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Keywords: States

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bats not boats for Afghanistan

    • Anthony
    • 10 September 2013
    17 Comments

    The United States, a country of cricket illiteracy, spent more than $1 million constructing the Kabul Cricket Stadium, recognising the major impact cricket is having in the country. Australia, one of cricket's 'first nations', has done nothing. It is tragic that, for ordinary Afghans, the vast majority of whom have never considered seeking asylum, Australia's most visible contribution to their country is the message to 'keep away'.

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  • RELIGION

    Politics of remembering

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 June 2013
    2 Comments

    When Polish Jews were herded into the closed Warsaw Ghetto, Chaim Kaplan kept a diary to ensure that 'in our scroll of agony, not one small detail can be omitted'. This kind of remembering is both deeply personal and profoundly public, and invites us to celebrate human freedom. The remembering involved in the collection of information by the United States and Great Britain is of a quite different character.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia in a sorry state as Gonski faces failure

    • Ray Cassin
    • 17 April 2013
    6 Comments

    If the states give Gillard's Gonski education proposals the thumbs-down, as is expected to happen at Friday's COAG meeting, it will not be the first time since Labor's return to office in 2007 that Australia's creaking constitutional arrangements have made fundamental reform impossible.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Intervening in Israel

    • Philip Mendes
    • 05 February 2013
    23 Comments

    The effectively deadlocked Israeli election outcome reflects a contradiction between philosophy and action: most Israelis are willing to consider two states in principle, yet they have been debating the same political issues for 20 years with no concrete outcome. Some form of long-term international intervention may be necessary to overcome the deadlock.

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  • EDUCATION

    Rhetoric rules in Gillard Gonski announcement

    • Chris Middleton
    • 12 September 2012
    5 Comments

    The Prime Minister's credibility in announcing an education policy response before reaching agreement with the states may be questioned. Without the states, the implementation of Gonski is impossible. This was illustrated graphically by the NSW Government's announcement of funding cuts to Catholic and independent schools.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Regulation as solidarity not censorship

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 August 2012
    10 Comments

    The Prime Minister has demanded states regulate the price of electricity. News Ltd continues its campaign against further regulation of newspapers. Regulation brings into play two values that stand in tension: individual freedom and solidarity. The trick is to regulate so that personal freedom is enhanced in a way that serves the good of all. 

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  • RELIGION

    Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia's Constitution

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 July 2012
    8 Comments

    Most Australians would agree that it’s time to free the Constitution from all vestiges of racial discrimination. For this, it needs an amendment affirming the status as Indigenous Australians as equal citizens. But in the current political climate, a referendum is unlikely to produce the necessary super majority of electors in four of the six states voting in favour.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Jose Ramos-Horta's Ian Thorpe moment

    • Pat Walsh
    • 20 March 2012
    11 Comments

    East Timor is living far too dangerously by dumping its incumbent president Jose Ramos-Horta in last weekend's election. It remains to be seen whether Ramos-Horta will continue in public life or retire, but there's no doubt the nation would do well to use his vast experience as an elder statesman.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Squeamish over Scottish independence

    • Justin Glyn
    • 17 January 2012
    11 Comments

    The prospect of a referendum on Scottish independence from the UK evokes one of the more interesting tensions in modern international law, between the right to self-determination on the one hand and the territorial integrity of states on the other.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard's Speaker dirty trick could backfire

    • Michael Mullins
    • 28 November 2011
    30 Comments

    New House Speaker Peter Slipper will have no authority if parliamentarians do not grant it to him. Opposition MPs do not respect him because of his history of disloyalty and questionable behaviour. If Slipper fails to command authority, it is arguable that Tony Abbott should be granted his wish of an early poll.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Eurozone trashed

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 November 2011
    10 Comments

    Many Italian protesters have called 12 November a day of liberation. This is a misunderstanding of what has happened. One does not have to be a fan of Silvio Berlusconi's sordid regime to see the madness of austerity that is stripping away the sovereignty of states through the eurozone. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Insanity rules after ten years of war in Afghanistan

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 07 October 2011
    12 Comments

    Today is the tenth anniversary of the war on Afghan jihadists. We civilised Westerners decided we’d had enough of barbarians flying planes into our skyscrapers, killing thousands of our civilians. And hence we sent our own planes to drop huge bombs on their villages and towns.

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