Vol 22 No 5

12 March 2012

EUREKA STREET TV

Lifting lay leaders
- Peter Kirkwood
- 23 March 2012
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AUSTRALIA

The fall and fall of Queensland Labor
- Scott Prasser
- 23 March 2012
9 Comments
Tomorrow, Labor will be swept from office in Queensland. The resounding defeat is not easy to explain. While there have been many policy debacles and scandals under Labor, the Queensland government has not resembled the shame of its New South Wales counterpart prior to its defeat last year.
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AUSTRALIA

Memories of two kings of Tonga
- Alan Gill
- 23 March 2012
2 Comments
There is a story that the king, having learned surfing at Bondi, introduced the sport to Tonga. I asked if he was ever fearful of sharks. 'There is nothing to fear,' he said. 'Look them straight in the eye like this!' At which he squared his shoulders in a demonstration of regal might which I shall never forget.
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EUREKA STREET TV

Lifting lay leaders
- Peter Kirkwood
- 23 March 2012
1 Comment
'Research shows Catholics value the role of their priests and their bishops even when they disagree with them. They have a sense that all of us together are the Church.' Lay theologian Zeni Fox embodies the vast changes in the role of the laity that have occurred since Vatican II.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Investment bankers and other monsters
- Tim Kroenert
- 22 March 2012
1 Comment
The action takes place in 2008 on the eve of the GFC, at an investment bank loosely modelled on Lehman Bros. The CEO is monstrous; a kind of sinewy bishop to capitalism, gaunt and vicious. Yet even the most principled characters are shown to compromise to varying degrees in the name of self-interest.
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RELIGION

Conversations with Rowan Williams
- Andrew McGowan
- 22 March 2012
9 Comments
When he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he brought with him the hopes of liberal Anglicans and the scrutiny of conservatives, as he appeared likely to lead the Anglican Church further towards acceptance of progressive views. His success or failure would have to be about conversation, not about decree.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Stynes a living breach of the rules
- Andrew Hamilton
- 21 March 2012
11 Comments
He was a notorious transgressor on the football field, and the last years of his life were a sustained transgression. Terminal sickness has its own code. It is normally handled and propitiated by silence. Jim Stynes seemed to do it a different way.
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CARTOON

Labor Queensland on the brink
- Fiona Katauskas
- 21 March 2012
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AUSTRALIA

Jose Ramos-Horta's Ian Thorpe moment
- Pat Walsh
- 20 March 2012
11 Comments
East Timor is living far too dangerously by dumping its incumbent president Jose Ramos-Horta in last weekend's election. It remains to be seen whether Ramos-Horta will continue in public life or retire, but there's no doubt the nation would do well to use his vast experience as an elder statesman.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Prodigal son's shoeless stroll
- Mark Austin
- 20 March 2012
2 Comments
A drink from the sole is more refreshing than any bottled river. I felt the cushion of grass. It did not exclude, but wrapped its spines around me, tickled my dying ankles to rattle, greasing the bearings of my toes.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Banning Dante's Divine Comedy is a human tragedy
- Benedict Coleridge
- 19 March 2012
17 Comments
The 17th century Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi's Book of Travels describes Christians as pigs for slaughter. Yet its beautifully imagined world is open to Christian readers who can forgive the comparison. In the same way Dante has much to offer beyond derogatory depictions of gays, Jews and Muslims.
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AUSTRALIA

Big media takes a leaf out of big tobacco
- Michael Mullins
- 19 March 2012
5 Comments
Media bosses believe self-regulation is compatible with protecting the interests of ordinary Australians. It's akin to allowing big tobacco to specify the size of health warnings on cigarette packs.
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AUSTRALIA

Social justice arguments against dismissal regulation
- Paul Oslington
- 19 March 2012
6 Comments
A subtle effect of dismissal regulation is that it penalises workers who are risky for employers, such as those returning to work after a break to rear children, those with a disability, or from particular racial groups. The most vulnerable in the labour market miss out as employers lean towards 'safe' workers.
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EDUCATION

Better results from a classless education system
- Michael Furtado
- 16 March 2012
15 Comments
Given that Catholic and independent schools tend to produce better results than government schools, one would expect to be able to demonstrate that the non-government sector adds more value to a student's education. The evidence does not bear this out.
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INTERNATIONAL

Iraq's sexual cleansing
- Ellena Savage
- 16 March 2012
In high school, I'd hack my hair into asymmetrical experiments, dye it impossible colours, and layer myself with kitsch op-shop garments. I was another precocious teenager who wore her individuality on the outside. Right now in Iraq, teenagers like I was are being murdered as 'homosexuals'.
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MEDIA

Eureka Street comes of age
- Andrew Hamilton
- 15 March 2012
25 Comments
This year Eureka Street celebrates its 21st birthday as a small fish in the ever turbulent lake of global media. Like other print and online media it has had to adjust to its environment. It has had to negotiate the particular challenge of the polarisation of attitudes within the Church.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Showing love to child offenders
- Tim Kroenert
- 15 March 2012
3 Comments
One of the boys had been charged with murder. The details of his alleged deed revealed a process of systematic humiliation and cruelty towards the victim. It was extremely difficult to reconcile this when looking into the face of a 14-year-old boy.
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CARTOON

Miners dig Tony Abbott
- Fiona Katauskas
- 14 March 2012
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The two St Patricks
- Frank O'Shea
- 14 March 2012
6 Comments
The theory that the person we know as St Patrick is an amalgam of a number of holy men is now respectably mainstream. The idea that Patrick came to pagan Ireland and changed it to an island of saints and scholars is an attractive one, however shaky that conversion has often seemed.
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MEDIA

How Google is narrowing our minds
- Edwina Byrne
- 14 March 2012
12 Comments
Google's personalised search aims to supply us with content that reflects our interests. The problem is that, exposed only to the views of those like us, our position is reinforced and may tend to the extreme as we become unsympathetic to alternative perspectives.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Love with an open hand
- Various
- 13 March 2012
When I'm with you, I take off my rings, unlatch my watch and untie my hair. And it's so quiet, so so quiet, like a film without a soundtrack.
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AUSTRALIA

More asylum seeker blood on Australia's hands
- Susan Metcalfe
- 13 March 2012
16 Comments
Reports into the death of a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker inside an Indonesian detention centre reveal he was bound, burned with cigarettes and beaten to death with a blunt object. The Australian Government and the Coalition must accept some responsibility for the death.
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AUSTRALIA

Zero tolerance for ritual humiliation
- Michael Mullins
- 12 March 2012
19 Comments
The Church is recognised as having tolerated abuse of children and young adults, and sometimes regarded it as character building, in connection with corporal punlshment and activities such as drinking rituals at university residential colleges. But the Catholic college at Sydney University has broken with tradition by implementing its zero tolerance policy.
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INTERNATIONAL

Kony collared by the sound of a million Tweets
- Michael McVeigh
- 12 March 2012
7 Comments
No matter how many people in the West sign on to the viral campaign, bringing Joseph Kony to justice is a complicated prospect. Yet what's most fascinating and exciting about the campaign is the way it has united people behind a single moral purpose.
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Vol 22 No 5