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Hopkins' words highlight how difficult it is for poets or lesser human beings to focus consistently on the particularity of each human being, let alone of each being in the world. Yet this is a necessary condition for recognising the claim that each person and the world make on us. It is no wonder that we sometimes falter in our commitment.
From strip searches to a needlessly low minumum age of criminal responsibility, Australia continues to be a menacing place for children encountering law enforcement. The need to be seen as 'tough on crime' plagues the major parties and precludes nuances within the criminal justice sphere including the protection of the rights of the child.
'Refugees/not refugees — here it is all the same,' a man tells me with a shrug. There seems to be both recognition of the impossibility of the situation for all who have been left here — but also an attitude that no one should be left behind.
If we wish to persuade the public that a group of people is being treated unjustly, we portray them as innocent victims. We represent them as a class and as virtuous in order to change public opinion. Stories of violent behaviour by members of the group, however, reveal the reality that no group is uniformly composed of the virtuous and innocent.
Assange's latest court appearance coincided with the launch of the Right to Know campaign, backed by the major press organisations in Australia as well as the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. To its immense credit, the MEAA has consistently defended him. But many prominent Australian journalists have not.
The Medevac law was needed because there was no sensible process to arrange for urgent medical treatment for the people we are punishing as a deterrent. The system is working according to the medical practitioners involved in it. It would be a tragedy if the Medevac laws were repealed, just to prove how tough and immovable we are.
Narungga Elder Tauto Sansbury died 23 September after a lifetime of campaigning to make the criminal justice system just for Aboriginal people, among other matters. He and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trailblazers set a benchmark to which we can all aspire in the pursuit of positive change.
The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.
In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert explains that we have placed animals in a lethal double bind: they have to move due to the effects of climate change and habitat destruction, but their pathways are blocked by roads or occupied by humans. Some might ask why this mass extinction should matter to us, but we ignore it at our peril.
Last week the Federal Court granted an interim injunction to a child born in Australia preventing her removal from Australia. The case raises complex issues regarding the statutory bars preventing asylum seekers from even making any application at all, and the exercise of the ministerial discretion to lift that bar.
Pope Francis has insisted that the urgent need to care for the natural world of which we are part is not a disputed question but a Christian duty. He has appealed to the legacy of St Francis of Assisi, whose name he took when he became Pope; that saint of the 13th century who is popularly known best for his love of nature.
Australia’s priority is clear: self-protection at all costs, no matter the sacrifice required of Timor-Leste. And it’s a theme that continues today: Australia’s neighbourly relationship with Timor-Leste remains one of taking anything it can, not of sharing like friends.
133-144 out of 200 results.