Keywords: Australian Border Force
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Michele Madigan
- 16 October 2017
23 Comments
One of the naysayers following ICAN's receipt of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was Australian journalist Andrew Bolt. What was most shameful was his insulting of one of Australia's own nuclear survivors, the late Yankunytjatjara Elder and anti-nuclear advocate Yami Lester.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Frank Brennan
- 12 October 2017
In the 16th century it was the Dominican friars like Vitoria, Las Casas and Montesino in Salamanca who confronted the state and challenged public opinion about the rights of the indigenous peoples in Spain's newly colonised lands. Not even the most nostalgic and forgiving Jesuit would opine that the modern practitioners of Morality with a capital M challenging the powers of the market and the state would be found in a modern monastery.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 09 October 2017
4 Comments
The decision by Nick Xenophon to leave the leadership of his Senate team to return to South Australian politics has rattled the political elites in his state and stirred the pot nationally. Xenophon's gamble raises two immediate implications and suggests one bigger and more tantalising question for Australian politics.
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RELIGION
- David Holdcroft
- 22 September 2017
8 Comments
Francis was elected on his perceived ability to address the need for reform of a Roman Curia increasingly beset by paralysis, inefficiency and scandal. It is almost in parenthesis that we note his pontificate coinciding with the rise of numbers of forced migrants to historically unprecedented post-war levels both in Europe and around the globe. This presented Francis with a unique opportunity to develop and demonstrate his vision for a renewed Church, repositioned in and for a globalised world.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kate Mani
- 12 September 2017
6 Comments
This Thursday will mark 70 years of Australian peacekeeping with a commemorative service and dedication of a new peacekeeping memorial. Dr Rosalind Hearder believes stereotypical perceptions of war and peace can leave Australians with a misguided understanding of peacekeeping. 'It's not the same experience as combat. But that doesn't mean it is easier. The long-term effects can still be damaging.'
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INTERNATIONAL
- Justin Glyn
- 08 September 2017
17 Comments
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said that 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' From the roots of ISIS to Russiagate to North Korea to border control in Australia, current trends both international and at home bear this out.
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RELIGION
- Rachel Woodlock
- 07 September 2017
32 Comments
The state doesn't have an opinion on whether God approves of the union because theocracy went out of fashion in the West, along with the Divine Right of Kings. These days in Australia, the state doesn't even care to enforce sexual exclusivity of partners, although once upon a time that was a major element of marital law. Divorce is all about distribution of assets and establishing proper care of the kids. So why the brouhaha over marriage for gay people?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brian Matthews
- 07 September 2017
2 Comments
Born a few months after Shelley drowned and desperate to understand the living Nature the Romantics had known, Matthew Arnold too found the natural world had gone silent. Where Wordsworth had heard 'strange utterance [in] the loud dry wind' and 'the sky seemed not a sky / Of earth - and with what motion moved the clouds', Arnold sadly concluded that 'the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light ...'
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AUSTRALIA
- Hayley Conway
- 01 September 2017
20 Comments
The intended postal plebiscite is profoundly undemocratic. It will be conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in the hope that it will be considered a 'gathering of statistics', not an electoral matter requiring oversight by the Australian Electoral Commission and an appropriation of funds by the parliament. The federal government is circumventing the will of the parliament. This is part of a broader trend to attack, undermine, defund, and erode the democratic institutions we rely on.
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AUSTRALIA
- Rohan Salmond
- 21 August 2017
53 Comments
Same-sex marriage, the government tells us, is not a first-order issue. And yet it has grown to become a controversy so monumental it has overshadowed even the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea.
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RELIGION
- Ann Deslandes
- 09 August 2017
4 Comments
As I write, staff of the Australian immigration authority and their security contractors are working hard to close the detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where Australia has held over 900 refugees for the last four years.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Todor Shindarov
- 07 August 2017
4 Comments
Today’s highly technological era amazes us with possibilities for human growth and innovation, but in our amazement we often forget to tackle various pitfalls. Arguably, the biggest risk is the emerging military technology, about which there are many unanswered questions. We are faced with many uncertainties: security risks due to loss of competitiveness, potential control over advanced weapons by terrorists and, most importantly, reduced comprehension by the wider society—let alone any participation in the decision making process, as the frenzied pace of technological development increases.
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