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Disabled people, and those that love them, have told the latest hearing of the Disability Royal Commission about their experiences in the health system. Neglect, abuse, violence all featured, with medical people and systems often talked about, not as caring health professionals, but as callous and cruel.
There is still a long way to go before Australian society is free of mental health stigmas and adequate services are funded and accessible. This is especially important for Australians who are at the intersections of multiple oppressions. But there has been progress, as a number of recent initiatives illustrate.
Adam Smith wrote 'no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable'. Poverty and inequality lead to non-participation in work and inhibit social mobility, which negatively affects economic growth. The concentration of economic power is bad for democracy.
For a nation with such a significant convict history, Australians take a peculiarly puritanical approach to prisoner welfare. Punishment, not rehabilitation, is often viewed as the point of the justice system. We take a very dim view of anything that could be construed as a prisoner perk. One such perceived privilege is access to the internet.
Every time I need to read an article that deals with climate change, I can feel a tightness in my body. It’s a physical response, the churning in my stomach and my shoulders hunching over, as though I’m trying to protect myself from the information.
If you're not burdened by a conscience, it's a perfect get-rich-quick scheme: offer 'garrison' services to governments reluctant to get their hands dirty. Ensure the vulnerable people you 'manage' are hidden, demonised by politicians and right-wing commentators. Hire cheap labour, minimise your tax, and make millions.
Robert Harris' The Gang of One ranges through Harris' five published books and a number of uncollected poems. Early work grows from his occasionally lonely, knockabout life and reveals not only a talent for catching the essence of fleeting memories and perceptions but also a mordant touch that gives edge to memory.
The recent federal election showed us that refugees and people seeking asylum do not need to be instrumentalised for votes. Perhaps refugee policymaking could be separated from politics. Perhaps it could be evidence-based and humane. Alas, the prevailing frames and politics of border protection quickly came to the fore post-election.
Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, Australia must respond promptly and fairly to the needs of all survivors, not only of institutional child sexual abuse, but of all forms of childhood trauma. Every time we create a new class of survivor and more 'have nots' we replicate the inequities of abusive systems.
Gillette's video on toxic masculinity provoked an uproar among a surprising number of men. As a woman of the baby boomer generation, a survivor of intimate partner violence and of rape and attempted rape as a young woman, I have been waiting for a long time for the issues conveyed in the video to be a focus of conversation.
On 7 February in Manado, Sulawesi, Sajjad, a 24 year old man who had just finished a degree in IT, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He died six days later. On the day of his death, Australians woke to the government's claim the passage of the Medevac Bill would restart boats from Indonesia and weaken Australia's borders.
The link Manne makes between Australian treatment of people seeking protection and the abiding cultural demand to control outsiders is illuminating, and his description of the 'Canberra mindset' is persuasive. But the resistance from the sector to negotiation about Manus and Nauru has more complex roots than Manne allows.
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