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Vol 22 No 19

24 September 2012


 

  • RELIGION

    Negotiating Catholic healthcare moral dilemmas

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 October 2012
    15 Comments

    The nation is the better for policies and funding arrangements that encourage public and private providers of healthcare, including the Churches. The public may need to be patient with Church authorities as they discern appropriate moral responses to new technologies. This is a small price to pay.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drunk tweeting and other social media pitfalls

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 05 October 2012
    2 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drunk tweeting and other social media pitfalls

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 05 October 2012

    'Journalists have long had a reputation for unwinding at the pub after a tough story ... What happens when you combine alcohol consumption, stress, real time and a live publishing platform that's unmediated?' Journalist, academic and 'furious citizen' Julie Posetti discusses the pros and cons of the Twitterisation of journalism.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Economic empire's unethical end

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 October 2012
    1 Comment

    Robert Miller has built an empire that is about to be sucked into the mire by a bad investment. Now he wants to offload it quickly before the purchaser realises anything is amiss. His practical obligations to his family and employees usurp his human obligations to those who become pawns in his efforts to maintain order.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conservative arguments in favour of gay marriage

    • Dustin Halse
    • 04 October 2012
    20 Comments

    Cory Bernadi's recent speech in the Senate linking homosexuality to bestiality illustrated how inverted and confused politics in Australia has become. Gay marriage is not a radical and abstract liberal idea. In fact, the most persuasive arguments in favour of gay marriage are distinctly conservative.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Same sex marriage and the republic

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 October 2012
    20 Comments

    If same sex marriage continues to gain momentum around the Western world then the Australian debate will not go away. But should international interest fade then it probably will in Australia too. Whatever the future of the republic debate in Australia it is not of the same international character and therefore harder to sustain.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A day in the life of a nun

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 03 October 2012
    6 Comments

    The convent has a history of catastrophe at the hands of invaders like the Franks and the Turks, not to mention the earthquake of 1986 and fires of 2007. There are now only two nuns in buildings designed to hold 100. One announces that she would rather someone plunged a dagger in her heart than be forced to leave.

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  • CARTOON

    Alan Jones' apology call

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 03 October 2012

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's pension fund perversion

    • David James
    • 03 October 2012
    7 Comments

    The demise of Gunns, Tasmania's biggest paper and pulp mill, has been greeted as a triumph of environmentalists over business. The saga encompasses much more than that. It poses some deep questions about ownership and accountability in Australia's financial system which are yet to be answered persuasively.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Political shoe (for Julia Gillard)

    • P. S. Cottier
    • 02 October 2012
    1 Comment

    Take long league strides over peasants and amazed cattle ... until the bad girl's red legs are chopped off, stumped, by the same woodcutter who freed the wolf. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fifty shades of rape culture

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 02 October 2012
    35 Comments

    Following the rape and murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne last week, many women admitted they too may have risked the short walk from pub to home in the early hours of the morning. Few men would see it as a risk at all; nor would they understand the 'continuum of threatened violence' women encounter with distressing regularity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Racist massacre in the Dominican pigmentocracy

    • Jeremy Tarbox
    • 01 October 2012
    9 Comments

    A Dominican drivers license specifies skin colour: white, light, dark, almost black or black. 'Black' likely brands the holder as a poor and inferior Haitian. Understanding this pigmentocracy is especially relevant now, on the 75th anniversary of the worst peace time human rights abuse of civilians in the Americas during the 20th century.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Families only a means to an end

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 October 2012
    8 Comments

    Family life  holds no value in itself but is an often fruitful means to a morally good life. There are other means for those who do not marry, such as voluntary work, single-minded dedication to a profession, or caring for ageing parents. Why, then, do the Catholic Bishops, and indeed governments, go to so much trouble to support the family?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fear the politicians of the future

    • Ellena Savage
    • 28 September 2012
    7 Comments

    If my short tenure in university politics gave me anything, it is an appreciation for non-politicians. Not only did Barbara Ramjan's allegations against Tony Abbott not surprise me, the honest brutality of the act sounds preferable to the slow, steady harassment that sustains student politicians these days.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Resurrecting Work Choices

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 28 September 2012
    10 Comments

    While Tony Abbott maintains that Work Choices is dead, Senator Nick Xenophon is advocating a position that adopts one of its central features. It is immoral to hold back wage increases or drive wages down on account of economic circumstances when there are other ways to promote job protection and create employment opportunities.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Curing Kerouac's misogyny

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 September 2012
    2 Comments

    The book is essentially misogynistic. Women are objects of hedonistic possibilities in the same way that drugs are. Even the Kerouac figure Sal's self-deprecating account of failing to impress a virginal lover manages to marginalise the woman in question. The film seeks to rectify this by giving flesh to its female characters.

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  • RELIGION

    Social justice and the 21st century family

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 September 2012
    20 Comments

    In the 2012 Catholic Social Justice Statement on the family, 'the family' is characterised by stable relationships between husband, wife and children. In Australia families of this kind are the exception. Reflection on family needs to consider the factors that create instability and suffering to children in a variety of relationships.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Groundhog Day for refugees

    • Lyn Bender
    • 26 September 2012
    8 Comments

    In March 2002 I spent hours with Afghanis, Iranians, Palestinians and Iraqis on hunger strikes; desperate people who felt they had no power except to use their bodies to convey their message of despair. I am not the only health professional to predict that the resurrected Pacific Solution will create the same destructive circumstances.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    The just world fallacy and the need for empathy

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 26 September 2012
    5 Comments

    Human beings have a bias towards a belief that the world is a fair place in which one's actions have appropriate consequences. This 'just world hypothesis' implies that those who suffer calamity must be at fault. It is the opposite of empathy and poses a serious challenge for those who seek to implement progressive social policies.

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  • CARTOON

    Gillard's Security Council bid

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 26 September 2012
    1 Comment

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Militancy trumps education on Pakistan frontier

    • Farooq Yousaf
    • 25 September 2012
    9 Comments

    With militants firmly holding the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the already low literacy rate of 29 per cent has nosedived to 17 per cent in the region. Religious madaris are perceived as places of affordable education by common rural dwellers, while to the outer world, they remain breeding grounds for militancy. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dodging dogma ninjas

    • Barry Gittins and Matthew Davies
    • 25 September 2012
    1 Comment

    We're strugglin' through the mythos of our parties. We're losin' gospel truths that never rang true. If life prompts metaphysical pilates, then faith is surely meant to stretch, extend you.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tony Abbott's monsters

    • Michael Mullins
    • 24 September 2012
    35 Comments

    The Federal Coalition has taken to making monsters of its own MPs in the hope that their larger than life profiles will translate into electoral success. But with the Cory Bernardi gay marriage bestiality debacle, Tony Abbott might have finally learned the lesson of Mary Shelley's morality tale Frankenstein.

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  • EDUCATION

    Skating solutions to boys' education

    • Tony Thompson
    • 24 September 2012
    10 Comments

    My son goes to a friendly primary school and is making progress. But his handwriting is poor, he hates sitting for long periods, and doesn't understand why the girls are 'better at everything'. He likes sport and art, which involve 'doing stuff'. Schools have been battling with adolescent boys for centuries. Maybe it's time to give some ground.

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