Vol 20 No 16

16 August 2010

AUSTRALIA

Beyond the selfish election
- Andrew Hamilton
- 27 August 2010
33 Comments
The churches, with their tradition of recognising the deeper values in human beings and society, can play an important part in generating a richer vision of Australian society. They'll need to cooperate with other groups who decry the self-interested focus in Australian politics.
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EUREKA STREET TV

Mixed marriage of Indigenous and Christian spirituality
- Peter Kirkwood
- 27 August 2010
2 Comments
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EUREKA STREET TV

Mixed marriage of Indigenous and Christian spirituality
- Peter Kirkwood
- 27 August 2010
With an Aboriginal mother and Irish American Catholic father, Joan Hendriks is a bridge figure between the Indigenous and Catholic worlds. Her life's goal is to bring these two realms into productive engagement. By Peter Kirkwood
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AUSTRALIA

All MPs have Independents envy
- Tony Smith
- 26 August 2010
10 Comments
Since both major parties wasted their chance to secure a clear mandate, the Independents have been treated by the media as opportunists and vengeful egotists. By making Parliament complex, the rise of Independents complicates the lives of political hacks.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Ratings hog Seven kills Cousins doco
- Tim Kroenert
- 26 August 2010
7 Comments
Ben Cousins is no angel, but neither is he a demon; just a man with a problem that he's fought to contain. His story has mirrors in the lives of many people who have battled addiction. Seven's treatment of it borders on exploitative.
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EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

Australia racist? Well, der!
- Bill Collopy
- 25 August 2010
11 Comments
X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we accept its false premise.
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CARTOON

The government we deserve
- Fiona Katauskas
- 25 August 2010
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AUSTRALIA

Guerilla diggers' East Timor debt
- Paul Cleary
- 25 August 2010
3 Comments
Hundreds of Timorese men and boys served alongide Australian fighters in an amazing guerilla campaign throughout 1942 that tied up several thousand Japanese troops while the battle for New Guinea was underway. Australia has made at best half-hearted efforts to acknowledge this debt.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Predator caged
- Grant Fraser
- 24 August 2010
1 Comment
Soundless as snow .. the leopard comes, .. all of his weight .. is in the gold of his predatory eyes ... behind the heavy, protecting glass ... eternally deprived of prey.
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AUSTRALIA

Hung parliament could be the making of Gillard
- Tony Kevin
- 24 August 2010
22 Comments
There was a massive loss of confidence in Labor's policies. The Australian electorate saw through the triviality of what both major parties were offering. Gillard would deserve her party's full support in leading a Labor Government in a hung parliament. This may be the making of her as a great prime minister.
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AUSTRALIA

The election Rudd could have won
- John Warhurst
- 23 August 2010
32 Comments
The result suggests some fascinating questions. Prime among them is whether Labor panicked and threw away this election when it deposed Kevin Rudd and replaced him with Julia Gillard in June. Would Rudd have done better? The answer is probably yes.
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AUSTRALIA

We're to blame for election shocker
- Andrew Hamilton
- 23 August 2010
20 Comments
We are wrong to assume our involvement in the political process ends with the casting of votes. If the experience of a fetid election campaign, of leadership abdicated and of a hung parliament leads us to offer more modest local forms of participation and leadership, all Australians will gain.
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AUSTRALIA

Don't wimp out at the ballot box
- Edwina Byrne
- 20 August 2010
22 Comments
It would be easy to cast a donkey vote or a vote for a minor party and to thus wash your hands of the responsibility for our governance for the next three or so years. In a representative democracy, a vacuous election represents a lazy polity.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

A journey with Indigenous 'in-laws'
- Myrna Tonkinson
- 20 August 2010
The women assemble to sing, dance, tell stories; thus the elders induct younger women into the religious knowledge and rituals that are shared across a wide area. Yuwani Annie's origin story blends a Yanyuwa version with the biblical Adam and Eve story.
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AUSTRALIA

Cheap targets this election hunting season
- Andrew Hamilton
- 19 August 2010
7 Comments
This election campaign has been reminiscent of the Italian hunting season, where it becomes dangerous to go out of doors when so many guns are pointed into the air. Elections are like the shooting season. High fliers are safe. Low fliers are not.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The morality of violent films
- Tim Kroenert
- 19 August 2010
7 Comments
'Anyone watching this saying it in some way supports or encourages violence is watching the film in a very perverse way.' UK filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has a point, but one must wonder what scenes of brutal violence against women contribute to the betterment of the public imagination.
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EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

Teaching children to read the Aboriginal world
- Nigel Pearn
- 18 August 2010
3 Comments
The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.
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AUSTRALIA

Inside Canberra's Catholic lobby
- Frank Quinlan
- 18 August 2010
11 Comments
This election we consider a PM who is doubted because of her atheism, an Opposition Leader who is doubted for being too 'Catholic', and the Greens who are doubted as being anti-Christian. Church social agencies have been involved in important issues with each of these groups.
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CARTOON

Tony's boat-phone
- Fiona Katauskas
- 18 August 2010
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Election week poems
- Mark Carkeet and Graham Kershaw
- 17 August 2010
They're elderly, unstable, probably a couple, their cheerful eyes sprung like steel against the cold, their hands arthritic, resigned; their grip carrying no conviction. Concentration lapses. People fail to see. This has never been a Labour town.
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AUSTRALIA

Abbott and Santamaria's undemocratic Catholicism
- Paul Collins
- 17 August 2010
26 Comments
Tony Abbott is wrong to suggest that B. A. Santamaria made Australian Catholicism 'more intellectual'. Santamaria embraced a form of doctrinaire conformism that is the death of thoughtful commitment. It would be worrying if this kind of integralist Catholicism infected contemporary public life.
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INTERNATIONAL

Tales from the kingdom of force
- Ben Coleridge
- 16 August 2010
2 Comments
Flicking the frisbee with a well practised arm, Jimmy told me about his former home in Sri Lanka. 'Last time I was there, I was carrying bodies to their graves in my arms, even the bodies of friends.' Homer's Iliad is a poem of force in which, at all times, the human spirit is shown modified by its relations with force.
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AUSTRALIA

Technophobe Tony's broadband back-step
- Michael Mullins
- 16 August 2010
20 Comments
Broadband policy is the only major point of difference between Labor and the Coalition in the lead up to this Saturday's federal election. The minimalist approach mooted by the Coalition fails to appreciate fast broadband's nation-building potential.
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Vol 20 No 16