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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Mercy Sisters of the Pilbara

    • Paul Cleary
    • 21 September 2021
    1 Comment

    In the late 1970s, two Mercy sisters answered a call to work with Aboriginal people, and they chose a place in the Pilbara region of Western Australia that had a notorious reputation. Sisters Bernadette Kennedy and Bernadine Daly arrived in the largely Aboriginal town of Roebourne in Australia’s north-west in mid-1978 to see if they were needed. They quickly discovered that in a town ‘awash with alcohol’ there was great need.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Australia needs a national Frontier Wars museum

    • Zachary Wone
    • 16 September 2021
    16 Comments

    The movement for genuine and long overdue truth telling about Australian history has gained considerable momentum in recent years. The Frontier Wars in particular has emerged as one of, if not the most significant untold stories which it is now broadly agreed must be included in any such process.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Three ways Queensland’s assisted dying bill goes too far

    • Frank Brennan
    • 15 September 2021
    22 Comments

    The Queensland parliament, like the Victorian parliament four years ago, is committed to legislating for voluntary assisted dying. The bill being considered by the one-chamber Queensland parliament this week basically follows the contours of the Victorian legislation. But there are three major developments proposed that are very worrying in this new field of social experimentation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Epidemiologists and unexpected lessons

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 September 2021
    7 Comments

    A striking feature of the Australia’s path through Coronavirus has been the coming out of epidemiologists and social biologists. From being little known members of small institutes they became rock stars, invited to press conferences, deferred to by politicians, selectively chosen for comment by the media, but also resented by representatives of big business and defenders of individual freedom.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Clive Palmer, COVID, and the WA Border

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 September 2021
    5 Comments

    Clive Palmer is one Australian wanting to smash border restrictions during this time of pandemic. He is threatening to go back to the High Court seeking recognition of his right as an Australian citizen to travel freely between the States. In particular he claims the right to enter Western Australia where he has significant mining interests. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hoping for hope

    • Barry Gittins
    • 09 September 2021
    1 Comment

    What does it take to lose hope? For the 4,000 people who attended the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last month, an odd coalition of the frustrated, the scared, the angry and the hurt, it takes 18 months of pain and the ensuing changes in employment status, isolation from family and friends, and losses in lifestyle and individual liberties.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coming out of Coronavirus  

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 September 2021
    11 Comments

    As restrictions drag on and the number of infections rises, more Australians are asking when lockdowns can cease. Federal politicians and business leaders have argued the case for a quick ending while claiming the authority of scientists. Science being science, the relevant questions have been tied to numbers. They have asked: how few cases should there be in the community before leaving lockdown? What percentage of the community must be vaccinated before the lifting of restrictions? What number of deaths should be tolerated for the gains of opening the economy? And when precisely should the opening of Australia take place?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What is a just outcome for the Biloela family?

    • Paul Cutler
    • 24 August 2021
    21 Comments

    I believe in the rule of law and I appreciate that the proper application of the law does not always produce a fair or popular result. I also believe that Australia's refugee policy is too harsh and deeply flawed. However, that policy is bipartisan and appears to be inexplicably popular. The same 'fortress Australia' mentality is evident in our efforts to contain Covid-19.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ethics of mandating vaccinations in healthcare

    • John Watkins
    • 19 August 2021
    8 Comments

    Since its unwelcome arrival over a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented us with a range of moral and ethical quandaries — some hypothetical, some deeply pragmatic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unnecessary red tape aimed at silencing charities

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 August 2021
    9 Comments

    Last Wednesday, the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation chaired by the Government’s Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells tabled a report highlighting problems with a proposed new regulation affecting charities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humility, kindness lead to strength

    • Barry Gittins
    • 17 August 2021
    10 Comments

    In his 83 years, social psychologist, researcher and author Hugh Mackay has seen the sun rise and set on regimes, ideologies, cults, fads, movements and manias. He has also seen language used to clarify and build common ground, or to confuse and demoralise. One constant throughout these years has been his fascination with how human beings treat each other and their planet, and why.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unmarked graves in Canada raise questions about Australia’s stolen children

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 12 August 2021
    9 Comments

    Across the Pacific Ocean, in Canada or ‘Turtle Island’ as it is also known by many of its Indigenous inhabitants, a horror has been unfolding. It started at a the former residential school in Kamloops, British Colombia where, via the use of ground penetrating radar technology, the remains of at least 215 Native Canadian children were found buried in mass unmarked gravesites. This school ran for 85 years, was part of compulsory government programs to forcibly assimilate these children, and was administered by the Catholic Church.

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