Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
Many of us, of course including residents of the towers, understand the exceptional response that COVID-19 has required, and that these lock downs form a part of the response. But when the situation has meant that people must, unless there are exceptional personal or medical grounds, remain house-bound for at least five days, we must be careful in the way we go about caring for the health of people.
The significance of having a sanctuary has been heightened during the last months of living with the threat of COVID-19, which starkly highlights the experience of those Australians who do not have a sanctuary, who do not have a home to shelter in.
Government must respect the human dignity of people who are often regarded as a burden on society. Seen from this perspective the JobSeeker allowance is deceptively named. It conflates two distinct though related responsibilities of government: to promote participation in the workforce by matching jobs available to people seeking them, and to provide for those who cannot work.
Ideology is a powerful presence in our lives. It works its way into our consciousness through the dominant discourses of government, media, institutional religion, legal frameworks, popular culture, advertising, all the means at the disposal of the powerful. Once we learn to recognise it we see it everywhere. If it feels like we were born into it, it is because we were.
People ask why it took the death of George Floyd to make so many Australians stand up. His experience mirrored that of so many Aboriginal people who have died while in custody. His dying words ‘I can’t breathe’ echo through our hearts, because this isn’t the first time a Bla(c)k man has uttered those words while being brutally arrested for a crime most white people would get a slap on the wrist for.
This Refugee Week, many asylum seekers and refugees are struggling to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are trapped in immigration detention centres across the country in cramped and overcrowded conditions that make physical distancing impossible. Others are living in our community on temporary visas or no visas at all, struggling to make ends meet.
If our governments fail to roll out frameworks of good governance when times are good, they cannot expect to have the trust of the people during a crisis. So long as Australia fails to enter into proper legal relations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we will see protests, and ‘agitators’ will continue to call for justice.
We must ask: are our police forces keeping us safe? All of us? Poverty, discrimination and disempowerment cannot be solved with more policing. What if we took the money that is currently spent on policing and spent it on supporting the community?
The streets were packed there were thousands of people there to march in solidarity with us. It was so incredibly heartening. Australia is growing. The only time I have felt this atmosphere was in Sydney in the 1988 march on Australia Day. But this time was different very different it was predominately young people under the age of 30. They get it, they do see it.
There are the same bland assurances from successive ministers, the local MP and government bureaucrats that all will be well, nothing will go wrong; fears for lands and waters and the reputation of our state’s food, fibre and tourism brushed aside. Again a strong media secrecy, intended or otherwise, from all, save a few local regional, outlets.
Broken wall hand sanitizer containers, hand soap shared by a large number of people, and six people sharing a bedroom would not be allowed at hotels where returning travellers are in 14-day lockdowns. They would be viewed as breaking government restrictions on safeguarding against the spread of COVID-19. But these are the conditions at Kangaroo Point hotel, the Brisbane hotel where around 114 refugees and asylums seekers are under the coronavirus lockdown.
Will former Governor General John Kerr's correspondence with the Queen shed light on what really happened in 1975? It may very well, and historians like Jenny Hocking were willing to challenge the National Archives of Australia's refusal to access such records in High Court.
193-204 out of 3188 results.