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Keywords: Asio

  • AUSTRALIA

    Beware the election campaign hobgoblins

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 11 April 2019
    7 Comments

    The American writer H. L. Mencken said the aim of politics is 'to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary'. Over the years there have been many hobgoblins of varying sizes and shapes, and this election campaign promsies to be no different.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's Chilean extradition test

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 26 February 2019
    3 Comments

    The news last week of former Pinochet era intelligence agent Adriana Rivas' arrest in Sydney spread like wildfire. Australia should embrace its moral and political responsibility to collaborate, through the appropriate legal channels, towards the Chilean quest for justice and memory.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Medivac: the unneeded bill we sorely needed

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 February 2019
    8 Comments

    During the debates about the bill regarding the transfer of people from Nauru or Manus to Australia for medical treatment, the Prime Minister stated it was 'unnecessary and superfluous'. Legally this should have been the case.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Australia needs its own Green New Deal

    • Osmond Chiu
    • 11 February 2019
    14 Comments

    Just as the focus of post-war reconstruction was not merely demobilisation but the maintenance of full employment, developing social security and economic development, decarbonising Australia must involve rebuilding faith that politics can deliver a better Australia. We need to ensure our response leads to a good society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't sit and watch antisemitism rising

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 06 February 2019
    21 Comments

    In the wake of the St Kilda riots, while I sit petrified, third generation to Holocaust survivors, I can't stop thinking about my grandfather, who lived and came to Australia. In 2018 there was a rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia compared with 2017, which also saw a rise on previous years.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    What a good Australia Day might look like

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 January 2019
    19 Comments

    The sound of the didgeridoo would be heard throughout the land. On each street corners buskers would mark out their patch, playing violins, oud, piano accordion, berimbau, nyatiti, cello, mouth organ, zither, anklung or daduk singing the love songs and epic poems from the many civilisations that have enriched Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This Invasion Day, march for the future

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 22 January 2019
    16 Comments

    This Invasion Day, instead of calling on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to conform to simplistic solutions such as changing the date of a public holiday geared around reinforcing jingoism and nationalism, walk alongside us and commit to doing better.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Philistine invasion is cringe-worthy indeed

    • Brian Matthews
    • 17 December 2018
    7 Comments

    Simon Birmingham's recent vetoing of 11 humanities research projects is a good example of cultural cringe's transmutation into populist philistinism. Scientific research projects are often more opaque to the uninitiated than humanities projects but are usually safe from ignorant criticism because their importance is assumed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's Christmas cognitive dissonance

    • Amy Thunig
    • 13 December 2018
    6 Comments

    I cannot help but think about the level of cognitive dissonance required to believe you hold not only the rights to an entire holiday, but also the moral high ground, all while occupying buildings built on stolen lands. The migration of this celebration to this continent did not happen in isolation from the violence of invasion and colonisation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Au pair visa saga shows the rot runs deep

    • Fatima Measham
    • 30 August 2018
    11 Comments

    Perhaps we couldn't care less about what happens to an au pair or the person who let her in. But to know that there is rot in the ceiling — embodied in relationships of mutual benefit between those in office and those with money — and still be fine retiring to bed underneath, does not really bode well for anyone.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fraser Anning's enemy twin

    • Susan Connelly
    • 17 August 2018
    3 Comments

    We see the occasional extreme Muslim cleric railing against the west. This week we witnessed a similar incident in Parliament, with a senator calling for a return to the White Australia policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. An insight of René Girard's assists in interpreting this incident and the resentment and fear which lies beneath it.

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