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Keywords: Punitive

  • RELIGION

    Supporting those on the margins

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 February 2019

    'We can do this better by breaking down the silos and binding together our concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.' Opening Keynote Address by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the Catholic Social Services Australia National Conference, Port Macquarie 19 February 2019.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A new standard for asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 February 2019
    26 Comments

    We are all gearing up for the third election in a row when boat turnbacks and the punitive treatment of refugees and asylum seekers feature. It need not be so. It’s time voters sent a message that it should not be so.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need leaders who are smarter on data

    • Kate Galloway
    • 29 January 2019
    1 Comment

    Transitioning to a networked world replete with data is a challenging task. Our parliamentarians have a duty to appraise themselves of the basics of human rights, data ethics, and the technological frameworks that will deliver good governance. Until then, we will be left lurching from one technology omnishambles to the next.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Two sides to Morrison's Rohingya tears

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 November 2018
    7 Comments

    Many who are appalled by the sufferings inflicted on people who seek protection in Australia under a policy for whose design and administration Morrison was responsible, saw his tears over the plight of Rohingya refugees as hypocritical. Both Morrison's tears and his critics' varying responses to them merit reflection.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why no compromise on Manus and Nauru?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 October 2018
    10 Comments

    The link Manne makes between Australian treatment of people seeking protection and the abiding cultural demand to control outsiders is illuminating, and his description of the 'Canberra mindset' is persuasive. But the resistance from the sector to negotiation about Manus and Nauru has more complex roots than Manne allows.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A parent's guide to reward and punishment

    • Barry Gittins
    • 20 September 2018
    6 Comments

    How best to extract them from their cozy dens? Whispering endearments and professions of love does not produce the desired results. Nor does opening curtains, turning on the lights, singing annoying songs, turning on a television or radio, or serenading them on a tuba. These strategies have all been unsuccessfully trialled.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The global push against refugees

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 July 2018
    16 Comments

    Cometh the time, cometh the exploitable prejudice. With millions of globally displaced persons, states are retreating from the business of actually treating the condition as one of dysfunction inflicted by war, famine and poverty. It has morphed from a matter of humanitarianism to one of social ill and unease.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Whatever happened to 'kindness to strangers'?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 July 2018
    14 Comments

    It has become clear that the brutal Australian treatment of people who seek protection is part of an international punitive policy. This is sometimes attributed to a failure of political leadership. But it may reflect a deeper cultural change in the Western attitude to strangers, seen in migrant and refugee policy, penal policy, international relations and the scope of the rule of law.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Burning down the house of inequality

    • John Falzon
    • 28 June 2018
    7 Comments

    If you accept the tenets of individualism, you are going to struggle to see why we should have anything but the most minimal level of taxation, and you wouldn't hold that taxation should be progressive to be fair. But the reality is that inequality is a political failure; not a personal one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Being sick in Australia is harder than ever

    • El Gibbs
    • 29 May 2018
    2 Comments

    I first got sick when I was 19. I am now in my 40s and still sick. I have tried myriad medications and treatments, and live with a now permanent disability. The public systems I have engaged with over this time have become increasingly adversarial. The gaps between systems are getting wider, and the expenses higher.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Close the camps now and stop the posturing

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 May 2018
    25 Comments

    For the good of the refugees who have languished for five years on Nauru and Manus Island, and for the good of the Australian body politic, it's time to put an end to this inhumane chapter in Australian history. Keep the boats stopped. Bring New Zealand into the mix now. Empty the camps. And fight your elections on matters of substance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tim Winton's model of manhood

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 May 2018
    5 Comments

    One of the challenges that faces any society is how boys will become men. In many societies the passage is mapped and enacted through ritual initiations or through military training. It also periodically causes great anxiety. Two recent books encourage reflection on different aspects of the passage from boys to men.

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