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Behind scrub on a nondescript South Australian highway lay a battered suitcase. It had been abandoned and largely forgotten, yet its presence was incongruous in this vast, unforgiving landscape. Last month, one passer-by was so disturbed by what he found after peering inside that he contacted police. Just off the Karoonda Highway in Wynarka, in South Australia's Murray Mallee region, a terrible secret had lain in wait.
The politicians have an excuse: they have vested interests. But what about the rest of us? Has the rape and torture of asylum seekers, many of them children, in institutions established at the behest of Canberra, become so commonplace that it no longer shocks? It's not that empathy is an emotion particularly lacking in Australia. But there remains a disconnect between 'us' and asylum seekers.
Someone yells a racial slur at you while you were just trying to do your job. Then you get booed for months for publicly celebrating your cultural heritage. You might think, how can anyone say this is okay? With the evidence brought to light, how can it be denied or, worse, condoned? But the truth is that siding with the bully or perpetrator is psychologically far easier for your average self-serving person.
The formal link between trade unions and the Labor Party is sacred in many quarters, and has sustained both sides of the relationship for 120 years. The revelations of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, despite its anti-Labor political origins, may eventually generate change. But the question has been around for decades, and any move to break the link would be vigorously opposed.
Lomborg's profile was built by a book on global warming in which he accepted its reality, but argued its effects would not be as catastrophic as predicted. He is a good media performer whose métier is not scholarship but popularisation. Universities, which claim that their activities are characterised by depth, appoint people with higher scholarly credentials and research experience to lead their research centres.
The epidemic of African wildlife poaching returned to the headlines this week with news that an American hunter had killed a much-loved lion, Cecil, in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park. Such 'leisure activities' speak to a base instinct to control, brutalise and defeat. Yet the outpouring of fury at Cecil's killer by celebrities and the public on social media platforms feels somewhat hypocritical and opportunistic.
Labor's National Conference endorsement of boat turnbacks does raise questions, as policies are not merely pieces of paper. They are statements of value, in this case about vulnerable and desperate humans. If, under our policies, we inflict pain for other purposes, it will come back to haunt us.
What is the difference between people who boo Goodes because they disagree with his statements on Aboriginality, and those who lined the streets of Selma to abuse Martin Luther King and his companions on their marches? What they are doing is designed to further marginalise and alienate Aboriginal voices brave enough to speak out against the status quo. The actions of those booing Goodes need to be called out for what they are - racism.
Political donations give privileged access to powerful public officials to those who are wealthy. But public funding does little to reduce parties’ reliance on private money and radical control measures can fall foul of the Constitution. A 2013 High Court judgment finding that a ban on donations infringed the constitutional freedom of political communication.
When refugee advocates criticise harsh policies such as boat turnbacks, they are confronted with claims that the measures are necessary for saving lives at sea. This justification has dominated the debate to the extent that any policy which further restricts refugee rights becomes justifiable on this ground. Imagine a proposal to ban cars because there were too many people killed and injured on the roads.
The Federal Government's ethical argument for coal is that it is the most readily available and cheapest resource for generating electricity for the development of poorer countries. The structure of this argument based on our duty to the poor is significant. It assumes that governments, mining companies, banks and the people who invest in them a duty to consider the effects of their actions on people both in their own nations and in other nations.
February's arrest of Australian man Peter Scully in the Philippines has focused concern on the sexual exploitation of Filipino women and children by foreigners. As long as they feel disempowered, when their sense of worth is measured by implicit trust and hope in white saviours and the dollar, they will continue to be preyed upon.
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