Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Deep calling on deep

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 April 2022
    4 Comments

    In our culture, Easter celebrates the benignity of the ordinary. It is a time for getting together with family, for going away to bush or beach, and in southern states a time of mild weather ideal for watching big football matches and other sport. The important question raised now by Easter is whether the meanings of Australian Easter, and indeed those available to our secular society, have the depth needed to handle our present predicaments. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Climate change and duty of care

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 April 2022
    1 Comment

    The children have been busy. On matters of environmental justice, Australia has witnessed much legal activity from youthful citizens who, despite in some cases not being old enough to vote, have stirred politics. In 2021, five lodged complaints with the United Nations over the failure of the Australian government to cut, in a meaningful way, greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    April is the cruellest month

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 April 2022
    1 Comment

    Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Local governments are being pushed out of aged care. But at what cost?

    • Zacharias Szumer
    • 05 April 2022

    Like the aged care sector more broadly, home care is in the process of transition as the federal government implements a system designed around the principles of consumer choice and efficiency. The push is driven by expectations that the number of Australians accessing aged care services will more than triple by 2050.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    For every silver lining there’s a cloud for refugees in Australia

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 05 April 2022

    Recently the Government announced a special visa program for Ukrainians fleeing the war in their home country. The desperate situation in the Ukraine has dominated news for the last month, and already many tens of thousands of Ukrainians have fled their country seeking safety in nearby countries like Poland, Hungary and Rumania. Whilst Ukrainian migration to Australia is relatively small numerically, the response was quick and seemingly generous — a three-year visa with Medicare and work rights.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Heigh-ho, it’s time for the election show

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 March 2022

    By attending to the faces of people who are seen as props to the election campaign, and developing an interest in the background of social change in different parts of Australia, we gain a deeper understanding of Australia and its needs. At one level election campaigns are all showbiz and make believe, but at another the humanity that they can never quite stifle also punctures the images that the contesting partners project of Australia.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Distinguishing communities

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 March 2022

    Part of what makes community is what distinguishes community, what sets it apart. It might be an interest in music, or sport, a neighbourhood or a set of values or practices. Initially, at least, the extent to which we identify with the community will depend upon the extent to which those things that define or characterise it are important to us.   

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    When ‘Good Refugees’ are admitted

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 21 March 2022

    While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The fable of the frog and the federal election

    • Barry Gittins
    • 21 March 2022

    Like the trusting frog, voters have in the backs of their minds the inkling that when a government achieves power, they lavish time, energy and resources on staying in power. Promises are non-core, or open to interpretation, or de-prioritised as new issues bob up to the surface.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    National security elections: Reds under the bed

    • John Warhurst
    • 09 March 2022
    9 Comments

    Domestic policies are often regarded as more important than foreign affairs and defence policies in influencing Australian election campaigns. But national security campaigns by the government of the day, known as either khaki elections or reds under the beds, have such a long history in Australian federal elections that they challenge the conventional wisdom.  

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Shane Warne’s limelight

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 March 2022
    4 Comments

    It was once said of T. E. Lawrence that he had a tendency to back into the limelight. With the late Shane Warne, arguably the finest slow bowler cricket has ever produced, it edged towards him. His debut appearance against India in the 1991-2 home series in Australia was not auspicious. Paunchy, exuding a vernacular Australian coarseness, and initially wayward, he received an object lesson from India’s Ravi Shastri and the youthful Sachin Tendulkar at the Sydney Cricket Ground. But there were already those incipient signs: the slovenly look, the ear piercings, the peroxide hair.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Government lowers bar to trigger visa cancellation

    • Paul Cutler
    • 07 March 2022
    2 Comments

    Most people would agree that the government should have the power to cancel the visas of, and deport, non-citizens who are serious or dangerous criminals. Nobody wants to be the victim of a crime or to live in an unsafe society. We have enough criminals without keeping additional ones.

    READ MORE