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Keywords: Committees

  • AUSTRALIA

    Chronicle of an asylum seeker's death foretold

    • Fatima Measham
    • 13 June 2014
    5 Comments

    As I take in the submissions presented to the Senate inquiry into the Manus Island riots, I am reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In it, nearly the entire town knew of Santiago Nasar's impending death; his assassins had made a point of divulging their intent to everyone they met over the course of the day. The prevailing impression from the Senate inquiry is one of similar inevitability and complicity.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Religious rebels rattle Big Coal's cage

    • Thea Ormerod
    • 19 March 2014
    14 Comments

    The arrest last week of three identifiably religious people drew attention again to Whitehaven's new coal mine site at Maules Creek, in northern NSW. Why did these people of faith feel it was time to put their bodies on the line? Simply put, when the law is fully harnessed to keep in place a system that many consider to be immoral, the most ethical action is peaceful, non-violent disobedience.

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  • EDUCATION

    Advice for graduating health sciences students

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 October 2013

    'My sixth piece of advice is for all graduates and not just those of you who are religious. We all need to develop a comprehensive worldview, nurturing the sense of the transcendent in the human spirit, and holding together in tension ideals and reality, dreams and our shortcomings.' Full text from Frank Brennan's La Trobe Graduation Address, Health Sciences, 18 October 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Liam Jurrah and the Northern Territory's jail-fail

    • Mike Bowden
    • 29 July 2013
    13 Comments

    AFL footballer Liam Jurrah had his prison sentence for an assault conviction reduced to three months. Hopefully he will not be too harmed by his experience, and afterwards may be given the chance to recommence his football career. But the conditions confronting his cousins and brothers will not change. In the NT there is a troubling confluence between harsher penalties and increasing incarceration rates.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia and Indonesia's deadly games of pass-the-parcel

    • Tony Kevin
    • 24 June 2013
    15 Comments

    The sinking of the asylum seeker vessel SIEV 358 encapsulates key questions as to why these tragedies too often happen at interfaces between Australia's border protection system and maritime search and rescue system, and the under-resourced Indonesian maritime search and rescue system. Hopefully next week's public inquest by the WA Coroner comes up with some answers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teaching literature to rock stars

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 February 2013
    2 Comments

    He appeared in the doorway of my study one day in 1971 and asked if I was the one who was starting a course in Australian literature. His voice was soft and melodic, his accent beautifully Irish. Born in Belfast in 1947, he had grown up amid the horrors of 'The Troubles' and would in later years refer to himself as 'a recovering Catholic'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2012: No lowly scapegoats in 'necessary' Royal Commission

    • Moira Rayner
    • 08 January 2013
    14 Comments

    One of the informing moments of my career as a lawyer came from the survivors of a family who disclosed that an authoritarian father had beaten and raped every one of his children — under the very eye of their mother. The Royal Commission isn't about punishing predators. It must find a way to institutionalise the right of every child to be heard. Tuesday 13 November

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Border protection word games

    • Frank Brennan
    • 19 December 2012
    19 Comments

    On Saturday Scott Morrison's border asylum meter registered the arrival of the 150th boat since Julia Gillard's announcement of the Pacific Solution Mark II in August. If the 'no advantage' principle is coherent and workable, the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers and Gillard have very different understandings of its operation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor stops short on migration and disability reform

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 05 December 2012
    8 Comments

    In 2001, a Pakistani man granted refugee status set himself on fire outside the Australian Parliament House. Visas for his wife and three daughters had been rejected because one daughter had cerebral palsy. While immigration policy has since become less discriminatory towards people experiencing disability, important barriers still remain.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No lowly scapegoats in 'necessary' Royal Commission

    • Moira Rayner
    • 13 November 2012
    58 Comments

    One of the informing moments of my career as a lawyer came from the survivors of a family who disclosed that an authoritarian father had beaten and raped every one of his children — under the very eye of their mother. The Royal Commission isn't about punishing predators. It must find a way to institutionalise the right of every child to be heard.

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  • RELIGION

    Law and justice for abuse victims, Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2012

    'Even without the political static which is drowning us all out down there in Canberra, there is real doubt whether the Gillard bluff 'Don't get on a boat because you might end up in Nauru' can do what the Howard bluff could not deliver.' Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's Law and Justice Oration at the Law and Justice Foundation 2012 Justice Awards Dinner, Parliament House, Sydney.

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  • RELIGION

    Advancing human rights in Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2012
    1 Comment

    Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Advancing human rights in Australia — lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation' at the 'Human Rights Matters!' conference marking Anti-Poverty Week 2012. 17 October 2012, Cardinal Knox Centre, St Patricks Cathedral, Melbourne.

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