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Keywords: Colonial

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • RELIGION

    'Equal laws and equal rights ... dealt out to the whole community'. How close 161 years on?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 December 2015
    1 Comment

    'Tonight, gathered here in the Southern Cross Club in the national capital, gathered as Eureka's children. We affirm that there is room for everyone under the Southern Cross. I hope you will return to Canberra carrying the Southern Cross flag when we proclaim the Australia Republic on 1 January 2020 which will be two elections after Australia last had a monarchist leader of a major political party. Tony Abbott is the last of his type. Whether the prime minister honoured to witness the proclamation is Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten or another matters not.' Annual Dinner for Eureka's Children, Southern Cross Club, Canberra, 3 December 2015.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Myanmar Mother Suu's moment in history

    • Amal Aung Zaw
    • 13 November 2015
    5 Comments

    The results resonate beyond the shores of Myanmar. The manner in which a fragile woman with the power of empty hands wrought a miracle, melting decades of totalitarian dominance, is the stuff of history. The world savours this moment as its own. This is the Gandhi moment, the Mandela moment of the 21st Century. In an era of ISIL killings and chronic violent wars in the middle east for 'democracy', a woman from the east has once again affirmed the moral superiority of non violence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    If only gender-based violence really was unAustralian

    • Tim Robertson
    • 13 October 2015
    11 Comments

    Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has declared that violence against women needs to be seen as 'unAustralian'. But sexual violence against women was part of the colonial experience for the Indigenous population, and continues to be a symptom of the punitive measures enacted against asylum seekers that we have a moral and legal obligation to protect. Violence against women is very much 'Australian', and will be until the institutional violence that has defined our past is owned and redressed.

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  • Francis, theological education and the public square

    • Jenny Te Paa
    • 09 October 2015
    16 Comments

    Thank you Francis, for although you have not spoken at any length about theological education per se — any more than you have spoken about the status of women per se — in spite of these somewhat startling omissions, this indigenous lay woman theological educator feels no less inspired, comforted, reassured, blessed, beyond imagining by your gentle, wise, insistent and prophetic urgings.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ecuador's example for Australia's neglected arts

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 25 September 2015
    1 Comment

    On a terrace just below the house is the beloved, late Ecuadorian artist Guayasamin's masterpiece, La Capillla del Hombre. A collection of his imposing artworks fills the space, works that ask the unanswerable question: why is man equally capable of such cruelty, and such compassion? It is a question that all good art should pose — a point that Australia's newly appointed Minister for the Arts would do well to remember.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Broken porcelain illuminates destructive Dutch colonial legacy

    • Bernard Appassamy
    • 16 September 2015
    4 Comments

    400 years ago, when Mauritius was still uninhabited, a cyclone thrust three tall ships of the Dutch East India Company against the coral reef. As the ships were ripped apart and thousands of Ming porcelain pieces on board smashed, the crew fought for their lives, but 75 men including the fleet commander Admiral Pieter Both, drowned. I picture that Sunday afternoon in the 1980s when my mother and I were wading in the water close to a familiar beach and found washed up shards of the porcelain. 

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  • MEDIA

    Images the catalyst for action but not change

    • Ellena Savage
    • 11 September 2015

    There are few activities more unsettling than viewing the bodies of deceased children. But I'm not convinced that visual tokens of suffering, shared within safe, affluent settings, change much. A photo can suggest that a woman is abused by her partner and motivate people to donate money to a charity. But it won't make anybody voluntarily give up the privilege that fostered the pain.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope Francis looks beyond hammer and sickle crucifix chatter

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 July 2015
    17 Comments

    The media declared Pope Francis not amused after Bolivian President Morales presented him with a crucifix superimposed on a hammer and sickle. It turned out that the design was from Jesuit Luís Espinal, who was captured, tortured and killed by right-wing paramilitaries in 1980. It depicted Christ's affinity with workers and peasants. Pope Francis was more interested in the reality of a crucified people than in discussing representations of the crucified Jesus.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whistleblowing and other new crimes

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 June 2015
    7 Comments

    Ministerial discretion over citizenship can't replace court processes. Such executive overreach, which contradicts democratic principle, has already found expression in law. From July 1st, workers involved in immigration detention, including doctors and teachers, are subject to two years imprisonment for speaking publicly about what they witness. In other words, whistleblowing has been penalised.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Quake forces Nepalis to walk on water

    • Angela Ford
    • 02 June 2015
    2 Comments

    As a kiwi I had grown up with earthquakes. I remember them large, small and intrusive. Awed by their power, I cherished the still that followed. This is what made Nepal’s second major earthquake so different for me. I will never forget the beginning of the 7.3-magnitude quake, but will never recall the end.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The exploitation of Anzac and other myths

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 May 2015
    13 Comments

    To describe events as mythical is always open to misunderstanding, because in common speech myth is opposed to reality. When mythical stories are seen as unreal, the deep significance they have for individuals and groups also comes into question. So a hostile response is to be expected.  

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  • Anzac Day centenary homily at Harvard Memorial Church

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 April 2015
    5 Comments

    This Memorial Church here at Harvard was dedicated on Armistice Day 1932 in memory of those who died in World War I. It is fitting that we, Australians, New Zealanders, Turks and Americans should gather in this place to mark the centenary of Anzac Day, the day on which Australians and New Zealanders landed in the stillness of the early dawn on the Turkish shoreline wanting to assist with the Allies’ advance on Constantinople, now Istanbul, the day on which the Turks commenced a successful, eight month campaign to defend their homeland against the assault.

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