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Progressive Australians want a process that restores a sense of moral legitimacy to the nation. But far from concern about settler Australia's moral legitimacy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples seek treaty as recognition of their political difference. Treaties on these terms are unlikely to be acceptable to the settler state.
These are people living precariously: pregnant women, families with young children, elderly people. They are being 'transitioned out' of Status Resolution Support Services based on 'job-readiness'. The move not only illustrates the arbitrary nature of immigration policy, which sets people up to fail; it is institutionalised sadism.
These initiatives are sideshows, grubby and voyeuristic. They mask the simple truth: that governments have the duty to respect people as human beings and not ciphers, to provide benefits that help people to live with self-respect, to take responsibility for the disadvantage of Indigenous Australians and to involve them in its healing.
Widespread community concern about the state government's proposed plans to sell the majority of public land on existing public housing estates for private development has meant a public inquiry into the matter will be delayed. This sell-off may be more concerned with profit than with rebuilding and improving public housing estates.
Every year around the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, politicians with white ribbons pinned to their suits deliver passionate speeches about protecting women from domestic violence. But when it comes to implementing life saving measures, their lack of action speaks louder than words.
Health spending takes up a significant amount of federal and state government spending. But is this to keep Australians healthy, or to treat us when we get sick? The budget was a missed opportunity to invest in preventative health measures, and to fix health inequalities through policies informed by the social determinants of health.
On the surface budgets are exercises in financial accountability. At a deeper level they are best understood as a yearly ritual; one of the ways in which rulers acknowledge and try to manipulate truths about state power. We should evaluate these less on their stated intentions but with what the show of competence and generosity reveals.
The budget includes a range of tax cuts for many Australian workers and some funding for education and early childhood services but fails to address the ever-growing inequality across the country. Simply put, it is those in the greatest need of support who have yet again been left behind.
The flagship cultural measure in the budget is, strangely, a flagship: the Endeavour. The government announced '$48.7 million over four years to commemorate the 250th anniversary of James Cook's first voyage to Australia and the Pacific'. A permanent presence on the first site of local trauma is not a vision for a nation.
For Japanese Australians, the connections with Australia's war-time history continues to be particularly fraught. Whether they are early or more recent migrants, Japanese Australians have many narratives and expressions of complex identities that are now gaining voice.
One of the challenges that faces any society is how boys will become men. In many societies the passage is mapped and enacted through ritual initiations or through military training. It also periodically causes great anxiety. Two recent books encourage reflection on different aspects of the passage from boys to men.
The Turnbull government holds the view that tax relief for companies and middle-income earners is necessary to improve the economic prosperity of Australia, offering a financial hand up to households struggling to pay their bills. For those on Newstart, though, those same increased costs of living are being all but ignored.
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