Vol 28 No 10

21 May 2018

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INTERNATIONAL

Lessons for Australia in Malaysia election shock
- Erin Cook
- 31 May 2018
4 Comments
The story has become the triumph of Mahathir Mohamad, himself part of the political elite as a former prime minister for two decades, and his opposition coalition. This is wrong. The real story is the mass-mobilisation of Malaysia's civil society in the face of anti-democratic moves at suppression.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Ted Kennedy's darkest hour
- Tim Kroenert
- 30 May 2018
2 Comments
Chappaquiddick notes the effects of these expectations on Ted's actions, without sympathising. 'I'm not going to be president,' he murmurs, by way of announcing Kopechne's death to Gargan. He comes off as more pathetic than Machiavellian, the future Liberal Lion rarely having the courage of his convictions.
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RELIGION

Vatican pointers for banks royal commission
- Andrew Hamilton
- 30 May 2018
15 Comments
As the royal commission prepared to resume its hearings into financial services the Vatican released Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones, on the ethics of markets. Although written quite independently, passages of the document could have been mistaken for factual reporting of the royal commission.
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RELIGION

A stringent critique of financial abuse
- Bruce Duncan
- 30 May 2018
5 Comments
The Vatican has launched a stringent critique of abuses in global economies, abuses that are driving astonishing inequality and threatening ecological sustainability. 'Oeconomicae et pecuniariae questiones' reiterates the call for an urgent dialogue between politics and economics to advance human life and wellbeing.
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CARTOON

The fear factor
- Fiona Katauskas
- 29 May 2018
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AUSTRALIA

Racism is real. What are you doing about it?
- Tseen Khoo
- 29 May 2018
13 Comments
'Racism seems to make the news a lot,' notes Jacqueline Maley, for a country that according to Queensland LNP senator Ian Macdonald has either no or only isolated racism. The most vicious, blatant racial abuse I have experienced or witnessed has been on public transport. Every abuser has been white. Almost all are men.
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MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

Emerging Indigenous Writers Fellowship
- Staff
- 29 May 2018
We are thrilled to announce that Amy Thunig is the recipient of the 2018 Margaret Dooley Emerging Indigenous Writers Fellowship. Amy is a Kamilaroi woman and a researcher at the University of Newcastle. We can't wait to present her writing to you over the coming year!
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AUSTRALIA

Being sick in Australia is harder than ever
- El Gibbs
- 29 May 2018
2 Comments
I first got sick when I was 19. I am now in my 40s and still sick. I have tried myriad medications and treatments, and live with a now permanent disability. The public systems I have engaged with over this time have become increasingly adversarial. The gaps between systems are getting wider, and the expenses higher.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Remembering the many-sided Brian Doyle
- Philip Harvey
- 28 May 2018
3 Comments
The evidence, from one line onwards, was unmistakeable Doyle. Imitation was impossible, self-parody ditto. Gore Vidal loved to say that Tennessee Williams knew how to do only one thing, but he did that thing better than anyone else. Brian Doyle's poetry was a bit like that.
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AUSTRALIA

Close the camps now and stop the posturing
- Frank Brennan
- 25 May 2018
25 Comments
For the good of the refugees who have languished for five years on Nauru and Manus Island, and for the good of the Australian body politic, it's time to put an end to this inhumane chapter in Australian history. Keep the boats stopped. Bring New Zealand into the mix now. Empty the camps. And fight your elections on matters of substance.
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EDUCATION

The joys of teaching adult refugees
- Paulette Smythe
- 25 May 2018
15 Comments
I often feel I have the best job on the planet. Teaching English to adult refugees should be a daunting task. Yet these classes are especially warm and congenial places to be. Human beings at their most vulnerable possess an extraordinary fund of light and laughter despite, or perhaps because of, the darkness they have left behind.
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AUSTRALIA

Robots are not the real threat to work
- Osmond Chiu
- 25 May 2018
1 Comment
While the threat from automation is often overstated, there are big technological shifts occurring which are undermining job security. But the experience is that work is created as well as displaced by new technology. Change in social relationships, not technology, explains what is happening in labour markets today.
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AUSTRALIA

Treaty is more than a white feelgood moment
- Sarah Maddison
- 24 May 2018
6 Comments
Progressive Australians want a process that restores a sense of moral legitimacy to the nation. But far from concern about settler Australia's moral legitimacy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples seek treaty as recognition of their political difference. Treaties on these terms are unlikely to be acceptable to the settler state.
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AUSTRALIA

Must we remain so exceptionally cruel?
- Fatima Measham
- 24 May 2018
3 Comments
These are people living precariously: pregnant women, families with young children, elderly people. They are being 'transitioned out' of Status Resolution Support Services based on 'job-readiness'. The move not only illustrates the arbitrary nature of immigration policy, which sets people up to fail; it is institutionalised sadism.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

If we ever got to be what we so want to be
- Brian Doyle
- 24 May 2018
2 Comments
'It's hard for a guy to cry endlessly and helplessly. It is. Some remote part of you shouts Man, get it together, this is totally beyond the bounds. But I couldn't stop.' Four previously unpublished poems by Portland author Brian Doyle, who died on 27 May last year.
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AUSTRALIA

Stigmatising those in need is a grubby game
- Andrew Hamilton
- 23 May 2018
8 Comments
These initiatives are sideshows, grubby and voyeuristic. They mask the simple truth: that governments have the duty to respect people as human beings and not ciphers, to provide benefits that help people to live with self-respect, to take responsibility for the disadvantage of Indigenous Australians and to involve them in its healing.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Gurrumul's gift to the world
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 May 2018
5 Comments
At the time of his death in July last year, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was the most commercially successful Aboriginal Australian musician to ever grace this world. Anyone expecting Gurrumul to resemble anything like your typical popular music documentary will be quickly dissuaded. Gurrumul was a far cry from your typical popular musician.
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CARTOON

The Labor way
- Fiona Katauskas
- 22 May 2018
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RELIGION

Accountability a virtue in churches and banks
- John Warhurst
- 22 May 2018
33 Comments
General apologies don't go far enough. Compensation is necessary, but also not enough. The reputation of the church would now be higher if there were more obvious signals of accountability by those in charge. The offer of resignation made as a group to Pope Francis by the entire Chilean hierarchy is a breath of fresh air.
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INTERNATIONAL

Remembering Palestine from Greece
- Gillian Bouras
- 22 May 2018
7 Comments
A little over 77 years ago, Allied forces fighting in northern Greece were overwhelmed by German strength. In Kalamata, for years now there has been a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial close to the waterfront. It occurs days before the Nakba, the remembrance of Palestinian displacement that this year marked 70 years.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

A painter's lament
- Clotilde Lopez
- 21 May 2018
1 Comment
If you listen carefully, the sound of each colour can be heard, the scrunch of each mineral discerned, each cadence, a trace of its former life, a finer distinction. Relieved of its cumbersome form, it becomes lighter and mixes with white spirit like a cocktail blast of violets, mauves and ochres, ground to a fine powder and wet with new life.
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INTERNATIONAL

Karl Marx would find no home in modern China
- Mark Hearn
- 21 May 2018
15 Comments
On recent the bicentenary of Marx's birth, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that the Communist Party 'has combined the fundamental principles of Marxism with the reality of China's reform and opening up'. In reality China's economic system bears no resemblance to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism advocated by Marx.
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ENVIRONMENT

Make peace by defying SA nuclear dump
- Michele Madigan
- 18 May 2018
8 Comments
Sunday 29 April 2018 marked the second anniversary for many such South Australian peacemakers. It was on that date in 2016, at 2.30am, that Adnyamathanha Elder Aunty Enice Marsh heard the news that the federal government had 'chosen' the Flinders Ranges to be the 'top of the list' site of the proposed national nuclear dump.
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AUSTRALIA

The profit motive in Vic. public housing sell-off
- Madeline Gourlay
- 18 May 2018
8 Comments
Widespread community concern about the state government's proposed plans to sell the majority of public land on existing public housing estates for private development has meant a public inquiry into the matter will be delayed. This sell-off may be more concerned with profit than with rebuilding and improving public housing estates.
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Vol 28 No 10