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Vol 30 No 6

22 March 2020


 

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Illness and the indescribable

    • Brian Matthews
    • 03 April 2020
    3 Comments

    Illness, so apparently explicit and ever more obvious as it progresses, in fact defies definition: submitting apparently to scientific and medical description, it escapes into a quality of pain, exquisite loss or appalled helplessness that is often most clearly captured at the heart of great works of art.

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  • EDUCATION

    Tips from a veteran homeschooler

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 03 April 2020
    9 Comments

    As more schools close to stop the spread of COVID-19, many parents are becoming instant homeschoolers. I’m a mum of six who started homeschooling before it was cool, and friends have been asking my advice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Social responsibility means care for all of the vulnerable

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 02 April 2020
    7 Comments

    While there have been endless social media posts, political campaigns and the like about staying safe by staying at home, I have been concerned about the many people who are not safe at home and what this may mean to them. What will this mean for the woman who’s been living with a domestic violence perpetrator for years?

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  • RELIGION

    Present from afar

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 April 2020
    13 Comments

    One of the challenges posed by social distancing is how to reconcile personal presence with distance. Presence is tactile and up close. Measuring out the prescribed separation as people walk around the park in the early morning tends to turn familiars into strangers and greetings into distancings.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The possible economics of COVID-19

    • David James
    • 01 April 2020
    4 Comments

    The world-wide chaos caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus has underlined a lesson that was only partly learned in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. In a more interconnected world the understanding of system-wide risk needs to be much better than it is.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Government needs to freeze rent and mortgages

    • Sangeetha Thanapal
    • 31 March 2020
    5 Comments

    The long queues outside Centrelink and the crashes on the website have fuelled the fears of many people, including myself, that one wrong sentence in the application means we will be denied relief, or worse, that even if we are eligible, the money could take weeks to come in, way past the point of financial solvency.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    COVID-19, democracy and voting

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 March 2020
    4 Comments

    In Australia, every politician from Canberra to the Northern Territory is insisting on isolation measures and avoiding close contact, keeping to distances of 1.5 to 2 metres. When it comes to the very practice of democracy and political representation, the social distancing imperative has been approached with confusing inconsistency.

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  • CARTOON

    Expecting the unexpected

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 31 March 2020

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Social connectivity in a pandemic

    • Jane Britt
    • 30 March 2020
    5 Comments

    It’s a stressful and anxious time for many people. Yet, the expression to ‘look for the helpers’ whenever a crisis occurs is an apt one in this situation. People are looking for social connectivity and ways to express kindness to others in practising social distancing under direction of medical experts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An echo of silence

    • Rory Harris
    • 30 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Melbourne in summer & the weather is grand & blazing, proof that global warming is real. At my age I allow myself to be surprised.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Morning reflections

    • Robert Whalley
    • 30 March 2020
    4 Comments

    All this is pleasant and unremarkable, except that we were just briefly discussing which future events are likely cancelled in light of the announced pandemic. It’s an unexpected morning topic for conversation before coffee. But it’s appropriate with the increasing concerns on flattening the curve of contagion, illness, infections, acute complications and death. 

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  • EDUCATION

    Digital divide made even wider in COVID-19 times

    • Nicola Heath
    • 27 March 2020
    9 Comments

    A laptop or tablet and the internet are not universally available to Australian students. In 2016-17, 1.25 million Australian households lacked the internet home connection that’s required to make full use of online learning platforms like Class Dojo, where my daughter’s class is congregating during the coronavirus lockdown.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The odd heroism of doing nothing

    • Joel Hodge
    • 27 March 2020
    7 Comments

    We are living in a time of pandemic but it seems so many people have been more focused on panic buying or flouting restrictions on social distancing and public gatherings. Why is it that many are less concerned about the virus than what they can buy or do?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Imagining life after COVID-19

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 March 2020
    33 Comments

    To think of life after COVID-19 is daunting. The changes that it has brought to our daily lives have been vertiginous. Our awareness of its potential harm is still limited. We are only beginning to catch sight of the grim beast that slouches towards us threatening death and devastation in coming months.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Education can uplift refugee women in Indonesia

    • Warsan Weedhsame
    • 25 March 2020
    3 Comments

    For the last two years I have been an advocate for the refugee community in Jakarta. I have seen how women’s education is the first and most important need for women to secure their rights. Each week, I meet many refugee women who can’t speak up for their rights.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Buying local in a global pandemic

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 24 March 2020
    10 Comments

    This morning there is fresh graffiti in the tunnel on the bike path: ‘No Income Still Pay Rent’. And it hits me like a punch in the gut: I still have a job, an income. I’m lucky.

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  • CARTOON

    Those were the days

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 24 March 2020

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need a robust democracy now more than ever

    • John Warhurst
    • 23 March 2020
    20 Comments

    COVID-19 brings many tests. Amid the health, economic and financial crises brought about by the pandemic, our greatest test is to conduct ourselves as a robust democracy and to demonstrate that we are a fair society. Neither test will be easy to pass, but we must aim to emerge at the other end as a better society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The earth we are made of

    • Lucy Alexander
    • 23 March 2020

    The floodplain is full of the black earth we are made of. All of the world’s particles pass through this zone: yours, too. Have them arranged so your heart can weigh in. Have them in order, crystallised and formatted. The light frothing up will hold your new name.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Language and prejudice

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 22 March 2020
    15 Comments

    I have been bemused to read the result of a recent poll taken in Britain. It suggests that 26 per cent of people feel ‘uncomfortable’ when hearing foreign languages spoken. Me, I feel envious, simply wishing that I was more of a linguist.

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  • RELIGION

    Farewell to a revolutionary

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 22 March 2020
    13 Comments

    Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal, Catholic priest, poet and revolutionary, was an essential figure of Latin American liberation theology. He died on March 1. He was 95. Cardenal’s spiritual life was the unyielding foundations of his country’s social and political struggle.

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