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Keywords: Sustainability

  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to honour Aboriginal frontier warriors

    • Paul Newbury
    • 21 January 2014
    23 Comments

    New Zealand, our partner in the Anzac legend, has no problem commemorating the Maori Wars of 1845–1872. Yet the Australian War Memorial refuses to honour Aboriginal warriors who fought and died defending their lands and their people against white invader settlers in the Frontier Wars of 1788–1928. This is a moral issue, and has the effect of excluding a whole people from commemoration based on a trifle.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    A reading list for climate change deniers

    • Greg Foyster
    • 30 July 2013
    29 Comments

    With the release of some frightening reports over the last 12 months, those who deny the scientific consensus on climate change will have to expand their list of 'alarmists' to include some unlikely suspects — the World Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the International Energy Agency. When accountancy firms start sounding like environmental campaigners, the future looks very alarming indeed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On the brink of native title history as Mabo comes of age

    • Paul Newbury
    • 03 June 2013
    3 Comments

    The Mabo decision of 3 June 1992 changed the course of Australian history and set the blueprint for native title determinations. Twenty-one years on, the Noongar people of Australia's south west are on the threshold of achieving the most momentous and comprehensive outcome to date of the native title process.

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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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  • MEDIA

    Catholic communicators navigating new media

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 07 May 2013
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My family connection to Aboriginal genocide

    • Paul Newbury
    • 30 April 2013
    24 Comments

    My great-grandfather John Eckersley Newbury was a convict and a squatter who became wealthy through a generous land policy and because his wife's family helped set him up on the land. During this period, the Kamilaroi of northern NSW fought a guerilla war of resistance against the British.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Tony Burke versus the invisible worm

    • Barry Breen
    • 10 April 2013
    6 Comments

    If poetry is the pulse of our cultural life, so too can it be seen as the pulse of our public decisions. Our poetry loving Minister for the Environment may find wisdom in the words of some of his favourite poets when it comes to decisions about the Murray Darling basin, Tarkine wilderness and Great Barrier Reef.

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  • RELIGION

    When community organisations sup with the devil

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 April 2013
    27 Comments

    A certain metaphorical framework sees community organisations as factories and the people they serve as consumers. It can be useful to focus attention on the costs and efficiency of programs. But when it becomes the master model for caring for human beings, it betrays all that most community organisations are about.

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  • EDUCATION

    Public schools' charity case

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 15 February 2013
    7 Comments

    A survey released this week found that the lion's share of philanthrpopic giving goes to independent non-government schools. Gonski devoted an entire chapter to the question of how private cash can be got to where need is greatest. The Government should act on his recommendation, but not before beefing it up.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rupert Murdoch an example for older Australians

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 April 2012
    20 Comments

    There is a lot not to admire about the business practices of Rupert Murdoch, but he stands tall as an elder who is able to maintain his stature in the face of great challenge. The Federal Government's new aged care blueprint has the potential to ensure that more Australians will retain their dignity in old age.

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  • RELIGION

    On Jesuit collaboration

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 April 2012
    4 Comments

    'This Jesuit network will not succeed where Copenhagen failed, but it is an incremental contribution to one of the great moral challenges of our age [climate change].' Text from Frank Brennan's paper 'An interpretation and a raincheck on GC 35's call to develop international and interprovincial collaboration', Boston College, 28 April 2012.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The best and worst of international aid

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 17 April 2012
    4 Comments

    Rumour has it the Government's projected aid budget increases will be cut to ensure a surplus. Some aid doesn't work: I was horrified as a young aid worker in the '80s being told that an open sewer in an Addis Ababa slum was a World Bank project. But aid does work if it is underpinned by a few key principles.

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