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Keywords: Commonwealth

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

  • AUSTRALIA

    There's no place like home

    • Kate Galloway
    • 13 May 2020
    2 Comments

    Over the weekend in most Australian states, rules requiring people to stay home were relaxed somewhat. The country has commenced its easing of the significant restrictions on venturing out in public. As we begin to reacquaint ourselves with life outside, it is useful to reflect on the new resonance of ‘home’ — but also on its inherent limits.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Opportunities for action on renewables

    • Bree Alexander
    • 11 May 2020
    3 Comments

    While the federal government has set a zero net emissions target by 2050, along with the states and territories and local councils in some areas, the steps that are taken to get there are vitally important. Yet there seems to be no signs of a rapid move away from fossil fuels.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Significant Federal Court win for Biloela Tamil family

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 24 April 2020
    7 Comments

    On 17 April 2020, the Federal Court ordered that Immigration had failed to comply with procedural fairness for the family. The case is known by the pseudonym XAD. The XAD case relied on significant legal principles going back to the M61 High Court decision of 2011.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Right to Know still has a long way to go

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 April 2020
    4 Comments

    The opacity of the Australian public service, and its disposition to secrecy, has left journalists in a bind. Leaks constitute the oxygen of the secret state, but publishing that material remains a dangerous affair.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    When normal returns, what do we want it to be?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 09 April 2020
    9 Comments

    Even during this period of disruption (and, indeed, even because of it) it is so important that we pay attention to the bigger picture. So much of what we do now will lay the groundwork for the kind of future that we are able to build at end of this crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Government needs to freeze rent and mortgages

    • Sangeetha Thanapal
    • 31 March 2020
    5 Comments

    The long queues outside Centrelink and the crashes on the website have fuelled the fears of many people, including myself, that one wrong sentence in the application means we will be denied relief, or worse, that even if we are eligible, the money could take weeks to come in, way past the point of financial solvency.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    COVID-19, democracy and voting

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 March 2020
    4 Comments

    In Australia, every politician from Canberra to the Northern Territory is insisting on isolation measures and avoiding close contact, keeping to distances of 1.5 to 2 metres. When it comes to the very practice of democracy and political representation, the social distancing imperative has been approached with confusing inconsistency.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Protecting civil liberties in a time of COVID-19

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 10 March 2020
    6 Comments

    Authorities can also be fearful, paranoid at the unruly nature of their subjects. Public health emergencies have been declared in various countries and while these are deemed necessary, they come with the exercise of broad, muscular powers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    ABC raid legitimised by Federal Court

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 20 February 2020
    3 Comments

    The Australian Federal Police raid on the 5th of June last year shook the Fourth Estate and, according to managing director David Anderson, ‘was seen for exactly what it was: an attempt to intimidate journalists for doing their jobs.’ It saw an unprecedented closing of ranks between journalists across the political spectrum, pursuing a campaign that came to be known as The Right to Know. Convincing the courts about this principle would prove to be something else.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The unfinished business of colonisation

    • Kate Galloway
    • 17 February 2020
    2 Comments

    Despite claims to the contrary, the decision in Love and Thoms affirms the standing of the common law, including the unassailable power of the Australian State to make and enforce law. It upholds the centuries-long common law principle of accommodation of Indigenous laws in a colonial context.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What Auschwitz means for the modern state

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 February 2020
    11 Comments

    This is cosmically far from saying that these are equivalent matters to the death camps of the Holocaust. But if we are to be serious about acknowledging the depravity of Auschwitz, we can at least take the lead from Katz on starting the conversation on why such events take place and do remain chillingly relevant.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Kiribati: What makes a 'climate refugee'?

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 January 2020
    10 Comments

    New Zealand's judicial channels found against the Kiribati national, claiming he did not satisfy the definition of refugee within international law. He was deported. This month, the UNHRC did not find the deportation unlawful, a move that former Fleet Street editor Damian Wilson said had 'piled on the misery in the climate change mess'.

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