keywords: John Falzon Is Chief Executive Officer Of The St Vincent De Paul Society's Canberra-Based National C
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CONTRIBUTORS
Dr John Falzon is a political sociologist, poet and author of The Language of the Unheard (2012). He has been Chief Executive Officer of the St Vincent Paul Society National Council of Australia since 2006. He has written and spoken widely on the structural causes of marginalisation and inequality in Australia and has long been an advocate for a fairer and more equitable society. John has worked in academia, in research and advocacy with NGOs, and in community development in large public housing estates. He was a participant in the 2020 Summit, has served on the ACOSS Board as well as on Government advisory committees such as the Community Response Task Force during the Global Financial Crisis and the Energy White Paper High Level Consultative Committee. He has been a member of the Australi
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AUSTRALIA
One of the greatest philosophical challenges for social justice is to articulate a 21st century vision of the role of government. Government is the chief means by which people achieve collectively what they cannot achieve alone. We have no right to indulge in despair when more and more people are being forced to bear the brunt of inequality.
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RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 31 May 2019
14 Comments
The church has something in common with both sides of politics because the Catholic community has a split political personality. Its range of concerns is so broad that they are addressed in various ways by different political parties. It wants to make an impact on government, but it is always highly unlikely that it can have it all.
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ECONOMICS
- John Falzon
- 22 March 2019
13 Comments
The work of charities, including the generous work of volunteers, should not be a means of letting governments off the hook. People do not want to have to rely on charity; they want to be able to count on justice. And charity is never a substitute for justice. But it becomes so when governments abrogate their responsibilities.
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- Andrew Hamilton
- 30 July 2015
3 Comments
Ignatius of Loyola, whose feast day is on 31 July, is remembered for founding the Jesuits, for his Spiritual Exercises and for the effect Jesuits had on European history and in overseas missions. He was a man who made a difference. But during his life that reputation was not a done deal. One often overlooked event, more accurately an event that failed to happen, shaped decisively how he has come to be remembered.
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Tony Thornton, former National President of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia, was a great lover of humanity and fighter for social justice. The persistence of poverty and homelessness in prosperous Australia affected him deeply. He was never willing to accept a status quo that included the wholesale rejection of people who were made to feel the sharp edge of inequality.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 27 March 2014
16 Comments
I reject the dystopian vision of an Australia where people experiencing poverty are made to endure expenditure cuts while the people who have the least need for assistance enjoy overly generous tax concessions. From time to time someone comes out of the woodwork and accuses me of being a communist but that's the least of my worries. What worries me is the myth that people living in poverty are to blame for their own situation.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 17 December 2013
13 Comments
Recently Pope Francis blasted the so-called trickle-down economic theories in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Some will scorn his message as naive at best and dangerous at worst, while others will regard it as an urgent enkindling of hope in the face of degradation and despair. The Christmas story hints that another kind of world is possible.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 21 December 2012
17 Comments
The greatest power for progressive social change lies with the forming of connections between the excluded. This Christmas I invite you to join me in saluting the people who experience exclusion and who are best placed to teach all of us how best to change society for the better.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 02 March 2012
7 Comments
The wound of colonisation is not yet healed. The so-called Stronger Futures legislation, which will extend and deepen some of the worst aspects of the NT Intervention, is built on the falsehood that the wound does not exist or is an Aboriginal problem. But it is an Australian problem. It is our problem.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 22 December 2011
7 Comments
Democracy has been described as 'the intrusion of the Excluded into the socio-political space'. Children and young people figure prominently among the excluded in our society. When you start to wonder why, you begin to re-evaluate the strength of your democracy.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 11 December 2009
7 Comments
Aside from a few fanatical poverty-deniers, there is a broad consensus that we have a serious problem. Frantz Fanon reminded us nearly 50 years ago that we need a redistribution of wealth. 'Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it.' We have been shaken to pieces.
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