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  • australia

    The Productivity Commission's magical thinking

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 25 July 2024

    While proposing broader access to tax deductibility for some charities, the Productivity Commission's new report on charitable giving suggests removing benefits for religious entities. This raises serious questions about the role of religion in fostering charitable giving and the potential consequences of these reforms for Australia's charitable landscape.

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  • education

    Universities struggle to keep pace with AI integrity challenges

    • Erica Cervini
    • 25 July 2024

    To counter threats to academic integrity posed by AI, universities need to continually update policies, alongside placing additional emphasis on examining what makes effective academic writing. 

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  • media

    Where the media vultures gather

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 July 2024

    Recent media pressure led to two high profile resignations. Joe Biden, after resisting pressure to do so, has abandoned his re-election bid and English professional football manager Gareth Southgate resigned. The part played by the media merits reflection on the human vulnerability of persons in public life and of those involved in reporting on it. 

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  • international

    Only in America

    • Peter Craven
    • 25 July 2024

    It’s easy, isn’t it – much too easy – to invoke the standard response that only in the so-called Land of the Free could these things transpire. A vulgar, mendacious man who has refused to believe that he lost the last election is now the improbable victim of an assassination attempt. And the incumbent president, who has not done badly at his impossible job, surrenders his chance at re-election.

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  • international

    Violence and virtue in an age of monsters

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 July 2024

    Trump's public persona, controversial as it may be, does not in any way justify or diminish the severity of such violence. However, we must also recognize that there exists a broader culture of violence to which individuals can simultaneously contribute and fall victim. 

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  • arts and culture

    Finding memory and magic in the ‘lost’ novel of Gabriel García Márquez

    • Michael McGirr
    • 19 July 2024

    Published ten years after his death, Gabriel García Márquez's final novella Until August emerges as a testament to the enduring power of an author's voice. This unexpected gift from the master of magical realism raises provocative questions about authenticity, how we view dementia, and what exactly defines an act of creation.

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  • Joycepoem

    • Peter Steele
    • 16 June 2024

      'From window and doorface painted in carnival, and / your foxing spirit here for a term / becoming again and again the flambeau it carries, / dear dirty Dublin a thing of fire.' A poem recollecting visits to the Jesuit-run Belvedere College, in the north of Dublin, where James Joyce completed most of his secondary schooling. (From 2007)

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  • Autumn's parting prayer

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 06 June 2024

    The chill of winter is now upon us. It is said that landscape is a defining factor in how a people have developed and how their behaviour is formed and modified. So too it is for the season. So thank you, autumn.

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  • Elegy for Peter Porter

    • John Kinsella
    • 05 June 2024

    An elegy doesn’t need to be written straight after a death... and maybe one’s own death catches up before the obituary we write is published. It might be something like re-arranging modernism into structurally sound lines, or discussing the context of metaphors in poems about London and friendship.

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  • Donald Trump: 'I had God on my side'

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 24 July 2024

    Following the assassination attempt, Donald Trump evidently sees his survival as a sign from God, in whom he very likely does not believe, that he is certain to achieve victory this November. It seems Trump’s religious road veers towards whichever destination offers him the greatest prize.

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  • Why are we being forced to buy into AI?

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 18 July 2024

    In a world racing to embrace AI, we rarely hear about AI's voracious appetite for energy. As tech giants like Google and Microsoft see their emissions soar, questions arise about the environmental cost of this digital revolution. Is AI's promise worth the toll on our climate goals?

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  • On reading electoral entrails

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 July 2024

    In the wake of recent elections in Britain and France, global democracies are seeing voters reject established parties amidst a deepening cycle of disillusionment. But can a return to honesty and integrity in politics break this downward spiral? 

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  • Legislating the right to a home of our own

    • Ken Haley
    • 18 July 2024

    With homelessness rising and housing affordability plummeting, Independents propose a radical solution: a National Housing Plan. In challenging both major parties, can they create a system that provides a roof over the heads of all Australians?

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  • Does 'social cohesion' mask religious political influence?

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 July 2024

    Senator Fatima Payman's departure from Labor over a pro-Palestine vote and the emergence of 'The Muslim Vote' have reignited debates about faith in Australian politics. While PM Albanese cautions against religious influence, his stance overlooks the nation's history of faith shaping governance, raising questions about the feasibility of separating belief from policy-making.

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  • Is property investment our greatest vulnerability?

    • David James
    • 10 July 2024

    With soaring Australian house prices creating a generational wealth divide, the increasing inequity of the property bubble is damaging to Australian society. Could diversifying investment options, like industry super funds, lure people away from property and cool the market?

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  • What to make of the Viganò Schism?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 23 July 2024

    Schism is an entrenched idea within Church History. What should we make of Pope Francis’ very modern schism: a decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to declare Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò guilty of ‘public statements resulting in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church’ and to excommunicate him?

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  • The Bishop of Rome and universal jurisdiction: An ecumenical obstacle?

    • Bill Uren
    • 11 July 2024

    The recent Vatican instruction terminating the celebration of the Tridentine Mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral is a prime example of Vatican officialdom overriding local episcopal authority. Let us hope that in a more decentralized Church some traditional obstacles to ecumenism may be removed without respective ecclesiastical loss of face on the part of the contributing Churches.

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  • Is another Catholic school shutdown on the horizon?

    • John Warhurst
    • 03 July 2024

    In 1962, Goulburn was the centre of national attention when Catholic schools closed in protest over a lack of government funding and control. Students overwhelmed public schools. Could this happen again? An Australian archbishop suggests it as an option if religious freedom in Catholic schools is threatened.

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