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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Dangers of gay conversion

    • Luke Williams
    • 19 October 2012
    36 Comments

    My first encounter with gay reparative therapy (GRT) was the day I summoned the courage to ask a friend about the cluster of scars on his wrists. The Australian Psychological Society recognises conversion therapy as harmful to individuals' mental health. Yet GRT of minors is unregulated, and in the case of Christian ex-gay groups often run by unqualified laypeople.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Worshipping Princes Romney and Obama

    • Zac Alstin
    • 17 October 2012
    30 Comments

    Whatever happened to American Christians concerns over Mitt Romney's Mormon faith? Like unease about Romney's conservatism and pro-life record, theological issues have been brushed aside in anticipation of November's US presidential election. Can a religious believer rightfully put their trust in either Romney or Obama?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cat's eye view on Australia's poor

    • Fatima Measham
    • 17 October 2012
    7 Comments

    I went to a house in the northern suburbs to collect a cat. I departed with a new awareness of poverty that until then I had thought did not exist in my adopted country of Australia. It is disheartening that nearly a decade later, attitudes toward poverty remain unchanged and continue to shape public policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gender and class equality should go hand in hand

    • John Falzon
    • 16 October 2012
    39 Comments

    Last week we witnessed one of the most powerful articulations of gender equality by any prime minister. Sadly on the same day the Government and Opposition pushed through legislation to force 140,000 sole parents onto the inadequate Newstart Allowance. Gender analysis is mainstream; it is time for class analysis to become so too.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Communist China keeps a grip on the gun

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 15 October 2012
    3 Comments

    Many people know Mao's famous dictum, 'Power comes from the barrel of the gun'. Fewer people know the second part: that 'the Party must control the gun'. The Party could allow last month's street protests because they unified the people against a hated enemy in Japan. But the protests were carefully controlled.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bringing Parliament out from behind the school toilets

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 October 2012
    39 Comments

    We have the right to expect our representatives in Parliament to discuss what matters to Australian society and to human beings. That they should waste their time talking about a radio announcer, the party leaders' appeal to the other sex, and the sexual behaviour of one of their members is a betrayal of whatever trust we have in them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Before and after Bali's searing flash

    • Pat Walsh
    • 12 October 2012
    4 Comments

    The bombing in Bali ten years ago today did not target Balinese directly, but they took the collateral damage to tourism, their bread and butter, very personally. Drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting motion, a smiling Balinese says he is happy the bombers have been executed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rise of the Kurds in Syria

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 10 October 2012
    4 Comments

    It is not only Arabs that stand to benefit from the Arab Spring. Kurdish autonomy has long been a desire of the Kurds, who are spread through Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. In Syria, while the Assad regime is occupied by rebel groups in Aleppo and Damascus, the Kurds are establishing their own armed security in their areas.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Back-pedalling on Vatican II

    • Michael Kelly
    • 08 October 2012
    30 Comments

    The fresh wind of Vatican II has been reined in, with the focus turned to shoring up 'the firm wall of religion' against threatening forces from a world that had grown tired of the Church. As Christianity faces minority status in Europe, the Pope offers an intellectualised version of the ghetto mentality that Vatican II sought to break down.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conservative arguments in favour of gay marriage

    • Dustin Halse
    • 04 October 2012
    20 Comments

    Cory Bernadi's recent speech in the Senate linking homosexuality to bestiality illustrated how inverted and confused politics in Australia has become. Gay marriage is not a radical and abstract liberal idea. In fact, the most persuasive arguments in favour of gay marriage are distinctly conservative.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Same sex marriage and the republic

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 October 2012
    20 Comments

    If same sex marriage continues to gain momentum around the Western world then the Australian debate will not go away. But should international interest fade then it probably will in Australia too. Whatever the future of the republic debate in Australia it is not of the same international character and therefore harder to sustain.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fifty shades of rape culture

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 02 October 2012
    35 Comments

    Following the rape and murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne last week, many women admitted they too may have risked the short walk from pub to home in the early hours of the morning. Few men would see it as a risk at all; nor would they understand the 'continuum of threatened violence' women encounter with distressing regularity.

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