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Vol 27 No 19

25 September 2017


 

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Voting yes to black and gay rights

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 06 October 2017
    3 Comments

    One of the first votes I ever cast was the one in which I got to help decide whether a marginalised group of people should have the same rights as me. It was March 1992. I was a young, white, enfranchised South African working as a journalist. The referendum was one of the methodical steps taken by F. W. de Klerk in the dismantling of apartheid.

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  • RELIGION

    Please treasure marriage

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 05 October 2017
    21 Comments

    On the one hand, one could look at the campaign for marriage equality and feel that it's refreshing that a section of society wants marriage to be affirmed and made more available. But what are people really going to be voting on when they make their decision in the postal survey?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What is identity politics really?

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 04 October 2017
    6 Comments

    The confusion around the term 'identity politics', and its frequent misuse across the political spectrum, sees it regarded with suspicion and contempt, as both conservatives and the traditional left use it as a slur to dismiss any discussions of racism and sexism.

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  • RELIGION

    Notes from India's margins

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 October 2017
    9 Comments

    A Jesuit priest who has worked for over 30 years in India with the poorest villagers, Tony Herbert grapples with three questions: what to make of poverty, what happens when you commit yourself to people who are indigent, and how, in living, the three aspects of poverty - religious poverty, material poverty and its injustices, and personal emptiness - come together. He builds his reflections around encounters with villagers on his own journey.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ghosts of letters past

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 03 October 2017
    4 Comments

    Conscientious friends have recently sent me bundles of the letters I wrote them decades before. I found myself strangely reluctant to look at them, or even loose the letters from their envelopes. The longer I procrastinated, the more I asked myself why I was doing so, and concluded that memory is another form of haunting: those letters are home to ghosts.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The violence in making America great again

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 October 2017
    11 Comments

    Terrorism has its loaded associations, a distinct demonology. To suggest that a US citizen might be a terrorist hardly accords with the project of Making America Great Again. Paddock was not a Muslim, which would have been a useful alibi for the restrictive policy on arrivals from specific Islamic countries.

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  • CARTOON

    Sticking to their guns

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 03 October 2017

    This week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • CARTOON

    Dying to leave

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 03 October 2017

    This week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cloud meditations

    • Wally Swist
    • 02 October 2017
    2 Comments

    Even when I was a child, I had a distinct intuition that I had lived previous lives in which I was trying to enlighten others around me. I find most people are not receptive.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The increasing relevance of our Asian Australian cohorts

    • Tseen Khoo and Jen Kwok
    • 02 October 2017
    5 Comments

    Our national population is more diverse than ever, particularly when it comes to those of Asian Australian heritage. Just how diverse is something we need to examine more closely if we are to develop a more inclusive, welcoming society.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Access to housing isn't a reward it's a human right

    • Rachel Kurzyp
    • 29 September 2017
    10 Comments

    History tells us that we won't end homelessness in Australia by building more crisis accommodation, and it's clear we can't rely on the private market to fill the growing housing gap. We've known since 1988 that social housing plays a crucial role in reducing homelessness. So what's stopping us from investing in social housing and replicating the success we've seen in countries like Finland?

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  • RELIGION

    'Seamless garment' extends to care for older Australians

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 September 2017
    6 Comments

    Discussion of ageing is often confined to practical matters. Deeper questions of why older people matter and of what value a good society should put on them are either answered in slogans or not at all.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Courting women's and gay rights

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 September 2017
    2 Comments

    The showdown between Bill Jean King and self-styled 'chauvinist pig' Bobby Riggs came at a time when King and other women tennis pros were protesting against unequal pay, and while King herself was coming to terms with her identity as a gay woman. A film about the match and its context should have plenty to say to present day socio-politics of sexuality and gender. But this one suffers from an identity crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Paternalism is no answer to disadvantage

    • Kate Galloway
    • 26 September 2017
    9 Comments

    The Senate is currently inquiring into the Cashless Debit Card Bill that will further expand the income management program. Welfare is a redistributive mechanism that supports the dignity and self-determination of the individual. In tying conditions to payments government is denying the self-determination of welfare recipients, counter to the very purpose of welfare.

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  • CARTOON

    Political incorrectness gone mad

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 26 September 2017
    1 Comment

    This week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • MEDIA

    Is Google and Facebook's imitation game doomed?

    • David James
    • 26 September 2017
    3 Comments

    There are very few examples of companies that have been able to genuinely change when confronted with new circumstances. It looks increasingly that Facebook and Google are approaching this situation. The challenge is likely to come from some quarter that is new and surprising, just as the demolition of conventional media came from companies that could have barely been imagined 20 years ago.

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  • RELIGION

    The Catholic option for 'yes' or 'no'

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 September 2017
    125 Comments

    For many Catholic voters, this has been a difficult issue because for the first time in their lives they have found themselves in the same position which our politicians find themselves every time they have to vote on contested moral and political questions in parliament. They don't find themselves getting all that much help from official church declarations. This is no criticism of our bishops. They are the custodians of a tradition which has been somewhat skewed on this issue for a long time.

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  • RELIGION

    Finding grace amid difference of marriage equality opinion

    • Julie Perrin
    • 25 September 2017
    23 Comments

    Several years into my time as school chaplain, a journalist asked for my opinion in relation to the taboos long held by Christians regarding homosexuality. I knew my views would be regarded as a betrayal by some of the parents and I put a call through to the gentle-fierce man. I did not want to unravel the remarkable friendship we had built, but neither did I want to remain silent on this issue. When I explained the dilemma, he said something I have never forgotten.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Refugee rift piques PNG's anti Australian sentiment

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 22 September 2017
    8 Comments

    One senior development consultant, an Australian with decades of experience in the region, told me they've never seen such significant anti-Australia sentiment in PNG public discourse. This makes sense. A former colony of Australia, PNG grapples with social problems on a scale unknown to our prosperous country. Why should they now have to also absorb the costs of resettling refugees who sought asylum in Australia?

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  • RELIGION

    How forced migration defined Francis' papacy

    • David Holdcroft
    • 22 September 2017
    8 Comments

    Francis was elected on his perceived ability to address the need for reform of a Roman Curia increasingly beset by paralysis, inefficiency and scandal. It is almost in parenthesis that we note his pontificate coinciding with the rise of numbers of forced migrants to historically unprecedented post-war levels both in Europe and around the globe. This presented Francis with a unique opportunity to develop and demonstrate his vision for a renewed Church, repositioned in and for a globalised world.

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  • RELIGION

    Euthanasia bill could put vulnerable Victorians at risk

    • Hoa Dinh
    • 22 September 2017
    22 Comments

    Euthanasia legislation would lead to further coercion against vulnerable persons in society: the elderly and people with disability. Once voluntary suicide is legalised, to continue living becomes a choice that people will have to justify to themselves, their family, and society. It is especially the case for persons who have to depend on the assistance of others: the elderly, and people with disability.

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