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Search Results: defensiveness

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Disarming truth

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 October 2023
    3 Comments

    Amid escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, the focus should turn to the mounting stockpile of advanced arms. In our bid to secure a world worth living through weapons, we may annihilate it. Disarmament may seem utopian, but the real madness lies in an unchecked arms race.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    White defensiveness in Morrison's Cook gaffe

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 24 January 2019
    13 Comments

    What do Indigenous and Muslim Australians have in common? They are the foil against which normative White Australian identity is contrasted. The latest group to join them are African migrants, subject of a new campaign of fear. Because the stories we tell ourselves can change, one day there might be one that honours all of us.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How I stopped worrying and read what I liked

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 24 January 2019
    5 Comments

    I realised my own definition of what was challenging was based on a lifetime of hate-reading books I thought I should like, while the romance books that I was reading were often dealing with heavy topics like colonisation, racism, trauma and mental illness from perspectives different to my own.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2017: Bishop Long at the Royal Commission

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 January 2018
    7 Comments

    Vincent Long's testimony was notable for its directness, honesty and the awareness it displayed of the importance of church culture. Long grew up in the Vietnamese Catholic Church and was afterwards chosen to lead the Australian Church. In his responses he focused on clericalism and its role in giving license and cover to clerical abuse.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bookending Australia's history

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 July 2017
    9 Comments

    Modern Australian history is bookended by the arrival of white settlers in which Indigenous Australians were expelled to the margins, and by the arrival of people seeking protection who were also expelled to the margins. Between these bookends lie the events, the people, the relationships, the enterprises and the experiences that compose the story of Australia. The bookends, though, are a bit shonky: not ideal for supporting proudly the heft of the history that lies between them. They need fixing.

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  • RELIGION

    Clarity beyond clericalism: Bishop Long at the Royal Commission

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 February 2017
    70 Comments

    The most thought provoking testimony given during the Royal Commission's Catholic 'wrap up' was that by Vincent Long, Bishop of Parramatta. It was notable for its directness, honesty and the awareness it displayed of the importance of church culture. Bishop Long grew up in the Vietnamese Catholic Church and was afterwards chosen to lead the Australian Church. In his responses he focused particularly on clericalism and its role in giving license and cover to clerical abuse.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Big and little crooks of politics

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 November 2013
    12 Comments

    Unethical misconduct by public figures, proven and alleged, is in the public eye almost daily. No one is above suspicion, including Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Is it a case of a few bad apples or are there systemic problems? There are levels of seriousness in these cases and it is helpful to disaggregate them to keep a sense of perspective.

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  • RELIGION

    Dysfunctional Church stares into the abuse abyss

    • Michael Kelly
    • 27 November 2012
    77 Comments

    Rome is seen to be out of touch with the membership. Local bishops often behave as branch managers of a poorly administered, centralised multinational corporation. Royal Commission notwithstanding, there won't be healing of the community of faith until there is systemic change. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dysfunction in the Church and the ALP

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 February 2012
    13 Comments

    As an institution stricken with dysfunction, the ALP shares a bleak outlook with unions, churches and other organisations that are similarly sustained by shared ideals and belief systems, but are struggling. They've lost their nerve and no longer know how to be authentic.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Best of 2009: Sexy vegetarianism could save the world

    • Sarah McKenzie
    • 06 January 2010
    10 Comments

    Vegetarians are still seen as antagonistic and self-centred, as if they'd made a selfish decision purely to sabotage dinner parties. Vegetarians have been too polite, and too careful not to offend carnivores, for too long. November 2009

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Sexy vegetarianism could save the world

    • Sarah McKenzie
    • 09 November 2009
    26 Comments

    Vegetarians are still seen as antagonistic and self-centred, as if they'd made a selfish decision purely to sabotage dinner parties. Vegetarians have been too polite, and too careful not to offend carnivores, for too long.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Deep spirituality underlies gay Catholic's activism

    • Terry Monagle
    • 01 February 2008
    11 Comments

    Michael Bernard Kelly undergoes the personal struggle to reconcile his own deep faith with being proudly gay. He then takes up the fight for acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church.

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