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Keywords: Close The Gap

  • AUSTRALIA

    Mixed news for feminist issues on IWD

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 08 March 2019
    2 Comments

    International Women's Day is as good a day as any to take stock of where we actually are in terms of current feminist issues and how much we still need to accomplish. As much as there is to celebrate, a glance at the news is a confirmation of our own worst fears about ourselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Family first' rhetoric neglects single mothers

    • Kate Galloway
    • 01 March 2019
    7 Comments

    There is one type of family that consistently is omitted from pro-family government rhetoric: that of the single mother. Instead of making life easier for single-mother families, the government has imposed additional requirements as a pre-condition to their receiving the payments they need to support themselves and their children.

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  • EDUCATION

    A Catholic response to school funding fallacies

    • Dallas McInerney
    • 26 September 2018
    36 Comments

    If governments stopped supporting low-fee non-government schools, fees would rise. This would force parents to move their children to the free government school in the same suburb, and the non-government school would become unviable. Families would be denied their school of choice, and the bill for taxpayers would be greater.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    RUOK? won't fill mental health care gaps

    • James O'Brien
    • 12 September 2018
    1 Comment

    When we commit to asking friends, family, and coworkers about their wellbeing, we affirm that their safety matters, and their life is of value. This same ethic of care calls on the governments provide community supports which send a signal: every single life can get better.

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  • RELIGION

    A planet to heal

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 August 2018

    How are we to honour the commitment to peace of these Japanese and Maralinga survivors of nuclear conflagrations unleashed maliciously or negligently last century? We need to renew our commitment to painstaking negotiation of international treaties and agreements designed to ensure peace and security for all, insisting on the dignity and human rights of all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Treaty is more than a white feelgood moment

    • Sarah Maddison
    • 24 May 2018
    6 Comments

    Progressive Australians want a process that restores a sense of moral legitimacy to the nation. But far from concern about settler Australia's moral legitimacy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples seek treaty as recognition of their political difference. Treaties on these terms are unlikely to be acceptable to the settler state.

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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

    The Apology ten years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 February 2018
    3 Comments

    Today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of what was a graced day in our nation's history. Back then, our elected representatives on both sides served us well. A heartfelt apology was given and received. We are all the better for it.

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  • RELIGION

    NAIDOC Week homily

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 July 2017

    There is no point in proceeding with a referendum on a question which fails to win the approval of you, the First Australians. Neither is there any point in proceeding with a referendum which is unlikely to win the approval of the overwhelming majority of the voting public, regardless of when they or their ancestors first arrived in Australia. Given that you Indigenous Australians have spoken strongly through your representatives at Uluru in support of a First Nations Voice, it is now for the Referendum Council to recommend to government a timetable for constitutional change with maximum prospects of a 'Yes' vote.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    An inclusive Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 June 2017
    1 Comment

    This evening, we come together deliberately as people of diverse faiths and none, affirming the blessing of life in an inclusive country where all world views are to be respected. We are able to affirm that our spiritual lives sustain and strengthen our public lives and the vitality of the polis. Our Muslim hosts show us how to give thanks reverently for all the blessings of life, and how to attest publicly the spiritual dimension of all human life. Those of us who are migrants or descendants of migrants need to be particularly attentive to the yearnings and aspirations of those Australians who rightly claim an indigenous heritage with ancestors who have thrived on this continent for up to 60,000 years.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The joyful duty of giving blood

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 01 June 2017
    4 Comments

    I'm pretty close to an ideal donor. I have a willing arm and good blood pressure. I'm glad I could help and now know my own blood type, but this is a system that works best when everyone who can pitches in. Giving blood is simple to do, feels good and is desperately needed. Though the blood service estimates that nine million Australians are eligible to give blood, only 500,000 are currently doing so. There must be other ideal donors out there waiting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unsocial budget fails health test

    • Amy Coopes
    • 15 May 2017
    3 Comments

    Next year marks four decades since promulgation of the seminal Declaration of Alma Ata, which declared health to be a fundamental human right and laid the foundations for what are now widely championed as the social determinants of health. Without action on the social determinants, health policy can be a little like that joke about the cyclopean orthopod who, when confronted with a patient suffering fatal internal bleeding, is interested only in fixing their broken leg. So it is with last week's Budget.

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