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Keywords: Floods

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Bolshie Cup

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 November 2022

    The Cup is stacked with horses from everywhere but Australia, is designed for celebrities and would-be celebrities to be seen rather than to see, and now restricts the space where the plebeians can ape the dress and the excesses of the privileged. Fortunately, the rain still falls on the rich and the poor alike.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our frightening times

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 November 2022
    8 Comments

    There are a great many despairing people about, with parents of children fearing they have no future; believing that by the time they are grown up the world as we know it will have ceased to exist. Floods, drought, wars, pandemics, climate change. In a world ever smaller and more connected, encouragement is needed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Can solidarity extend beyond the next natural crisis?

    • Julian Butler
    • 18 October 2022

    It might be a bit stale and trite to say so, but Australians do a good job of being at their best in a natural crisis. Solidarity is experienced in a way absent from much of our common conversation. Why is that? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Navigating the Ship of State

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 September 2022
    3 Comments

    The policy of the Labor Government can be described as steady as she goes. This does not mean that it will simply follow the policies of the previous government. Its reading is that the ship of state has been becalmed, responding haphazardly to the political winds with no sense of direction or destination. It had become the ship of fools. The new Government then has committed itself to show that there are captain on board and a competent, disciplined crew that can work together.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reducing flood risk in Lismore starts with better data

    • Jerry Vanclay
    • 19 July 2022

    How is it that Lismore, one of the most flood-prone towns in Australia, can be so ill-prepared and so badly affected by floods this year? Flood frequency is critical information, so you might expect that such guidance was based on the best available data – but this does not appear to be so.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The grace of courtesy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 June 2022
    7 Comments

    Since the Federal Election one of the most refreshing features has been the new Prime Minister’s connection with people. Whether it is shown by riding a bamboo bicycle with the Indonesian President, expressing sympathy for the Nadesilingam family for their prolonged ordeal before returning to Biloela or agreeing with Jacinda Ardern, herself a model of public empathy, about the unreasonableness of expelling to New Zealand people who had never lived there, his actions displayed a readiness to listen and to enter the experience of other people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Can the Class of '22 fix Australian Democracy?

    • Tim Dunlop
    • 22 June 2022
    5 Comments

    Concern about political malfeasance in Australian politics was one of the issues that drove the influx of new members (mainly women) into the Australian Parliament on 21 May, and they are promising a raft of reforms. The astounding thing is that we managed to leverage the change of 21 May 2022 within the confines of a system that inherently favours the status quo, the preferential voting system tending to channel votes back to the major parties.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Independent triumphs: The changing of Australian politics

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 May 2022
    11 Comments

    The centre of the political system did not so much hold as desert. The vote was a furious, determined and tenacious shout from the estranged centre, a shivering of the timbers. The calibre of individuals elected — many from professions, many with public service outside the traditional party hierarchy of patronage and promotion, and most, women — has not been previously seen in this country’s politics.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    After the election

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2022
    2 Comments

    As the election campaign mercifully comes to an end, many of us have been musing on what the new Government should do when it comes into office. It is a difficult question to answer because both Parties have excluded any radical action to address the clear and pressing needs of Australians. Fires, floods and insurance costs highlight the need for immediate and shared action to address climate change. The simultaneous high cost of housing, the inadequate benefits available to the disadvantaged, and lack of accommodation for people in need testify to the need to address the growing inequality in Australian society. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ties that bind: How negative campaigns eclipse community focus

    • Julian Butler
    • 12 May 2022
    3 Comments

    Election campaigns can be defined by all sorts of things. Gaffes, negative ads, international incidents, public policy. It is trite but no less true to say that this federal election campaign has been much more about the first three rather than the last. The policy discussion has been edged into the election mix most seriously by various interest groups and by some of the macro party and independent candidates seeking election.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Deep calling on deep

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 April 2022
    11 Comments

    In our culture, Easter celebrates the benignity of the ordinary. It is a time for getting together with family, for going away to bush or beach, and in southern states a time of mild weather ideal for watching big football matches and other sport. The important question raised now by Easter is whether the meanings of Australian Easter, and indeed those available to our secular society, have the depth needed to handle our present predicaments. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope against hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 March 2022
    12 Comments

    Taken together the events of recent years suggest that we face a crisis, a time in which the working assumptions that have guided our personal and collective lives no longer hold. If we do not change we face increasing threats to the world that we shall hand on to our children. 

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