section: Australia
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 19 June 2014
28 Comments
Many Australians, myself included, believed that the Federal Budget was unfair. So Treasurer Joe Hockey's recent speech in defence of its fairness offers a welcome challenge. Hockey is right to insist that fairness can co-exist with gradations of wealth within society. But fairness is incompatible with gross disparity of wealth because the concentration of wealth in the hands of few people and corporations destroys equality of opportunity.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 18 June 2014
11 Comments
All is not well in the Sunshine State, where Premier Newman is running a strong 'law and order' line. Judges are used to politicians running 'law and order' lines, but enjoy independence from the executive government once appointed. The risky part is the sequence of events associated with the appointment. The naming of Tim Carmody as the state's chief justice has made a mockery of the transparency and openness of this process.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 17 June 2014
11 Comments
In October 2013, Jesuit Fr Frans van der Lugt wrote about the suffering of the besieged people of Homs in Syria: 'Despite these difficulties, we keep grasping onto hope.' On 7 April 2014 he was executed outside his home. The rout of Iraqi forces in Mosul by the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant must be a worry to the Iraqi authorities and the US and Western countries that have invested so much in the new post Saddam Iraq.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 16 June 2014
47 Comments
In the lead up to Refugee Week the attitudes of Australians to people who come by boat to seek protection made sober reading. 71 per cent of Australians believed Australia should turn back asylum seeker boats. That is far higher even than the Prime Minister's disapproval rating. Some might say that 71 per cent of Australians can't be wrong. At Eureka Street we have never been persuaded that majorities always have truth on their side.
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 16 June 2014
10 Comments
Friends of mine had their first child recently and my first, 'obvious' question — 'Is it a boy or a girl?' — was answered by a jubilant father: 'It's a girl!' Life is complex, however, and our all-too-human desires for normalcy and 'simplicity' (embodied in my automatic query) are sometimes revealed to gleam in the light of unintended prejudice. The reality for some Australians is that my question isn't always as easily answered.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 13 June 2014
5 Comments
As I take in the submissions presented to the Senate inquiry into the Manus Island riots, I am reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In it, nearly the entire town knew of Santiago Nasar's impending death; his assassins had made a point of divulging their intent to everyone they met over the course of the day. The prevailing impression from the Senate inquiry is one of similar inevitability and complicity.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 05 June 2014
29 Comments
Australia's cruel arrangement for asylum seekers arriving without a visa cannot be scrutinised by our courts and has never been approved by our Parliament. In the name of democracy, in the name of Australian self-respect, and in the name of human rights protection and the rule of law, it is time this arrangement was presented to our Parliament for its approval by our elected representatives or for immediate ditching. It's a disgrace.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 02 June 2014
4 Comments
The Pope says we have 'forgotten how to weep'. The most potent moments in current affairs television occur when a person is shown to cry, yet we're taught to believe that 'breaking down' means that we're not in command of the argument. Julie Bishop could not have been unmoved if the jostling Sydney University students had instead wept over the lost educational opportunity in the Federal Budget.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 02 June 2014
2 Comments
The Budget will be the first test. The negotiations will set the scene for the remainder of this parliamentary term. Palmer, an enigma, has already survived longer than many of his critics thought he would. In fact he has grown in confidence and reputation rather than falling in a heap. What the Greens have to guard against are some of the traps that the Democrats fell into. They look pretty disciplined at the moment but that can't be guaranteed.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Lawrence
- 30 May 2014
2 Comments
There may be debate about whether the current Family Tax Benefit, Part B is adequate recognition of the economic and social value of domestic child care. But there is no doubt that the $5.75 per week proposed in the recent Budget would drive low paid families deeper into poverty. The side issue of whether Howard or Keating was the father of the threatened payments could impact on post-Budget strategies and positions in the Senate.
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AUSTRALIA
The Budget was one of most vicious attacks on ordinary people that we have seen in recent Australian history. We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis but if we embark on this treacherous path we will be staring down the barrel of a social crisis. But we have a secret weapon. It is called solidarity. Even though we name it openly and proudly, it remains a secret weapon because those who do not practise it can never understand it.
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AUSTRALIA
While recent weeks have been taken up with thinking about the Budget's disproportionate impact on poorer Australians, another, more spectacular, area of government disregard for the lives and rights of its citizens has gone relatively unremarked. It goes to the heart of democracy, revealing not only the distance between Western governments and their citizens, but also the acceptance of that gulf as a fact of modern political life.
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