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There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
The outer suburban marginal seats will almost certainly swing to the Coalition on Saturday. I'm sure many of the Left intelligentsia think they have the reasons for this all worked out: voters in the outer suburbs are uneducated, 'aspirational', cashed-up bogans who only care about their mortgages, negating their working-class origins and keeping out asylum seekers. As a swinging voter from one such electorate, I can tell you the reality is not that simple.
Reflecting on his participation in an SBS TV marriage equality discussion, Ben felt judged and humiliated by many who responded to him. Must determining what is right and wrong for a society be bound up with judging people? Or can we listen to our conversation partners, reach for a language that is shared and leave room for our opinions to be changed? Pope Francis showed the way when he said: ‘If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?’
Labor is subcontracting our international obligations to poor neighbours who do not have the resources to resettle refugees who may well have trauma issues. Not to be outdone in the cruelty stakes, the Coalition has four proposals, each of which has serious flaws. Neither party has a policy that respects relevant human rights issues, or an administrative system designed to ensure the correct decisions are reached.
Manus Island's hot, there's no protection for the weak. Though you think you're kind, it's true asylum that I seek. What's the point of difference between the church and state? Why do Salvos validate a policy of hate? History repeats, you Aussies did the same to Jews. Running from the Nazis, with their pleas for help refused.
Hot-button topics such as economic management and asylum seekers are best seen from a wide lens, yet we seem determined to keep the rest of the world out of the frame. It is a sea-girt mentality that our politicians don't care to take apart because it is too hard to convince the average voter that there are in fact other people on the planet. Such denialism will inevitably leave us ill-prepared for significant challenges.
We might get lucky. Malcolm Turnbull might be right, and the mass of egos, grievances and interests that make up US-Sino relations might 'evolve into a new order, without either side having to make concessions to the other'. But the risks are growing. In this context the framing of asylum seekers as a threat to our sovereignty seems plain silly. War between China and the US would be a disaster to our national interests.
'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.
Welcome to Nauru. Land area: 21 square kilometres. Permanent population: around 10,000. Chief economic activity: human dumping ground. Nauru has joined PNG in the Cohort of the Willing — willing, that is, to take dollops of Australian money to hide away an Australian problem. Substitute 'asylum seekers' for 'convicts' and it recalls the way Australia was used by Great Britain in the 18th century to dispose of a British problem.
Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia, with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There's only one thing worse than shock and awe; that's shock and awe that doesn't work because you haven't done your homework.
Even more disturbing than PNG's poverty and gender-based violence is its military and police human rights record. Evidence of abuses in the form of a military blockade, massacres, rape and torture during the Bougainville Crisis of the 1990s are well-documented. The history of this crisis reveals PNG as incapable of caring for its most vulnerable citizens due to systemic corruption.
The Greens' Senate balance of power was endangered by the prospect of a landslide Coalition victory. Now, not only will the Labor-Green Senate majority benefit from a revitalised Labor, but the major government policy changes to heartfelt Green concerns about carbon pricing and asylum seekers should ensure the Greens poll strongly in their own right.
A constitutional challenge in PNG to the resettlement agreement could quickly destroy any disincentive value as far as people smugglers are concerned. Under the country's constitution, foreigners may not be detained unless they have broken the law in entering the country. Since the asylum seekers are being sent there against their will they cannot be held to have entered illegally.
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