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Vol 28 No 3

12 February 2018


 

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mental illness does not equal violence

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 22 February 2018
    11 Comments

    Many films and TV shows use mental illness to explain violent behaviour. The stereotype is so ingrained that after the recent Florida shooting, Trump said he would deal with 'the difficult issue of mental health', but didn't mention guns once. In reality, people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims than perpetrators of violence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Loving hating Tonya Harding

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 February 2018
    4 Comments

    If you're looking for concrete facts, look somewhere else. What Robbie gives us instead a portrait of a sympathetic antihero, whose rough and 'redneck' manner stands in contrast to her profound abilities, and at odds with the gentility of her chosen sport. Meanwhile her farcical mantra 'It wasn't my fault' whenever things go wrong is given weight by a portrayal of serial abuse.

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  • RELIGION

    Matching action to social justice rhetoric

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 February 2018
    9 Comments

    The World Day of Social Justice greets a year when social justice is returning to favour. Bank executives begin to own their social responsibilities. Liberal economics begin to be seen, not as the condition for a productive economy but as a barrier to it. That is the rhetoric. For governments, though, it is business as usual.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Don't let business mindset stifle the arts

    • David James
    • 20 February 2018
    2 Comments

    The practice of appointing business people to oversee arts bodies is as questionable as referring to the arts as an 'industry'. Business and the arts work on almost diametrically opposed rationales. Understanding this might go a long way towards assessing the art world more intelligently.

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  • CARTOON

    For love or money

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 20 February 2018

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  • RELIGION

    A new high water mark for child protection

    • Sheree Limbrick
    • 20 February 2018
    34 Comments

    When the bishops and religious decided to establish CPSL they understood that a new approach was needed. In a Church that will take many years to recover from the child sexual abuse crisis, something different had to happen. The safety and protection of children and vulnerable people in the Church is everybody's business.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Now that you're 12 I can't keep up

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 19 February 2018
    1 Comment

    Fondly I remember Evie, aged approximately one, pumping her short, sturdy legs along the shore at Watson's Bay ... Now that you're 12 you lope on long, lithe legs, bronzed by the northern sun; you leap across the ballet stage in grands jetes, you dive and swim; on sports days, fleet as Atalanta, yours is the athletics track ...

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Florida shooting and the cult of individuality

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 February 2018
    6 Comments

    The mass murderous gun, even in the hands of a disgruntled teenager, remains a manifestation that will linger in the face of legislative apathy and constitutional fervour. A civilised society may not require such guns, but US civilisation expresses a frontier brutality that refuses to abandon them.

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  • RELIGION

    The changing landscape of Catholic social work

    • Denis Fitzgerald
    • 16 February 2018
    5 Comments

    Catholic social service agencies are facing many challenges from a number of the disruptions at play in our postmodern society. These have to be addressed if the agencies are to continue their work with those on the margins, and their indispensable contribution to the mission of the Church.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Building ecological justice in organisations

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 16 February 2018
    4 Comments

    A holistic, culture-sensitive ecological justice has its roots in the feelings, actions and awareness of each person and their relationships: human and otherwise. Organisations, a manifestation of our collective culture, must engage with the ecological challenges and not leave it to the individual, privatised space.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    SA's free solar not what it seems

    • Greg Foyster
    • 15 February 2018
    2 Comments

    It sounded like the ultimate election sweetener. Six weeks out from polling day, SA Premier Jay Weatherill announced a plan to install free solar and Tesla batteries on 50,000 homes. Except it's not quite that simple. Seduced by the chance to publish more clickbait about Elon Musk, the media misrepresented the details.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Joyce's choices in the capital of hypocrisy

    • Fatima Measham
    • 15 February 2018
    33 Comments

    Joyce's extramarital affair is far less salient than the choices allegedly made around it. No politician is owed anything. They are dispensable, and the role is not, which means they have an obligation to preserve the dignity of office and maintain confidence in government. Some things need expelling; it gets toxic, otherwise.

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  • RELIGION

    Rising from the ruins of 2010 Mass translation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 February 2018
    46 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of liturgy is always contentious. Fr Gerald O'Collins' latest book deals with a relatively small and domestic issue: the ingeniously engineered launch and spluttering subsidence of a revised English Catholic Mass translation. Though small, the events carry a large symbolic weight.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Are Israel boycotts really anti-Semitic?

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 14 February 2018
    12 Comments

    When New Zealand singer Lorde cancelled her 2018 concert in Israel, she joined the ranks of artists who boycott Israel to protest its occupation of Palestine. The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement is contentious in Israel/Palestine activist or Jewish circles, with some calling it anti-Semitic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Apology ten years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 February 2018
    3 Comments

    Today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of what was a graced day in our nation's history. Back then, our elected representatives on both sides served us well. A heartfelt apology was given and received. We are all the better for it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's arms boost is morally indefensible

    • Noah Vaz
    • 13 February 2018
    10 Comments

    When Australia's arms sales reach the shores of countries and parties with histories of human rights abuses and blunders, the growth or even existence of a defence exports industry must be heavily questioned.

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  • CARTOON

    More than words

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 13 February 2018

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Silent Jack's birthday grace

    • Julie Perrin
    • 13 February 2018
    18 Comments

    Family and friends gather to wish happy birthday to the boy who does not speak and whose hearing and seeing are easily overloaded. The headphones are designed to cut sound out not bring it in. Even before his diagnosis at 18 months, Jack's parents were translating the world to him. Since then they've been translating him back to the world.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Strolling for dummies

    • Ross Jackson
    • 12 February 2018
    2 Comments

    I am so pressed by memories poached in warm air, that I step a good way around circling pavement ants. Though experts say nothing positive about the world, despite the encroaching dark I might just pin badges of purple hibiscus flowers on anyone to hand.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Marriage is no protection for women

    • Kate Galloway
    • 12 February 2018
    33 Comments

    Amid speculation about whether and why the Deputy Prime Minister's relationship is in the public interest, is a much more interesting and foundational point about the nature of marriage as an institution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't let the Apology's great hope die

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2018
    7 Comments

    Ten years have passed since the Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on behalf of Parliament and the nation. It seems longer. It was a time of great hope. Today, with respect to Indigenous affairs as to much else, fewer people hold great hope that anything good can come out of Canberra.

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  • RELIGION

    Churches and charities caught in foreign influence net

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 February 2018
    14 Comments

    Keeping foreign billionaires and foreign governments out of Australia's elections can be done without keeping churches and charities out of routine advocacy for the poor and marginalised.

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