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14 February 2011
Asylum seekers have also always needed help to make their journey to safety. Our people smugglers may be seen as distinctive in that they charge high prices for their troubles. But asylum seekers have always relied on people who exploited them.
Renowned immigration lawyer Kerry Murphy explains how changes in government refugee policy are strongly coloured by community fears about migrants and refugees.
Gallipolli was a disaster and a relatively minor conflict, but it is upon such 'minor' conflicts that Empires are built. These songs go to the heart of a contradictory dilemma: the love of country on the one hand and the ugly extremes of patriotism on the other.
Unreasonable hope is when we think God will save Christchurch, or that anything is going to be the same again. Reasonable hope means we become realistic, sensible and moderate, directing our attention to what is within reach.
In trying to convince my atheist goddaughter to embrace her Catholic schooling, I found an unlikely role model. I'd never thought of Greer as a chip off the old block of a convent education. Now I realised that that's exactly what she was.
SIEV X survivor Amal Basry died of cancer in 2006. By then she had received her permanent visa and was able to return to see her children, grandchildren and father in the Middle East one more time. When she returned, she expressed a wish to be buried in Australian soil.
I didn't have much hope. Soon I would be 50. Love was fitful and glorious and painful. There will always be thugs in caves murdering children and crowing. But we are capable of creating wonders beyond our imagination every second of the game.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's speech on multiculturalism could be seen as laying the ground for a formal apology for the White Australia Policy. The parallels with the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations and the 2009 Apology to the Forgotten Australians are striking.
In an extraordinary move, the Vatican has denied approval for Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight to stand for a second term. There is outrage in the Confederation, and with good cause.
In earlier generations, Australian priests were treated as tribal heroes. But the sexual abuse scandals and their inept management by Church authorities have dealt lethal blows. The paradigm is broken and needs a full review.
Like tweeters, buskers can command a certain amount of attention. They can sing in tune or flat, hit the note or miss it, just as bloggers can turn a stylish paragraph or churn out self regarding rubbish, and tweeters can report every breath they draw.
Despite extensive welfare activities, Catholics have made only a modest contribution to public debate about the economic foundations of family life. Yet the Australian institution that is most associated in the public mind with 'pro-family' policies is the Catholic Church.
Becca is appalled by the insufficiency of religious platitudes. Howie's emotions are unbridled and barely tempered, emerging as a lunging stallion roar. Separated by the obelisk of grief for their dead son, they seek solace individually.
Even in death asylum seekers open a faultline in Australian culture and society. The two Sydney funerals for the asylum seekers who died trying to reach Christmas Island raise larger questions that deserve comment.
When I first moved to Greece, my language skills were reduced to those of a three-year-old. The pain of this was exacerbated when six months after our arrival, my six and eight-year-old sons started speaking to each other in Greek.
A heavenly choir .. some individual faces at the front .. and all the rest in the careful fuzz of distance .. computer-generated to a full infinity
One website proudly proclaimed that Egypt's protests were a safe space for women. In fact women were on the frontline. They were part of a long history of women who have struggled for recognition of their human rights in Egypt.
Rudd's cold rebuttal of Assange's mother's appeal to him is most unworthy. To say Assange has been offered consular assistance does not answer her. David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib received similarly worthless consular access.
Three years since Kevin Rudd's National Apology to the Stolen Generations, discriminatory aspects of John Howard's Intervention are still in place. Let's hope that by the fourth anniversary, we are no longer singling out Aborigines for such 'special treatment'.
St Valentine's Day is always painful for frustrated lovers. It reminds them of what they want but have not got, and may never get. We need to cancel St Valentine's Day and find a 'real' saint, one whom we know dealt effectively with the demons that were getting in the way of his or her object of desire.