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Keywords: Lockdown

  • AUSTRALIA

    Hoping for hope

    • Barry Gittins
    • 09 September 2021
    1 Comment

    What does it take to lose hope? For the 4,000 people who attended the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last month, an odd coalition of the frustrated, the scared, the angry and the hurt, it takes 18 months of pain and the ensuing changes in employment status, isolation from family and friends, and losses in lifestyle and individual liberties.

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  • RELIGION

    Valuing human life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 September 2021
    23 Comments

    In recent weeks the value of human life has become a topic of public conversation in different contexts. Proposed legislation on abortion and assisted dying has continued to focus attention on it. Debate about loosening COVID restrictions has also balanced the risk of death from the disease with risks to health and economic welfare from lockdowns. In Afghanistan the victory of the Taliban has again raised questions about the morality of the war and the killing involved by both sides.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coming out of Coronavirus  

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 September 2021
    11 Comments

    As restrictions drag on and the number of infections rises, more Australians are asking when lockdowns can cease. Federal politicians and business leaders have argued the case for a quick ending while claiming the authority of scientists. Science being science, the relevant questions have been tied to numbers. They have asked: how few cases should there be in the community before leaving lockdown? What percentage of the community must be vaccinated before the lifting of restrictions? What number of deaths should be tolerated for the gains of opening the economy? And when precisely should the opening of Australia take place?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humility, kindness lead to strength

    • Barry Gittins
    • 17 August 2021
    10 Comments

    In his 83 years, social psychologist, researcher and author Hugh Mackay has seen the sun rise and set on regimes, ideologies, cults, fads, movements and manias. He has also seen language used to clarify and build common ground, or to confuse and demoralise. One constant throughout these years has been his fascination with how human beings treat each other and their planet, and why.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The plight of the sandwich generation

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 02 August 2021
    5 Comments

    Once stereotyped as the MTV generation, a gang of apathetic, disaffected ‘latchkey kids’, Gen X has grown to middle age. We are now the sandwich generation. Many of us care for young children at home. Many care for our ageing parents. Many do both at the same time.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why we need to think communally in lockdown

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 29 July 2021
    6 Comments

    The despair induced by daily infection and death tallies would be, in normal times, ameliorated to some extent by one’s workaday routine. And the crisis would be borne in togetherness — an impossible response, since the pandemic calls on us to withdraw into ourselves rather than draw together.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ebbtide of responsibility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 July 2021
    9 Comments

    The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don’t be distracted by the individual blame game, focus on the system

    • Cristy Clark
    • 13 July 2021
    16 Comments

    Although there has been a reasonable level of attention paid to governance issues — such as the incredibly slow vaccine roll out, the ongoing problems with hotel quarantine, and the timing of the lockdown itself — Sydney’s current lockdown has also been marked by an unhelpful focus on individual actions.

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  • CARTOON

    And the winner is...

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 30 June 2021

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Raising the age of criminal responsibility

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 15 June 2021
    9 Comments

    Those two little boys turn ten this year, reaching a milestone most Australians celebrate simply as reaching 'double figures'. Yet with these double figures comes a new threat most Australians aren’t aware of: they will also reach the age of criminal responsibility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Recognising the human value of work

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 June 2021
    9 Comments

    In Victoria the latest lockdown has prompted fresh questioning of the business-as-before approach to life after COVID-19. In particular it urges renewed reflection on the connection between the remuneration of work and its importance to society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The transformative potential of a universal basic income

    • Tim Dunlop
    • 04 May 2021
    8 Comments

    The debate about the future of work, and therefore UBI, was hijacked by a reductive media narrative around ‘the robot question’ and this has made it hard to recognise the complex nature of the changes underway.

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