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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Actually, my illness does define me

    • Tim Hutton
    • 01 October 2020
    9 Comments

    For many people, illness has a narrative: a clear beginning, middle and end. If we’re lucky, the ending is actually a fresh start where the illness is gone and our hero is returned to normal life, changed but stronger because of their ordeals. In the lives of those with chronic illness, however, those lines are blurred; our descent into illness may have been gradual and there might be no end in sight.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mobile phone bill threatens dignity and decency

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 September 2020
    21 Comments

    The objections to the legislation focus correctly on the infringement of human rights. That phrase, however, is bloodless. It might suggest that rights form a list to be ticked off. Human rights are better conceived as a way of speaking about the conditions necessary for people to live decent human lives. The proper place from which to reflect on them is the actual lives of the people who are affected.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Out of the hothouse, into the garden

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 September 2020
    5 Comments

    An everyday exercise in planning and humility is gardening. For amateur gardeners, at least, planning, planting, pruning, watering and placing all have their place. But ultimately the plants make their way and take their individual shape.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Getting the balance right with COVID-19 and prisons

    • Clare Johnstone
    • 15 September 2020
    2 Comments

    With COVID-19 having reached the prison population, the risks for prisoners are real. It is plain to see that prisons are vulnerable environments. Hundreds of people detained in close confined quarters and concerns around hygiene standards and access to masks are but some of the issues that make them fertile ground for the virus to grow in.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Discussions about euthanasia

    • Justin Glyn
    • 10 September 2020
    9 Comments

    While the legislation was proposed as something of a measure of last resort, the numbers already tell a different story. Unfortunately, many of us with a disability look at these figures (and at the proposed legalisation of euthanasia in New Zealand, which will be voted on later this year) with a weary mix of familiarity and horror.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Support after Suicide report: 'Fighting the system as well as the illness'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 September 2020
    4 Comments

    A recent report from Jesuit Social Services’ Support after Suicide program reflects on the experience of people who have accompanied a friend or family member before, through and after their suicide. At the heart of the report is its insistence on the importance of the human face in health care.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human rights and pandemic lockdowns

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2020
    11 Comments

    The Buhler arrest stirred a range of responses from across the political divide, many troubled. Legal representatives and human rights advocates were similarly disturbed by what they regarded as a lack of proportion and restraint in police action.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Jobactive and job service providers are unfit for purpose

    • Izabella Antoniou
    • 03 September 2020
    11 Comments

    Beyond the announcement of the corona supplement falling from $550 to $250 a fortnight in September, and the reintroduction of asset testing, there has been little in the way of a roadmap for our nation’s unemployed in a landscape where job seekers outnumber jobs 13:1.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How can we fix our broken political system?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 27 August 2020
    13 Comments

    If you are feeling disengaged and cynical about our political system, it turns out that you are in the majority. And that is concerning.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living in a gendered pandemic

    • Fernanda Fain-Binda
    • 27 August 2020

    When I read Jess Hill’s piece in The Monthly which calls the coronavirus lockdown a ‘gendered pandemic’, I felt heard. I wanted everyone to read this article, to understand that feminist wins were being erased in the name of a national emergency, and that women were stepping up to the now larger domestic workload with a career cost further down the line.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    COVID-19 shining a light on ableism

    • Justin Glyn
    • 25 August 2020
    7 Comments

    The pandemic has lit up the areas in which our neoliberal economies are basically unfit for the purpose of providing healthy and safe environments — whether it be privatised aged care homes and quarantine services or ‘the gig economy’, which forces sick people to ‘soldier on’ infecting people as they go. One area that has been rather less considered, however, is disability.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why I won’t be signing petitions about the Aboriginal flag

    • Brooke Ottley
    • 25 August 2020
    16 Comments

    If you’re mad about some white people controlling the use of the Aboriginal flag, there are some things you should know. This is not a clear-cut case of white people trying to exploit Aboriginal culture or intellectual property for multiple reasons.

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