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Keywords: Globalisation

  • AUSTRALIA

    Is our morality at sea with the refugees?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    8 Comments

    'We should abandon talk of taking Australia off the table. We should also abandon talk of taking the sugar off the table. The collateral damage of that is too great. The best we can do ethically and practically is to put the sugar out of reach while leaving it on the table for those who make it here with a visa or in direct flight from persecution.' Frank Brennan contributes to a Palm Sunday panel at St Michael's Uniting Church, Melbourne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human stories of criminal monsters

    • Joe Caddy
    • 25 October 2013
    19 Comments

    For 11 years I worked as a chaplain in a maximum security prison. I would meet inmates who were accused of serious crimes that had shocked the community. In coming to know those who stood accused I came to see that they too had a story. More often than not it included enormous deprivation and sadness. They had relationships that they cherished, and I never met anyone who in their heart did not want their circumstances to be better.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis and Australia’s social justice agenda

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 October 2013

    'Here is a pope who is not just about creating wiggle room or watering down the teachings of the Church. No, he wants to admit honestly to the world that we hold in tension definitive teachings and pastoral yearnings — held together coherently only by mercy and forgiveness.' Frank Brennan's Wallis Lecture presented in Hobart on 24 October 2013 and Launceston on 25 October 2013.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholics' radical alternative

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 October 2013
    4 Comments

    'When confronted with moral evil in public policy, church personnel have a choice: to be prophetic sticking to the moral absolutes, or to be practical engaging in the compromises needed to temper the evil. At the moment, the only political parties not wanting to embrace a short term shock and awe approach are the Greens, the DLP and the Palmer United Party. And neither Christine Milne, John Madigan nor Clive Palmer will ever be prime minister.' Workshop paper from Catholic Social Services Victoria's Listening, Learning and Leading conference, October 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Vulnerable are victims of the federal game of thrones

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 August 2013
    14 Comments

    If the last three years have been like the first three years of the First World War, now is the time for a final blitzkrieg. The treatment of people who seek protection in Australia is not simply one of many election issues. It is a measure of how far each political party will go, how much damage each will be prepared to do to Australia's honour, reputation, economic interests and relationships in order to gain and hold power.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope's Catholic health check

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 August 2013
    31 Comments

    Both Francis and Benedict emphasise Christian faith in the Catholic Church as the privileged way of finding meaning in life. But where Benedict might picture the Church as a treasury of all the beliefs, relationships, liturgical details and traditions, Francis might imagine it as like a dispensary from which health workers go out to share their life saving medicines.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis' three types of intelligence

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 July 2013
    31 Comments

    When policies affect people's lives, imaginative intelligence should come first into play. It is the inclination to see people, not simply as the objects of policy, but as persons each with their own face and life story. The Pope exemplified this when he visited Lampedusa, 'Italy's Christmas Island', to mourn the dead and console the living. And in so doing he stated the priority for others.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Banksters' deadly game of Sheldon's three-person chess

    • David James
    • 01 May 2013
    3 Comments

    In The Big Bang Theory Sheldon invents a game of chess which 'utilises a three-sided board with transitional quadrilateral-to-triangular tessellation to solve the balanced centre combat-area problem'. This gobbledegook sounds suspiciously similar to the application of mathematical models to financial securities in derivatives markets.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis' unfinished business with the poor

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2013
    24 Comments

    The relationship between the Catholic Church and the poor was explored most seriously in Latin America. I caught its dimensions most vividly in a dawn trip on a clapped out US school bus to a small regional town in El Salvador.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Before and after Bali's searing flash

    • Pat Walsh
    • 12 October 2012
    4 Comments

    The bombing in Bali ten years ago today did not target Balinese directly, but they took the collateral damage to tourism, their bread and butter, very personally. Drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting motion, a smiling Balinese says he is happy the bombers have been executed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Resurrecting Work Choices

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 28 September 2012
    10 Comments

    While Tony Abbott maintains that Work Choices is dead, Senator Nick Xenophon is advocating a position that adopts one of its central features. It is immoral to hold back wage increases or drive wages down on account of economic circumstances when there are other ways to promote job protection and create employment opportunities.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Multiculturalism's answer to terrorism

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 18 May 2012
    3 Comments

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