Writer
Julie Macken
Julie Macken has worked for many years as a senior Writer with The Australian Financial Review. She was a consultant to then-shadow minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett before managing the traditional media for Greenpeace Australia Pacific. She was Director of Communications for the NSW Greens successful 2015 State election campaign and currently works as a Justice and Peace Facilitator at the Justice and Peace Office of the Sydney Archdiocese. She has just finished her PhD into the question of why the Australian state treats asylum seekers as it does.
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That time when Canada cancelled its nuclear submarine order
Back in 1987, when no one knew that the Cold War was just about to end, the Canadian Government signed up to build ten nuclear-powered submarines. That submarine program lasted for all of two years before being cancelled in 1989. No nuclear Canadian sub ever even began construction, let alone gettin Continue reading »
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Side stepping the politics of cruelty
Anyone who has spent time in a National Labor Conference will understand the way ideas, propositions, policies and platforms swirl and merge and disappear, only to reappear in a whole other form just hours later, often without anyone quite tracking the process. The most recent Conference held in Brisbane was a study in this form Continue reading »
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In Australia, reality bites back
Australia is fast approaching a reckoning with its past, its present and the state of the nation’s soul. And if the last month is any indication to go by, we will be found wanting. Continue reading »
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Time to change the story on war
Last week we witnessed some extraordinary interventions by two mainstream media mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in pursuit of both headlines and an agenda. The three part “Red Alert” series begins with a paragraph that could have been found in Edward Bernays book, Propaganda: Continue reading »
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Australian charities are struggling with demand: the Coalition will rue turning its back on them (MWM Aug 22, 2020)
The charity sector is struggling in the face of unprecedented demand from those the Coalition refuses to help. There are now fears that many charities won’t survive. But if they go down, a big chunk of Australia’s social safety net will go with them, as will large numbers of jobs. Julie Macken reports. Continue reading »
