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Keywords: De Facto

  • AUSTRALIA

    Aborting abnormality

    • Zac Alstin
    • 12 July 2011
    112 Comments

    Research suggests that 85 per cent of Australians support legal access to abortion for 'severe disabilities', and 60 per cent for 'mild disabilities'. While we encourage tolerance and diversity in our multi-ethnic society, our medical culture is moving in the opposite direction.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Chris Lilley's juvenile justice role model

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 June 2011
    7 Comments

    'Gran' from ABC1's Angry Boys is irreverent enough to be her charges' friend, authoritative enough to demand respect, compassionate enough to earn real affection. Australian comedian Chris Lilley differs from other satirists such as The Chaser. Their humour is often nasty. His is marked by warmth.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fast-tracking Prince William and John Paul II

    • Michael Mullins
    • 02 May 2011
    17 Comments

    Many argue that the holiness attributed to John Paul, who was beatified yesterday just six years after his death, is tempered by evil deeds that took place under his watch. Arguably, fast-tracking his route to sainthood is an offence against due process, as fast-tracking Prince William's route to the throne would be.

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  • INFORMATION

    Refugee persecution is stupid

    • June Factor
    • 18 March 2011
    8 Comments

    A Sydney Morning Herald editorial 71 years ago declared that to persecute refugees 'is stupid from the purely practical point of view'. The practical and humanitarian reasons it outlines for welcoming refugees remain relevant today.

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  • RELIGION

    In defence of same-sex unions

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 March 2011
    53 Comments

    There are homosexual persons who enter into loving, faithful and committed relationships. It is difficult to characterise a law that gives non-discriminatory protection to such couples as 'so harmful to the common good as to be gravely immoral' as Benedict has previously done.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Burmese refugees' Christmas story

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 13 December 2010
    3 Comments

    Outside: the fish factory that never sleeps. The people working in it are illegal migrants, paid a pittance and treated as sub humans. Only the strong return from the fishing trips. If you are ill and cannot work, you can be tipped into the sea along with the other rubbish for the seagulls.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wren-Hardy stoush exposes sectarian bigotry

    • Juliette Peers
    • 06 August 2010
    6 Comments

    The Power Without Glory trial ought to be read as a high-profile and long lasting punishment meted out to traitors to a so-called Australian normality. Frank Hardy's acquittal and the campaign to defend his novel partly belong to mid 20th century Australia's strong anti-Catholic undertow.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Not the Pacific Solution

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 July 2010
    27 Comments

    Julia Gillard insists that the centre in East Timor centre would be properly 'run, auspiced and structured'. For the Australian Government to ensure that such a centre respects the human dignity of asylum seekers will be difficult. Similar arrangements with Indonesia were not satisfactory.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freedom Flotilla and Israeli 'pirates'

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 02 June 2010
    31 Comments

    Turkey has condemned the attacks on a flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza as piracy. Branding activists as terrorists and denying the human situation in Gaza will not help an Israeli cause that is proving increasingly alienating.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Bushfire commission's climate denial

    • Tony Kevin
    • 28 May 2010
    9 Comments

    The Black Saturday Royal Commission seems to be ignoring scientific evidence that climate change was a major causal factor. The possibility that Victoria's cool mountain ridges and valleys are drying out and that such ferocious fires are the way of the future might be a truth too much to bear.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In Thailand, the land of snarls

    • Simon Roughneen
    • 24 May 2010

    Standing amid the burnt-out ruins of southeast Asia's second biggest shopping mall, it becomes clear the Land of Smiles has become a land of snarls. The uncompromising quashing of the anti-government redshirt rally by the Thai army may have sown the seeds for more conflict later on.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church as advocate in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 February 2010

    'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.

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