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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Julie Bishop is one hell of a survivor

    • Moira Rayner
    • 25 February 2019
    12 Comments

    After five or so years as a better-than-most foreign minister, and a serial turner-up at branch fundraisers and social events, she has been mourned as 'the prime minister we never had,' and someone who was never fully or adequately appreciated. I think this was inevitable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stateless refugee facing indefinite detention

    • Shira Sebban
    • 22 February 2019
    5 Comments

    A Faili Kurd, who fled Iran by boat aged 16 with his mother, Shalikhan has been detained since arriving on Christmas Island in August 2013. Suffering from a developmental disorder and mental health issues exacerbated by his father's death in Iran, he has in the past attempted suicide and displayed volatile behaviour.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal women lead fight against violence

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 19 February 2019
    8 Comments

    If the rest of Australia was as brave as those four women who told their stories, and confronted their fears regarding the full extent of what safety, autonomy and equality for Aboriginal women might truly look like — free from racism, sexism and a state which continues to benefit from our oppression — things could actually get better.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A new standard for asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 February 2019
    26 Comments

    We are all gearing up for the third election in a row when boat turnbacks and the punitive treatment of refugees and asylum seekers feature. It need not be so. It’s time voters sent a message that it should not be so.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaping the Pope's sexual abuse summit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 February 2019
    33 Comments

    This week the presidents of bishops conferences and representatives of religious congregations around the world will meet in Rome to reflect on responses to the sexual abuse of children To understand and evaluate the meeting, we should keep in mind its background and the different groups that have a particular interest in it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Navigating the post-Medivac ugliness

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 15 February 2019
    16 Comments

    Having failed to prevent tinkering to the border protection regime, the Morrison government returned to the well Australian politicians have drawn upon when faced with electoral crisis. Mathias Cormann was no less crude in adopting a mode that speaks wonders to the desperation of a government awaiting its electoral deliverance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Medivac: the unneeded bill we sorely needed

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 February 2019
    8 Comments

    During the debates about the bill regarding the transfer of people from Nauru or Manus to Australia for medical treatment, the Prime Minister stated it was 'unnecessary and superfluous'. Legally this should have been the case.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The national apology 11 years on

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 February 2019
    8 Comments

    It is hard to think of a more encouraging action by any government during the last 20 years than the national apology to the stolen generations. Much has been said about that apology. It is worth reflecting more generally on why apologies properly made are so gratifying, and what qualities they must have in order to be proper.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In praise of unsmiling Hayne

    • Moira Rayner
    • 07 February 2019
    9 Comments

    An academic friend of mine made a dilligent and well-argued case that Hayne had failed in his task to 'tackle bank structure'. With the greatest of respect, this was not the job Hayne had to do. To imagine otherwise is to misunderstand both the law, and what it is 'meant' to do in the hands of those who are judicially trained.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't sit and watch antisemitism rising

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 06 February 2019
    21 Comments

    In the wake of the St Kilda riots, while I sit petrified, third generation to Holocaust survivors, I can't stop thinking about my grandfather, who lived and came to Australia. In 2018 there was a rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia compared with 2017, which also saw a rise on previous years.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Banks remain protected species

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 February 2019
    10 Comments

    Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial sector has named, shamed and excoriated banks, regulators, insurance companies and other financial services businesses to the extent that you would think they are now extremely vulnerable and universally unloved. That would be a mistake.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What we can learn from the Covington incident

    • Chris Middleton
    • 04 February 2019

    Because this story is in the political arena, it seems vicious comments from celebrities, politicians, and countless others are made with impunity. And we wonder why young people can be so cruel online and why it is so hard to educate them that words matter; that words hurt. Then, as they say, the story got complicated.

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