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Vol 20 No 3

15 February 2010


 

  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Making more room for women in the Church

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 26 February 2010
    19 Comments

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  • EDUCATION

    Gillard student numbers don't add up

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 February 2010
    5 Comments

    Many teachers argue that NAPLAN test results should be used to improve the standard of education, and not a lever for market-based competition. These critics are called secretive and defensive. Perhaps this is how Rudd and Gillard want them to be seen.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Getting high on war

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 25 February 2010
    1 Comment

    Staff Sergeant William James is responsible for disarming bombs laid by insurgents in the sandy streets of Baghdad. For him, the stress of the job is a veritable amphetamine, and he's well and truly hooked.

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  • RELIGION

    Liturgical payback

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 25 February 2010
    33 Comments

    It's unlikely people will flock back to mass simply because a new translation is in place. Far more likely is that, as with the change at Vatican II, there will be a disaffected minority who cease to practice because their experience of the sacred has been violated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Kevin Rudd's Iran problem

    • Shahram Akbarzadeh
    • 24 February 2010
    8 Comments

    Australia is committed to nuclear non-proliferation, and the 'Iran problem' offers a chance for the Government to demonstrate its commitment to its ally, the US. This is tricky as Rudd came to office on a wave of anti-war backlash against Australia's commitment to the Iraq war.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stark raven Barnaby Joyce

    • Brian Matthews
    • 24 February 2010
    4 Comments

    In Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, pet raven Grip is given to tantalising but incomprehensible pronouncements, fluttering annoyingly around the edges of conversational gatherings, and launching sudden, inexplicable attacks.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dream of me

    • Graeme Kinross-Smith
    • 23 February 2010
    4 Comments

    when I get there driving through the night rain's sheen .. I come on myself already asleep in the bed .. mouth ajar head resting on one elbow .. drawing off gloves I bend down .. to look more closely. I see my face ...

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Boys with knives

    • Moira Rayner
    • 23 February 2010
    12 Comments

    Adolescence is a time of violent, primitive emotions, of play-acting and the most intensely lived reality. Boys' passionate assertion of relative worth is developmentally necessary. That child's place in the society of his peers is, for that moment, a matter of life and death.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Media's poor need a leg up too

    • Michael Mullins
    • 22 February 2010
    2 Comments

    As the $250 million 'gift' to free to air TV networks was announced, we heard that the Communications Minister had been fraternising in exclusive locations with Australia's richest media moguls. Perhaps Minister Conroy should now play pool at the local pub with a community radio station manager. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Misdiagnosing Benjamin

    • Barry Gittins
    • 22 February 2010
    17 Comments

    The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders may merge Asperger's into the broader 'autism spectrum disorder'. The father of a misdiagnosed two-year-old boy reveals the emotional and social implications of mental illness pigeonholing.

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  • RELIGION

    Tony Abbott, the poor and Jesus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 February 2010
    30 Comments

    Expressing scepticism about the value of politicians committing to healing social problems, Abbott quoted Jesus: 'The poor you have with you always'. This phrase, used here to diffuse the claim the poor make on us, is much richer in meaning when read in context.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Indigenous voices examine the Intervention

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 19 February 2010
    3 Comments

    In 2009, the Federal Government embarked on consultations with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory about the Northern Territory Emergency Response, commonly referred to as the Intervention. This is what they said.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mr Darcy's suicide notes

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 February 2010
    2 Comments

    That scene in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice where Mr Darcy emerges from a cathartic swim in his pond still makes many women swoon. Colin Firth's enduring sex appeal is channeled into his latest character, a gay university professor who has decided to commit suicide.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Real stories betray Abbott's homelessness untruth

    • John Falzon
    • 18 February 2010
    22 Comments

    Everyone has a story, and they don't happen in limbo. Tony Abbott's comments about homelessness mimic the paternalistic attitude pushed by Margaret Thatcher, where the focus is on supposed individual deficits rather than structural deficits.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Immersed in India's light and shade

    • Anne Doyle
    • 17 February 2010
    3 Comments

    Before long we come upon an open stone building — the meeting room. We enter to find 60 weathered women seated on mats on the dirt floor. Their saris fill the enclosure with colour. Their faces tell the poignant stories of their lives.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Legacy of a whingeing bogan

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 17 February 2010
    14 Comments

    It's official: Pauline Hanson the whingeing bogan will soon become a whingeing Pom. She may not remain in Australia in body, but her spirit will stay with us for decades. Our politics, media and public discourse have been infected by Hansonite thinking.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Foodies savour the smell of rich people

    • Georgina Laidlaw
    • 16 February 2010
    1 Comment

    Despite damnation, bombs and climate change, the truffle continues to prove that peasants can eat like kings — just not in Australia where, priced at up to $3500 a kilo, it has been typecast as an indulgence of the wealthy.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Today I desire less debris

    • Marlene Marburg
    • 16 February 2010

    It is harder to write poetry .. when you are rich ... People in Haiti are dead .. dying, grieving, .. starving and hunting for loved ones, .. and if they have the energy .. looting the few things left. .. Do I really believe .. that mine is yours, my friend?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Winter Games cool Aussies' long hot summer

    • Michael Visontay
    • 15 February 2010
    1 Comment

    The Winter Olympics make for beautiful television — skiers hurtling down the slopes, snowboarders doing somersaults in the air, skaters dancing on the ice. Yet they occupy an unusual place in our imagination. They feel more like recreation than competitive sport.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rudd's apology was also our apology

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 February 2010
    6 Comments

    On the second anniversary of the apology to Indigenous Australians, we look instinctively to the Prime Minister to tell us what he's done. He presented his report card to Parliament on Thursday. But he's not the only one who needs to account.

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