Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Author: Kate Galloway

  • AUSTRALIA

    The right to be an agitator

    • Kate Galloway
    • 11 June 2020
    57 Comments

    If our governments fail to roll out frameworks of good governance when times are good, they cannot expect to have the trust of the people during a crisis. So long as Australia fails to enter into proper legal relations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we will see protests, and ‘agitators’ will continue to call for justice.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    There's no place like home

    • Kate Galloway
    • 13 May 2020
    2 Comments

    Over the weekend in most Australian states, rules requiring people to stay home were relaxed somewhat. The country has commenced its easing of the significant restrictions on venturing out in public. As we begin to reacquaint ourselves with life outside, it is useful to reflect on the new resonance of ‘home’ — but also on its inherent limits.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Masking anxiety, showing care

    • Kate Galloway
    • 15 April 2020
    5 Comments

    Who knew that the greatest moral debate of our time would be whether or not to wear a mask? Having sewed my first mask many weeks ago, I’ve been following the millions of words written and spoken on the efficacy of masks, whether to wear them, who should wear them, how to use them, and how to make them. In a genre that is already bending my brain, there is a special sub-category of mask-shaming.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Keep your distance

    • Kate Galloway
    • 17 March 2020
    18 Comments

    How to make sense of what is going on? I think that there are ostensibly competing discourses at play. Apart from widespread community concern, or even fear, I see three different spheres of risk that are melding together in the collective (non-expert) consciousness: public health, personal health, and workplace health and safety.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The unfinished business of colonisation

    • Kate Galloway
    • 17 February 2020
    2 Comments

    Despite claims to the contrary, the decision in Love and Thoms affirms the standing of the common law, including the unassailable power of the Australian State to make and enforce law. It upholds the centuries-long common law principle of accommodation of Indigenous laws in a colonial context.

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Government tries to turn 'Aboriginal' into 'alien'

    • Kate Galloway
    • 02 December 2019
    17 Comments

    Two Aboriginal men are currently being held in immigration detention under threat of deportation because they are not Australian citizens. The case raises far-reaching implications concerning the status of the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and the state.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Environmental boycotts and the free market

    • Kate Galloway
    • 04 November 2019
    5 Comments

    It is up to business to determine what the market wants. And business is being given a very clear message of market sentiment, through people protesting. For government to attempt to regulate this is a burden on freedom of speech and a significant imposition on the market mechanism, the very thing Morrison says he is trying to protect.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Living in Australia's social credit dystopia

    • Kate Galloway
    • 08 October 2019
    6 Comments

    If government is concerned for citizens' wellbeing, it should properly resource services — drug and alcohol support, parenting support, subsidised childcare, education and so on. Instead, it is generating a system of social credit: rewarding those who toe the line and punishing those whose 'score' falls below that of the 'good citizen'.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Robodebt at the vanguard of government power grab

    • Kate Galloway
    • 12 September 2019
    7 Comments

    A policy genuinely in support of moving into employment would not seek to capitalise on the ambiguity of accounting in the year of transition from welfare to work — which is effectively what robodebt does.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Ovarian transplant pitch demonises menopause

    • Kate Galloway
    • 13 August 2019
    5 Comments

    As a society we have tended to ignore ageing women, and menopause has been read as a signal of our descent into decrepitude. The sales pitch for a procedure to delay menopause buys into this way of thinking. For many women menopause is not a burden, but a gift: no more menstruation, no more pregnancy, new purpose.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Setting straight critics of a Voice to Parliament

    • Kate Galloway
    • 15 July 2019
    7 Comments

    Constitutional reform works at two levels. It would establish the institution of the Voice so that a future Parliament could not easily get rid of it. Doing so is also symbolic — but not merely symbolic. It recognises the place of Indigenous Australians within the Australian polity. This is not a divisive action. Rather it is inclusive.

    READ MORE