Vol 22 No 15

30 July 2012

RELIGION

Malaysia solution is not there yet
- Frank Brennan
- 10 August 2012
9 Comments
Next week Parliament reconvenes; meanwhile the boats keep coming. Chris Bowen will be armed with a report from an expert panel that has been hearing from the community. We're still awaiting an answer on unaccompanied minors under the Malaysia solution. Until one is provided no one in good conscience can give it the tick.
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EUREKA STREET TV

Studying the health needs of refugees
- Peter Kirkwood
- 10 August 2012
2 Comments
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EUREKA STREET TV

Studying the health needs of refugees
- Peter Kirkwood
- 10 August 2012
'We act as if we are historically as well as geographically isolated, with no responsibilities for those who seek our assistance.' For 20 years Deborah Zion has researched ethical issues concerning vulnerable populations. Her interest began with her own family, Jews from Poland who sought refuge in Australia before World War II.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Aboriginal voices silence Vietnamese war stories
- Tim Kroenert
- 09 August 2012
2 Comments
The anti-American rhetoric is direct and effective, the phrase AMERICAN WAR OF AGGRESSION a recurring, pulsating slur. Yet who would deny it, faced with this photographic account of Vietnamese suffering? There are at least two versions of any war, and this is theirs. But there are others.
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AUSTRALIA

Bashing Queensland's revolting gay panic laws
- Moira Rayner
- 09 August 2012
16 Comments
My dad had just picked me up from the law library when we heard the screams. A chunky boy raced past, shirt tail flying, crying. Then I heard shouting, yelping and laughing, and three young men flew past in pursuit. This was to be my first experience of gay-bashing, and of the unofficial law-enforcement view of it.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Robert Hughes, the Australian exile who never left
- Binoy Kampmark
- 09 August 2012
3 Comments
Hughes was part of that movement of Australian artists and intellectuals — Germaine Greer and Clive James among them — who fled to Europe in the 1960s. Yet he was unable to escape the antipodean orbit he found arid and constricting. Australian reference points followed his pen with nagging persistence, a permanent shadowing.
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CARTOON

And in the Preferred Prime Minister event...
- Fiona Katauskas
- 08 August 2012
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Farewell to the concierge of Pitt Street
- Kerry Murphy
- 08 August 2012
24 Comments
Yassin made sure the bins were out for the garbage collectors, and that people had parking tickets on their cars in case the rangers passed by. He looked after the area so well that we nicknamed him 'the concierge'. Last Monday a security guard found him lying unconscious and without a pulse.
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AUSTRALIA

Why Fair Work works well
- Luke Williams
- 08 August 2012
4 Comments
A major review into the Fair Work Act says the nation's workplace laws are 'working well'. Industry response has been predictable, uncompromising and even dishonest. The question we should ask is: do the majority of Australians (not just bosses) think we have a fair system which rewards hard work and productivity?
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Olympics silver whining
- Various
- 07 August 2012
Our species believes it progresses without limitation. We shout when a swimmer wins silver, 'That's no inspiration'. As humans pound forward, no 'burden of care' limitation ... We deserve only winners, our species the sole inspiration.
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AUSTRALIA

Perils of the Greens' moral vanity
- John Warhurst
- 07 August 2012
13 Comments
The Greens have been accused of self-righteousness leading to an unwillingness to compromise. Yet the most inflexible party in the current parliament has been the Coalition, led by Tony 'Mr No' Abbott. Getting the balance right between flexibility and maintaining what you stand for is an important lesson for all political parties in parliament.
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AUSTRALIA

Australia and other arms rogues
- Binoy Kampmark
- 06 August 2012
4 Comments
A long-standing principle of arms control is that some regimes deserve lethal weapons, and others do not. But who is or is not a desirable dealer is often an open question. Australia adds to the confusion: one Brisbane weapon-maker's claim to fame is the creation of an electronic gun capable of firing a million bullets a minute.
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AUSTRALIA

The Olympics and business world need to grow up
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 August 2012
9 Comments
The Olympic Games see many thousands of mainly young athletes from all around the world competing for a hundred or so medals. So the point of the exercise can't be to win. It is to lose. Or rather the Games are a school for learning how to lose and so grow in humanity.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Cultural snobbery and Wayne Swan's Springsteen mania
- Ellena Savage
- 03 August 2012
6 Comments
In Australia, land of the cultural cringe, the social elite mainly consume middle- and low-brow culture: mainstream cinema, best-sellers, and Bruce Springsteen, for example. Swan's admiration of Springsteen is positive in its belief in the legitimacy of mainstream taste, which is dictated more democratically than highbrow taste.
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AUSTRALIA

Hope beyond disability support flip-flopping
- Moira Byrne Garton
- 03 August 2012
2 Comments
Disability policy is no longer a short-term issue for political point-scoring, it is in the middle of the public policy sphere. While it is heartening that there is general consensus between political parties on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, some state premiers' bickering over funding has fuelled the distress of affected people.
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RELIGION

Why I'm still a Catholic
- Geraldine Doogue
- 03 August 2012
94 Comments
I've come to believe that the world beyond the institutional Church is kinder, gentler, full of more conscientious ethics, values and care for others; that the secular world in which lay people live is more functional and more ready to conscience-examine than the institutional Church. Why then am I still a Catholic?
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RELIGION

Confidentiality in the confessional and psychiatrist's rooms
- Andrew Hamilton
- 02 August 2012
19 Comments
The news that Aurora accused James Holmes had sought psychiatric help may broaden the Australian discussion of the secrecy of confession. The exemption of certain privileged conversations from the duty of disclosure may be justified on the grounds of the public good.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Drowning rats of Wall Street
- Tim Kroenert
- 02 August 2012
Eric Packer is 'the one per cent', who stoically discusses economics with his chief advisor even as an anti-capitalist protest broils outside his limousine; Occupy reimagined as animal anarchy, with protestors yielding spray-paint and dead rats; 'the 99 per cent' of the besieged city raging to reassert their worth.
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AUSTRALIA

What's the point of the Olympics?
- Fatima Measham
- 01 August 2012
16 Comments
The games are an escapist spectacle, where the flags of Iran, Palestine and Syria flutter without irony alongside those of the US, Israel and Turkey, and delegates from Spain and Greece wave as if their nation's economies have not fractured the Eurozone. The dissonance between the games and reality has become hard to ignore.
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CARTOON

Gillard's games
- Fiona Katauskas
- 01 August 2012
1 Comment
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AUSTRALIA

The opposite of Australian swimming hubris
- John Honner
- 01 August 2012
10 Comments
The Spit Baths consist of two swimming areas bounded by boardwalks built on piles sunk into Middle Harbour. At low tide there is barely enough water to swim in. Olympic medallist John Devitt does time trials in just a few feet of water. There is no black line on a sterile tiled floor, just sand and seaweed.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Canary in a nursing home
- Louise McKenna
- 31 July 2012
3 Comments
At times the music holds him still, and a jonquil light beams through two pinholes in his brain, singing of a caged soul.
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AUSTRALIA

Hope for haemorrhaging Zimbabwe
- Chris Chatteris
- 31 July 2012
3 Comments
For the international community, including Australia, it is devilishly difficult to find the most helpful stance to take with the present regime in Zimbabwe. It is naive, however, to simply assume that things will come right once Mugabe has died. The fact is that things could get worse once he is off the scene.
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MEDIA

On media and massacres
- Lyn Bender
- 30 July 2012
3 Comments
Media and lone protagonists who commit Colorado-style mass murder have common traits. They seek to enthrall, send a message and rise above the pack. Many experts agree that dramatic, hysterical publicising of the perpetrator and his crime can feed the so called copycat compulsion.
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AUSTRALIA

Olympic torch should shine on athletes not nations
- Michael Mullins
- 30 July 2012
14 Comments
Nationalism is the scourge of the modern Olympics. We slide too easily from speaking of 'how our athletes are doing' to 'how we are doing'. We should consider discontinuing national anthems and medal tallies and even introduce a fixed host city.
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Vol 22 No 15