Keywords: Household Words
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 09 September 2021
1 Comment
What does it take to lose hope? For the 4,000 people who attended the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last month, an odd coalition of the frustrated, the scared, the angry and the hurt, it takes 18 months of pain and the ensuing changes in employment status, isolation from family and friends, and losses in lifestyle and individual liberties.
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AUSTRALIA
There is not sufficient focus on the underlying drivers of sexual assault, harassment and other types of violence. Instead of people reverting to phrases like ‘boys will be boys’ to explain or excuse a hurtful comment or action, as a society we must do more to understand where these behaviours originate and work to prevent them.
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AUSTRALIA
- Benedict Coleridge
- 09 February 2021
30 Comments
The celebration of pragmatism in Australian politics obscures the role that ideology has always already played. In fact, one of the more stealthily ideological moves in Australian politics, generally made within that swirl of commitments people call ‘centrism’, is the de-politicisation of policy — the attempt to present policy as responsive to natural imperatives rather than to specific values and ideals.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 01 May 2020
1 Comment
In Friends and Rivals Brenda Niall brings together four significant Australian women writers. Between them they published works from the 1890s to the 1950s. Ethel Turner and Barbara Baynton were from NSW. Nettie Palmer and Henry Handel Richardson were from Victoria, both schooled at Presbyterian Ladies College.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 13 December 2019
5 Comments
Dickens was a prolific writer, and one of patchy quality: the threat of sentimentality was never far away, so that this brief work is not one of his best. But in this consumer age it is salutary to have his definition of the Christmas spirit, which is one 'of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance'.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Philip Harvey
- 08 February 2019
8 Comments
It's all very well to remove excess furniture, but furniture is not books. How many chairs does one need? Chairs are not books. To reduce a library as a household expedience is to objectify the books. Their contents are emptied of value, their history relegated to out-of-date. They have no more meaning than books in an Ikea display room.
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ECONOMICS
- Eliza Berlage
- 22 November 2018
1 Comment
The government finally released its women's economic security statement. The package is built around three pillars — workforce participation, earning potential, and economic independence — totalling $109 million dollars over four years. It is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to address the crisis of gender violence and substantial inequality.
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EDUCATION
- Pauline Griffiths
- 26 October 2018
10 Comments
Are we clever enough in Australia to reduce the inequity in our schooling in order to help our moderate voters develop a strong narrative of sensible sharing to shape our future? Or, will the inequities in our schools contribute to ever-deepening divisions?
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ENVIRONMENT
- Cristy Clark
- 26 October 2018
7 Comments
We are already suffering from the effects of global warming and the intensification of extreme weather events, and things are going to get worse. The question now is what we do to both limit the damage and adapt to the inevitable. Fortunately many of the actions that we must take will actually make our lives better.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 10 September 2018
As leaders like Gough Whitlam and Patrick Dodson have attested, if we are to imagine and strive towards New Horizons for Justice and Solidarity, we need conviction, perseverance, capacity for compromise, relationships of trust, humour.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Michele Madigan
- 27 August 2018
11 Comments
In the 26 August ministry reshuffle, Senator Canavan retained his portfolio. As Resources Minister, he often repeats his assurance: 'Australia's nuclear waste facility will not be imposed on an unwilling community.' The marchers across the Port Augusta Bridge bore banners printed with a single word: UNWILLING.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 20 July 2018
4 Comments
'I voted 'yes' in last year's ABS survey on same sex marriage. As a priest, I was prepared to explain why I was voting 'yes' during the campaign. I voted 'yes', in part because I thought that the outcome was inevitable. But also, I thought that full civil recognition of such relationships was an idea whose time had come.' — Frank Brennan, 2018 Castan Centre Human Rights Conference
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