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Keywords: Murdoch

  • AUSTRALIA

    Eureka Street person of the year 2023

    • David Halliday, Michael McVeigh, Laura Kings, Michele Frankeni, Andrew Hamilton, Julian Butler
    • 21 December 2023
    7 Comments

    To close the year for Eureka Street, the editorial team wanted to nominate who we considered to be the Eureka Street ‘person of the year’ based on this year's newsmakers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Chatbots for love

    • Michael McGirr
    • 09 February 2023
    6 Comments

    At the root of questions around ChatGPT are issues of authenticity and creativity. It has the capacity to call the bluff on a society which is increasingly inclined to trade pre-digested ‘messaging’ and call it a conversation. Outsourcing self-expression to a computer forces you to ask yourself what makes a human being. Where does the machine end and where do I begin? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A brief comment on commentary

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Reflecting on the value of newspaper commentary on public life prompts self-reflection concerning the quality of what we columnists write and what we hope to achieve through our work. The ephemeral quality of a column suggests how important it is for us not simply to react to the news but to ask what lies beneath it.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Managestocracy

    • David James
    • 28 October 2022

    Who wields the most power in the world? If one follows the money trail, it becomes clear that Western societies have become ruled by a new type of aristocracy: a management aristocracy. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The empty echo chamber: A conversation with Dr Axel Bruns

    • David Halliday, Axel Bruns
    • 22 September 2022

    Despite our differing social and cultural beliefs, we can mostly agree that we live in highly polarised times. But what divides us? ARC Laureate Fellow Prof. Axel Bruns studies social polarisation, and in this discussion we explore the drivers of polarisation, examining the role that digital and social media and broader social and political contexts play in intensifying social conflicts, threatening economic prosperity, undermining public trust, and ultimately destabilising societies.

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  • RELIGION

    War, truth and Christianity

    • Peter Vardy
    • 21 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Pope Francis recognised that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’ and said he was warned before the war that Nato was ‘barking at the gates of Russia’. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica the Pope condemned the ‘ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops’ but warned against a fairy tale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election 2022: The value of independents

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 21 April 2022
    3 Comments

    Few sights are more desperate than old political parties on the run. In this Australian federal election, the challenge from independents and smaller parties has sparked a nervous reaction, much of it negative and most of it misplaced.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shane Warne’s limelight

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 March 2022
    4 Comments

    It was once said of T. E. Lawrence that he had a tendency to back into the limelight. With the late Shane Warne, arguably the finest slow bowler cricket has ever produced, it edged towards him. His debut appearance against India in the 1991-2 home series in Australia was not auspicious. Paunchy, exuding a vernacular Australian coarseness, and initially wayward, he received an object lesson from India’s Ravi Shastri and the youthful Sachin Tendulkar at the Sydney Cricket Ground. But there were already those incipient signs: the slovenly look, the ear piercings, the peroxide hair.

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council: Restoring the Third Rite

    • Bill Uren
    • 05 October 2021
    14 Comments

    As a result of the pandemic, like other religious observances, the availability of the Sacrament of Penance has been drastically curtailed, and it is unlikely that recourse to the sacrament will be as frequent as previously even when the restrictions are lifted. Further, the confidence of the laity in the inviolability of the seal has, understandably, been undermined, a consequence of which may again be that recourse to the sacrament will be in decline. 

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council: Consulting the faithful

    • Bill Uren
    • 30 August 2021
    31 Comments

    One might submit that a Plenary Council is a cumbersome instrument to ascertain the genuinely representative views of the Catholic Church in Australia. Many of the canonical strictures regarding the membership, agenda and process of the Council will dampen the original enthusiasm for the Council that provoked over 17,500 submissions.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Finding a new business model for big tech monopolies

    • David James
    • 09 March 2021
    5 Comments

    Social media companies are adopting a strategy that may go down in history as among the worst corporate mistakes ever. Google and Facebook are now monopolies and, like all monopolies, they no longer see their main interest as serving customers but rather to capture governments in order to protect their market dominance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living with lockdown

    • Julian Butler
    • 18 February 2021
    7 Comments

    Each of us has our own experience of the first COVID year. We do all share some of the best results in supressing the virus anywhere in the world. Talk, though, of social cohesion and government competency is loaded here in Melbourne.

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