Vol 28 No 6

26 March 2018

DOWNLOAD PDF

RELIGION

Can the national redress scheme deliver justice?
- Craig Hughes-Cashmore
- 05 April 2018
10 Comments
Redress is not compensation. It is about acknowledging the harm caused and supporting people who have experienced child sexual abuse in an institution to move forward positively in the way that is best for them.
READ MORE
INTERNATIONAL

Love answers Punish a Muslim hate campaign
- Rachel Woodlock
- 05 April 2018
4 Comments
Punish A Muslim Day has come and gone. While we won't know for a few months if there was a statistical increase in the number of reported attacks on Muslims, the campaign's real purpose was simply to reiterate a message of stigma and exclusion. This is what makes the various counter-campaigns so important.
READ MORE
ARTS AND CULTURE

Gay teens and white privilege
- Tim Kroenert
- 04 April 2018
4 Comments
For gay teens and those who known them, the film is vitally affirming. But there's baggage that comes with its treatment of these themes that undercuts its efforts to engage the experience of alternative sexual orientation. Simon may be gay, but he is also explicitly a privileged white man.
READ MORE
ARTS AND CULTURE

Books saved from waste extend the story cycle
- Julie Perrin
- 03 April 2018
7 Comments
Jill Allan wants to see good stories in circulation. As she holds a book in her hands she asks herself, 'Would a child want this?' She's been a children's librarian for years, she's read the research. The number of books in the home is a crucial factor influencing language and literacy outcomes.
READ MORE
CARTOON

Introducing Coaly McCoalface
- Fiona Katauskas
- 03 April 2018
READ MORE
RELIGION

Let’s be less shrill about Church-State relations
- Frank Brennan
- 03 April 2018
48 Comments
Archbishop Fisher's Easter warning was in part responding to the findings of the royal commission and in part to some of the submissions to the Ruddock panel on religious freedom. Being on the panel, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on particular submissions at this time. But I was shocked by the Archbishop's shrill tone.
READ MORE
RELIGION

Mud-wrestling the Catholic elephant
- John Warhurst
- 01 April 2018
26 Comments
The size and complexity of the church has bedevilled the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Church reformers face the same dilemma. The church is big and slippery, with numerous opportunities to engage but equally numerous veto points and dead-ends when it comes to getting action.
READ MORE
INTERNATIONAL

Don't look away from genocide history
- Catherine Marshall
- 29 March 2018
11 Comments
The repository of a superfluity of victims' faces and their heartbreaking stories leaves visitors questioning how it is possible for a country to turn on its own people like that. Why do humans turn into killing machines at the behest of their leaders, and when will we allow it to happen again?
READ MORE
ENVIRONMENT

Another page torn from the glossary of life
- Fatima Measham
- 29 March 2018
10 Comments
The last male northern white rhinoceros was euthanased in March. With two females still alive, there is hope the subspecies might be saved. The impending loss of an animal that evolved over six million years, and once grazed in hundreds of thousands, is worth noting. There can be room in our hearts to lament.
READ MORE
RELIGION

When popes fail
- Andrew Hamilton
- 27 March 2018
12 Comments
This year Easter coincides with the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis' election. Anniversaries are times for assessment and measurement. Francis' anniversary has led many to comment on the successes and failures of his papacy. Easter is a doubly appropriate time to reflect on whether the commentators have weighed in correctly.
READ MORE
RELIGION

I am afraid of dying, but I have hope
- Moira Rayner
- 27 March 2018
5 Comments
This Easter, and Orthodox Easter, and Passover, and at the changing of the seasons, I am prepared to reassert my faith. That whatever evil brings, compassion, courage and passionate commitment to the old values of honesty, accountability and care for others will bring the enormous change that was promised so long ago.
READ MORE
INTERNATIONAL

Is Nixon the celebrity anti Trump we need?
- Saman Shad
- 27 March 2018
1 Comment
When Cynthia Nixon announced she was running for governor of New York the excitement was instantaneous. Not because she was a woman, as there have been no female governors of the state, nor because she once played Miranda on Sex and the City, but because she spoke in a way that captured leftie hearts the world over.
READ MORE
CARTOON

Give and take
- Fiona Katauskas
- 27 March 2018
READ MORE
AUSTRALIA

Locked out of our mother tongues
- Sheila Ngoc Pham
- 27 March 2018
7 Comments
On my first day of primary school, I understood very little English and spoke even less. My parents seemed to feel little anxiety and assumed I'd just figure it out at school. Turns out they weren't wrong. However, what they didn't anticipate is what would happen to my Vietnamese.
READ MORE
ARTS AND CULTURE

The acts of the apostles
- Bill Rush
- 27 March 2018
3 Comments
It wasn't all action. Sometimes they stopped in their tracks struck dumb by the thought that they had walked, talked, eaten and drunk with the Lord. How to explain that to their grandchildren! The story could not to be contained.
READ MORE
AUSTRALIA

Australian cricket's great betrayal
- Gillian Bouras
- 26 March 2018
11 Comments
The idea of cheating at sport, of setting such a bad example to the young, was quite simply unthinkable then, but now this cricketing episode, I fear, is a disgrace from which Australian sport may never recover. Something ethical, almost spiritual, has gone, and I am left with an acute sense of loss.
READ MORE
INTERNATIONAL

Don't be the Australia Dutton wants us to be
- David Holdcroft
- 26 March 2018
8 Comments
There are two laws for how to get out of a hole: the first is to acknowledge you are in one. The second is to stop digging. I suspect Peter Dutton won't care too much for this advice. He is clearly enjoying his job, playing the populist card with great aplomb, including recently in his advocacy for white South African farmers.
READ MORE
AUSTRALIA

Cricket cheats blind to the common good
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 March 2018
24 Comments
As with any activity that involves many people, cricket is shaped by multiple relationships. I would not expect that cricketers be able to articulate what is entailed in these relationships. But I was surprised that some dim awareness of their importance did not make the players hesitate before launching on such a daft adventure.
READ MORE
ARTS AND CULTURE

Women's divine rights
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 March 2018
We know how this is going to turn out historically: the 1971 referendum is successful. There is a certain quaintness to the film that makes it feel off the pace of the current conversation around women's rights. But there is an engaging frankness to its attention to the sexual liberative dimension of women's self-agency.
READ MORE
AUSTRALIA

Parliamentary troll alert
- Brian Matthews
- 23 March 2018
4 Comments
In Iceland, the most recent 'troll alert' was only 50 years or so ago, and belief in the mythological troll dies hard. What is interesting to consider regarding the revenant troll of the internet age is where they are congregated. Michaelia Cash's recent outburst suggest we might look no further than our Federal Parliament.
READ MORE
RELIGION

A fine line between tolerance and freedom
- David Holdcroft
- 23 March 2018
16 Comments
As Australia moves to a post-Christian state, there are numerous tendencies to see limits on the expression of religion as some kind of necessity. But religions remain legitimate voices in the political process and life of the community, and the space that permits the hearing of these voices is one of the marks of a healthy democracy.
READ MORE

Subscriber login

Vol 28 No 6