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Keywords: Bob Hawke

  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard chalks up a win in China

    • Tony Kevin
    • 11 April 2013
    4 Comments

    The Rudd years, like the Howard years, were years of stasis, even regression, in Australia-China relations. Refreshingly, Julia Gillard chalked up a major foreign policy success this week, putting Australia-China relations back on the track trailblazed by Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke many years ago.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Downer and Costello's murky world of political lobbying

    • John Warhurst
    • 02 April 2013
    8 Comments

    In days past the 'consultancy' activity of former senior politicians was cloaked in respectability and not perceived as being at the hands-on end of lobbying. That pretence has now ended and Alexander Downer and Peter Costello are good examples. It is an unhealthy development with plenty of room for conflicts of interest.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Party games in darkening Canberra

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 March 2013
    10 Comments

    Our political leaders are suffering from the disenchantment of the electorate. Canberra and its political hackery has less appeal now than it's had for a long time. It might be worth listening to Bob Hawke, who recently unwittingly echoed the seniment of French philosopher Simone Weil's essay 'On the Abolition of All Political Parties'.

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  • RELIGION

    How can the Catholic Church contribute to a better culture for life?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 March 2013
    3 Comments

    Change is upon the Church. Just recall the scene when the new pope emerged on the Vatican balcony. He appeared with none of the papal trimmings of office, and did not once did he refer to the papacy. Could something of this new papal style help Catholics engage more creatively with their fellow citizens? Text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'How Can the Catholic Church Contribute to a Better Culture for Life?'

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  • EDUCATION

    50 years since Australia's 'most poisonous debate'

    • John Warhurst
    • 09 July 2012
    10 Comments

    Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg observed that ‘the oldest, deepest, most poisonous debate in Australia has been about government aid to church schools’. The most dramatic episode in the history of church state relations in Australia was the Goulburn schools strike, which took place 50 years ago this month.

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  • RELIGION

    What should Rudd do now?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 February 2012
    46 Comments

    If Rudd loses Monday's expected leadership ballot, he will either go to the back bench or resign from Parliament. If he stays, what will he do? Spend the next six months undermining Gillard as Keating did Hawke? Rudd might not think that is a morally appropriate course of action.

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  • RELIGION

    A Catholic Social Teaching perspective on the Intervention

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 November 2011
    1 Comment

    Text from the 4th Annual Gerald Ward Lecture 'How do we design a dignified welfare safety net without becoming a Nanny State? — Lessons from Catholic Social Teaching', presented  by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the National Library of Australia, 18 November 2011.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bringing civility back to the parliamentary cockfight

    • Tony Kevin
    • 31 October 2011
    14 Comments

    Many Australian politicians who should know better give the people and the media exactly what they want: rancorous confrontations and barbed insults. The 'tough' way in which Australian politics is played corrodes civility and potentially erodes our democracy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on Gillard's atheism

    • John Warhurst
    • 17 October 2011
    10 Comments

    Gillard's atheism puts her in stark contrast to her immediate predecessors Kevin Rudd and John Howard. We consider several implications of Gillard's position, including her relations with church-state issues and community attitudes towards gay marriage and euthanasia. 

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Migrant myths and memories

    • Julie McNeill
    • 24 August 2011
    4 Comments

    Sociologist Eva Cox heard all the vitriol about boat people when, as a five-year-old Jewish girl, she fled Nazi Germany and headed to Australia. My nine-year-old mother was a different kind of boat arrival: one of 135,000 'child migrants' imported under the 'Populate or Perish' policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The religious beliefs of Australia's prime ministers

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 November 2010
    12 Comments

    Nine prime ministers have been observant Christians. Two have been conventional Christians. Ten have been nominal Christians. Five have been articulate atheists or agnostics. One was a nominal atheist or agnostic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The perils of holding the balance of power

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 August 2010
    10 Comments

    Though the Independents are raising expectations about a 'new politics', the forces behind the status quo are strong and the public is fickle. If they fail to deliver they might eventually suffer a backlash, like Kevin Rudd and the Democrats before them.

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