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Keywords: Ffa

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Love poem to a Hills Hoist

    • Kevin Gillam
    • 22 January 2013

    dear hoist, still standing? still spinning? still lapped by buffalo? we loved you. weren't allowed to of course. but we did. draped over, swung from, cranked up and down, merry-go-round on green sea. Mum's peeling carrots, voice piercing the flywire.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sad stories of teenage trauma

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 December 2012
    3 Comments

    As an introvert and writer Charlie is deeply empathetic. He sees in others sad stories that reflect his own. His sister is in an abusive relationship, and his gay friend is having a secret affair with a closeted peer. In being so deeply introspective Charlie misses the destructive consequences of his own actions.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Flying sofas in the Great Australian Dystopia

    • Barry Gittins
    • 05 December 2012
    4 Comments

    Hindrance Day was conceived as a means of commemorating the millions of acts of self-indulgence that marked the First Gillard-Abbott war on unAustralians. The concept of two minutes' ignorance was popularly adopted across what was left of the civilised world and became a key ritual of the annual celebrations.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church is not beyond reproach

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 November 2012
    1 Comment

    'Might not the chief problem with Church language in the public square be that we tend to come from a position of moral superiority, approaching those dreadfully compromised politicians who will do anything to be elected? The abuse crisis reminds us that the Church is not irreproachable.' Text from Fr Frank Brennan's presentation at the Anglican Church of Australia's Public Affairs Commission Conference, November 2012.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Historical precedents for Jones' Shamegate

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 October 2012
    10 Comments

    The name Charles Hughes Cousens is not one that has been canvassed during the lamentable and often tawdry debate about the Alan Jones affair, but perhaps it should have been. Cousens' ordeal as the target of a treason-baying press lies in the distant but pointed background to Jones' assault on Julia Gillard.

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  • MEDIA

    Justifying garden-variety torture

    • Max Atkinson
    • 12 July 2012
    6 Comments

    Any discussion of the morality of torture must distinguish two kinds of justification. The first is concerned with cases so exotic they have nothing to do with the ordinary affairs of mankind, such as the nuclear bomb ticking away in a New York basement. A real-life justification must provide a rationale for a wide range of common garden cases. 

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  • RELIGION

    The Pope's butler did it!

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2012
    53 Comments

    Catholics get used to being asked why they are Catholic. These days, in light of cases of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups, and perceived abuse of authority and contempt for women, the question is more accusatory: 'Why are you still a Catholic?' The recent affair of the Pope's butler provides a way out of this interrogation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Erasure of an Aboriginal temple

    • Patti Miller
    • 03 May 2012
    21 Comments

    For thousands of years there was a temple on the banks of the Macquarie. A long avenue of trees carved with serpents, lightning, meteors and hieroglyphs led to a walled space where a giant human figure made of earth reclined. It was as important as the Acropolis or the temple of Horus. But it no longer exists. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A tale of two refugee movement speeches

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 01 May 2012
    23 Comments

    Tony Abbott did not mention the term 'human rights' in his 3000 word speech to the Institute of Public Affairs on Friday. 'Illegal' appeared 11 times and 'asylum' once. In February, Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees gave a 3000 word speech to the Lowy Institute. A search of that speech finds 'human rights' five times, 'asylum' 21 times and no use of 'illegal'. 

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  • RELIGION

    Bruises all round in Pell-Dawkins street fight

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 11 April 2012
    89 Comments

    Atheist Richard Dawkins' debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February was a gentlemanly affair. By contrast Dawkins' debate with Cardinal George Pell on the ABC's Q&A this week was billed as a 'title fight of belief'. As one comment on Twitter noted the next day, 'they both lost'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Empathy after Labor's knife fight

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 March 2012
    19 Comments

    The battle between Rudd and Gillard supporters was a nasty affair and it is hard to see that good will come out of it for anyone. But its defects provoke reflection about the qualities that might enable public conversation to contribute to an enhanced sense of human possibility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Malaysia's migration paradox

    • Joachim Francis Xavier
    • 15 February 2012
    3 Comments

    A large segment of Malaysian society and the government in particular is clearly xenophobic. Yet Malaysia has thrown its arms wide open to asylum seekers heading to Australia. What is the motivation underlying Malaysia's sudden love affair with refugee swap deals?

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