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Keywords: Colonisation

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Christmas story's whisper from the edges

    • John Falzon
    • 17 December 2013
    13 Comments

    Recently Pope Francis blasted the so-called trickle-down economic theories in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Some will scorn his message as naive at best and dangerous at worst, while others will regard it as an urgent enkindling of hope in the face of degradation and despair. The Christmas story hints that another kind of world is possible.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coalition stirs the ghost of Jimmie Blacksmith

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 December 2013
    5 Comments

    More than a century after Federation, Australia has yet to resolve this tension between a romantic notion of what 'Australia' is, and the depravities that were undertaken to attain it. It may be couched in more polite terms, but it rears its head in ham-fisted and fundamentally disrespectful approaches to Indigenous policy, such as recent moves by the Coalition Government that threaten to undercut the spirit of Native Title legislation.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    The ethics of paternalism in Aboriginal policy

    • Callum Denness
    • 25 September 2013
    3 Comments

    Following the abuse received by Adam Goodes from a teenage spectator in the AFL's Indigenous round, and the subsequent remarks made by Eddie McGuire, the country became embroiled in a debate about racism in modern Australia. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory introduced its Mandatory Alcohol Treatment Bill which, if passed, will see more Aboriginal people incarcerated. We were too busy describing the modern face of racism to notice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humiliation at the heart of homelessness

    • John Falzon
    • 18 June 2013
    13 Comments

    Recent ABS data reveals NT has both the highest rate of people experiencing homelessness and the highest imprisonment rate of any Australian state. Former Spanish PM Zapatero said 'a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members'. Successive Australian governments have systematically humiliated citizens on the basis of cultural background or health or social status.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Multiculturalism puts the lie to monarchists' mission

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 June 2013
    66 Comments

    There is no denying that our nation was forged by men and women who settled here from the UK. There is also no denying that men and women from other parts of the world came after them, and that there were countless generations here before them. Until monarchists can reconcile themselves with these facts then the image they hold of Australia is incomplete.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    McGuire ape gaffe exposes Australian tolerance as myth

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 31 May 2013
    29 Comments

    Those who object to Indigenous people being called 'apes' and to white men painting themselves black are dismissed as being politically correct and denying free speech. But how can Adam Goodes choose not to be offended by comments conceived for the very purpose of justifying crimes against the racial group to which he belongs?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor lost in democracy's gaps

    • Fatima Measham
    • 21 May 2013
    10 Comments

    How do we make sense of the perception that the economy is being mishandled when Australia is performing far better than other western countries? Or the fact that Labor faces a grim fate despite massive support for its major policies? The incongruence between public and political interest reveals democracy as an unfinished project. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Australian wars that Anzac Day neglects

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 22 April 2013
    24 Comments

    Around 20,000 people died in a series of violent conflicts between peoples extending across the entire continent and more than half of our history. We have yet to find a way to remember the loss of those people with anything like the scale and intensity of our other commemorations, such as Anzac Day.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Before and after Bali's searing flash

    • Pat Walsh
    • 12 October 2012
    4 Comments

    The bombing in Bali ten years ago today did not target Balinese directly, but they took the collateral damage to tourism, their bread and butter, very personally. Drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting motion, a smiling Balinese says he is happy the bombers have been executed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal solidarity with refugees

    • John Falzon
    • 18 June 2012
    8 Comments

    The words spoken by the people forced to the edges of Australian society are born from a strong and positive vision for Australia. They speak with authority and their message emerges from their collective wisdom and experience. None of us can learn what is right if we fail to listen to what is wrong. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Poverty's skanky tarts

    • Barry Gittins
    • 06 June 2012
    11 Comments

    Poverty is the unpaid rent of 200 years of colonisation. Poverty leaves a kid to her own solitary devices in the corner of a one-bedroom unit. It is pensioners eating canned excuses for a decent meal. Poverty is what happens when I don't care about you and you don't give a toss about me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Picking the scab of colonisation

    • John Falzon
    • 02 March 2012
    7 Comments

    The wound of colonisation is not yet healed. The so-called Stronger Futures legislation, which will extend and deepen some of the worst aspects of the NT Intervention, is built on the falsehood that the wound does not exist or is an Aboriginal problem. But it is an Australian problem. It is our problem.

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