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Keywords: Hawke

  • RELIGION

    What should Rudd do now?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 February 2012
    46 Comments

    If Rudd loses Monday's expected leadership ballot, he will either go to the back bench or resign from Parliament. If he stays, what will he do? Spend the next six months undermining Gillard as Keating did Hawke? Rudd might not think that is a morally appropriate course of action.

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  • RELIGION

    A Catholic Social Teaching perspective on the Intervention

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 November 2011
    1 Comment

    Text from the 4th Annual Gerald Ward Lecture 'How do we design a dignified welfare safety net without becoming a Nanny State? — Lessons from Catholic Social Teaching', presented  by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the National Library of Australia, 18 November 2011.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bringing civility back to the parliamentary cockfight

    • Tony Kevin
    • 31 October 2011
    14 Comments

    Many Australian politicians who should know better give the people and the media exactly what they want: rancorous confrontations and barbed insults. The 'tough' way in which Australian politics is played corrodes civility and potentially erodes our democracy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on Gillard's atheism

    • John Warhurst
    • 17 October 2011
    10 Comments

    Gillard's atheism puts her in stark contrast to her immediate predecessors Kevin Rudd and John Howard. We consider several implications of Gillard's position, including her relations with church-state issues and community attitudes towards gay marriage and euthanasia. 

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Migrant myths and memories

    • Julie McNeill
    • 24 August 2011
    4 Comments

    Sociologist Eva Cox heard all the vitriol about boat people when, as a five-year-old Jewish girl, she fled Nazi Germany and headed to Australia. My nine-year-old mother was a different kind of boat arrival: one of 135,000 'child migrants' imported under the 'Populate or Perish' policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Back to basics on asylum seeker policy

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 23 June 2011
    2 Comments

    The Rudd Government promised positive reforms after a decade of 'boat people'-bashing from the previous government. Three years later, we are back where we were. To understand how this happened it is helpful to overview the changes under Labor and the gradual decline in 'key immigration values'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reclaiming Labor's lost soul

    • Fatima Measham
    • 15 June 2011
    18 Comments

    Voters who'd otherwise position themselves between the conservative Liberals and radical Greens are stranded. They are looking for leaders who would rather lose big on matters of principle than win by a margin on compromised policy. History has shown Labor to be the natural home for such leaders.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Natural disaster fund could be Gillard's easy path to glory

    • Michael Mullins
    • 31 January 2011
    5 Comments

    It is difficult for Prime Ministers to impose short term pain for long term gain if they want to be re-elected. But Gillard faces a different situation because the Independents are her masters, not the 2013 voters.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we lost the Ashes: it’s politics, stupid

    • John Honner
    • 07 January 2011
    3 Comments

    The fortunes of the English and Australian cricket teams follow the fortunes of their nations' conservative governments.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Social change based on the 'view from below'

    • John Falzon
    • 22 December 2010
    3 Comments

      Dylan Thomas wrote that 'A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe.' Our 'good poem' is the listening to, and learning from, the people on the margins. But it will only be a 'good poem' if these whispers are translated into collective action.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The religious beliefs of Australia's prime ministers

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 November 2010
    12 Comments

    Nine prime ministers have been observant Christians. Two have been conventional Christians. Ten have been nominal Christians. Five have been articulate atheists or agnostics. One was a nominal atheist or agnostic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The perils of holding the balance of power

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 August 2010
    10 Comments

    Though the Independents are raising expectations about a 'new politics', the forces behind the status quo are strong and the public is fickle. If they fail to deliver they might eventually suffer a backlash, like Kevin Rudd and the Democrats before them.

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