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This vote will be remembered as an opportunity for Australians to grapple with the injustices of history, and imagine a more just way forward. My hope is that each person voting will have done just that – and whether they vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’, that they are making their vote bearing in mind what they think will best reconcile our nation’s past and look forward to a more just future.
Eighty years ago today, 77-year-old Yorta Yorta elder walked ten kilometres to deliver a letter to the German consulate protesting the attacks on Jewish people during Kristallnacht nearly a month earlier. Despire the dire circumstances faced by Aboriginal people at the time, Cooper's conscience couldn't ignore the suffering of others.
Making fun of mental illness has a long history that was reflected in plans of the Perth Royal Show to offer an amusement based on the notorious Bethlem Sanatorium in London, where residents were cruelly taunted for the sake of public amusement. The WA Agricultural Society refused to cancel the show in reponse to criticism, instead changing the theme to ‘the outbreak of a deadly contagion’, itself an inappropriate subject for public amusement.
In the last month, an estimated 2000 Palestinians including 400 children have been killed and 10,000 injured. Much of Gaza is reduced to rubble and rendered uninhabitable. It was a 30 degree day in Gaza as our small band of around 20 kept vigil in the cold night rain at Melbourne’s Federation Square. A Muslim girl recited a poem, ‘I am Gaza I have a dagger in my heart. I am bleeding’.
'We need to break down the silo mentality between health, welfare and education. This exists in church agencies as much as elsewhere in society. We must be committed to providing first rate health care to our patients, but also to creating a more equal society.' Text from Frank Brennan's MercyCare Oration.
Burke and Wills have long since attained the kind of heroic status Australians seem inclined to assign to catastrophic failure. But perhaps, in mid 2010, we might see their expedition's story as being more about the strains, perils and transience of leadership.
Much can be achieved in cooperation with friends who don't necessarilyshare the same faith or any faith at all. If you're homeless, who careswhether an atheist, a Christian or a Buddhist provides shelter?