Human Rights
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TSEEN KHOO. What Anzac Day meant for Asian Australians.
This year, just before ANZAC Day, I read a poignant, insightful piece by Nadine Chemali about what new migrants to Australia really thought about Anzac Day. Continue reading »
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RICHARD ACKLAND. Peter Dutton’s power grabs may yet be his undoing
The fate of Amber Rudd offers some hope to Australians who disapprove of Dutton and his methods. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING AND JON STANFORD. Australia’s strategic risks and future defence policy; Part 2: Future defence strategy, capability and submarines
In this second article we discuss the need to develop a defence strategy that involves shifting from a force structure designed for coalition warfare to one optimised for the independent defence of Australia. We focus on the requirement for new submarines, given that these are the assets best suited for the prosecution of asymmetric warfare Continue reading »
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SUSANNE ROBERTS. Hugh Mackay reimagines a more compassionate Australia (Book Review)
Esteemed social researcher Hugh Mackay’s latest book Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society is exquisitely timed. As the daily headlines tell of bank and church scandals and failures in the health, education and housing systems, many of us are asking what went wrong and are increasingly preoccupied with searching for solutions. We Continue reading »
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MARGARET O’CONNOR. Institutional reform following the Royal Commission on child sex abuse is women’s work.
Women – from those who quietly brought pressure on parliamentarians through to the Prime Minister and Governor General – brought about the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Yet the response to the Commission is being handled as if it is all blokes’ business. Continue reading »
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)
We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country Continue reading »
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Australians in WWI didn’t die for Australia. They died for Britain. (Part 1 of 2)
And so, the Monash Centre, for all its good intentions, for all the honour it does the dead, is at heart a centre for forgetting. It leads us to forget that the 62,000 young men who died in world war one died far from their country in service of one distant empire fighting other distant Continue reading »
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GARRY EVERETT. Importance of seeing the ‘big picture’.
Failing to see or accept the big picture is a condition that is currently affecting many organisations in our world, says Garry Everett, and four particular organisations stand out as having significant problems in this regard. Continue reading »
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TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE. Australian business and other organisations persistently fall short on cultural diversity.
Australia is widely celebrated as a multicultural triumph, but any such success remains incomplete. There remains significant under-representation of cultural diversity in the senior leadership of Australian organisations. Our society does not yet appear to be making the most of its diverse talents. Continue reading »
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JIM COOMBS: The “moral crisis” in Cricket is a “beat up” with media frenzy making a mountain out of a molehill.
One would have to assume that all these outraged commentators have never played cricket with anything more substantial than a used tennis ball. For those of us who have played the game with any interest in the techniques and science of the game (alas, I am one such eccentric) know the true facts. The ball Continue reading »
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MICHAEL LIFFMAN. Tribalism, anti-racism, and over-reach
Living, as the world does, with slavery, colonialism, brutal civil conflicts, and the Holocaust still casting the blackest of clouds over us, the principle of ‘anti-racism’ has – rightly – been developed to become an incontestable foundation of our ethics and morality. This is as it should be, and arguably can be seen as one Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. Homelessness, Australia’s disgrace ignored.
The last few days have seen a media preoccupation with relentless attacks on a new federal Labor proposal to eliminate the payment of cash cheques to those who don’t need their dividend imputation credits because they pay no tax. The media has channelled expressions of shock and rage, and accusations of robbery, from Coalition politicians Continue reading »
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JOAN STAPLES. Bill weak on stopping foreign donations, but strong on silencing NGOs.
The current Bill before parliament to reform electoral donations is the most comprehensive attempt I have seen at silencing public advocacy in 30 years. It does not succeed in its supposed aim to restrict foreign donations – an aim that is supported by NGOs. Instead, it is a convoluted, excruciatingly complicated maze that will undoubtedly Continue reading »
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ELIZABETH EVATT. Democracy under challenge.
In their recent book, How Democracies Die, discussed this week on Late Night Live, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, outlined how democracies can be undermined and ultimately destroyed without the violent coup of Pinochet, but by abuse of the system itself. They address the problems of the United States. But we have to be on guard Continue reading »
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NICK SEDDON. Democracy in danger. Or, how to get GetUp.
Proposed amendments to the Electoral Act if enacted will profoundly constrain or shut down political advocacy that is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. Ruddock and the religious freedom review.
In commercial matters religious freedom needs no further protection. There is no case for extending exemptions from existing anti-discrimination measures to the commercial provision of facilities, catering, furniture or entertainment that may play a part in hospitality following a marriage. Such goods and services are not a legal part of the civil marriage contract and should Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. It’s time for a Human Rights Act for Australia -A repost
In Pearls and Irritations recently, Elizabeth Evatt (Why not protect all our rights and freedoms?) called for a Human Rights Act to protect all our rights and freedoms and not just freedom of religion. The issue of freedom of religion is being examined by Phillip Ruddock and his ‘expert panel’. This issue is also being Continue reading »
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MICHAEL MULLINS. What happened to my Australian accent?
I spent the summer of 1983-84 in the Philippines. During this time I fell in love with the Philippines and its people and felt ashamed to be Australian. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Australia Day and all that.
The moral basis of contemporary Australian society is being squeezed dry by political opportunism and contempt for civic virtue among our political leaders. The ignorance those leaders demonstrate about the insult Australia Day has become for many Indigenous people is evidence that Australia has become a morally backward society. Continue reading »
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JERRY ROBERTS. Change the date of the day by all means and change Australia
Let’s change the date of Australia Day, not just for Aboriginal public relations, but to prove that we can do something – anything – to cast off the chains of our pusillanimous politicians and their little mates, the boofhead media commentators. Continue reading »
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CERIDWEN DOVEY. The mapping of indigenous massacres in Australia [New Yorker]
From New York to Cape Town to Sydney, the bronze body doubles of the white men of empire—Columbus, Rhodes, Cook—have lately been pelted with feces, sprayed with graffiti, had their hands painted red. Some have been toppled. The fate of these statues—and those representing white men of a different era, in Charlottesville and elsewhere—has ignited Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Domestic violence, not terrorism, is the big killer in Australia- A REOST from November 10 2017
Compared to other risks, we have little to fear from terrorism. In the last two decades only three people in Australia have died from terrorism. But there is a ‘vividness’ bias in terrorism because it stands out in our minds. Importantly, a lot of politicians, businesses, stand to gain from exaggerating the terrorist threat. It Continue reading »
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STAN GRANT- We ignore our racist past-A REPOST from August 21 2017
I passed by Hyde Park this week in the heart of Sydney and looked again on the statue of Captain James Cook. It has pride of place, a monument to the man who in 1770 claimed this continent for the British crown. Continue reading »
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A Human Rights Bill 2009
As part of our campaign for a national Human Rights Act, a Bill was drafted to ‘respect, protect and promote Human Rights for Australia’. This model Bill formed the core of our group’s submission to the National Human Rights Consultation, chaired by Frank Brennan SJ OA. See following draft of Human Rights Bill 2009. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. A campaign from 2005, for a Human Rights Act for Australia.
In 2005, Susan Ryan, Spencer Zifcak, I and others, in association with New Matilda, launched a campaign for a Human Rights Act for Australia. This campaign is outlined in the following. It formed part of a submission to Frank Brennan SJ who was Chair of the Commonwealth Government, National Human Rights Consultation. As a result Continue reading »
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JUDE McCULLOCH, JANEMAREE MAHER, KATE FITZ-GIBBON AND SANDRA WALKLATE. Finally, police are taking family violence as seriously as terrorism.
Victoria Police recently announced that family violence perpetrators will be treated as seriously as terrorists and murderers. This strategy represents a major milestone in the evolving police approach to family violence. Though family violence results in far more death and injury, terrorism is nonetheless considered Australia’s leading security threat. The Victoria Police strategy represents an opportunity to Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Melbourne’s South Sudanese youth problem and the confection of a crime gang crisis.
That there are groups of disaffected and anti-social youths of Sudanese (and other) origin in Melbourne is not in dispute. What is at issue is the way it is being handled by the yellow press and by right wing politicians. Continue reading »
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MICK PALMER. Australia’s Illicit Drugs Policy – There Really is a better Way A REPOST
It happens time and time again. We are told breathlessly by the media with photos of bags of seized drugs flanked by Border Protection officials and police officers about how successful we are in containing the drug problem.. But is it ‘success’ when despite the new records in drug seizures the drug problem in the Continue reading »
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CHRISTINA HO. Racist reporting still rife in Australian media
Half of all race-related opinion pieces in the Australian mainstream media are likely to contravene industry codes of conduct on racism. Continue reading »
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Hunger and disease haunt Rohingya refugees
‘Sometimes we borrow from neighbors or we starve’ Continue reading »
