Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Punitive

  • AUSTRALIA

    Policy solutions to bonkers housing costs

    • Gabriela D'Souza
    • 06 April 2018
    5 Comments

    I was in Sydney recently, and within less than an hour of my arrival of the airport, I was thrust into a conversation about how completely unaffordable the city was becoming. 'Bonkers' was the general consensus. But how did it get this bad and what can be done to repair the current state of affairs?

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal women's lives matter

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 06 March 2018
    11 Comments

    The sole purpose of bringing up Aboriginal women who are victims of abuse in political discussions is often to further oppress our populations. It's certainly not to give those women a voice, empower them to build solutions and ensure that these solutions are funded adequately.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't let the Apology's great hope die

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2018
    7 Comments

    Ten years have passed since the Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on behalf of Parliament and the nation. It seems longer. It was a time of great hope. Today, with respect to Indigenous affairs as to much else, fewer people hold great hope that anything good can come out of Canberra.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The many failures of our wild welfare regime

    • Amelia Paxman
    • 23 October 2017
    9 Comments

    Increasing the feelings of shame of being unemployed and restricting freedoms doesn't create more jobs and only grinds down a vulnerable group who are subsisting on a meagre payment. But the government is yet to show any meaningful concern over the significant risks of these draconian welfare policies.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Developing an inclusive and sustainable economy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 September 2017
    2 Comments

    The real call of Everyone's Business is to move beyond them and us to admitting that there is only us. If we are truly to build an inclusive and sustainable economy, it can't be just those in full time paid employment who are part of that economy. We take seriously the principles of neo-liberalism, letting the market decide. But we set limits on the market for the common good.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Bishops call for an economy that serves all

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 September 2017
    11 Comments

    The general argument of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Statement on the economy is that Australia is a wealthy economy in which too many people are marginalised. In response to the litany of neglect and abuse that it details, the statement calls for a new view of the economy as the servant of people, and not vice versa.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The bi-partisanship shame of refugee policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 August 2017
    29 Comments

    What possessed Filippo Grandi, the relatively new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to go public last week, having a go at Australia for our government’s treatment of unvisaed asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat? He repeated UNHCR’s demand that Australia terminate offshore processing of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island and that we not outsource our responsibilities to others.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The origins and incoherence of Australia's asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 June 2017
    7 Comments

    I am resigned to the boats from Indonesia being stopped and staying stopped. But it is high time to stop the cruel treatment of the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island, and provide a permanent solution for the asylum seekers waiting inordinately in the Australian community. Their treatment is separable from the stopping of future boats setting out from Indonesia. The Commonwealth's $90 million settlement of the claim brought by asylum seekers on Manus Island should be a wake-up call to us all.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Unsocial budget fails health test

    • Amy Coopes
    • 15 May 2017
    3 Comments

    Next year marks four decades since promulgation of the seminal Declaration of Alma Ata, which declared health to be a fundamental human right and laid the foundations for what are now widely championed as the social determinants of health. Without action on the social determinants, health policy can be a little like that joke about the cyclopean orthopod who, when confronted with a patient suffering fatal internal bleeding, is interested only in fixing their broken leg. So it is with last week's Budget.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    'Labor-lite' budget's social welfare report card

    • Julie Edwards
    • 10 May 2017
    5 Comments

    'Labor-lite' or not, there are many investments contained in the budget which will work towards a more just society, including the securing of funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme by raising the Medicare levy, and the needs-based approach to school funding, dubbed 'Gonski 2.0'. But among these commitments that seek to create a more equitable Australia, this budget again seeks to vilify welfare recipients, among the most vulnerable members of our community.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Hope versus humiliation in the Federal Budget

    • John Falzon
    • 10 May 2017
    14 Comments

    It would be nice to believe, as the Treasurer wants us to, that better times are around the corner. But while wages stagnate and company profits surge, inequality is at its highest since the 1950s. This is not going to get any better any time soon. By 2019, the highest income earners will have received an effective tax cut of 1.5 per cent compared to all other taxpayers who will be paying an extra 0.5 per cent. For young people especially, Budget 2017 boosts inequality instead of building a better future.

    READ MORE
  • EDUCATION

    Reading, writing, and stifling homeschool regulations

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 01 May 2017
    16 Comments

    I decided to homeschool for one year, to give my daughter a chance to recover and to build her confidence. I never expected to fall in love with the lifestyle. Twelve months later, I gave in to my younger son's entreaties and began homeschooling him as well - just for one more year. In Victoria, the registration process is simple and straightforward. It is not surprising, then, that Victoria has the highest number of registered homeschoolers. But this may soon change.

    READ MORE