Keywords: St Vincent De Paul Society
-
RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 03 May 2022
9 Comments
We should not underestimate the difficulty that people who represent independent branches of the same organization face when drawing up an agreed statement on contentious issues. Even the widely applauded Uluru Statement from the Heart did not secure the support of all Indigenous groups. If the Bishops Statement was to be effective it had to be supported, or at least tolerated, by all members of the Conference, despite their differing views about political and church issues and the priority that should be given to them in advocacy.
READ MORE 
-
RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 26 April 2022
22 Comments
The Church must speak up to be relevant, but those who seek to ‘speak for the church’ must be brave. They risk exposing themselves to claims of bias unless they stick to a very narrow agenda and speak in extremely measured terms. Yet if they are too bland they risk being irrelevant to the sharp end of political debate and their intervention becomes little more than a symbolic ritual.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 20 January 2022
7 Comments
Social security payments were once seen as a means of preventing poverty, not prescribing it. A job was once seen, at least for some, as being not only the best guarantee against poverty but the path to economic security. Now it seems, however, multiple jobs are required to stave off poverty.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
- John Falzon
- 04 January 2022
7 Comments
When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Claire Victory
- 26 October 2021
14 Comments
We don’t need further commentary that gives people who are well off yet another excuse to demonise people living in poverty and to blame them for their circumstances. It lets governments off the hook – governments which should be addressing the structural causes of poverty.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
- John Falzon
- 10 August 2021
13 Comments
When you put rising housing costs alongside stagnating wages, an alarming trend in normalising insecure work, persistent unemployment and underemployment, and statutory incomes that are going backwards in real terms, there’s good reason to be deeply worried about an increase in homelessness.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
You only have a road before you. It looks as if it has no end, stark, like the country it weaves through. It is beautiful like that. It should not matter to you, whether or not it has an end.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
Our economy is 1.1 per cent larger than a year ago. Yet, as the situation in Victoria reminded us, none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. And we cannot be safe while work remains increasingly insecure, while social security payments are inadequate and while our public infrastructure is found wanting.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Michele Madigan
- 13 May 2021
9 Comments
A state government has an obligation to do what is possible within the limits of state resources to help its people, to make the state an inclusive place where all have access to essential services and housing. However, over the last few weeks, with the announcement of the funding restructure for homelessness services, this idea of a fair go seems to have dissipated.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
In a recent speech to business leaders, Prime Minister Morrison made the remarkable claim that ‘we are going to meet our [climate change] ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of capitalism.’ This is straight from the neoliberal playbook, the doxa that the role of government is to get out of the way to make room for those animal spirits so as to pander to the fantasies of the wealthy few.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Claire Victory
- 08 April 2021
8 Comments
The treatment of refugees and people seeking asylum calls for a determined response on the back of years of poor public policy that has led to the misery of thousands and cost Australian taxpayers billions. I stand to support the Minister in the early days of her new role to make compassionate and sensible decisions, to find a different path for the resolution of the challenges she faces.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
Ideology is a powerful presence in our lives. It works its way into our consciousness through the dominant discourses of government, media, institutional religion, legal frameworks, popular culture, advertising, all the means at the disposal of the powerful. Once we learn to recognise it we see it everywhere. If it feels like we were born into it, it is because we were.
READ MORE