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Next week we officially enter winter. The associations of winter are largely negative. They mourn the loss of the summer that has passed. For that reason it may seem incongruous that winter should begin immediately after a Federal Election campaign that ended with the excitement of the people’s choice of a new Government. The potential for a new beginning might fit better with spring.
The news of Musk’s $44 billion dollar purchase of the platform was met with paroxysms of excitement or hysteria depending on where one sits on the political spectrum. Everyone had something to say about it (including Eureka Street). Considering the corrosive state of public discourse over the last few years, which has at least in part been influenced by the algorithms driving social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, I’ll be upfront in saying I’m not especially convinced of Twitter’s status as a social good. So, this development is at least deserving of some curiosity.
I have always considered myself pro-life. It’s not something I’ve felt a need to wear as a badge of honour, rather it has always been a default position. But terminology matters. Indeed, frequently, calling myself pro-life has drawn the derision or raised eyebrows of people around me, nuns and priests and radical ratbags alike, it has connotations.
We are now three months into the Ukraine war. From an invasion it has turned into a war of attrition that has cost many lives, displaced civilians, destroyed cities, and led to sanctions and the making of alliances with effects that have spread suffering far beyond Ukraine. In this Roundtable, Andrew Hamilton SJ, David Halliday, Michele Frankeni and Dr Stewart Braun explore the ethics of the war and likely paths to peace.
In purely economic terms, the upcoming Federal election is extremely unusual. The shut down of the Australian economy for almost two years because of health measures really has no precedent in our history. Only war can produce that type of shock. The Federal government’s financial response was as extreme as the state of emergency measures, including a sharp increase in Australian government debt. It remains to be seen, however, if the government gets much credit for injecting so much free money into the economy. It is unlikely.
The Church must speak up to be relevant, but those who seek to ‘speak for the church’ must be brave. They risk exposing themselves to claims of bias unless they stick to a very narrow agenda and speak in extremely measured terms. Yet if they are too bland they risk being irrelevant to the sharp end of political debate and their intervention becomes little more than a symbolic ritual.
In our culture, Easter celebrates the benignity of the ordinary. It is a time for getting together with family, for going away to bush or beach, and in southern states a time of mild weather ideal for watching big football matches and other sport. The important question raised now by Easter is whether the meanings of Australian Easter, and indeed those available to our secular society, have the depth needed to handle our present predicaments.
Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.
Like the aged care sector more broadly, home care is in the process of transition as the federal government implements a system designed around the principles of consumer choice and efficiency. The push is driven by expectations that the number of Australians accessing aged care services will more than triple by 2050.
Part of what makes community is what distinguishes community, what sets it apart. It might be an interest in music, or sport, a neighbourhood or a set of values or practices. Initially, at least, the extent to which we identify with the community will depend upon the extent to which those things that define or characterise it are important to us.
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.
Kermit the Frog, of enduring Muppets and Sesame Street fame, was always a favourite with my children and me: he was so amusing and appealing, and also had a way of unobtrusively communicating simple goodness along with the occasional moral message. He was also concerned with the most important matter of the self, so that in his most famous song he puts a positive spin on the matter of greenness, the colour of envy and jealousy.
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