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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    US gun law reform is biblical

    • Evan Ellis
    • 18 December 2012
    10 Comments

    Following the latest school massacre US President Obama cited Psalm 147, invoking God to 'heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds', and renewed a call for 'meaningful action'. He'll be judged not on his words, but on how he defines and delivers said 'action'. He'd do well to first revisit Psalm 147 in its entirety. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A global perspective on American child deaths

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 18 December 2012
    15 Comments

    'You come from a culture where it is okay to kill children,' the Iraqi woman said. We were sheltering against the wall of a building in Fallujah while the city was under attack by US forces. What could I say? There were several little bodies at my feet, bloodied remains laid out on the footpath and covered with thin sheets.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The media and the vulnerable in 2012

    • Michael Mullins
    • 17 December 2012
    3 Comments

    Browsing the highlights and lowlights of the year, media treatment of vulnerable people has been a constant. The regrettable circumstances surrounding the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha come to mind, but there are surprising moments when journalists have distinguished themselves with investigative reporting for the common good.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lesson from South Africa for US gun owners

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 17 December 2012
    13 Comments

    Our gun was not some inanimate piece of metal; it was an object designed with malignant intent, one swiftly transformed into an instrument of violence. The day we handed it in was one of the happiest of my life. It takes a mature society to handle weapons responsibly, and a truly liberated one to relinquish them altogether.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We all lose when governments trash the law

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 December 2012
    15 Comments

    Evidence about the persecution of returned Sri Lankan asylum seekers calls into question the justice of summary repatriation. And the actions of the Australian Government have thrown doubt on its legality. The rule of law is a delicate web of relationships that protects the weak from the tyranny of the great, and we are all weaker when it is broken. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My brush with Israeli militarism

    • Lyn Bender
    • 10 December 2012
    14 Comments

    Aged 18, during a period of great personal confusion, I considered volunteering for the Israeli Army. I had been indoctrinated within a community of holocaust survivors who had latched onto militant Zionism as a means to reclaim Jewish pride and safety. In the early adulthood when the brain is not fully matured, youth is particularly vulnerable to being captivated by idealism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Royal Prank blood is on everybody's hands

    • Michael Mullins
    • 10 December 2012
    53 Comments

    Following the 2DAY FM impersonation of the Queen and Prince Charles, the behaviour of the social and mass media lynch mob was no less shocking and shameful than that of the pranksters themselves. Even the CEO of the hospital shares the blame for accepting a royal patient without giving his staff adequate media training.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Minority Government stands the test of time

    • John Warhurst
    • 07 December 2012
    13 Comments

    Whatever happens now there will be no election until March 2013 at the earliest. This means the Gillard Labor Government will go almost full term despite relentless pressure from the Opposition, a hung parliament and a raft of controversies. But survival is not the same as victory. It has come at a cost.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor stops short on migration and disability reform

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 05 December 2012
    8 Comments

    In 2001, a Pakistani man granted refugee status set himself on fire outside the Australian Parliament House. Visas for his wife and three daughters had been rejected because one daughter had cerebral palsy. While immigration policy has since become less discriminatory towards people experiencing disability, important barriers still remain.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia proves a soft touch at UN over toxic warfare

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 03 December 2012
    13 Comments

    Four new studies on the health crisis in Fallujah have been released in the last three months. The studies suggest babies are dying of wounds from a war they never saw. Australia has already breached its admirable 'Australian Agenda' at the UN, succumbing to US pressure to abstain from a vote on depleted uranium weapons.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pro-business governments reversing Eureka Stockade achievement

    • Michael Mullins
    • 03 December 2012
    10 Comments

    Today is the 158th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade rebellion, often seen as the source of our ‘fair go’ ethos. Wealthy landowners and businessmen controlled the government, as they do today. Governments anxious for private sector investment give free reign to James Packer and others, at cost to the common good.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parable of the inhospitable hospital

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 November 2012
    12 Comments

    Even No Advantage, the best of policies, could not control the breaking of bones, crushing of spleens, poisonings, complications in pregnancy, aneurisms and other events. Still the Intruders came: on crutches and stretchers, with drips, catheters and prostheses. The council saw with alarm, and their opponents with grim satisfaction, that the policy was not working. It had to be strengthened.

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