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Keywords: Asio

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Standing room only

    • Brian Matthews
    • 30 November 2021
    1 Comment

    The time: Queen’s Birthday Monday 1992. The place: outside the Great Southern Stand of the MCG. The occasion: St Kilda versus Collingwood. One word, belonging to the world we all now live in, brings the scene vividly back to me … because the gathering throng is clearly going to be huge — much bigger than forecast — and because one section of the G, at least as I remember it, is closed off for some local temporary reason, a very large crowd will require more than routine management.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Your poetry questions, answered

    • Philip Harvey
    • 04 November 2021
    10 Comments

      Although I teach poetry and do occasional workshops, the following is written in response to one such workshopper, new to writing poetry, who in lockdown would message me on social media with fairly open-ended questions about poetry. My answers are written after the wry manner of the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska; wry, but generally helpful. They are not the launch pad for a new poetics. I have stopped for now at 12 questions, but the questions keep rolling in.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Racism in families belies simple reconciliation

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 22 April 2021
    9 Comments

    Due to the impacts of colonisation which have led to everything from loving intermarriage to acts of sexual violence, most Aboriginal people have non-Indigenous relations. Most of these people have, at some time or another, experienced racism within their extended family.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    On the beach, in the storm

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 February 2021
    15 Comments

    It was all very quiet, and the waterfront was practically deserted. But I suddenly noticed a sole woman right at the water’s edge. She had her back to me, but I saw her lift what was clearly an icon, which she then venerated. I couldn’t hear her precise words, but it seemed obvious she was repeating the forms of the liturgy to herself.

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  • MEDIA

    More respectful Invasion Day coverage, but much work still to be done

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 28 January 2021
    18 Comments

    It’s a tradition of mine to undertake my own “media watch” experiment following the annual Invasion Day rallies. I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't change the date, change the attitude

    • Malarndirri McCarthy
    • 28 January 2021
    7 Comments

    January 26 is one day out of 365. But no other date conjures up so much passionate debate amidst a cacophony of divided views. Each year there is the predictable commentary about Australia Day. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Solidarity and asking the right questions

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 17 December 2020
    7 Comments

    It’s usually January that white blindfold think pieces around Invasion Day start, but this year they’re getting in early. I cannot help but think this has a lot to do with the right in Victoria feeling completely dishevelled and disempowered at this point in time and lashing out.

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  • MEDIA

    Will we ever learn from the war on terror?

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 22 September 2020
    10 Comments

    The strange thing is that those chest-beating about terrorism rarely made an issue of when terrorists of the modernist Islamist variety (such as al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and ISIL) attacked mosques, Muslim shrines and Muslim congregations. Nor do they report of just how fringe and hated these groups are in their own countries where the bulk of their attacks take place.

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  • RELIGION

    Friendship and Ignatius Loyola in isolation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 July 2020
    7 Comments

    Ordinarily the last two days of July would for me be occasions of celebration. July 30 is the International Day of Friendship and July 31 is the feast day of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. This July, in Victoria, at least, it is hard to summon energy to celebrate. We are in a time of endurance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian politics out of hibernation

    • John Warhurst
    • 20 May 2020
    8 Comments

    Politics in the best sense is returning to normal. To do so it first needs the federal parliament, which should not have been filleted in the first place, to be fully functioning. More will then follow.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dutton's ASIO bill goes Kafkaesque

    • Justin Glyn
    • 18 May 2020
    42 Comments

    The new ASIO Powers Amendment Bill 2020 is being rushed through Parliament in a time of pandemic, guaranteeing that it will lack even the minimal level of scrutiny normally accorded to legislation dealing with ‘national security’.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Home is where the work is

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 19 March 2020
    4 Comments

    Overnight, my workplace has doubled in size. This once quiet space, filled with just the click-clacking of a keyboard and the occasional waft of classical music, now rumbles with the sound of my husband’s voice. He goes from one call to the next, discussing spreadsheets and renewals, holding conference calls and informal chats and performance reviews.

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