section: Australia
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- David Stephens
- 11 November 2013
12 Comments
Remembrance Day has always been for Australians a quieter affair than Anzac Day, particularly as Anzac Day in recent years has taken on a brassy, bragging style. The historian Ken Inglis described Anzac as Australia's civil religion. Although we were the first country anywhere to come together under a national constitution after a mass popular vote, we downplay Federation and venerate instead a failed military campaign in Turkey in 1915.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 08 November 2013
3 Comments
From a liberal perspective the use of public money to fund free legal services to individuals is inherently undesirable. Even if the contracts are awarded under competitive tendering, the funding of the services is a distortion in the market. Ideally they should be left to the market to provide. And by definition they are less efficient than commercial organisations disciplined by a free and competitive market.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Matthews
- 08 November 2013
7 Comments
Within an hour the shop is humming with talk and movement. Mac is courteous, but has some iron rules. A woman who talks ceaselessly into her mobile phone receives a steely glare and silence. Someone with both ears plugged into his iPod finds Mac has also suddenly gone deaf. Each new arrival is threaded into a sort of endless conversation which functions at two levels — greetings to the customer and side-of-the-mouth asides to me.
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Kevin
- 08 November 2013
23 Comments
The Coalition's impending destruction of the Australian car industry by calculated public stalling of decisions on government assistance is shaping up as its most disastrous high-visibility policy blunder. This industry — but none other — is to be wilfully abandoned as a victim of rigid free-market economic ideologies. It does not make sense, in economic, social or national security terms. This is Australia's version of US Tea Party budget brinkmanship.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 07 November 2013
23 Comments
Whenever public funds are made available for frowned upon projects they are described as taxpayers' money. When I hear the phrase roll from critics' lips, I imagine taxpayers as prune faced and laser lipped, or like children watching with beady eyes as their mother cuts the cake, ready to howl if their slice of the cake is the smaller half by a crumb or two. Underneath the phrase usually lies a view of life in which the market is a sacred site.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 02 November 2013
7 Comments
'There have been innumerable post-mortems and words of advice as to how the party with new structures, election rules, and policies can pick itself up, dust off, and win the next election. Sadly some of those post-mortems have come with more coatings of spite and loathing. It is no part of my role in the public square as a Catholic priest to offer such advice.' Frank Brennan's address to the Bathurst Panthers Club, 2 November 2013.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 01 November 2013
12 Comments
Unethical misconduct by public figures, proven and alleged, is in the public eye almost daily. No one is above suspicion, including Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Is it a case of a few bad apples or are there systemic problems? There are levels of seriousness in these cases and it is helpful to disaggregate them to keep a sense of perspective.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 30 October 2013
17 Comments
There is a bizarre and remorseless logic to some of Joe Hockey's proposals, such as the absorption of Centrelink by Australia Post and making Medibank Private responsible for delivering the services of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. ACTU president Ged Kearney described the Centrelink proposal as 'moving into space-cadet territory'. She's right: the space cadets are flying the ship now.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 29 October 2013
47 Comments
Marriage equality advocates are pursuing the issue at a state level in the hope of pressuring the Commonwealth. In the process they risk blowing apart the national coherence of marriage laws put in place in 1961. The marriage equality question is best resolved by the Australian Parliament exercising a conscience vote. Marriage is too precious a social institution to be put in the mix of a dog's breakfast.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 28 October 2013
18 Comments
TV viewers are alarmed that they can so easily identify with Ja'mie King, Chris Lilley's studiously unlikeable comic creation in ABC1's Ja'mie: Private School Girl. In a previous incarnation, Ja'mie was sponsoring underprivileged Third World children about whom she knew little and cared less. People like Ja'mie have a pathological disability to feel the needs of others.
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AUSTRALIA
- Joe Caddy
- 25 October 2013
19 Comments
For 11 years I worked as a chaplain in a maximum security prison. I would meet inmates who were accused of serious crimes that had shocked the community. In coming to know those who stood accused I came to see that they too had a story. More often than not it included enormous deprivation and sadness. They had relationships that they cherished, and I never met anyone who in their heart did not want their circumstances to be better.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 23 October 2013
2 Comments
'We spent about a week planning the baptism of 12 kids using traditional symbols including the water ceremony to welcome newcomers to country, the firesticks, the smoking, and the ti tree bark to heal and make strong. Miriam has always drawn strength from culture and church no matter what the internal tensions.' Frank Brennan launches the Miriam Rose Foundation at St Mary's Cathedral Darwin.
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