Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
Kevin Rudd’s mother had a saying: ‘Just put it into your forgettery’. It helped him cope with criticism such as his reported tantrums and harsh treatment of staff. Julia Gillard has had her own forgettery raided by ‘misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet’ and elsewhere. Political vindictiveness is not sufficient reason to retrieve unpleasant memories from a person’s personal trash.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is board director of St Vincent's Health Australia and professor of law and director of strategic research projects (social justice and ethics) at Australian Catholic University. Text is from his address at Leading the Way, the Catholic Health Australia Conference, Perth 21 August 2012, Governance and Mission stream.
On Friday evening, Eureka Street's inaugural Discerning Conversation took place between former prime minister Kevin Rudd and Fr Frank Brennan. It was the end of a week during which federal Parliament enacted legislation for offshore refugee processing. But the Rudd-Brennan conversation began with the recollection that Queensland politicians rejected individual greed following the Fitzgerald Inquiry in '89.
All major political parties now hope they can confine people in Nauru for years on end without any prospect of court supervision and without any need for Parliament to revisit the matter. We have reached a fork in the road between decency and deterrence. As a nation we have taken the low road, inviting the newest signatory to the Refugees Convention to emulate our indecent behaviour.
Amending the Migration Act to make the old style Pacific solution less susceptible to judicial review errs on the wrong side of decency. The Coalition and the Greens should unite in the Senate to oppose it. In the protection of the human rights of asylum seekers, deterrence must come second to decency and accountability, even when we are trying to beat people smugglers.
Next week Parliament reconvenes; meanwhile the boats keep coming. Chris Bowen will be armed with a report from an expert panel that has been hearing from the community. We're still awaiting an answer on unaccompanied minors under the Malaysia solution. Until one is provided no one in good conscience can give it the tick.
New South Wales ALP General Secretary Sam Dastyari called the Greens 'extremists not unlike One Nation'. Paul Howes, the Australian Workers' Union National Secretary, denounced them as a 'fringe' party with 'extremist agendas'. But who better represents mainstream Australian values — the Greens or the ALP?
The passage of time has shown that it has not made a great deal of difference whether the ALP leader was Gillard or Rudd. In all likelihood, it doesn't really matter who leads Labor to the 2013 election. What is more important is that they are able to demonstrate good policy achievement.
Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg observed that ‘the oldest, deepest, most poisonous debate in Australia has been about government aid to church schools’. The most dramatic episode in the history of church state relations in Australia was the Goulburn schools strike, which took place 50 years ago this month.
It should be mandatory for anyone writing on asylum seekers to spend time visiting detention centres. Many commentators ignore the hard work of those who have. Moreover the politicians are too poll driven to even explain the human desperation that leads to boat journeys.
A Herald/Neilsen poll this week showed that Rudd leads Gillard by 62 per cent to 32 per cent. But that figure is distorted by the overwhelming pro-Rudd preference of Coalition voters, who prefer Rudd to Gillard by 71 per cent to 19 per cent. The motivation behind this preference is not immediately clear.
The US pursuit of Assange is being played out with the cooperation of other western democracies. Last week a British court rejected his appeal against extradition to Sweden. The UK government could overrule this, as it did for Chilean dictator Pinochet in 1998. But it looks as if they won't repeat the favour for Assange.
169-180 out of 200 results.