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Keywords: Hospitality

  • RELIGION

    The inside low-down on Pope Francis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 March 2023
    10 Comments

    Pope Francis's ten-year papacy continues to surprise and puzzle observers measuring him by liberal and conservative polarities. But to understand his actions and words better, it's important to recognise that his framework is not derived from contemporary culture but from Christian faith. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Daring to intrude in the dismal science

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 March 2023
    3 Comments

    As politicians and economists search for a simple solution to inflation, high debt, and rising interest rates, Australia's inequality has become a defining feature of its economy. As the fear of unintended consequences and the power of vested interests loom large, incremental reform may be the only way to reduce inequality and serve the common good.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Farewell the unlamented TPVs

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 February 2023

    After years of intense debate, Australia has now offered permanent residence to people with Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs), which caused great suffering and were part of a deterrence policy. However, this decision is just an incremental step towards a more humane refugee program that respects secure borders and the humanity of people seeking protection.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Christmas in the face of uncertainty

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 December 2022
    4 Comments

    In 1939, King George VI gave an encouraging Christmas address, speaking after the Declaration of War on the Nazis. The future was uncertain, with no assurance of survival. In Australia we do not face the same immediate threat, but we do share the same uncertainty.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconsidering the role of ATAR in Australian Schools

    • Sarah Dunn
    • 12 December 2022
    1 Comment

    The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is a number between 0 and 99.95, which indicates a student’s position in relation to their peers. Statistics from recent years provide troubling insight into the usefulness of the ATAR system, only further exacerbated by the growing number of dissatisfied students.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best laid plans and parks

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 December 2022

    Parks are gifts, not only of nature but of people who have recognised how important they are for good human living and have guarded them. Recent generations have been less generous in providing parks and in protecting them from encroachment. At a time when the survival of the earth as we know it depends on our treasuring the beauty and delicacy of the natural world, such neglect is disrespectful.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Discovery or cover-up?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 August 2022
    9 Comments

    Much has recently written about the doctrine of discovery and its bearing on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the United States where it grounded an early legal decision. The doctrine enshrined in law claims that the discovery of underpopulated and cultivated lands conferred on the discoverers the right to ownership, and was used to justify colonial occupation of territory in the Americas, Asia and Africa.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Home sweet home turns sour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 August 2022
    8 Comments

    It is easy to view homelessness from a distance as only a failure of economic policy and of the political responsibility to deliver material goods. A home, however, is more than a house. It connotes connections that are central to humanity. Left without a home people are deprived of more than bricks and mortar; they are diminished in their humanity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Then and now

    • John Honner
    • 28 July 2022
    4 Comments

    The ‘Land Rights Now’ banner is hoisted against the wind, and the marchers set off for the Embassy. A young Aboriginal woman walks ahead of the banner. She has dyed her hair red. She turns and leans into the wind to face the marchers, holding a megaphone to her mouth. ‘What do we want?’ she shouts, ‘When do we want it?’ And she keeps going, exhorting the marchers. We reply ‘Land Rights … Now!’ The crowd tires before she does.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    April is the cruellest month

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 April 2022
    1 Comment

    Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The unequal pandemic

    • Brigid Meney
    • 31 January 2022
    13 Comments

    When COVID-19 first arrived, it was described as the great equaliser. Infection could happen to anyone. Your race, creed, or the balance of your bank account didn’t matter to the virus that was spreading. But after a summer of dodging the virus and hunting for rapid tests, it is abundantly clear this isn’t a pandemic of equals. Now we have the data which quantifiably measures just how Australia's socio-economic fault lines were exposed and exacerbated by COVID-19.

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  • RELIGION

    The Eucharist is a schooling for sinners, not a reward for the just

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 July 2021
    38 Comments

    Looking from outside at the debates among American Catholics about whether President Biden should be refused communion has been a little like watching the crowd in a Rangers v Celtic game in Glasgow. Much that was said and done fervently in the name of faith showed little familiarity with it. To understand the issue we must enter the Catholic imaginative world in which the Eucharist is central.

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