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Keywords: Commonwealth

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Banks remain protected species

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 February 2019
    10 Comments

    Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial sector has named, shamed and excoriated banks, regulators, insurance companies and other financial services businesses to the extent that you would think they are now extremely vulnerable and universally unloved. That would be a mistake.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Lecturing Venezuela

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 January 2019
    6 Comments

    Think of how it grates with the non-interference doctrine of the UN. Such interference 'must be forcible or dictatorial, or otherwise coercive, in effect depriving the state intervened against of control over the mater in question'. Yet many countries, most purported liberal democracies, have very happily made Venezuela the exception.

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  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom in schools

    • Frank Brennan
    • 15 January 2019
    40 Comments

    When Parliament resumes, one outstanding item of business will be Penny Wong's bill dealing with religious schools' capacity to discriminate against students on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. I support the bill subject to the proviso that religious schools should remain free to teach their doctrine respectfully and reasonably.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Religious freedom in secular Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 December 2018
    15 Comments

    Let's hope all members of parliament can agree to the insertion of such a clause in the legislation providing assurance to religious educators that they can continue to teach their doctrine in good faith while assuring all students and their families that they will not suffer any detriment while sitting at the feet of religious educators.

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  • RELIGION

    Church reform scorecard

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 December 2018
    53 Comments

    Scoring the performance of the Australian church is a complex task at any time. Dioceses and congregations vary enormously. The mission of church agencies continues unabated in education, health, social services and aged care. But by any measure 2018 has been a big year.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    UN human rights declaration turns 70

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 December 2018
    14 Comments

    It is appropriate to affirm the worldwide amplification system for the 'still, small voice' of conscience speaking to power, even when that voice of conscience maintains a religious tone, while the power of the state is increasingly secular and the tone of society more stridently secularist.

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  • ECONOMICS

    What it will take to redeem the banks

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 December 2018
    8 Comments

    Now that the royal commission hearings have finished, people are asking whether things will change. There are grounds for both cautious hope and pessimism. Hope is based on the expectation that the exposure of greed, complacency and lassitude in institutions, boards and regulators will lead them to hunger for a better reputation.

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  • MEDIA

    Press wake in fright to Assange prosecution

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 28 November 2018
    6 Comments

    With the evidence of a cobbled prosecution case against Julian Assange irrefutable, the at times previously mute press has become concerned. To get at Assange, goes this fear, is not to punish a narcissist keen to make etches in history; it is, by its very spirit, to attack the entire vocation, cause, and role of journalism proper.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to stop punishing the unemployed

    • El Gibbs
    • 21 November 2018
    10 Comments

    Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Elegy for Sisto Malaspina

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 15 November 2018
    2 Comments

    What is so urgent here is not a sense of being morbid. Nor, in the main, was there even a vengeful note. This was unalloyed grief, unimpaired by manipulation and political exploitation.

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  • EDUCATION

    Research funding regime gets personal

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 November 2018
    2 Comments

    Birmingham's intervention, and Tehan's consolidation of that ill-exercised discretion, suggests Australian Research Council funding will be politicised by executive veto. Expertise will be subordinated to the whimsy of the education minister of the day; researchers will be pondering how to shape their applications accordingly.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A bill of rights for the age of technology

    • Kate Galloway
    • 29 October 2018
    2 Comments

    A robust human rights framework would hold government to account in its own deployment of technology such as 'robodebt'. It would also provide protections against the government's increasing attempts to control data through legislation — where data is collected and deployed using diverse technologies.    

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