Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Vol 32 No 22

06 November 2022


 

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Australian housing crisis: A Roundtable

    • David Halliday, Peter Mares, John Falzon, Nicola Nemaric, Rae Dufty-Jones
    • 18 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Despite rising interest rates and the recent dip in property values, Australia’s housing situation places it among the least affordable property market in the world. With a rise in homelessness and younger Australians locked out of an inflated housing market, what is the way forward for Australia? 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's OPCAT problem

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 17 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Australia’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) came about as a reaction to the abuses recorded at the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth prison. To monitor compliance with OPCAT, UN independent inspection teams are permitted to conduct unannounced visits to any place where people are deprived of liberty. But on October 24, a Corrective Services NSW spokesperson announced that inspection teams were ‘refused entry without incident’.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rocker, writer, activist: The many lives of Paulie Stewart

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 November 2022
    2 Comments

    Paulie had a childlike delight in taking the mickey out of everything and everyone and acting outrageously. The stories of the Painters and Dockers’ engagement with their equally wild audiences and the public, full of hilarious encounters, display the same innocence and the same sublimated rage. If it was his brother Tony’s death that set him on his madcap journey, Paulie has shaped his own life as a monument for Tony more durable than marble. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harlequin country

    • Paul Williamson
    • 16 November 2022
    3 Comments

    Along the tree lined rural highway / past paddocks where canola gleams / so cars stop for golden photographs / past paddocks where sheep graze / then clumps of darker remnant eucalypts / distant hills wear dancing patches of colour.

    READ MORE
  • CARTOON

    The Cruel Sea

    • Glen Le Lievre
    • 16 November 2022
    1 Comment

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the US midterm elections, questions abound

    • Jim McDermott
    • 15 November 2022
    5 Comments

    In recent weeks it had become a foregone conclusion that the Democrats were going to post big losses in the midterms; it’s just the way American politics seems to work. The party in power loses seats halfway through a term. What are we to make of the fact that that didn’t happen, or that we didn’t see anything the protests and violence that ensued after the 2020 election?  

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Catholic political leaders: Does faith matter?

    • John Warhurst
    • 15 November 2022
    16 Comments

    Australia is awash with politicians who identify or are identified as Catholic. And Catholic media always take some interest in Catholic politicians whatever their political stripe. But what does this mean to have Catholic politicians from a theologically and ideologically diverse church? 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Matters of interest

    • David Halliday
    • 14 November 2022

    How much financial strain can a system tolerate? With families simultaneously staring down the four horsemen of wage stagnation, higher prices of goods, higher bills, and higher mortgage repayments, something’s got to give.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Dogging the man in the iron mask

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 November 2022
    3 Comments

    In Justice in Kelly Country, author Lachlan Strahan writes on the life of his great-great-grandfather, a policeman whose career stretched over thirty years. When a significant part of that story is intermeshed with such a fiercely contested story as Ned Kelly’s, telling it introduces the further complexities of the writer’s sympathies and judgments.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The hope of remembering

    • David Rowland
    • 10 November 2022
    3 Comments

    When people gather on Remembrance Day, commemorating the cease-fire at the end of the First World War, people take great pains to remember; a small acknowledgement of the horror of war, its loss, sacrifice and suffering. And in that time, it’s also worth pausing to reflect on those for whom wartime sacrifices and suffering are a daily reality. What do these people wish to remember?

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why we need a special day to see the poor

    • Michael McGirr
    • 10 November 2022
    2 Comments

    There are many special days in the year and there’s no harm in celebrating umbrellas, origami or crochet. But surely the World Day of the Poor has a special place. It asks us to see the world for what it truly is and it is not always a pretty picture.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A brief comment on commentary

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Reflecting on the value of newspaper commentary on public life prompts self-reflection concerning the quality of what we columnists write and what we hope to achieve through our work. The ephemeral quality of a column suggests how important it is for us not simply to react to the news but to ask what lies beneath it.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The Bolshie Cup

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 November 2022

    The Cup is stacked with horses from everywhere but Australia, is designed for celebrities and would-be celebrities to be seen rather than to see, and now restricts the space where the plebeians can ape the dress and the excesses of the privileged. Fortunately, the rain still falls on the rich and the poor alike.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our frightening times

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 November 2022
    8 Comments

    There are a great many despairing people about, with parents of children fearing they have no future; believing that by the time they are grown up the world as we know it will have ceased to exist. Floods, drought, wars, pandemics, climate change. In a world ever smaller and more connected, encouragement is needed.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    New gambling slogans unlikely to curb social losses

    • Julian Butler
    • 08 November 2022
    3 Comments

    In the midst of the spring racing carnival, online betting companies have been told their advertising will next year need to include warnings about the risk of gambling. The new requirements fall well short of regulation that might meaningfully curb what is become a social norm and cultural marker for many.

    READ MORE