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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Still a long way to go in ending family violence

    • Felicity Rorke
    • 14 February 2020
    4 Comments

    The Royal Commission into Family Violence conducted by the Victorian Government in 2015, told many of us what we fundamentally already knew — that family violence is a widespread issue for many women across this state, and that our services, systems, institutions and communities are not doing enough to effectively support victim survivors.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    AFLW continues to make history

    • Kirby Fenwick
    • 13 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Footy returned to our radios, televisions and suburban grounds right around the country last weekend as the fourth season of the AFLW kicked off. It was a weekend of history making moments but it was also a weekend that highlighted some of the very real challenges facing the competition.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Apology anniversary as a time to reflect

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 February 2020
    5 Comments

    In the Apology to the Stolen Generations the Australian Government spoke on behalf of all Australians in recognising that it acted wrongly in removing Indigenous children from their parents. It recognised also that the reason for the removal was the disrespectful claim that its targets were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their race. This disrespect caused lasting damage to the children and families.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hopeful vision for a better NDIS

    • Helen Burt
    • 10 February 2020
    5 Comments

    My personal experience during the first 18 months of involvement with the NDIS, was frustrating and particularly deflating for someone who had written submissions and emailed politicians and understood the potential of the scheme. My only contact seemed to be with an immovable, impossible-to-navigate bureaucracy determined to stand in the way of me receiving any support I was promised.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Honours reflect our shifting values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 February 2020
    7 Comments

    The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Choosing to be childless is more than okay

    • Vivienne Cowburn
    • 31 January 2020
    18 Comments

    The modern 'old maid' is no longer confined to the attic. She's in the workforce, the senate, leading in the community. Yet while gender norms are being deconstructed and cultural ideas of femininity are evolving, the idea women exist only to procreate still persists. Women are not only supposed to have children, they're supposed to want to.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bastard subsidiarity of bushfire responses

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 January 2020
    11 Comments

    The crisis brought to a head this ambivalence of governments. It underlies the attack by three NSW government ministers on the community groups responding to the fires. The ministers criticised them for doing ineffectually what the government was not doing and for spending money on administration that it should have provided.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This is not about the fires

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 22 January 2020
    11 Comments

    My dog I've had for 14 years dies, and I decide to spend two days in bed. I look online and see that more than a billion Australian animals have died in the fires. Guilt spirals on top of guilt. How gauche, to feel this private grief, when there is such public grief already.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia Day as a day for humility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 January 2020
    17 Comments

    Australia Day would be wasted if it were devoted simply to self-congratulation. In the wake of the catastrophic fires we need to ask questions about how Indigenous Australians before settlement managed the land and how our agricultural and economic practices have contributed to the perilous situation in which we now find ourselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A royal commission for the land

    • Kate Galloway
    • 20 January 2020
    16 Comments

    For our society to function responsively to what is now a dynamically changing context, we urgently need differently oriented governance. This will, no doubt, be unpalatable for some — both in government and in the general public. But without re-setting how we are governed, our land and our society will suffer further destruction.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bushfire divisions etched in sand

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 January 2020
    12 Comments

    As the sea withdrew, the waves left curling black lines that crossed one another. The beach became a map in which territories were separated from one another. That image reflected the fires and the ways in which they were perceived. They were more than localised events. They affected relationships that spread far beyond the fire.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Allies keeping faith despite Medevac blow

    • Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
    • 12 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Outside, a Martian-red haze kisses the windows. An ode to the future perhaps. Most of the people present are already aware of the Medevac repeal decision. The room is heavy with silence, the mood is sombre, but far from resigned. We want change, and are willing to have a crack at demanding it.

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