Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    New gambling slogans unlikely to curb social losses

    • Julian Butler
    • 08 November 2022
    3 Comments

    In the midst of the spring racing carnival, online betting companies have been told their advertising will next year need to include warnings about the risk of gambling. The new requirements fall well short of regulation that might meaningfully curb what is become a social norm and cultural marker for many.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Gamification nation

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 03 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Gamification affects almost all our online activities, from communicating to shopping, with gaming elements omnipresent in the form of points, avatars, badges, leader boards, and real-life rewards. Stripping activities of their intrinsic value, virtually any online activity could be transformed into a challenge to win. Yet users make the mistake of focusing on the game rewards without seeing how the game itself is subtly changing  behaviour.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Love, mercy and schadenfreude

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 02 November 2022
    4 Comments

    The town celebrated Guy Fawkes day and burned an effigy of the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament centuries before. For days beforehand, even as the holy women left the churches where they had prayed for the release of souls from punishment, children would be dragging carts and prams around with Guy Fawkes dummies they’d made, stuffed with straw and newspaper like scarecrows, easy to burn.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Those with the least are still expected to do the most in the face of inflation

    • John Falzon
    • 31 October 2022
    3 Comments

    In the first Chalmers budget we see a firm, albeit modest, assertion of the role of government in the long-term project of exiting the dismal and destructive era of neoliberalism and incrementally creating, in its place, a society where we have the collective resources to care for eachother, our planet and ourselves.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The Albanese reset: Stopping boats while treating onshore asylum seekers decently

    • Frank Brennan
    • 28 October 2022
    6 Comments

    In recent years, Australian policies in relation to asylum seekers and refugees have been unnecessarily mean, cruel and disorganised. The election of the Albanese government provides the opportunity for a reset, putting behind us the past mistakes of both Coalition and Labor Governments in the last 20 years.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Three-lie leeway

    • Michele Frankeni
    • 24 October 2022

    How do we go from insisting our children tell the truth, even if it leads to punishment for breaking rules, to casually accepting a lack of veracity from societal ‘leaders’? Why in this age of social media when the mildest of heterodox comments cause a storm of protest do blatant untruths cause not even a ripple? 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    When the lobbyist makes the laws: Victoria and the sex industry

    • Juliette Hughes, Kathy Chambers
    • 20 October 2022
    10 Comments

    With very little public debate or consultation, Victoria has repealed almost all laws relating to prostitution. Alone among all recreational activities, sex for payment is now unrestricted, even regarding health and safety. If we really care what happens to people, what place does sex work have in our society?

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    With less than due respect

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 October 2022
    8 Comments

    The one thing lacking in much of the debate about the travails of the Essendon Football Club and the brief tenure of its CEO was a proper respect. That lack of respect may merit reflection. Respect begins with persons, not with principles and opinions. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Can solidarity extend beyond the next natural crisis?

    • Julian Butler
    • 18 October 2022

    It might be a bit stale and trite to say so, but Australians do a good job of being at their best in a natural crisis. Solidarity is experienced in a way absent from much of our common conversation. Why is that? 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Civil disagreement on a hill

    • David Halliday
    • 10 October 2022

    Last week, in a pluralistic and diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society, a person was considered ill-fitting for employment, not because of their track record, but because of their outward association with a mainstream religion.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Is the Essendon saga evidence of faith under siege?

    • Chris Middleton
    • 10 October 2022
    18 Comments

    It is highly doubtful that the Essendon Football Club appreciated the reaction that would occur when it presented its new CEO, Andrew Thorburn, with the option of giving up his role as a lay leader in the City on a Hill Anglican Church or resigning from his role with the Club. Even if many were uneasy about how the issue was caught up in the culture wars, it caused widespread concerns amongst people of faith.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Life and death in the Cathedral

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 October 2022
    8 Comments

    Two weeks ago, Bishop Hilton Deakin died. My memories of him are inextricably tied to the Mass he celebrated in 1999 at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, certainly the most emotionally charged event that I have seen there, following the violence orchestrated by the Indonesian military following the Referendum on Independence in East Timor. During the struggle for Independence, many East Timorese had joined the Catholic Church. 

    READ MORE