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Keywords: Bushfires

  • ENVIRONMENT

    Opportunities for action on renewables

    • Bree Alexander
    • 11 May 2020
    3 Comments

    While the federal government has set a zero net emissions target by 2050, along with the states and territories and local councils in some areas, the steps that are taken to get there are vitally important. Yet there seems to be no signs of a rapid move away from fossil fuels.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Telling Aurelia

    • Julie Perrin
    • 11 May 2020
    13 Comments

    In the week following my mother’s funeral I wake up knowing I need to begin cooking again. I need to enter the world beyond my door. It takes me until lunchtime to coax myself out from under the doona. I will walk up to the local shops for bread and vegetables.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beginning's end

    • Barry Gittins
    • 24 April 2020
    8 Comments

    We are at the end of the beginning. ‘If you feel you have coronavirus…’ I tune out emotionally and daydream as the public service announcement plays over and over in empty trams and trains, and in deserted shopping centres.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A modest and muted Anzac day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 April 2020
    18 Comments

    This year the celebration of Anzac Day will be muted. No marches, no large reunions, few speeches at war memorials. The soldiers and others who lost their lives in war will be remembered, however, as they should be. Indeed, the celebration will perhaps speak more eloquently because of its simplicity.

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  • RELIGION

    Prayer and community during COVID-19

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 08 April 2020
    17 Comments

    For millions of Australians of varying degrees of religiosity, prayer will play a key role in dealing with the novel stresses associated with this novel virus. Religions bring us not just closer to our creator but also to each other, especially in times of crisis. And you don’t have to be devout to feel the blessing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keeping vigil

    • Julie Perrin
    • 06 April 2020
    4 Comments

    While I stay by my mother, I glean only the edges of the news; already the horror of the fires has been at full stretch. In the quiet room where my mother lies, I think of people trying to sleep in unfamiliar environments, refugees from the fires.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Resilience and trust, in crisis

    • Deborah Singerman
    • 15 March 2020
    2 Comments

    I still mainly look back. The bushfire legacy lives on. It acts as a benchmark for assessing tragedy and hope. I cannot get the searing images out of my head of red, angry skies, of flames raging frighteningly, embers flying, and firefighters miraculously persevering against the odds.

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  • MEDIA

    AAP is a vital supplier of Australian journalism

    • Isabelle Oderberg
    • 13 March 2020
    6 Comments

    Most restaurants don’t grow all their own food. Of course, they can and may grow some produce, but their expertise is on the preparation, cooking and plating of the dish. They look to farmers to supply the raw ingredients. This is a pretty good analogy for the role of the national newswire, Australian Associated Press (AAP), which will be closing mid 2020.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Commemorating the Bombing of Tokyo

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 March 2020
    9 Comments

    In March we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Tokyo in which over 300 planes stacked with incendiary weapons followed each other at regular intervals for three hours and killed an estimated 100,000 people — as many as those killed by either of the nuclear weapons in Japan.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stop bombarding us with military metaphors

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 February 2020
    22 Comments

    One of the most popular, and largely counterproductive, metaphors in public conversation is the military one. It suggests that the project commended is a war in which there is an enemy, a campaign to be begun, forces to be mobilised, a public whose support is to be won, and weapons to be used. They commit us to do whatever it takes to win the war.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate justice includes secure public housing

    • Andrew Jackson
    • 21 February 2020
    6 Comments

    As the bushfires raged and air quality worsened, we were constantly told to stay indoors, keep cool and be alert for emergency orders on our phones. But with each public service announcement, we continued to leave some of our most vulnerable behind.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Call to revive Australian tourism

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 20 February 2020
    3 Comments

    This communal outpouring during the bushfires has an opportunity to perpetuate itself indefinitely, even though the embers have been extinguished and those not directly affected by the fires have gotten on with their workaday lives. For even as the fires burned, Tourism Australia was mounting a campaign to encourage Australians to holiday locally instead of taking their patronage abroad, and to persuade international tourists to visit, too.

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