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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    The myths and half-truths of fatherhood

    • Mike Kelly
    • 01 September 2022
    3 Comments

    With many types of fathering in a wide range of ethnic, cultural, and social situations by separated dads, stepdads, gay dads, uncles, and grandpas, as we celebrate today’s dads, it’s good to think about fatherhood and parenting myths and how they stack up in an ever-changing world.   

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Morrison shadow government and the romantics of convention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 September 2022
    8 Comments

    The most striking note in the tempestuous outrage regarding Scott Morrison’s self-appointment (technically, appointment with the Governor-General’s approval) to five ministerial portfolios other than his own, is the search for the illegal. Such a search is fruitless in a system that thrives on the principle of convention, perennially uncodified and therefore susceptible to breach.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Laying the foundations for an economy that works for people: the Jobs Summit challenge

    • John Falzon
    • 29 August 2022
    2 Comments

    While the Jobs Summit does not signal the end of neoliberalism, it does signal a political willingness by the Albanese government to begin an inclusive, deliberative process for healing some of the wounds that have been inflicted on ordinary people through the accumulation of superprofits on the one hand and cuts to real wages and the dismantling of social infrastructure on the other.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The price of mistrust

    • Julian Butler
    • 29 August 2022

    The absence of trust undermines our ability to meet basic human need, to feel supported, to share resources and to effectively divide responsibilities. Mistrust imposes its own ‘price’ on every ‘transaction’, every engagement with others becomes more costly as we need to account for the perceived insincerity and unreliability of others.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on the Voice to Parliament: Vicki Clark and Frank Brennan

    • Frank Brennan, Vicki Clark
    • 18 August 2022
    3 Comments

    How can individuals and organisations engage with and support progress on reconciliation? In this conversation, Fr Frank Brennan SJ (Rector, Newman College) and Vicki Clark touch on progress of reconciliation in Australia in light of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the Yoorrook Justice Commission and the Victorian Treaty process.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The constant remaking of a nation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 August 2022
    4 Comments

    Few Australians of Irish descent will now be familiar with this history and the experience that accompanied it. They would see themselves as simply Australian. But the emphasis on social justice, the recognition of the value of community, and the concern for people who are marginal that are communicated through Catholic schools and the sympathy with the underdog owe much to the Irish heritage.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Path to a Referendum: From Uluru via Garma to Canberra and on to the People

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 August 2022
    2 Comments

    We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Discovery or cover-up?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 August 2022
    9 Comments

    Much has recently written about the doctrine of discovery and its bearing on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the United States where it grounded an early legal decision. The doctrine enshrined in law claims that the discovery of underpopulated and cultivated lands conferred on the discoverers the right to ownership, and was used to justify colonial occupation of territory in the Americas, Asia and Africa.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Home sweet home turns sour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 August 2022
    8 Comments

    It is easy to view homelessness from a distance as only a failure of economic policy and of the political responsibility to deliver material goods. A home, however, is more than a house. It connotes connections that are central to humanity. Left without a home people are deprived of more than bricks and mortar; they are diminished in their humanity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sharing a world both clean and not

    • Barry Gittins
    • 03 August 2022
    1 Comment

    History has repeatedly shown us that what gets us through a crisis, what helps us to recover and rebuild, is responding to it with prosocial behaviour ― working together, starting with our communities at the local level, and from there building mutually supportive relationships at and across every level of society. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Former detainee seeks compensation for unlawful detention

    • Maeve Elrington
    • 02 August 2022
    3 Comments

    Former detainee, Kurdish-Iranian refugee Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitabar, seeks compensation from the Federal Government for what he alleges was unlawful detention. Detained offshore in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and in Australia for almost eight years, Moz is seeking compensation in the Federal Court of Australia for the physical and emotional toll of his detention, particularly from the final 14 months of detention in two Melbourne based hotels.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Then and now

    • John Honner
    • 28 July 2022
    4 Comments

    The ‘Land Rights Now’ banner is hoisted against the wind, and the marchers set off for the Embassy. A young Aboriginal woman walks ahead of the banner. She has dyed her hair red. She turns and leans into the wind to face the marchers, holding a megaphone to her mouth. ‘What do we want?’ she shouts, ‘When do we want it?’ And she keeps going, exhorting the marchers. We reply ‘Land Rights … Now!’ The crowd tires before she does.

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