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Keywords: Common Good

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The value of novels

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 26 July 2021
    19 Comments

    I was at university when I first heard of the so-called death of the novel, and was frightened by the thought. But I’ve since heard the phrase many times during the ensuing decades, and am cheered by the fact that so far the novel has clung to life, albeit precariously, while novelists persist in writing, despite the many drawbacks attendant upon the practice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Keeping refugee advocacy alive

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 June 2021
    23 Comments

    The present climate offers little encouragement for people anyone who cares for refugees and wants to press their cause. It would be rash to think that things will change soon.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Questioning the wisdom of legalising euthanasia

    • Margaret Somerville
    • 03 June 2021
    9 Comments

    No one on either side of the debate wants to see people suffer and the euthanasia debate is not about if we will die — we all will at some point. The debate is about how we will die and whether some ways of dying, namely euthanasia, are unethical and dangerous, especially to vulnerable and fragile people, and destructive of important shared values on which we base our societies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s spiritual journey

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 01 June 2021
    11 Comments

    Like the best religious poetry, Dylan’s works resists easy interpretation and remains open to endless meditation. Dylan’s overtly political songs — ‘Hurricane’, ‘Political World’ — and love songs — ‘Idiot Wind’, ‘Tangled up in Blue’ — have often been challenging. It’s the same with his religious output.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Interrogating the past

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 May 2021
    27 Comments

    A wry satisfaction to be enjoyed in reading histories of events of your youth is that it uncovers your prejudices at that time. It reassures you that you have grown wiser but also makes you wonder whether your present attitudes will need revisiting. Save Our Sons, Carolyn Collins’ detailed and even-handed study of women’s campaign against conscription during the Vietnam War, offered such pleasures.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dying and the question of dignity

    • Annmarie Hosie
    • 25 May 2021
    27 Comments

    Peace, laughter and lightness during dying might seem unlikely, but such experiences are common, not rare. Seeing and sharing in these sudden, strengthening consolations (and receiving them in my own griefs) have taught me about our awesome potential to transcend suffering, and confirmed why we don’t need euthanasia or assisted suicide.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Four issues to consider when legislating for medically assisted dying

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 May 2021
    25 Comments

    Australian jurisdictions are presently considering laws and policies relating to euthanasia, physician assisted dying and medically assisted suicide. The law can and should provide bright-line solutions or at least firm parameters within which the dying, their loved ones and their care providers can negotiate dying and death.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Truth lies at the heart of communication

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2021
    10 Comments

    There are larger and unchanging questions about why we communicate and about the effect of our communications on the way we live. World Communications Day is an opportunity to think about these basic questions.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Football, money and the nature of the local

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 April 2021
    4 Comments

    The history of sport, with its varied and often conflictual relationships between local communities, money and administration, provides the context for understanding the Super League move. It also raises more important questions about the nature and importance of the local. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Are we all in this together?

    • Ursula Stephens
    • 01 April 2021
    1 Comment

      At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government reassured Australia ‘We’re all in this together’ but the truth is that the end of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus supplement payments will leave more than 2.6 million people in poverty.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When poetry purifies

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 March 2021
    15 Comments

    We recently celebrated World Poetry Day, which gives poets, both public and private, a day in the sun. It also renews old conversations about why poetry might be important and whether all poems should rhyme.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dreyfus redivivus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 March 2021
    18 Comments

    Any government decision can cause hurt to some groups in society. There is a difference, however, between decisions that are only painful and those that are vindictive. The former may be regretted, but vindictiveness implies a satisfaction in causing pain that does not arise out of need. The reason for it must be sought in the minds and hearts and culture of those who devise the policies.

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