Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Merit

  • AUSTRALIA

    On remembering the forgotten

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 June 2022
    1 Comment

    In his initial speech as leader of the Liberal Party Peter Dutton committed himself to care for the forgotten voters, echoing a foundation document of the Liberal Party: Robert Menzies’ speech after an electoral defeat in 1942 refers to forgotten people to point the way forward for the new party. The phrase was central to a re-imagining of Australian society. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Back to Bilo for a Tamil family

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 02 June 2022
    6 Comments

    The case of the Murugappan family illustrates the punitive and puritanical approach of the previous government towards human beings arriving in Australia by boat and then seeking asylum. The tone of each message clearly reflects totally different attitudes towards the people affected, with special note of the fact that Minister Chalmers rang the family to tell them, and then rang people in Biloela to pass on the news.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Why bother about trying to communicate?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 May 2022
    2 Comments

    It is unfortunate that World Communications Day is celebrated in the middle of an election campaign. We have seen the worst of partisan media coverage, of shouting as a preferred form of communication, of endless experts promising Armageddon if the result is not to their taste. And yet we have also seen the best of media informing us of the issues that concern people in different parts of Australia. Without such public communication, for all its defects and excesses, our society would be the poorer.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    April is the cruellest month

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 April 2022
    1 Comment

    Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Reforming the Roman Curia

    • Brian Lucas
    • 29 March 2022
    1 Comment

    Prior to the conclave that elected Pope Francis, the Cardinals who met together identified the need for a reform of the Vatican finances and a broader reform of the Roman Curia. Shortly after Francis was elected, work began on the reform of the Roman Curia. There was wide consultation including with the various bishops’ conferences around the world.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 27 January 2022
    23 Comments

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

    READ MORE
  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Best of 2021: The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 January 2022

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Look back at who we’ve left behind

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 November 2021
    4 Comments

    The abrupt change in public attitudes to the threat of COVID calls to mind an earthy Cambodian proverb. It describes someone who has begged a boat ride across a river and then goes on his way without thanking or paying the boatman. Roughly translated the proverb says, ‘Flash your bum and say good-bye’.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Gone to graveyards every one

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 November 2021
    11 Comments

    Aficionados of United Nations Days and Weeks will know that this is the Week of Science and Peace. In the middle of it, perhaps deliberately and certainly paradoxically, sits Remembrance Day. Initially called Armistice Day, it marked the end of the First World War and of the industrial scale killing involved in it. The events of 1918 and what they might say about the relationship between war and science merit reflection today.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council: Consulting the faithful

    • Bill Uren
    • 30 August 2021
    31 Comments

    One might submit that a Plenary Council is a cumbersome instrument to ascertain the genuinely representative views of the Catholic Church in Australia. Many of the canonical strictures regarding the membership, agenda and process of the Council will dampen the original enthusiasm for the Council that provoked over 17,500 submissions.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The Murugappan family and the cynicism of refugee politics

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 June 2021
    27 Comments

    The Murugappan family have found themselves in the middle of this nasty tangle, their fates politicised and manipulated.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Recognising the human value of work

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 June 2021
    9 Comments

    In Victoria the latest lockdown has prompted fresh questioning of the business-as-before approach to life after COVID-19. In particular it urges renewed reflection on the connection between the remuneration of work and its importance to society.

    READ MORE