Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Liberated Libya's fatal flaws

    • Anthony Ham
    • 12 September 2011
    3 Comments

    The disparate strands of Libya's revolution have been held together by a single unifying thread: a visceral desire to oust Gaddafi. Extremely effective as a rallying cry for rebellion, this anti-Gaddafi sentiment is deeply flawed as the unifying narrative for a new nation.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's refugee bastardry is biblical

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 September 2011
    30 Comments

    The stories of Jesus' trial highlight the triumph of expediency over legality and morality. The Malaysia solution and the scramble to restore it contains detailed similarities. The people of the time are now remembered principally for their participation in an act of bastardry.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    What was left behind

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 09 September 2011
    2 Comments

    A soft toy. A restaurant menu. A business card. An agony so great it swamped the world. While America was busy hunting down Osama bin Laden, my son and his contemporaries, who were children at the time of the attack, grew up and inherited a world irrevocably changed. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    America changed and still the same

    • Jim McDermott
    • 09 September 2011
    1 Comment

    Walking down the streets of New York today, almost everything seems as it was ten years ago. The same honking horns, hustling crowds, mundane and sometimes myopic worries and preoccupations propelling us. I note this with gratitude — our fears have not overcome us.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    To remember is to pray

    • Brian Doyle
    • 09 September 2011
    3 Comments

    To remember the roaring courage of the people who rushed to help, or the people who used their last minutes on earth to call their families and say I love you I love you I will you forever, is to pray for them and us and even the poor silly murderers, themselves just lanky frightened children.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Sects and power in the Arab revolution

    • Shahram Akbarzadeh
    • 07 September 2011
    4 Comments

    The unfolding events in the Arab world are not simply about finding a path to democracy and political openness, but a maze of sectarian tensions and regional power-plays. There is widespread consensus that the opening up of the political space will benefit Islamist forces.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The reluctant Australian citizen

    • Fatima Measham
    • 05 September 2011
    16 Comments

    2001: Two planes slammed into the World Trade Centre. A Pakistani refugee self-immolated in front of the Australian Parliament. Asylum seekers were accused of throwing children overboard. These events had nothing to do with me, but I absorbed them. I am brown-skinned. I have an Arabic name.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The twin terrors of 2001

    • Michael Mullins
    • 05 September 2011
    8 Comments

    Before Tampa, refugees were regarded as a positive for Australia's economy and lifestyle. After Tampa they were a threat to our sovereignty that was somehow grafted on to the sense of public malaise prompted by the 9/11 attacks on the sovereignty of the United States.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Revisiting South Africa

    • Duncan Maclaren
    • 31 August 2011
    2 Comments

    My last visit to South Africa was in 1989 when apartheid was in its death throes. The only difference between then and now in the gap between the poor (mostly black and so-called coloureds) and rich is that some blacks have become the 'nouveaux riches' of the new South Africa.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia flouting international law over refugees

    • Justin Glyn
    • 30 August 2011
    9 Comments

    By pursuing the refugee swap deal with Malaysia, Australia may be in breach of one of the most serious prohibitions in international law. This raises the question of what Australia's attitude is to other fundamenal norms of international law. This question goes well beyond issues of refugee protection. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons from Bluescope's human crisis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 August 2011
    11 Comments

    Respect for the people whose lives will be affected by the Bluescope crisis should lead us to ask wider questions about the society their children will inherit. The ways in which Australia shapes its economy creates a society in which human beings may flourish or be diminished.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Rallies take the good fight to Canberra

    • John Warhurst
    • 29 August 2011
    7 Comments

    Political rallies are on the rise. That is a good thing. The ones that should really make governments take notice are those that contain not just rusted on party supporters, but people who really are considering changing their vote from the Gillard-Abbott election in 2010.

    READ MORE