Keywords: John Kerr

  • RELIGION

    Did the pope’s Iraq visit make a difference?

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 25 March 2021
    6 Comments

    Pope Francis is the first Pope to ever visit Iraq. Although Pope Francis only spent three days in Iraq, his visit received much attention and support from the Iraqi Government and was of major interest to Iraqis both in Iraq and here in Australia. I spoke with several Iraqis in Australia in order to hear their thoughts on this historic visit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court decision on palace letters

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 02 June 2020
    19 Comments

    Will former Governor General John Kerr's correspondence with the Queen shed light on what really happened in 1975? It may very well, and historians like Jenny Hocking were willing to challenge the National Archives of Australia's refusal to access such records in High Court.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dancing in the dark of western culture

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 09 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Politicians love to remind minorities to integrate. Minority kids by and large resent these calls, because they are desperate to integrate. South Asian kids like me and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor were among those wishing to be Australian or British. Our idols were Bruce Springsteen and Jim Kerr, not Abu Bakr Baghdadi or Osama bin Ladin.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons from the case of the lucky refugee

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 25 January 2019
    6 Comments

    Rahaf Mohammed is very lucky to have been granted residence by Canada so quickly. In my nearly 30 years of working with refugees in various capacities, I have never heard of anyone being granted residence as quickly. The speed of the process, and also the way she conducted her case on social media, bear deeper consideration.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Kerryn Phelps' middle-class populism

    • Osmond Chiu
    • 05 December 2018
    4 Comments

    At first glance, the move towards electing independent MPs seems to be a repudiation of attempts to mimic right-wing populism and a vote for small l liberalism. But it shares more with populism than many care to admit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The politics of asylum-seeking children

    • John Warhurst
    • 08 November 2018
    12 Comments

    The government and the opposition are prevaricating and effectively delaying the positive outcome that many in the Australian public are crying out for. The time is ripe for action, but decisive policy movement is still absent.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stop maiming the gift of Aboriginal languages

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 12 June 2018
    17 Comments

    As I watched the debacle over the ill-advised Meanjin cover last week, I couldn't help but reflect on Aboriginal languages and how, when our words or histories do come to the forefront, they're continually disrespected or treated as a massive threat to the white patriarchal status quo. Meanjin is only the latest example.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Quiet pilgrimage of an ageing atheist

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 16 November 2017
    2 Comments

    Lately Lucky has death on his mind, and these and other various acquaintances serve as stars by which he navigates his close-held fears of impending oblivion.

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  • MEDIA

    The sad history of Australian media reform

    • Andrew Dodd
    • 19 September 2017
    5 Comments

    The big media players eventually get what they want by wearing down the government of the day and latching on to whatever opportunity comes their way. This month the government handed them the reform they've long craved while Xenophon attempted to win some concessions. We can assume Australia's media market will now become more concentrated. What we don't know is whether Xenophon's trade offs will do enough to protect public interest journalism and media diversity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On Aboriginal land: seeking a place at the table

    • Frank Brennan
    • 31 May 2017
    6 Comments

    Indigenous leaders this last week have called for the creation of two new legal entities. They want a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution, and a Makarrata Commission set up by legislation. The Makarrata Commission would supervise agreement making between governments and First Nations and engage in truth telling about history. The envisaged destination is a national Makarrata (or treaty). So the immediate constitutional issue is the creation of the First Nations Voice. There is no point in proceeding with a referendum on a question which fails to win the approval of Indigenous Australia. Neither is there any point in proceeding with a referendum which is unlikely to win the approval of the voting public.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    We will never be free of all our debts

    • Sandra Renew
    • 20 February 2017
    4 Comments

    Observing the decades long incident is unbearable - although they have fallen beautifully time is not on their side, their ideals are consigned to fire. But do we care so little that when the fates convene and humans fail sumo-sized jelly fish and yellow crazy ants and ubiquitous spiders will be all that's left? Do we care so little and think we are free of all our debts? Did we think we were never so needy as to sell our dreams?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A tale of two refugees

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 June 2016
    2 Comments

    Mustafa speaks very good English, and his professional skills are going to help him get work in Australia. He is not going to take an 'Australian's job' - he will work and contribute to the economy, as we all try to do. Ali's situation is far less certain. He came on a boat after being approved as a refugee by the UNHCR in Indonesia. He saw no movement in resettlement from Indonesia so he came to Australia. He is one of the thousands who, if they can prove their refugee case, only get a temporary visa.

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