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Keywords: Character Test

  • AUSTRALIA

    Government lowers bar to trigger visa cancellation

    • Paul Cutler
    • 07 March 2022
    5 Comments

    Most people would agree that the government should have the power to cancel the visas of, and deport, non-citizens who are serious or dangerous criminals. Nobody wants to be the victim of a crime or to live in an unsafe society. We have enough criminals without keeping additional ones.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why our defamation laws are no longer fit for purpose

    • Cristy Clark
    • 10 November 2021
    9 Comments

    Peter Dutton has recently argued that funds for defamation actions should be a ‘workplace entitlement’ for Members of Parliament (MPs). I’d like to repeat that another way: the Honorable Peter Dutton, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, would like the taxpayer to fund MPs to sue members of the Australian public for defamation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The High Court’s surrender to the Morrison-Dutton immigration detention regime

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 June 2021
    11 Comments

    Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Interrogating the past

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 May 2021
    27 Comments

    A wry satisfaction to be enjoyed in reading histories of events of your youth is that it uncovers your prejudices at that time. It reassures you that you have grown wiser but also makes you wonder whether your present attitudes will need revisiting. Save Our Sons, Carolyn Collins’ detailed and even-handed study of women’s campaign against conscription during the Vietnam War, offered such pleasures.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dreyfus redivivus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 March 2021
    18 Comments

    Any government decision can cause hurt to some groups in society. There is a difference, however, between decisions that are only painful and those that are vindictive. The former may be regretted, but vindictiveness implies a satisfaction in causing pain that does not arise out of need. The reason for it must be sought in the minds and hearts and culture of those who devise the policies.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Victim blaming in Pakistan curbs the voices of survivors

    • Annam Lodhi
    • 08 October 2020
    2 Comments

    Social media, while a blessing, has also become a curse for survivors in Pakistan. The platforms are widely used by survivors to share their stories of sexual harassment, molestation or rape. It also gives users a chance to comment and provide leeway for the perpetrator. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Year of the mask

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 June 2020
    5 Comments

    2020 has been the year of the mask. The masks worn during the smoke of bushfires, during the threat of COVID-19, and during the Black Lives Matter protests. Masks are a powerful and complex symbol.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous is not alien, High Court decides

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 17 February 2020
    8 Comments

    At its heart, the question was whether an Indigenous Australian who was eligible for citizenship but had never formalised it could be regarded as an alien and therefore subject to removal. In a landmark judgment, a 4:3 majority of the Court found that Indigenous Australians were not aliens, even if they were not citizens.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaking faith: the Taylor and Westpac scandals

    • Joe Zabar
    • 04 December 2019
    4 Comments

    In light of the banking royal commission and the government's work in developing a plethora of transparency and integrity measures, it beggars belief how Brian Hartzer and Angus Taylor could bring upon themselves and their respective institutions so much unwanted publicity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Government tries to turn 'Aboriginal' into 'alien'

    • Kate Galloway
    • 02 December 2019
    17 Comments

    Two Aboriginal men are currently being held in immigration detention under threat of deportation because they are not Australian citizens. The case raises far-reaching implications concerning the status of the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and the state.

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  • RELIGION

    Lay community key to reforming Catholicism

    • Paul Collins
    • 04 September 2019
    42 Comments

    Anyone in the past who called attention to these issues was accused at best of exaggeration'. Getting Back on Mission points out that until the church accepts good governance characterised by accountability, transparency, inclusion and a recognition of the equality of women, it will continue its culture of clericalism and secrecy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hawkie, for whom I'd have faced cannon fire

    • Moira Rayner
    • 19 May 2019
    2 Comments

    I told one of my fiercely right-wing Kiwi uncles that if Bob Hawke were elected leader of the ALP I'd follow him through cannon-fire, and surprisingly won his (grudging) respect. For he was a man's man, and so was my then hero.

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