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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Youth justice blueprint is in front of our noses

    • Julie Edwards
    • 28 May 2019
    6 Comments

    Almost two years have passed since the youth justice royal commission prompted by the abuses at Darwin's Don Dale youth detention facility. Yet many of its recommendations remain unrealised, largely due to a lack of federal funding support. In the meantime, youth justice has remained at the crossroads in many parts of Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Resist 'brutal retail politics'

    • Esther Anatolitis
    • 24 May 2019
    2 Comments

    There's a lot of work to be done to ensure the Australian government has the best guidance it needs to prepare the policies and deliver the services Australians urgently need. To strengthen ourselves into making that contribution, let's begin by rejecting 'brutal retail politics' and instead champion generous community expertise.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons from GetUp in how not to do activism

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 23 May 2019
    9 Comments

    The most successful political movements are those flexible enough to co-opt the rhetorical and ideological tropes of their opponents. The ones which fail are those which insist on ideological purity. They may be well-resourced, have plenty of volunteers and ambitious programs. But all this may count for little if they cannot sell their ideas.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election is done, now to focus on what matters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 May 2019
    15 Comments

    It is time to return to the more important question of what matters for the future good of Australia. This is what governments and political parties are bound by tradition and by their own official rhetoric to serve. This, not electoral success or failure, should govern their actions and our response as citizens to their governance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't denigrate rational regional Queensland

    • Kate Galloway
    • 21 May 2019
    48 Comments

    Queenslanders are subjected to the imposed norms of southerners all the time. Those in central and north Queensland are imposed to the same kind of disdain from Brisbane. In the wake of the Coalition's election victory, it has been unedifying to see opposition voters seeking to explain the loss of their parties by blaming a ‘stupid’ electorate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What went wrong for Labor on climate

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 20 May 2019
    19 Comments

    Had Labor flatly opposed Adani, it would have been better positioned to sell a different model for the creation of local jobs and security. Instead, the lack of clarity prevented the ALP from articulating a persuasive economic alternative to a mine it wouldn't say definitely was closing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Where to next for the Uluru Statement

    • Kate Galloway
    • 20 May 2019
    3 Comments

    As we will be asked to participate in a referendum on the issue within the next couple of years, each Australian needs to inform themselves of the facts about the proposal and the design process.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't move to New Zealand, stay and fight

    • Brenna Dempsey
    • 20 May 2019
    34 Comments

    My social media feeds were awash with posts from my friends — many of whom are queer, disabled or on low incomes — worrying about their futures and the future of our earth. I saw countless posts with people saying 'That's it, I'm moving to NZ'. I completely understand the desire people had to give up — I felt it too.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hawkie, for whom I'd have faced cannon fire

    • Moira Rayner
    • 19 May 2019
    2 Comments

    I told one of my fiercely right-wing Kiwi uncles that if Bob Hawke were elected leader of the ALP I'd follow him through cannon-fire, and surprisingly won his (grudging) respect. For he was a man's man, and so was my then hero.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A little more jaded but still valuing my vote

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 16 May 2019
    5 Comments

    In 2016, when some of my friends told me they weren't going to vote, I was aghast. I was so keen to get voting that the night before the election, I made a Word document to practise the order of my preferences. Fast forward to last week, when I couldn't remember which Saturday the election was on and feared I had accidentally missed it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politics of shame

    • John Falzon
    • 16 May 2019
    8 Comments

    I do not believe that most people do accept these violations of dignity, these instigations of shame. But the fact that we as a nation have tolerated these settings for so long makes it look like neoliberalism has crept into our souls, that we accept the institutionalisation of fear and shame.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My brilliant mother

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 13 May 2019
    8 Comments

    This was the nerve touched by Bill Shorten when he spoke of his mother's lost opportunities. Women who shared their own mothers' stories in response under the #MyMum hashtag did so with an acute awareness of both the gulf that separated them from their mothers, and the entrenched structural discrimination that remains.

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