Keywords: Christmas Story
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Frank O'Shea
- 15 December 2010
6 Comments
We invented you, Santa, and named you after a hirsute Russian bishop. For anyone who thought about it, you were a kind of parable; you helped us to believe that prayers could be answered, that there was a bounty that was not diminished by the number of clients.
READ MORE 
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Duncan MacLaren
- 13 December 2010
3 Comments
Outside: the fish factory that never sleeps. The people working in it are illegal migrants, paid a pittance and treated as sub humans. Only the strong return from the fishing trips. If you are ill and cannot work, you can be tipped into the sea along with the other rubbish for the seagulls.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Sarah Kanowski
- 15 November 2010
6 Comments
Buying and selling has shaped history. Alongside goods, new ideas and practices get exchanged, leading to the creation of remarkable civilisations. My young daughter and I recently caught a bus into the city to do some shopping. A mundane errand was transformed into something magical.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Kerry Murphy
- 12 November 2010
6 Comments
A litmus test for the health of a democracy is what a Government does when it loses cases in the highest court in the land. The first consequence of yesterday's High Court decision regarding the cases of two Tamil asylum seekers is that many cases will need to be reconsidered.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 08 November 2010
10 Comments
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi dismissed Islamic banking as 'incompatible with Australia's Western values'. But Western values that uphold a banking system that treats its customers with disdain – as the Commonwealth Bank did last week – need to be questioned.
READ MORE
-
MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD
- Scott Steensma
- 03 November 2010
4 Comments
The back label of my taboo-smashing pre-10am cake was covered in an unintelligible language, which I could only presume was Dutch. What I had thought a tasty sounding Breakfast Cake was apparently also known less appetisingly as an 'Ontbijtkoek'. I can neither read nor speak Dutch despite my Dutch migrant heritage.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 01 November 2010
3 Comments
There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 14 October 2010
The other people in Paul's life exist only as disembodied voices from a mobile phone, set adrift in the box in which he is trapped. This may be taken as an allegory for modern communication, where handheld electronic devices are the primary conduit to networks of interaction and intimacy.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 19 August 2010
7 Comments
This election campaign has been reminiscent of the Italian hunting season, where it becomes dangerous
to go out of doors when so many guns are pointed into the air. Elections are like the shooting season. High fliers are safe. Low fliers are not.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Ben Coleridge
- 16 August 2010
2 Comments
Flicking the frisbee with a well practised arm, Jimmy told me about his former
home in Sri Lanka. 'Last time I was
there, I was carrying bodies to their graves in my arms, even the bodies
of friends.'
Homer's Iliad is a poem of force in
which, at all times, the human spirit is shown modified by its relations
with force.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Catherine Marshall
- 02 August 2010
27 Comments
Given that eruvs are inconspicuous, and religious freedom in Australia is a fait accompli,
there can be only one explanation for the prevailing sentiment, and
that is a subtle prejudice which represents the great big elephant in
the room for anyone living on Sydney's North Shore.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Greg Foyster
- 21 July 2010
42 Comments
I am not here to get rich, to receive charity, steal your job, or cheat the system. I am
not a 'queue jumper'. I am not an 'illegal arrival'. I am not a
'political issue'.
I am an asylum seeker, and this is my story.
READ MORE