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Keywords: Missions

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Searching for the truth about a wartime massacre

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 15 March 2024
    3 Comments

    Two books about a 1942 massacre of Australian nurses were released last year. One is reliable, the other is notable for factual omissions. If we leave something out, are we then guilty of censorship? Alternatively, if our truth-telling offends someone else, what is our justification for so doing?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Identity and attack helicopters

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 22 November 2023

    A recent image of an Israeli soldier with a Pride flag in Gaza's rubble recalls Isabel Fall's controversial story, ‘I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter.’ The story and the photo both highlight how symbols of liberation can be co-opted for conflict, underscoring the need to reclaim these symbols for their original, liberating intent.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Backwards to go forwards

    • Barry Gittins
    • 16 November 2023
    6 Comments

    How should our nation reckon with its colonial history and its lasting impact on contemporary society? From the stark realities of early settlement to the enduring legacies of injustice towards Indigenous peoples, this piece explores what it means for a country to grapple with its identity amidst a backdrop of change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Listen – just listen!

    • Brian McCoy
    • 30 August 2023
    16 Comments

    The Kimberley region stands as a testament to both the enduring spirit of Australia's Aboriginal communities and the shadows of colonisation. As the Referendum looms, the potential for a united Voice beckons, inviting Australia towards a harmonious future.

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  • RELIGION

    Must suppression bring on depression?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 August 2023
    4 Comments

    Despite taking place 250 years ago, the Jesuit Suppression remains a deeply felt experience. Today, as exiles shape headlines, this chapter in Jesuit history poses a resonant question: How does a faith community endure and evolve when its very existence is challenged by the authority it holds sacred?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bridging histories: In conversation with Tony Birch

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 23 June 2023
    1 Comment

    Renowned author and academic Tony Birch is known for his insightful and compelling narrative explorations into societal issues like marginalisation, Aboriginal identity and racial struggles. In conversation with Paul Mitchell, Birch discusses his work, the unique intersection of academia and creative writing, and the profound impact of historical dispossession.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A voice for the voiceless

    • Brian McCoy
    • 19 April 2023
    13 Comments

    Terence Darrell Kelly is not an isolated example of the intergenerational trauma that colonisation has brought to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As Australia grapples with the ongoing effects of colonisation, including the dispossession of land and culture, the need to listen to voices of Indigenous communities becomes increasingly urgent.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The complicated path to saving the world

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 11 April 2023

    The government’s Powering Australia Plan promises renewable energy and net-zero emissions by 2050. However, analysts warn that there is little change in the economic and bureaucratic structures that support the fossil fuel industry. Unless Australia finds a way to prosper sustainably, the country will continue to benefit from emissions while the rest of the world suffers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Path to a Referendum: From Uluru via Garma to Canberra and on to the People

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 August 2022
    2 Comments

    We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.

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  • RELIGION

    Plenary Council fails to embrace Pope Francis’s wider social vision

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 21 June 2022
    3 Comments

    Some 278 Catholic bishops, clergy, religious personnel and lay people will meet as members of an unprecedented Plenary Council during 3-9 July to finalise the resolutions of their first assembly last year. However the May working document ‘Framework for Motions’, despite much worthy content, especially on Indigenous affairs, relies on a narrow notion of mission overly focused on inner-church issues at the expense of the wider social engagement that Francis emphasises.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the name of Kyrill

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2022
    7 Comments

    Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow has received much justified criticism for aligning his Church alongside Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine. If we are to understand how he could think it is right to do so, however, it is helpful to know how he came to be Kyrill. The story of his earlier namesakes illuminate the conduct of the present Patriarch of Moscow. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    After the truths are told

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 03 May 2022
    6 Comments

      The danger is that unless commissions and inquiries are accompanied by other ways of telling other truths they will inadvertently help to shrink that national story into the story of victims who in fact have never been only victims, and of unmentioned perpetrators who in fact have never been only perpetrators. They risk preaching to a more-or-less converted majority and to an implacably unconverted minority.

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