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Keywords: Conservatives

  • AUSTRALIA

    Weighing in on Abbott's Labor Lite slight

    • John Warhurst
    • 03 March 2017
    18 Comments

    Two irreconcilable views of the ideological position of the Turnbull government are now in circulation. One, held by those who once had high hopes that Malcolm Turnbull would lead a small l liberal government, is that the Coalition clearly is conservative. The other, advanced by South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi when he deserted the ship to form the Australian Conservatives, is that the Turnbull government is not conservative enough, maybe not even conservative at all. Both views can't be right.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Swedish politicians' veiled let-down of Iranian feminists

    • Azadeh Davachi
    • 16 February 2017
    4 Comments

    Sweden's feminist Trade Minister Ann Linde has come under sharp criticism from some Iranian women's rights activists after she and her female colleagues wore hijab and long coats in their meetings with the Iranian president and other delegations in Tehran. Later Linde maintained she did not want to violate the law in Iran where it has been mandatory for women to wear headdress since 1979. This flies in the face of the Swedish government's position on women's rights.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Appeals to caring and fairness alone can't bridge climate divide

    • Greg Foyster
    • 02 February 2017
    10 Comments

    If climate change were a short-term problem, polarisation wouldn't be so crippling. One side could push a solution through parliament, and by the time the other side took power it might be a non-issue. But climate change is an extraordinarily long-term problem that requires massive investment in new infrastructure and consistent policy settings over decades. It needs a supermajority of support so years of work isn't undone with each change of government. That means getting conservatives on board.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump moves against vulnerable women

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 25 January 2017
    30 Comments

    No-one doubted Trump's ascendancy would deeply fracture the world as we know it. But few of us could have anticipated the swiftness with which his orders would impact some of the world's most disadvantaged citizens: vulnerable, impoverished women. With just one signature, the newly-installed president snatched from these women access to services that are essential to their physical and mental wellbeing and their economic prospects - and, in so doing, endangering countless lives.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Left doesn't own the fight against racism

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 15 November 2016
    8 Comments

    Cultural totalitarianism, embodied in Trump in the US and Hanson in Australia, is a major injustice of our age. To fight it effectively, we have to enter into coalitions with those whose opinions we otherwise find distasteful. An anti-racism rally with only leftwing speakers is not going to make as big an impact as one with speakers across the spectrum. To insist the fight against racism is necessarily a leftwing issue is in some ways its own form of cultural bigotry.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Seven warnings for Queensland as it considers a human rights act

    • Frank Brennan
    • 31 October 2016
    3 Comments

    'First warning: if you're going to be serious about a Human Rights Act, make sure that your government departments are sufficiently resourced and encouraged to produce meaningful statements of compatibility. Second warning, especially in a unicameral legislature: make sure that your parliamentary committee on human rights has sufficient muscle and status to arrest the progress of any bill until it has been thoroughly scrutinised for human rights compliance.' Frank Brennan's remarks at the Fringe Conference of the 2016 Queensland ALP Convention.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human rights acts after Brexit

    • Frank Brennan
    • 28 October 2016
    7 Comments

    Even prior to Brexit, the Conservatives were wanting to replace the UK Human Rights Act with weaker legislation. They have been worried about what they perceive to be a loss of sovereignty. But even the British Conservatives remain committed to some form of human rights act. I commend the Queensland parliament for undertaking its present inquiry, and sound a cautious note of optimism about the modest gains which might be made by the enactment of a human rights act in Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Plebiscite debate is pure politics

    • John Warhurst
    • 31 August 2016
    17 Comments

    If the plebiscite bill is defeated in parliament Labor, the Greens and Nick Xenophon will bear responsibility for not taking the opportunity offered even if it is in their view a second-best option. The government is already labelling them as same sex marriage wreckers. Yet if before too long a parliamentary alternative, such as a free vote, is found to advance the cause of same sex marriage then the rejection of the plebiscite option will come to be applauded as a master stroke.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Orlando shooting brings hate to its natural conclusion

    • Fatima Measham
    • 15 June 2016
    45 Comments

    At the epicentre of all this is a place where young, queer men and women had felt safe and free to be themselves. The dead are almost all black, brown, gay and working class. If, as Dr Cornel West has often said, justice is what love looks like in public, then injustice must be what hate looks like, and there is perhaps no greater injustice than murder. Mass murder is hatred realised in full grotesque proportion. This means is that the little things we do to validate hatred are not inconsequential.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Pugilist-poet Ali's race legacy still packs a punch

    • Fatima Measham
    • 08 June 2016
    7 Comments

    The contest over Ali began even as news spread of his passing. His legend straddles the violence of his sport and the violence in which he refused to participate. Boxing is brutal but it has rules and finite duration. In war, there are no rules and no one wins. Ali recognised a larger violence, chose his enemies, and reimagined bravery. Attempts to sublimate this legacy - such as comments about him 'transcending' race - resemble the appropriation of Martin Luther King Jr by conservatives.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Positivity key to the new Shorten's rise

    • J. R. Hennessy
    • 30 May 2016
    4 Comments

    Labor has built a small poll lead over the Coalition as led by the eminently more marketable Malcolm Turnbull, and in this case the commentariat are willing to give Shorten and Labor the credit. They're the ones controlling the policy conversation and setting the agenda, and it feels like the government are just responding in turn. Who is this Bill Shorten? This is someone who even a few months ago would be largely inconceivable in the top job, but now seems at the very least plausible.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    We need a grassroots revival to save the reef

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 27 May 2016
    12 Comments

    Many people have hoped that when global warming manifested itself as a concrete threat, politicians would be forced into action. Yet it's becoming horrifyingly clear that the political class is quite willing to let the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world, slowly die. If we want to save the reef, we're going to have to do it ourselves. The Franklin dam blockade of 1982-1983 transformed the political climate and preserved an iconic river. We need to recapture that energy.

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