Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: De Facto

  • RELIGION

    Asylum seeker ethics is simple

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 March 2014
    28 Comments

    Asked whether they think the government's treatment of asylum seekers is right, some people will withhold judgment, arguing that the question is ethically complex; asylum seeker policy must take into account many issues, and an ethical judgment must await consideration of all these factors. This position is mistaken. The ethical questions are quite simple. The complexities and confusions arise only after we have answered them.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    West wasting breath huffing and puffing over Crimea

    • Tony Kevin
    • 05 March 2014
    18 Comments

    Tony Abbott's 'We warn the Czar' statements were ludicrously over-the-top, though clearly he was responding to a Washington appeal to friendly allies to say something. I hope Australia will not continue to overplay its hand in the Security Council. There is no point in gratuitously offending Moscow on an issue that is outside our strategic area of interest and raises no human rights concerns whatsoever.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A distasteful slice of gender politics pie

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 February 2014
    1 Comment

    Adele is a single mother suffering the debilitating after-effects of past trauma. But her story offers no robust consideration of mental illness. In stark contrast to her male counterparts, Adele is merely pitiable and helpless, and lacks the agency to raise herself from despondency. Weakness is thus conflated with femaleness. Only the arrival of a strong, practical and violent man serves to raise her Adele from her stupor.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Fawlty thinking about the aftermyth of war

    • Ray Cassin
    • 29 January 2014
    15 Comments

    'Don't mention the war!' admonishes John Cleese as the hapless hotelier Basil Fawlty in the classic television comedy series Fawlty Towers. With a string of war-related anniversaries to take place over the next four years, beginning this year with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, we may soon find ourselves sharing Fawlty's sentiments.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Alternatives to trash reality TV

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 20 December 2013
    4 Comments

    In Pimp my Soup Van, contestants are asked to deck out a van with items that could be used to help people on the streets. In Please Marry My Boys, they sit down with the mothers of people in gay relationships and hear about their experiences. The Refugee Factor asks contestants to listen to asylum seekers' stories, and press a red button at the point where they feel that they, too, would have fled their homeland.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Christian social thinking for Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2013
    1 Comment

    'Many Catholics wonder how we can maintain our Christian faith at this time in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis and the many judgmental utterances about sexuality and reproduction. The Church that has spoken longest and loudest about sex in all its modalities seems to be one of the social institutions most needing to get its own house in order.' Frank Brennan's address to the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy, 8 November 2013. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's Noah's Ark economy

    • David James
    • 05 November 2013
    2 Comments

    Australia is very much the 'Noah's Ark' economy: two of everything. Consider the spate of industry sectors in which only two companies dominate: airlines (Virgin and Qantas); paper and packaging (Visy and Amcor); print media (News Corporation and Fairfax). The Federal Government's announcement that it will be launching a 'root and branch' review of Australia's competition law will, at the very least, make for a fascinating spectacle.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Migrant factory worker's story

    • Selected poems
    • 06 August 2013
    1 Comment

    The factory thrust its bloody quota past her six days a week, and she did what she had to. The gloves and boots and heavy denim became first and last lines of defence. She lost a thumb once, then a fingertip a year later. Language didn't come into it. She got sick and sacked in the same fortnight, then lay doggo for a decade.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Reshaping the Church with Bishop Robinson and Pope Francis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 July 2013
    26 Comments

    Robinson's recent book on the culture of the Catholic Church critiques the factors that have contributed to clerical sexual abuse of children. Robinson desires institutional changes, yet institutional changes are insufficient unless relationships and attitudes change. In this there is a happy conjunction between Robinson's project and the way of proceeding of Pope Francis.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Hope for a Malaysian Spring

    • Lily Zubaidah Rahim and Sven Schottmann
    • 29 April 2013
    1 Comment

    Amid democratic transitions in Asia and protest movements in the Middle East, a growing number of Malaysians are unwilling to countenance any further their government's paternalistic politics. Whoever wins next Sunday's election will have the task of forging a new consensus on what it means to be Malaysian. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    When community organisations sup with the devil

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 April 2013
    27 Comments

    A certain metaphorical framework sees community organisations as factories and the people they serve as consumers. It can be useful to focus attention on the costs and efficiency of programs. But when it becomes the master model for caring for human beings, it betrays all that most community organisations are about.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    How can the Catholic Church contribute to a better culture for life?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 March 2013
    3 Comments

    Change is upon the Church. Just recall the scene when the new pope emerged on the Vatican balcony. He appeared with none of the papal trimmings of office, and did not once did he refer to the papacy. Could something of this new papal style help Catholics engage more creatively with their fellow citizens? Text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'How Can the Catholic Church Contribute to a Better Culture for Life?'

    READ MORE