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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral life is more than carrots and sticks

    • Matt Beard
    • 10 September 2018
    9 Comments

    I worry that the way we talk about ethics today makes the formation of a good will, or some variation on it, impossible. For regulatory and trust-based approaches to ethics, there's always something outside morality that serves as motivation. It's Santa Claus for grown-ups: we behave so we get presents instead of coal.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The case for banning gay conversion therapy

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 06 September 2018
    7 Comments

    When I watch the video 'How women become gay', it hurts. Not because of the anti-gay content, but because it uses language about God's love, the type of religious language I grew up with, to sneak past my defenses. For a moment, despite years of learning to accept myself, I waver.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Wentworth's by-election bellwether

    • Ailsa Piper
    • 06 September 2018
    6 Comments

    Wentworth as I know it is not an electorate that is easily pinned down. It's also not easily duped. At the far eastern tip of the Wentworth electorate, a measured war is being waged. It's a microcosm, at state level, of the forces that will come to play in the upcoming federal by-election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Chasing dignity and work

    • Susan Leong
    • 31 August 2018

    Despite contemporary society's valorisation of the entrepreneurial self, its reality is disempowerment. According to Peter Bieri, 'powerless is the absence of ... the power to be able to fulfill a desire'. What name do we put to a desire so strong it compels one to leave the comforts of home for the untried fields of a new country?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Affirmative consent is good for everyone

    • Tim Hutton
    • 31 August 2018
    7 Comments

    A classic argument of those opposed to active consent is that it paints all men as predators. On the contrary, active consent should actually provide greater peace of mind to men than the current mainstream approach. When in doubt, ask. If the response is not unambiguous and affirmative, then do not proceed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Au pair visa saga shows the rot runs deep

    • Fatima Measham
    • 30 August 2018
    11 Comments

    Perhaps we couldn't care less about what happens to an au pair or the person who let her in. But to know that there is rot in the ceiling — embodied in relationships of mutual benefit between those in office and those with money — and still be fine retiring to bed underneath, does not really bode well for anyone.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons in humanity from the Turnbull coup

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 August 2018
    13 Comments

    If human beings are diminished, they usually respond badly. When politicians are not engaged with shaping a better society they quarrel about slogans that are detached from larger goals, or about goals that they have abandoned in pursuit of economic purity. Then they turn on one another.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Oh, for a return to the Howard years

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 28 August 2018
    9 Comments

    We have gotten so used to a revolving door of political leaders that the prospect of a leadership challenge each time things get a little hot has become normalised. I never thought I would say this, but as an Aboriginal feminist with hard-left personal politics, last week I almost found myself viewing the Howard years in a favourable light.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The loss of Julie Bishop is more than optics

    • Kate Galloway
    • 27 August 2018
    3 Comments

    Regardless of one's politics, the loss of Bishop from cabinet should be a wake-up call, prompting reflection on how our socialised norms work together with our institutions to keep women from power. We need women — and far greater diversity in other respects also — at the table, making decisions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Consolations from the Liberal Party mess

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 August 2018
    25 Comments

    Dutton would never have enjoyed any legitimacy as PM given the tactics he employed to get there, and such behaviour would have been repeated and rewarded yet again in the future. Even in the derelict state of Australia's contemporary politics, Dutton's perfidy augmented by Abbott's desire for revenge are no longer to be rewarded.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This is not Dutton's Trump moment

    • J. R. Hennessy
    • 22 August 2018
    14 Comments

    This was always the natural endpoint of the constant see-saw of leadership: some guy who nobody knows and nobody likes being thrust into the top job by a panicked backbench. Like all great decisions of world-historical significance, it's out of fear of losing their own seats than any particular vision for the country.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Here's Fraser Anning's final solution 'context'

    • Brian Matthews
    • 21 August 2018
    14 Comments

    The desperate, semi-literate plea that one has been taken 'out of context' is the first resort of many politicians challenged for being indelicate, stupid etc. It is its own condemnation. The latest appeal to contextual sensitivity though, that of Anning in ducking the implications of the phrase 'final solution', deserves some contextualising.

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