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Section: Australia

  • AUSTRALIA

    The radical state of being content

    • Fatima Measham
    • 12 April 2018
    10 Comments

    How comfortable does anyone really need to be? The amounts of money that get quoted in remuneration packages or property portfolios is incomprehensible to many Australians who manage to survive, even thrive, on so much less. Inequality seems to be driven by an incapacity to recognise what is enough and to stop.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conversations about China need more nuance

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 12 April 2018
    3 Comments

    While no-one expects nuanced discussions on Twitter, the name-calling does none of the participants any favours. What does become apparent in the conversations around Clive Hamilton's The Silent Invasion is how entrenched 'yellow peril' rhetoric is in the way people talk about 'the Chinese'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Families dazed by the running of the bills

    • Barry Gittins
    • 10 April 2018
    3 Comments

    Parenting is expensive, financially and emotionally. I would be fibbing if I didn't acknowledge the love and pride we receive from laughing with our progeny. Seeing them grow. But I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that being a mum or dad can be hazardous to your financial, social, sexual and physical health.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Our economy is failing families

    • Erin Riley
    • 10 April 2018
    11 Comments

    As I drop my daughter at daycare at 6:30am, to be looked after by someone else who I then have to pay, to go to work to earn enough money to pay our rent and daycare, I am struck by how much our system is failing families. It was a failure of my own empathy that I only came to understand this after I experienced it personally.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rethinking work to embrace diversity

    • Kate Galloway
    • 09 April 2018
    7 Comments

    Employable Me follows a group of neuro-diverse young people as they search for meaningful work. The insights the program offers are a call to think about the world of work and the role of employment as a social good rather than a purely economic one, and how we make employment more inclusive.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Policy solutions to bonkers housing costs

    • Gabriela D'Souza
    • 06 April 2018
    5 Comments

    I was in Sydney recently, and within less than an hour of my arrival of the airport, I was thrust into a conversation about how completely unaffordable the city was becoming. 'Bonkers' was the general consensus. But how did it get this bad and what can be done to repair the current state of affairs?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Can white South African farmers be refugees?

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 05 April 2018
    3 Comments

    Recently the Minister for Home Affairs has confirmed he still wants to provide humanitarian visas to 'persecuted' white South African farmers. Regardless of any political issues, there are a number of legal hurdles these farmers could face in order to meet the strict definition of refugee in Australian law.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Locked out of our mother tongues

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 27 March 2018
    7 Comments

    On my first day of primary school, I understood very little English and spoke even less. My parents seemed to feel little anxiety and assumed I'd just figure it out at school. Turns out they weren't wrong. However, what they didn't anticipate is what would happen to my Vietnamese.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian cricket's great betrayal

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 26 March 2018
    11 Comments

    The idea of cheating at sport, of setting such a bad example to the young, was quite simply unthinkable then, but now this cricketing episode, I fear, is a disgrace from which Australian sport may never recover. Something ethical, almost spiritual, has gone, and I am left with an acute sense of loss.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cricket cheats blind to the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 March 2018
    24 Comments

    As with any activity that involves many people, cricket is shaped by multiple relationships. I would not expect that cricketers be able to articulate what is entailed in these relationships. But I was surprised that some dim awareness of their importance did not make the players hesitate before launching on such a daft adventure.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parliamentary troll alert

    • Brian Matthews
    • 23 March 2018
    4 Comments

    In Iceland, the most recent 'troll alert' was only 50 years or so ago, and belief in the mythological troll dies hard. What is interesting to consider regarding the revenant troll of the internet age is where they are congregated. Michaelia Cash's recent outburst suggest we might look no further than our Federal Parliament.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Palm Sunday protests demand a better way

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2018
    15 Comments

    Critics are right to say the marches are ineffectual in the face of bipartisan and popular support for Australia's brutal behaviour. But the faces of those who take part - refugees and activists, older Australians and children, churchgoers and atheists - witness that the Australian community can wear a compassionate face.

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