Vol 28 No 4

26 February 2018

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AUSTRALIA

There's no wrong way to be Chinese overseas
- Tseen Khoo
- 08 March 2018
6 Comments
Huang's article 'What Australia gets wrong about Chinese New Year' caused an uproar, with many comments about the Mandarinisation of Chinese culture. I had a moment of pleasure imagining telling my mother that, according to this writer, she's doing Chinese New Year wrong. My mother has an excellent range of Cantonese epithets.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Rights, obligations and the art of caring
- Tim Kroenert
- 07 March 2018
1 Comment
Last year Brooklyn Museum exhibited radical 20th century works by American women of colour alongside The Dinner Party, a 1970s Second Wave feminist piece noted for its white, middle-class preoccupations. The resonance of this pairing illuminates the plight of Christian, hero of the Swedish art-world farce The Square.
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RELIGION

Aid work grounded in good relationships
- Andrew Hamilton
- 07 March 2018
9 Comments
The reports of sexual exploitation by officers of aid organisations illustrate the truth of Aristotle's dictum that the corruption of the best is the worst form of corruption. The factors that contribute to such behaviour are complex. They illustrate the constant need for self-reflection personally and in organisations, especially when doing good works.
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AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal women's lives matter
- Celeste Liddle
- 06 March 2018
11 Comments
The sole purpose of bringing up Aboriginal women who are victims of abuse in political discussions is often to further oppress our populations. It's certainly not to give those women a voice, empower them to build solutions and ensure that these solutions are funded adequately.
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CARTOON

Minding your own business
- Fiona Katauskas
- 06 March 2018
1 Comment
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INTERNATIONAL

A vision of a gun-free America
- Zac Davis
- 06 March 2018
2 Comments
A man took his own life Saturday, shooting himself outside the White House. The scene was cleared, the victim identified, and everyone moved on. In America, a 26-year-old firing multiple rounds into himself right outside the presidential residence is not an A1 story. It may not spark conversation or policy change - but it should.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Wearing glitter in the fire age
- Les Wicks
- 05 March 2018
1 Comment
We all need a bit of weird, turning chops orange or making ice-cream out of beetroot. So I aspire to be a paperclip - that touch of menace as I approach a putative community of sheets despite all their disparate hate and flimsy promise ... A golden paperclip because a psychologist once said I was gilt-ridden.
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INTERNATIONAL

Edging closer to a just regime in the Timor Sea
- Frank Brennan
- 05 March 2018
5 Comments
On Tuesday the governments of Timor Leste and Australia will sign a maritime boundary treaty in New York in the presence of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations. This day has been a long time coming. It will be a day of great celebration for the Timorese. They've taken a big gamble and it seems to have paid off.
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AUSTRALIA

Demystifying the Coalition
- John Warhurst
- 02 March 2018
12 Comments
The downfall of Barnaby Joyce and his replacement by Michael McCormack as Nationals leader shows once again that maintaining the Liberal-National coalition has a considerable impact on the nation, and thus it deserves greater attention and transparency. Instead it is clouded in secrecy and often taken for granted.
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AUSTRALIA

Where have all the arts ministers gone?
- Eliza Berlage
- 02 March 2018
1 Comment
Is it any wonder that when I came to work in the press gallery I was cynical about arts policy? In those lockup hours scouring budget papers it was clear yet again the arts would not see any wins. It wasn't always this way. Prime ministers and arts ministers of yesteryear produced arts policy informed by their personal and political interest.
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INTERNATIONAL

Stepping out of the way of the next generation
- Fatima Measham
- 01 March 2018
10 Comments
I've been thinking about my former students lately. Anyone who has ever spent time with young people over the past ten years would see something inevitable in the current moment over gun control in the US, where Parkland students are charging at the seeming edifice of the NRA - and leaving cracks.
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MEDIA

Sympathetic men need to check their privilege
- Catherine Marshall
- 01 March 2018
7 Comments
While the female-led outcry continues, those men benefitting from the imbalance ought to question their privilege. Instead of carrying sympathetic white roses into the Oscars, they should use the opportunity to question their own complicity in accepting roles in movies where women are inadequately represented.
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RELIGION

Why clericalism matters
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 February 2018
81 Comments
In the Catholic Church clericalism is the whipping boy of choice. But what it embraces is less clear. It is a pejorative word, used by people of others but never of themselves, and is normally defined by reference to examples of it. It is worth pausing to reflect on clericalism and its significance for church and society.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Lady Bird's riposte to Hollywood sexism
- Tim Kroenert
- 28 February 2018
8 Comments
That Hollywood has a gender equality problem is not in doubt. The conversations around what constitutes assault and harassment, and about how Hollywood culture reflects and reinforces equality in society at large, is vital, and sophisticated. The standard of what we should expect is being constantly raised. It should be.
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ECONOMICS

No more free pass for legislators on inequality
- Joe Zabar
- 27 February 2018
4 Comments
How is it we allow investors to leave units vacant in the Docklands while young people struggle to access housing in Melbourne? We have given legislators a free pass when it comes to economic policies that discriminate against those without means. This creates systemic inequality, and it needs to be addressed urgently.
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INTERNATIONAL

The danger of dissent in Singapore
- Sangeetha Thanapal
- 27 February 2018
9 Comments
The world continues to laud Singapore as a model for governance, while ignoring the serious human rights violations that occur within it. The silence of countries like Australia and others in the region ensure that the Singapore state will continue intimidating its opponents into silence, or obscurity.
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RELIGION

Love, justice and humility to abuse survivors
- Staff
- 27 February 2018
16 Comments
'Instead of a church walking humbly with its God, it found an arrogant church, that placed its own reputation above the interests of victims, and did so knowlingly in a way that would cause further harm to many of those victims.' Robert Fitzgerald of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse addresses the Catholic Social Services annual conference in Melbourne, February 2018.
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CARTOON

A class of its own
- Fiona Katauskas
- 27 February 2018
4 Comments
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Germaine Greer at Heathrow
- Ian C. Smith
- 26 February 2018
1 Comment
I once read The Female Eunuch, the only bloke taking a course on feminism, admired Greer's chutzpah, knew she lived in England where I came to dwell on the edge of belonging. I mourn unplanned lives, mine, others', back stories, each of us carrying private clouds of sadness. What happened next, that distant dawn?
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INTERNATIONAL

Refugee inventors prove the power of education
- David Holdcroft
- 26 February 2018
5 Comments
Louise, Aline and Kapinga are hardly household names in Australia. They are better known in Malawi, having received the prestigious Scientific and Technological Innovation Award at the Malawian National Schools Science Fair. Aline and Kapinga are all refugees residing at Malawi's Dzaleka Refugee Camp.
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RELIGION

In dialogue with Francis' eco manifesto
- Jacqui Remond
- 23 February 2018
9 Comments
Dialogue plays a role in how we create meaning. When we have true dialogue we create a flow of meaning: between us, and between us and everything around us. Laudato Si' invites us to be mindful of the dialogue that's happening at a human level, at a cosmic level, and with the creator God.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Wisdom from the realm of the office zombies
- Barry Gittins
- 16 February 2018
1 Comment
The closest Confucius came to this romantic view of work was a line expressed from the view of the bosses, saying, 'When he chooses the labours which are proper, and makes them labour on them, who will repine?' The answer as to who will repine, rather obviously, is the labourers.
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Vol 28 No 4