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Keywords: Pragmatism

  • AUSTRALIA

    Neoliberalism in the swinging outer suburbs

    • Luke Williams
    • 03 September 2013
    20 Comments

    The outer suburban marginal seats will almost certainly swing to the Coalition on Saturday. I'm sure many of the Left intelligentsia think they have the reasons for this all worked out: voters in the outer suburbs are uneducated, 'aspirational', cashed-up bogans who only care about their mortgages, negating their working-class origins and keeping out asylum seekers. As a swinging voter from one such electorate, I can tell you the reality is not that simple.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The politics of disgust

    • Ellena Savage
    • 30 August 2013
    6 Comments

    The moral questions presented in this election demand rational action, and not responses based on aversion to 'illegal' boat arrivals, gay men kissing or the idea of giving hard earned money to government programs in the form of tax. As long as both major parties are vying for ‘politics of disgust’ votes on the backs of vulnerable people, we can’t expect a better nation. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The public, the Church, and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 August 2013
    1 Comment

    'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Conversations about a damaged marriage

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 July 2013

    Jesse and Celine head out to enjoy a final night in Greece. In conversation, the fray and fineness of their relationship are revealed. Discussions of philosophy and art illuminate ways in which their individual worldviews impact on their lived reality. They land in a hotel, where the conversation goes from intimate, to pragmatic, to something akin to exorcism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When it comes to work and welfare, market rules Labor's roost

    • Luke Williams
    • 27 May 2013
    10 Comments

    If I was a long-term unemployed person, how would I answer the question, 'What has the ALP done for me?' 'Lots, and not much.' The Gillard Government's commitment to developing workforce skills suggests it values decent work, not just jobs, but in positing productivity as the path to prosperity it seems more Reagan than Keynes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NSW Labor's diseased ethics

    • Tony Smith
    • 06 February 2013
    11 Comments

    The Labor Party's ethical problems are deep seated. Once it adopted pragmatism as its first principle, policy debates lost meaning. The ideological vacuum was filled by enslavement to poll driven politics and media images. The Left struggled to retain its influence and Labor's heart vanished. We should expect much more from our politicians.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Evil is relative in the hunt for bin Laden

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 January 2013
    5 Comments

    The tagline 'history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man' is ironic. By the time of bin Laden's execution his dangerousness was arguably largely emblematic. Zero Dark Thirty portrays the manhunt as a quest for revenge, and leaves open to question whether America was enhanced or diminished by exacting its vengeance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conservative arguments in favour of gay marriage

    • Dustin Halse
    • 04 October 2012
    20 Comments

    Cory Bernadi's recent speech in the Senate linking homosexuality to bestiality illustrated how inverted and confused politics in Australia has become. Gay marriage is not a radical and abstract liberal idea. In fact, the most persuasive arguments in favour of gay marriage are distinctly conservative.

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  • RELIGION

    Truth and reconciliation in Toowoomba

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 July 2012
    35 Comments

    The consecration of Bishop McGuckin in Toowoomba threw into relief the poverty of our public life and the need of symbols of trust. In applauding dismissed Bishop Morris, the people expressed their esteem for a man who was deeply trusted, but also expressed their judgment on what had been done to him.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sympathy for the dodgy salesmen of Australian politics

    • Zac Alstin
    • 12 June 2012
    34 Comments

    Duplicity in politics is not new. Every utterance is tainted by the subtext of scoring points. If it is painful for us to listen, how much worse must it be for the politicians? It is dispiriting to constantly undermine one's own integrity, and the 'dodgy salesman' is no one's ideal of human flourishing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Traipsing Turkey's deep, dark soul

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 May 2012
    1 Comment

    A group of men wander the fields and knolls of a Turkish steppe in search of a corpse. Among them, a doctor's willingness to share a smoke with a confessed murderer contrasts starkly with the police chief's latent brutality. In this place empathy seems ever at odds with a world-weariness bordering on apathy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to change our racist constitution

    • Michael Mullins
    • 23 January 2012
    8 Comments

    Those who have been aware of racism in the Constitution and prepared to tolerate it, have effectively blessed the attitude that it's acceptable to regard Indigenous Australians as second class citizens in theory as long as we treat them as equals in practice. 

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