Keywords: Chinese New Year
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Peter Bowden
- 04 February 2019
1 Comment
Distant she said. Superficial was his word. Words to describe all that they cared, after the years gone by, long gone, and two children now almost reared. Twenty they were, those changing years. Love replaced by void, even fears. A house, a high hill, ambitious pride. A façade, an emptiness.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 23 January 2019
19 Comments
The sound of the didgeridoo would be heard throughout the land. On each street corners buskers would mark out their patch, playing violins, oud, piano accordion, berimbau, nyatiti, cello, mouth organ, zither, anklung or daduk singing the love songs and epic poems from the many civilisations that have enriched Australia.
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EDUCATION
- Pauline Griffiths
- 26 October 2018
10 Comments
Are we clever enough in Australia to reduce the inequity in our schooling in order to help our moderate voters develop a strong narrative of sensible sharing to shape our future? Or, will the inequities in our schools contribute to ever-deepening divisions?
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INTERNATIONAL
- Gillian Bouras
- 19 October 2018
11 Comments
In London of the 1990s, I observed people sleeping under bridges, on doorsteps, in cardboard boxes. How they survived the winters, I never knew, and I suppose many didn't. Since the beginning of Greece's financial crisis in 2008 and the influx of refugees from the Middle East, similar scenes can now be seen in Athens.
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ECONOMICS
- David James
- 05 October 2018
5 Comments
That Trump is a narcissistic braggart was never in doubt. The more intriguing question was always how a businessman would behave once he became president. His administration sees business-style standover tactics as a thoroughly good option. The system-wide shifts that are resulting may have a lasting impact.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Jeremy Clarke
- 28 September 2018
4 Comments
In light of the self-serving and at times criminal behavior of bishops around the world as revealed by the sexual abuse crisis, it might seem strange that the appointment of bishops is such a neuralgic issue for Vatican-China relations. But in China, the appointment of bishops has become the litmus test of a so-called orthodoxy in much the same way right-to-life issues are in the USA.
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RELIGION
- Erin Cook
- 27 September 2018
6 Comments
On a pure numbers basis, China is one of the top 25 most Catholic countries on Earth. But like so much of China, large raw numbers don't equal power for minorities. A freshly inked and still secretive Provisional Agreement between the Chinese government and the Vatican promises to improve that. Believers aren't so sure.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 20 August 2018
2 Comments
Hopefully Australia will take stronger measures against what is effectively a one party state that ruthlessly crushes opposition at home and seeks to intimidate and threaten critics abroad. It is not surprising that after 25 years, I am again seeing Cambodian asylum seekers.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Bernard Appassamy
- 17 August 2018
7 Comments
Standing and waiting in a crowd at peak hour outside Newtown train station at the pedestrian crossing. A crossdresser wearing a one piece orange swimsuit, a tiny matching frilly skirt and platform shoes pushes through. The sound of a communal inbreath as she runs dangerously through the traffic to the other side.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Sangeetha Thanapal
- 07 August 2018
2 Comments
Singapore has one of the world's lowest mortality rates, with a general life expectancy of above 80. Singapore's women outlive men by about five years, making the country second in the world for how long its women live. It seems the Singapore state has decided to punish women for it.
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AUSTRALIA
- Rachel Woodlock
- 24 July 2018
18 Comments
Either they are flat-out wrong, unable to read crime reports or understand what the police and other agencies are telling them (which leaves in question their ability to accurately and intelligently govern), or some apparatchik in the strategy back-rooms has decided it is a good way to garner votes with a 'tough-on-crime' campaign.
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AUSTRALIA
For Japanese Australians, the connections with Australia's war-time history continues to be particularly fraught. Whether they are early or more recent migrants, Japanese Australians have many narratives and expressions of complex identities that are now gaining voice.
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