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Keywords: Inheritance

  • ECONOMICS

    Whose liberty matters as Dickensian budget looms?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 May 2014
    16 Comments

    French economist Thomas Piketty argues that current conditions have set us on track for a return to 19th century-levels of inequality. The Commission of Audit proposals suggest that the auditors and the Government are keen to expedite this neo-Dickensian era. It's all done in the name of 'incentives' toward 'personal responsibility', but this cannot remain coherent in the face of those who will be hit hard by the proposed suite of cuts and co-payments.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The GST and Abbott's fair go for all

    • Michael Mullins
    • 07 April 2014
    7 Comments

    Federal Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson has called on the Government to increase the GST. In isolation this would hurt the poor and benefit the rich. But it could help the common good if it is part of a tax reform package that cuts tax avoidance strategies for high income earners, including superannuation concessions, negative gearing and trusts.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2013: Advice for the Pope on reforming the Church

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 14 January 2014
    13 Comments

    I wish he would invite me to be his temporary consultant, to offer him advice for his next 500 days. I'd begin by proposing a substantial Vatican-led inquiry, into why the Church has been so troubled by sexual abuse across various countries. Then I would point to the experiences of several large secular institutions, including the New York Times and US Army, that have rebuilt after crises.

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  • RELIGION

    Advice for the Pope on reforming the Church

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 24 September 2013
    35 Comments

    I wish he would invite me to be his temporary consultant, to offer him advice for his next 500 days. I'd begin by proposing a substantial Vatican-led inquiry, into why the Church has been so troubled by sexual abuse across various countries. Then I would point to the experiences of several large secular institutions, including the New York Times and US Army, that have rebuilt after crises.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's shrinking moral and intellectual horizons

    • Ray Cassin
    • 05 August 2013
    5 Comments

    It is economically illiterate nonsense to equate the state of the budget with the state of the economy, yet Labor and the Coalition have acquiesced in the view that delivering a surplus is the sole indicator of responsible economic management. If this election campaign fails to inspire many voters and drives some to disengage, it will be in large part because of where the contending parties stand or, more importantly, refuse to stand. 

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Facts alone won't save Australia's fatuous political agenda

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 July 2013
    12 Comments

    It is pleasing that PolitiFact is able to demonstrate that foreign minister Bob Carr's claim that boat people 'are not people fleeing persecution ... they are coming here as economic migrants' is 'mostly false'. But even if Carr's claim was mostly true, how does discussion of the comparatively small number of economic migrants justify its place on the agenda, compared with issues such as the mental health of Australia's youth? 

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  • RELIGION

    Australia's morality drifts with asylum seeker bodies

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 June 2013
    20 Comments

    Sometimes events take on a significance beyond their historical context. That was the case with Gallipoli and the Eureka Stockade. It may also prove to be the case with the bodies left in the water after an asylum seeker boat sank, and the delay by the Australian authorities to take responsibility for their recovery.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Empathy and irony in post-Howard Australia

    • Barry Gittins
    • 11 December 2012
    1 Comment

    Becalmed, bereft, besieged by race memory and hip pocket absorption, a nation of travellers and seafarers swallow leaders' sleight-of-hand, as they conjure pirates from refugees, demons from daughters, sons and lovers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mysticism and the Beatles

    • Philip Harvey
    • 11 October 2012
    6 Comments

    It has never seemed just an accident that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at a church fete. The broad message of Christianity is at the very front of the lyric concerns of the Beatles, even if Christianity itself is rarely acknowledged. In art and belief, they were never interested in experimentation for its own sake but in how to make something new out of something old.

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  • RELIGION

    Why I'm still a Catholic

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 03 August 2012
    94 Comments

    I've come to believe that the world beyond the institutional Church is kinder, gentler, full of more conscientious ethics, values and care for others; that the secular world in which lay people live is more functional and more ready to conscience-examine than the institutional Church. Why then am I still a Catholic?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Only good policy will save Labor

    • Michael Mullins
    • 23 July 2012
    7 Comments

    The passage of time has shown that it has not made a great deal of difference whether the ALP leader was Gillard or Rudd. In all likelihood, it doesn't really matter who leads Labor to the 2013 election. What is more important is that they are able to demonstrate good policy achievement.

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