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Keywords: Race Matthews

  • AUSTRALIA

    Re-building the commons: In conversation with Joshua Lourensz

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 06 February 2024

    In a world that has become increasingly more divided in the aftermath of the pandemic, Executive Director of Catholic Social Services Victoria Joshua Lourensz is questioning how we might best re-develop a sense of the commons to reignite our communities and foster social responsibility?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tying off the threads of doubt

    • Brian Matthews
    • 05 August 2021
    4 Comments

    In times of unexpected or inexplicable crisis, humans all over the globe regardless of race, religion, lineage or historical evidence, will often turn to myth, the occult, each other, to their until then untested and unimpressive leaders, or to a hoped-for apparent miracle to explain what seemed otherwise beyond explanation.

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  • MEDIA

    Editors' Picks: Best of the Decade

    • The Editors
    • 20 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Our team of editors have dug through the past ten years' worth of Eureka Street articles to nominate their favourite pieces published between the start of 2010 and today. Check out our list and then jump into the comments to tell us what are your picks of the decade and why.

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  • RELIGION

    Labor Party reform through Catholic Social Teaching

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 April 2017
    6 Comments

    It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic outsider. I found Race Matthews' new book that treats Catholic engagement in public social issues fascinating in that respect. Matthews' perspective is that of a member of the Labor Party who admires Catholic Social Teaching, especially its commendation of the communal ownership of business enterprises. He sees the possibilities this presents for the reform of Australian society, particularly if adopted by the Labor Party.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Running after Merv Lincoln

    • Brian Matthews
    • 23 March 2016
    10 Comments

    I was out on our quiet country road the next morning at first light intent on running just half a mile. Some days later, when I had recovered and various outraged muscles had stopped twanging, I determined to carry on. In those days, running was regarded as eccentric, even sinister. 'Why do you do it?' the 'milky' asked. 'Are you a footy umpire or somethin'?' Then there was the elderly bloke who, driving past in his ute, stared back at me for so long to demonstrate his scorn that he drove off the road.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal footballers' MCG dreaming

    • Brian Matthews
    • 16 October 2015
    3 Comments

    In the recent AFL Grand Final, the performance of Aboriginal footballer Cyril Rioli seemed to be not much short of magic. Well, perhaps the spirit world did make a contribution. In 1844, a great throng of clans was camped on the site of what became the MCG. Perhaps, 170 years later, Aboriginal footballers, running down the race for the first time and steeling themselves for the noise, the space, the tension, find instead a great sense of intimacy as their feet hit the grass of the oval.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Abbott and co. working from Orwell's playbook

    • Brian Matthews
    • 18 July 2014
    20 Comments

    Life in Orwell's Airstrip One is graceless, demeaning and inhumane for all but those entitled to preferment. Surveillance is increasing, ruling-party secrecy and monopoly on information is rigid, refugees are demonised and language is reduced to sound bites and slogans. The leadership is disjoined from and cynical about the natural world. Just as well it's fiction because it sounds awful doesn't it?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What the postmaster saw

    • Brian Matthews
    • 08 November 2013
    7 Comments

    Within an hour the shop is humming with talk and movement. Mac is courteous, but has some iron rules. A woman who talks ceaselessly into her mobile phone receives a steely glare and silence. Someone with both ears plugged into his iPod finds Mac has also suddenly gone deaf. Each new arrival is threaded into a sort of endless conversation which functions at two levels — greetings to the customer and side-of-the-mouth asides to me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Catholic social solutions to workplace fairness

    • Race Matthews
    • 01 February 2012
    5 Comments

    The worker-owned cooperatives based at Mondragon in Spain have demonstrated great resilience during harsh economic times. Their model based in Catholic social values provides a contrast to the bruising industrial confrontations we've seen in Qantas and Victorian hospitals.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Publishing George Orwell

    • Brian Matthews
    • 14 April 2011
    2 Comments

    In 1981, a few months before actor Peter Davison became the fifth Doctor Who, Professor Peter Davison, the literary scholar, accepted a commission to produce the corrected editions of Orwell's nine books. The project was to be fraught by false dawns and recurring frustrations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Scenes from a taxi

    • Brian Matthews
    • 17 December 2008
    1 Comment

    I don't support the view that cab drivers are sources of homespun wisdom and arcane knowledge. Australian cabbies are an amiable, diverse lot, not given to philosophy, though I encountered one spectacular exception.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Books survive the orgasm of closure

    • Brian Matthews
    • 20 August 2008
    3 Comments

    We've seen the 'end of history' and the 'death of God', yet the humble book lives on. While technology buffs embrace the e-book, printed books continue to exercise an atavistic attraction through their fusion of form and content.

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