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Keywords: Democracy

  • AUSTRALIA

    Jacqui Lambie and wildcard senators are not rogues

    • Tony Kevin
    • 25 November 2014
    22 Comments

    Jacqui Lambie has resigned from the Palmer United Party, apologising to the nation for weeks of acrimonious sniping and instability in parliament. We can understand the hostility of the major parties, and even the Greens, to independent and PUP senators who took office mid-year. But it is not in their self-interest to try to exploit differences and to weaken and destabilise the newbie senators.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hong Kong not in the mood for love

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 03 October 2014
    3 Comments

    Over the last 20 years, every time the people of Hong Kong have heard some 'menacing' messages from Beijing, they have responded and become politically active. The menacing message this time is the one I heard two years ago in the office of Leung Kwok-hung – better known as 'Long hair' – in the Legislative Council offices far from the epicentre of the protests: 'Beijing won’t honour its pledge’.

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  • EDUCATION

    Harvard professor defies Australian class warfare

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 27 June 2014
    13 Comments

    Amidst a whirl of media interviews and meetings, David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard University and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2014, paid a visit to his alma mater: a state school in suburban Sydney. State schools aren't the repositories of children too impoverished or unintelligent for the alternative; they're the living manifestation of democracy, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and ecumenism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's time Parliament had a say on 'disgraceful' PNG solution

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 June 2014
    29 Comments

    Australia's cruel arrangement for asylum seekers arriving without a visa cannot be scrutinised by our courts and has never been approved by our Parliament. In the name of democracy, in the name of Australian self-respect, and in the name of human rights protection and the rule of law, it is time this arrangement was presented to our Parliament for its approval by our elected representatives or for immediate ditching. It's a disgrace.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Government blasé on Australian drone deaths

    • Justin Glyn
    • 27 May 2014
    13 Comments

    While recent weeks have been taken up with thinking about the Budget's disproportionate impact on poorer Australians, another, more spectacular, area of government disregard for the lives and rights of its citizens has gone relatively unremarked. It goes to the heart of democracy, revealing not only the distance between Western governments and their citizens, but also the acceptance of that gulf as a fact of modern political life.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thai coup more of the same

    • Michael Kelly
    • 26 May 2014
    3 Comments

    The cycle of election, opposition protest, social and political instability that provokes a royal approved military intervention underlies how immature democracy is in Thailand. Unfortunately, in the medium term — the next five years — it will be 'same, same' unless there is a circuit breaker. That may come with the next trigger to instability which has to be set off sooner rather than later: the death of a very frail royal person.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's hip to be a bigot in radical Abbott's Australia

    • Ray Cassin
    • 28 March 2014
    23 Comments

    The Howard Government's radical-right tendencies emerged gradually. By contrast, the Abbott Government has already sent multiple signals that it is intent to radically remake the political fabric. While the restoration of knighthoods to the national honours system is merely a wacky emanation of the prime ministerial psyche, the proposed amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act are corroding basic principles of constitutional democracy.

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  • MEDIA

    Turnbull's bone for the News Corp behemoth

    • Ray Cassin
    • 24 March 2014
    17 Comments

    Malcolm Turnbull is unusual among Australian politicians in having a keen regard for the role of journalism in a democracy. That makes his blithe disregard of the prospect of handing Rupert Murdoch even greater influence over Australian politics all the more puzzling. It is unsurprising that some observers see the foreshadowed change to media ownership laws as a pay-off for News Corp's support of the Coalition in the 2013 election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2013: Australian democracy needs an intrusion of the excluded

    • John Falzon
    • 16 January 2014
    1 Comment

    Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Coalition and the mandate myth

    • Max Atkinson
    • 11 October 2013
    12 Comments

    Since the election there has been much discussion of the idea that, because democracy means respecting the will of the people, elected members have a duty to support the government's 'mandate'. Accordingly, they need not inform themselves and act on their own judgment because the people have spoken. Edmund Burke, the father of conservative political philosophy, would argue that this betrays, rather than serves, constituents.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Eureka Street readers shift towards Greens

    • Ray Cassin
    • 30 August 2013
    29 Comments

    Subscribers to Eureka Street are changing their political allegiance in this federal election campaign. A readers’ survey conducted last week revealed a shift away from the ALP, which the majority of poll respondents supported in the 2010 federal election. The Greens have been the chief beneficiary.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A letter to my daughter, who will vote for the first time

    • Ray Cassin
    • 28 August 2013
    7 Comments

    You are excited at voting but dismayed at the choices you're going to find on the ballot papers. You are not alone in this - nearly one in five eligible voters aged between 18 and 24 have not bothered to enrol to vote. Why don't people trust democratic process to change the things they think should be changed? One reason is that the kind of politics we have is devoid of any great moral clash of ideas.

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