relations is a powerful one.
There seems something profoundly feminist in the act of running a political meeting in the midst of family life. One of the barriers to female participation in politics (and elsewhere) is family commitments. Doris’s brand of radical hospitality changes this.
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.
Even as it is an ‘inner light’, illuminating all else, having faith isn’t without critical reason. Philip’s ‘appreciative but never uncritical’ approach to faith might be said to characterise the approach of a growing number of young people, too.
The biggest test for the Plenary Council, now less than six months from its first meeting, is to reconnect with the Catholic community. The elongated nature of the lead up and growing apathy have made that difficult, yet it remains essential.
On 30 March, the Holy See engaged with an important aspect of displacement with the publication of its ‘Pastoral Orientations on Climate Displaced People’. The intersection between climate change and human displacement is a still emerging area of concern. Nevertheless, we know that climate change is already a factor in various forms of human mobility.
The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked difficult questions about the links between the simultaneous health and ecological crises. These questions were examined in late January at the virtual Halki Summit, the latest in a long series of environment-focused events convened by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate.
On a superficial level, it makes no sense to commit so strongly to managing the impacts of climate change (adaptation) on the one hand while refusing to significantly reduce emissions (mitigation) on the other. On the other hand, when you start to unpack the logic of so much adaptation policy, this contradiction fades away.
How do you measure a human? Can you determine their worth by vivisecting the actions of a potentate or a serf? Do we judge by what they’re consuming? Are we truly labelled from birth? Are we assessed by our factions? The absence or presence of mirth?
The female is mostly red, a painted nail crimson. The male a fervent green. That the female is gaudier has caused experts experty angst.
Sitting at my garden table one warm February day watching birds dash from paperbark to Tasmanian blue gum to palm tree, I realised with a satisfying jolt that I had been present for every season of this singular year; I had journeyed in sync with my surroundings on their year-long journey around the sun.
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