Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Ian C Smith

  • AUSTRALIA

    Why the choice revolution let us down: In conversation with Mark Considine

    • David Halliday
    • 28 February 2024
    1 Comment

    The main purpose of government is to promote the welfare of its people. And yet over the last few decades, through numerous inquiries, it’s become clear that the Australian government has failed to provide services for the Australian population as well as might be expected. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The perils of being a civilian

    • Tony Smith
    • 22 February 2024
    1 Comment

      The illusion of warfare as a contest between professionals should have disappeared forever as the twentieth century brought numerous examples of barbarous armies butchering civilians. And unfortunately, the pattern now is that some 90 per cent war casualties are civilians. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2023: How Australia's asylum seeker policy has evolved over thirty years

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 04 January 2024

    Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Crown: As Diana, Elizabeth Debicki is 'a thing of wonder'

    • Peter Craven
    • 15 December 2023

    The Crown, that extraordinary TV series about the British Royal Family, is drawing to a close, with the final six episodes released in the prelude to Christmas. In the meantime, the producers have shrewdly done a quartet of episodes about Diana, with Australia's Elizabeth Debicki giving a dazzling performance as ‘the People's Princess’.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    May this new engagement not be broken off

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 August 2023
    10 Comments

    The Catholic Bishops Justice Statement, timed with an impending Referendum on the Voice to Parliament, scrutinizes the ties between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians. Crafted alongside the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council, it underscores the urgency of deepened engagement through listening, learning, and love, advocating for Indigenous justice and healing.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Three steps back and one step forward: Three decades of asylum seekers in Australia

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 28 July 2023

    How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How the road unravelled: In conversation with Kate Holden

    • Barry Gittins
    • 14 July 2023
    2 Comments

    Kate Holden’s The Winter Road is a ranging meditation on a 2014 execution-style murder committed on a dirt track in Croppa Creek, in northwest NSW. Barry Gittins speaks to Kate Holden about her prize-winning account of the crime, reminding readers of the uneasy history of predation in this country and the damage it does to the land and to the people on it.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    A voice for the voiceless

    • Brian McCoy
    • 19 April 2023
    13 Comments

    Terence Darrell Kelly is not an isolated example of the intergenerational trauma that colonisation has brought to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As Australia grapples with the ongoing effects of colonisation, including the dispossession of land and culture, the need to listen to voices of Indigenous communities becomes increasingly urgent.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    An Australian Pacific tale: Climate security, sovereignty and neglect

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 10 May 2022
    8 Comments

    On May 3, the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare, vented his fury in parliament at ‘the continual demonstration of lack of trust by the concerned parties, and tacit warning of military intervention in Solomon Islands if their national interest is undermined in Solomon Islands.’ The targets of the speech — Australia and the United States — were clear enough.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The ones who came with chains

    • Brian McCoy
    • 14 December 2021
    15 Comments

    I don’t write to State Premiers very often. However, a month ago I did. It was to the Western Australian Premier, Mark McGowan. It was not about Test cricket, the Juukan Gorge or opening the state’s borders. It was in relation to a photo on the front page of The Australian on the weekend of the 6/7 November showing an Aboriginal man in Western Australia boarding a plane under arrest. He was barefooted and with both a wrist and ankle chain.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Why our defamation laws are no longer fit for purpose

    • Cristy Clark
    • 10 November 2021
    9 Comments

    Peter Dutton has recently argued that funds for defamation actions should be a ‘workplace entitlement’ for Members of Parliament (MPs). I’d like to repeat that another way: the Honorable Peter Dutton, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, would like the taxpayer to fund MPs to sue members of the Australian public for defamation.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the shadow of SIEV-X

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 November 2021
    38 Comments

    Two decades ago, an Indonesian vessel given the name SIEV X sank with loss of life that should have caused a flood of tears and a surge of compassion. Instead of being seen in humanitarian terms, the deaths of 353 people became a form of rich political capital, placed in the bank of opportunism to be amortised at a federal election.

    READ MORE