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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Modest but realistic hope for a 2017 Referendum

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 July 2015
    7 Comments

    Australia is more mature and more complex than it was at the time of the 1967 Aboriginal citizenship referendum. We need to be very attentive to the diversity and (hopefully) emerging consensus of Aboriginal viewpoints. We also need to be attentive to what measures the leaders of our major political parties will be prepared to sponsor during the life of the next parliament, championing those measures in a referendum campaign.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Addiction is about social exclusion not moral failing

    • Paul Jensen
    • 21 July 2015
    11 Comments

    Greens leader Richard di Natale is currently visiting Portugal for a first hand look at how they have successfully bypassed the criminal justice system in treating drug addiction. There’s increasing acceptance of the view that addiction is caused by a lack of social connection and bonding. For Portugal, the most crucial step was to provide addicts with secure housing and subsidised jobs so they had a purpose in life and a sense of responsibility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cold War blinkers threaten MH17 truth

    • Tony Kevin
    • 20 July 2015
    9 Comments

    A Russian investigative committee continues to claim that MH17 was most likely to have been downed by an air-to-air missile that was not Russian-made. For their part, Western commentators became increasingly impatient and scornful of Russian ‘conspiracy theories’ on who downed MH17. Whether the identity of who actually shot down MH17 becomes known in the fullness of time could depend upon the extent to which our political leaders can resist using MH17 to prosecute their Cold War enmities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope's pungent pontification against greed

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 July 2015
    14 Comments

    As high level negotiators left the air foetid in Europe and Australia, South America was scented rather more freshly, with Pope Francis ahead in the stakes of providing hope for humanity. He delivered a fiery denunciation of modern capitalism, declaring modern capitalism's 'unfettered pursuit of money' the 'dung of the devil' and accusing world leaders of 'cowardice' for refusing to defend the earth from exploitation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Zen and the art of wealth amassment

    • Ellena Savage
    • 17 July 2015
    4 Comments

    There is a suburban myth about migrant families. The first generation toil, the second become professionals, and the third artists. Like all dynasties, the Rineharts are destined to one day represent the crusty relics of former glory. That's fine. I mean, why would the beneficiaries of other people's obsessive toils and struggle work, if they didn't have to?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Terrorist or criminal? Why it matters

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 17 July 2015
    7 Comments

    How we name someone makes a big difference. Criminals are subject to the criminal justice system. They can access legal aid and the prosecution must prove its case. Whereas terrorists can have their citizenship cancelled under the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act if they are a dual national, even without a conviction.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope Francis looks beyond hammer and sickle crucifix chatter

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 July 2015
    17 Comments

    The media declared Pope Francis not amused after Bolivian President Morales presented him with a crucifix superimposed on a hammer and sickle. It turned out that the design was from Jesuit Luís Espinal, who was captured, tortured and killed by right-wing paramilitaries in 1980. It depicted Christ's affinity with workers and peasants. Pope Francis was more interested in the reality of a crucified people than in discussing representations of the crucified Jesus.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A time for all Australians to nurture Indigenous heritage

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 July 2015
    4 Comments

    This year's NAIDOC Week theme calls on Indigenous Australians to value their inheritance and to nurture it. It also challenges other Australians to be curious about the heritage of their Indigenous brothers and sisters, and to respect it in the uses to which their lands are put to.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Foreign fighter with the 'Anzac spirit'

    • Tim Robertson
    • 13 July 2015
    7 Comments

    It's hard not to admire Reece Harding, whose sense of social justice, idealism and internationalism led him to take up arms against an organisation he seemingly believed lived up to Tony Abbott's characterisation as a 'death cult'. The Federal Government has warned Australians against travelling to the Middle East to fight on any side. But these calls are drowned out by decades of contradictory rhetoric that has seen the Anzac legend placed at the fore of our history and culture.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When life and death break into the game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 July 2015
    8 Comments

    Because football and other large sports are an image of life, they are safe spaces in which loss is never final and youth is never lost. But occasionally, as in the death of Philip Hughes and Phil Walsh, real life breaks into the image. Death and horror have to be grappled with.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The limits to private ownership of property

    • Samuel Tyrer
    • 08 July 2015
    11 Comments

    Private property rights are one of the few rights expressly protected under the Australian Constitution, but broader societal interests must be taken into consideration. Compulsory acquisition of land for the greater public good has always been a fact of life for property owners. France is currently enacting laws to force supermarkets to give their unsold consumable food 'property' to charities. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Intimidated ABC embraces self-censorship

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 July 2015
    17 Comments

    Nine days after the Zacky Mallah Q&A episode, the ABC Board said it had censured the program's executive producer. It could have been a failure of the producer's editorial judgment, but there is a worrying sense that it was really a matter of the ABC appeasing the Government. There is a chilling echo of the Philippine media under the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The media came to anticipate direct interventions from Malacañang Palace; eventually, none had to be made.

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