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  • australia

    Building constitutional bridges: In conversation with Frank Brennan

    • David Halliday
    • 28 June 2024

    It's been eight months since the Voice referendum, and people are starting to grapple with what its defeat means for Australia. There are few voices in Australia as qualified to conduct a postmortem of the outcome of the Voice referendum campaign as Frank Brennan. We examine what lessons can be learned and crucually, whether there’s reason for hope for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

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  • australia

    For better laws on family violence, we need better data

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 June 2024

    In addressing family violence, the immediate emphasis must be to protect women and children. But if the only response is harsher penalties in addressing any social problem, it is bound to be ineffective. Regulation depends also on understanding why people are drawn to behave badly and how the culture that supports it can be changed.

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  • australia

    Sports betting is ruining more than our sports

    • Tim Costello
    • 26 June 2024

    Gambling is now so entrenched in the AFL and NFL it is changing the way people, especially young people, follow sport. With former AFL chief Gillon McLachlan set to become CEO at Tabcorp, we should consider the profound impact of gambling on Australian society.

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  • arts and culture

    My father's poetry: The unpublished poems of Bruce Dawe

    • Jamie Dawe, Bruce Dawe
    • 28 June 2024

    These unpublished treasures of my father’s are sure to strike a chord amongst those readers whose hearts wander among the more hidden byways, as I have discovered within myself.

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  • arts and culture

    Can your favourite authors lose their allure?

    • Michele Frankeni
    • 24 June 2024

    I’m not sure if it’s age, personal experience or the way the world has changed but some favourite authors no longer have the same attraction they did 30 years ago. To the extent where I find that some of my favourite books now belong to a past self.

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  • australia

    Uncle George’s war

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 21 June 2024

    Most soldiers don’t like to talk about what they’ve been through, the things they’ve had to see; the things they’ve had to do. Uncle George was more willing to talk as he got older and more willing to be coaxed by a crowd of adoring nieces. But there were some things he'd never say. And the war never went away from him.

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  • Joycepoem

    • Peter Steele
    • 16 June 2024

      'From window and doorface painted in carnival, and / your foxing spirit here for a term / becoming again and again the flambeau it carries, / dear dirty Dublin a thing of fire.' A poem recollecting visits to the Jesuit-run Belvedere College, in the north of Dublin, where James Joyce completed most of his secondary schooling. (From 2007)

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  • Autumn's parting prayer

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 06 June 2024

    The chill of winter is now upon us. It is said that landscape is a defining factor in how a people have developed and how their behaviour is formed and modified. So too it is for the season. So thank you, autumn.

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  • Elegy for Peter Porter

    • John Kinsella
    • 05 June 2024

    An elegy doesn’t need to be written straight after a death... and maybe one’s own death catches up before the obituary we write is published. It might be something like re-arranging modernism into structurally sound lines, or discussing the context of metaphors in poems about London and friendship.

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  • Numbers of war and peace

    • Sergey Maidukov Sr.
    • 20 June 2024

    Unlike the initial days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when thousands eagerly gathered at recruitment centers, the army now faces difficulties in enlisting new soldiers as the troops continue to endure ongoing hardship. 

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  • Pandering with pandas: Australia-China relations turn warm and fuzzy

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 19 June 2024

    In a significant thaw in Sino-Australian relations, Premier Li Qiang's visit to Canberra brought strategic agreements on education, climate change, and trade, and the promise of new pandas for Adelaide Zoo. Prime Minister Albanese emphasised cooperation and dialogue over confrontation, contrasting with the hawkish rhetoric of domestic critics.

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  • Poland and the problem of borders

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 06 June 2024

    The Prime Minister of Poland announced a $2.5 billion plan to fortify borders with Russian Kaliningrad and Belarus,  highlighting the ongoing struggle for stability and security in a continent preparing for a future of conflict.  

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  • What does it mean to be complicit?

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 27 June 2024

    To be complicit, must you share the same intent? If one says nothing, does nothing, does this signify complicity? Is there then such a thing as an innocent bystander? 

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  • The problem with CEO pay rises

    • Joe Zabar
    • 25 June 2024

    For decades, unchecked corporate power and policy failures have driven up Australia's cost of living, leaving many Australians struggling. As corporate interests dominate, CEO pay increases dramatically while wages stagnate, and inflation rises. This influence of corporate Australia has eroded economic safeguards, dismantling the guardrails that once protected the common good.

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  • Comic from detention illustrates lives unseen

    • Danielle Terceiro
    • 18 June 2024

    In Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System (2021), artist Safdar Ahmed shares the harrowing stories of asylum seekers through comic art. He vividly depicts their plight by incorporating artwork from a drawing group he started at Villawood Detention Centre. 

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  • Women deacons: A closed book?

    • Bill Uren
    • 11 June 2024

    In a 60 Minutes interview, Pope Francis was asked whether there would ever be the prospect within the Catholic Church of a woman being ordained as a deacon. The Pope’s reply was a blunt ‘No’. This negative response came as a surprise to many Vatican watchers. 

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  • Painful times for Church reformers

    • John Warhurst
    • 29 May 2024

    We are now witnessing a changed dynamic within the movement for church reform. The balance within its component parts has changed towards a more pessimistic view. A minority is still hopeful; a few even remain optimistic, but most are struggling.

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  • Pope against the machine

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 May 2024

    When Pope Francis delivered a message for the World Day of Social Communications, he focused on AI. The pope posed a wide range of questions including how to regulate its development and use in order to avoid the manipulation of truth and the inevitable centralisation of wealth and power.

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