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Search Results: veil

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pilger's cheap shots won't ease Indigenous oppression

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 February 2014
    13 Comments

    Rabble-rousing Australian journalist John Pilger is prone to hyperbole. He refers to a 'concentration camp' located on Rottnest Island and proceeds to denounce the atrocities that occurred there. He conducts a vox pop amid flag-waving Australia Day revellers, goading them with questions about the white invasion with predictably cringe-worthy results. He may have good intentions, but he's not doing Aboriginal Australia any favours.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2013: NDIS helps the common good

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 17 January 2014
    3 Comments

    Dr Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, last week cautioned the Government against listening to certain interests at the expense of the common good. His criticism of the former Government as 'reckless' for establishing and funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme reveals an upsetting indifference and a lack of awareness of the benefits of such a scheme both to individuals and to society as a whole.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ghost of weddings past, present and future

    • Brian Matthews
    • 06 December 2013
    6 Comments

    Is there a spirit of place, a kind of psychological imprint that endows a particular location? There are spots along the Coorong in South Australia where, as twilight deepens, you could swear that wraith-like, dark figures are moving through the dunes. Recent events made me wonder if the legendary William Buckley lives on in that way on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula, where he lived for 32 years among the local Wataurong people.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Spies like us

    • Bill Calcutt
    • 25 November 2013
    6 Comments

    The recent observation by a close Asian ally that 'spying on friends is amoral' belies an apparently growing gap between the illusion of civility and honesty and the reality of our suspicious relations with 'foreigners'. While the justification for the development of ubiquitous electronic surveillance capabilities is counter-terrorism, the greatest beneficiaries may be private business interests gaining a competitive advantage in a global free market.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NDIS helps the common good

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 20 November 2013
    16 Comments

    Dr Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, last week cautioned the Government against listening to certain interests at the expense of the common good. His criticism of the former Government as 'reckless' for establishing and funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme reveals an upsetting indifference and a lack of awareness of the benefits of such a scheme both to individuals and to society as a whole.

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  • RELIGION

    Church-state issues and the Royal Commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 October 2013
    2 Comments

    'The Church should not give any appearance of hiding behind the corporate veil. Justice demands that present church leaders agree to satisfy any judgment debt against their predecessors or their deceased predecessors' estates when there is an allegation of past failure to supervise or adequately investigate a sexual predator in the ranks. Any damages should be paid from church assets.' Frank Brennan addresses the Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference, Rydges Lakeside, Canberra, 26 October 2013.

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  • RELIGION

    Church-state issues and the Royal Commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 September 2013
    2 Comments

    'The Towards Healing protocol is not a substitute for criminal prosecution of sex abusers. Nor is it a cheap alternative to civil liability for damages. It is a procedure available by choice to victims in addition to criminal prosecution of perpetrators or pursuit of civil damages for negligence by church authorities.' Full text from Frank Brennan's address to the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand 47th Annual Conference, 4 September 2013 at Hotel Grand Chancellor Adelaide on Hindley.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civil liberties in a grave new world

    • Bill Calcutt
    • 09 August 2013
    1 Comment

    Since the turn of the millennium several major technology-enabled developments have significantly altered the balance between national security and civil liberties. In Australia, the hyper-politicisation of national security finds voice in the discourse on the issue of border security, turning a complex humanitarian and policing challenge (asylum seekers arriving by sea) into an enormously controversial and expensive imbroglio.

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  • RELIGION

    Politics of remembering

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 June 2013
    2 Comments

    When Polish Jews were herded into the closed Warsaw Ghetto, Chaim Kaplan kept a diary to ensure that 'in our scroll of agony, not one small detail can be omitted'. This kind of remembering is both deeply personal and profoundly public, and invites us to celebrate human freedom. The remembering involved in the collection of information by the United States and Great Britain is of a quite different character.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The rise of global surveillance anxiety

    • Ray Cassin
    • 21 June 2013
    7 Comments

    Unease about the Australian Federal Police obtaining phone and internet records without a warrant coincided with a greater, global anxiety about the more troublesome surveillance activities of the US National Security Agency. The Obama administration's defence of the NSA has been as lame as Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus's defence of the AFP.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sports fans' idolatry makes monsters of heroes

    • Michael Mullins
    • 25 February 2013
    16 Comments

    The success of elite athletes is often accompanied by narcissistic behaviours that exploit and damage other people. This appears to be the case with Oscar Pistorius and Lance Armstrong. In seeking to curb such behaviour, we can call for greater regulation and surveillance. But we can also examine our own behaviour. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    What it is to be a woman in India

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 13 February 2013
    2 Comments

    Have the men in India been staring at you?' Audrey asks. Before I can respond she says: 'They've been staring at me, and I'm 84!' The trial of five men for the rape-murder of a young Delhi woman may prompt India to analyse the links between entrenched anti-female practices and the way women are valued today. 

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