Vol 28 No 17

27 August 2018

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AUSTRALIA

The case for banning gay conversion therapy
- Neve Mahoney
- 06 September 2018
7 Comments
When I watch the video 'How women become gay', it hurts. Not because of the anti-gay content, but because it uses language about God's love, the type of religious language I grew up with, to sneak past my defenses. For a moment, despite years of learning to accept myself, I waver.
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AUSTRALIA

Wentworth's by-election bellwether
- Ailsa Piper
- 06 September 2018
6 Comments
Wentworth as I know it is not an electorate that is easily pinned down. It's also not easily duped. At the far eastern tip of the Wentworth electorate, a measured war is being waged. It's a microcosm, at state level, of the forces that will come to play in the upcoming federal by-election.
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CARTOON

When things go au pair shaped
- Fiona Katauskas
- 04 September 2018
1 Comment
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Walt Whitman on Donald Trump
- Wally Swist
- 03 September 2018
5 Comments
Oh, you snake oil selling provocateur, you faux gilded imposter, selling authoritarianism for American democracy; may you choke on your own phlegm-filled speeches, your conspiratorial rants, your endless quiver of lies, whose equivocal insults you brandish and shoot like arrows at those whose integrity you should quaver beneath.
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ECONOMICS

Where the west will rest in new economic order
- David James
- 03 September 2018
7 Comments
The corporations have had it their own way for most of this century but two recent events have startled them. One is the election of a US president who says he is an economic nationalist. The other was Brexit. The battle lines have been drawn between a unipolar, American dominated world and a multipolar world.
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INTERNATIONAL

Dress sense or political statement? It's a tie
- Gillian Bouras
- 03 September 2018
10 Comments
Collars and ties, or lack of them, can have a specific political application. In 2007 Robert Mugabe, fearsome Zimbabwean dictator, was invited to an EU summit in Lisbon. The Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, cut up his clerical collar on television and vowed to replace it only after Mugabe had gone.
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RELIGION

What it will take to prove the Church gets it
- John Warhurst
- 02 September 2018
47 Comments
The question of the seal is seen as proof that the church leadership is still resisting the royal commission recommendations. That impression can only be allayed if the church's record in a decade's time can be shown to be impeccable in responding to the other 98 per cent. Already 98 per cent has been shown to be a rubbery figure.
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AUSTRALIA

Affirmative consent is good for everyone
- Tim Hutton
- 31 August 2018
7 Comments
A classic argument of those opposed to active consent is that it paints all men as predators. On the contrary, active consent should actually provide greater peace of mind to men than the current mainstream approach. When in doubt, ask. If the response is not unambiguous and affirmative, then do not proceed.
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AUSTRALIA

Chasing dignity and work
- Susan Leong
- 31 August 2018
Despite contemporary society's valorisation of the entrepreneurial self, its reality is disempowerment. According to Peter Bieri, 'powerless is the absence of ... the power to be able to fulfill a desire'. What name do we put to a desire so strong it compels one to leave the comforts of home for the untried fields of a new country?
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RELIGION

Past is present for the Catholic Church
- Jim McDermott
- 31 August 2018
19 Comments
The Annabel Crabb-led Back in Time for Dinner has some perhaps inadvertent lessons for society — and for the Catholic Church. Amid the frothy wonder of it all come unexpected moments of pain and dislocation. We are always in the process of seeing and becoming.
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ENVIRONMENT

Christian PM should have a heart for climate
- Cristy Clark
- 30 August 2018
12 Comments
When Parliament resumes on 10 September, I hope Morrison leaves his lump of coal at home and takes his Christian values to work. He could start by adopting a 2030 emissions reduction target of at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels and ensuring that environmental considerations are central to all future development approvals.
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AUSTRALIA

Au pair visa saga shows the rot runs deep
- Fatima Measham
- 30 August 2018
11 Comments
Perhaps we couldn't care less about what happens to an au pair or the person who let her in. But to know that there is rot in the ceiling — embodied in relationships of mutual benefit between those in office and those with money — and still be fine retiring to bed underneath, does not really bode well for anyone.
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CARTOON

Scott free
- Fiona Katauskas
- 28 August 2018
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AUSTRALIA

Lessons in humanity from the Turnbull coup
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 August 2018
13 Comments
If human beings are diminished, they usually respond badly. When politicians are not engaged with shaping a better society they quarrel about slogans that are detached from larger goals, or about goals that they have abandoned in pursuit of economic purity. Then they turn on one another.
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AUSTRALIA

Oh, for a return to the Howard years
- Celeste Liddle
- 28 August 2018
9 Comments
We have gotten so used to a revolving door of political leaders that the prospect of a leadership challenge each time things get a little hot has become normalised. I never thought I would say this, but as an Aboriginal feminist with hard-left personal politics, last week I almost found myself viewing the Howard years in a favourable light.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Giving suicide grief centre stage
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 August 2018
1 Comment
The play began in work with people who have survived suicide and who are helped to move beyond isolation and stigma by speaking about it in an encouraging environment. It helps those who watch it to break down taboos that might make them shrink from people whose relatives and friends have taken their own lives.
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ENVIRONMENT

Truths for Trump on South African farmers
- Catherine Marshall
- 28 August 2018
2 Comments
In the 17 years since, farm murders have dropped dramatically. At face value, this is a triumph in the fight against violent crime, and a resounding riposte to people like President Donald Trump and our own Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott, who have seized on the issue in order to sow racial hatred among their own constituents.
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RELIGION

The Uniting Church's marriage conundrum
- Avril Hannah-Jones
- 27 August 2018
17 Comments
The narrative that the sexuality debate pits LGBTIQ members of the church against Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and culturally and linguistically diverse members has been revealed for the 'fake news' that it has always been.
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ENVIRONMENT

Marchers unite against federal nuclear dump
- Michele Madigan
- 27 August 2018
11 Comments
In the 26 August ministry reshuffle, Senator Canavan retained his portfolio. As Resources Minister, he often repeats his assurance: 'Australia's nuclear waste facility will not be imposed on an unwilling community.' The marchers across the Port Augusta Bridge bore banners printed with a single word: UNWILLING.
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INTERNATIONAL

A journey with urban refugees in Bangkok
- Michael Kelly
- 27 August 2018
3 Comments
Some days I feel like a people trafficker, though I'm not making a zack out of the trafficking. Other days I see myself as a latter-day Oskar Schindler. But mostly I just feel trapped along with the 1000 refugees and asylum seekers I'm doing my not-very-successful best to get the hell out of an open prison called Bangkok.
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AUSTRALIA

The loss of Julie Bishop is more than optics
- Kate Galloway
- 27 August 2018
3 Comments
Regardless of one's politics, the loss of Bishop from cabinet should be a wake-up call, prompting reflection on how our socialised norms work together with our institutions to keep women from power. We need women — and far greater diversity in other respects also — at the table, making decisions.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Walking the river valley
- Grant Fraser
- 27 August 2018
2 Comments
Higher up, with head down in devotion, a kookaburra was beaked out for small murders; with the azure armorial flashed on his wing, he was a rakish monk on his saintly wire; in his taut patience, he was always able to laugh off his murders at the end of the day.
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AUSTRALIA

Consolations from the Liberal Party mess
- Frank Brennan
- 25 August 2018
25 Comments
Dutton would never have enjoyed any legitimacy as PM given the tactics he employed to get there, and such behaviour would have been repeated and rewarded yet again in the future. Even in the derelict state of Australia's contemporary politics, Dutton's perfidy augmented by Abbott's desire for revenge are no longer to be rewarded.
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MEDIA

How fake news stifles democracy in Asia
- Lika Posamari
- 24 August 2018
1 Comment
In the Philippines and elsewhere, the spread of disinformation appealing to fear and hatred has helped create what Rappler CEO Maria Ressa describes as a 'spiral of silence that has had an incredibly negative impact on our democracy'. Social media platforms are far from blameless.
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INTERNATIONAL

UN's dubious human rights appointment
- Ramona Wadi
- 24 August 2018
1 Comment
It is important that Bachelet's appointment is discussed away from the framework promoted by the UN. Primarily, it should raise questions as to how a torture victim can become complicit in impunity as president. That such complicity is ignored at an international level should contribute to the growing mistrust in the UN as human rights 'guardian'.
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Vol 28 No 17