Eureka Street

Keywords: Dissent

AUSTRALIA

Freedom of expression for the rest of us
- Ruby Hamad
- 04 April 2014
6 Comments
How ironic that, even as Attorney General Brandis ensures the rights of 'bigots', the rest of us find our own rights under threat. Liberal state governments continue to roll out laws that affect the more marginalised and less privileged among us. Victoria's new 'anti-protest' laws and Queensland's 'anti-bikie' laws threaten public protest and assembly, which for most of us is how we exercise our freedom of expression.
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AUSTRALIA

Fence-sitters key to asylum seeker success
- Fatima Measham
- 10 March 2014
19 Comments
After more than a decade of refugee advocacy, campaigns still cater to small 'l' liberals and progressives. They are of course critical to consolidating support for asylum seekers and sustaining political pressure. Yet the debate has become so polarised that it would seem as if the left has a monopoly on compassion. This is a serious campaign problem because it alienates those who might otherwise be allies.
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AUSTRALIA

Abbott-whacking Greens senator's emotional politics
- Benedict Coleridge
- 07 March 2014
7 Comments
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam this week excoriated Tony Abbott, homing in on Abbott's politics of fear. Whatever you think of the speech, its implication was that politics includes a struggle over the cultivation, control and directing of public emotions. While our instinct is to think of our politics in terms of discussion and consensus, the public sphere also includes forms of expression beyond speech, such as ritual, recognition and mourning.
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AUSTRALIA

The public, the Church, and asylum seekers
- Frank Brennan
- 13 August 2013
1 Comment
'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.
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MEDIA

'Fundamentalist' Americans miss the point of Boston bomber cover
- Catherine Marshall
- 22 July 2013
19 Comments
Glory is the preserve of the patriotic American. Never was this belief more obvious than when Rolling Stone dared to publish on its cover a photograph of the alleged Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The ensuing public outrage has invoked the stiflingly patriotic adage adopted by George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers: you're either with us or against us.
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AUSTRALIA

Pragmatic answers to the asylum seeker question
- Frank Brennan
- 27 June 2013
10 Comments
'I want to outline the contours for a better approach — better than forcibly turning around boats, better than transporting people to Nauru and Manus Island or to Malaysia to join an asylum queue of 100,000 or permitting people to reside in the Australian community but without work rights and with inadequate welfare provision.' Frank Brennan speaks at the Australian Catholic University National Asylum Summit 2013.
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INTERNATIONAL

Turkish democracy gets the shake-up it needs
- William Gourlay
- 12 June 2013
5 Comments
Turkey's increasingly dictatorial prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid little heed to last week's violent demonstrations, dismissing protesters as looters and blaming social media for inflaming the situation. The protests are hardly on par with Egypt's government-toppling anti-Mubarak demonstrations, yet may still lead to a rejuvenation of Turkish democracy.
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AUSTRALIA

Labor's cruel joke on asylum seeker women
- Susan Metcalfe
- 26 March 2013
15 Comments
While the Government deserves some credit for its decision to transfer pregnant women from the PNG detention centre to Australia, and for refraining from sending children under the age of seven to the facility, the fact remains that it has embraced and entrenched many of the Coalition cruelties that in 2007 it promised to end.
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RELIGION

Pope for a new Reformation
- Andrew Hamilton
- 14 March 2013
28 Comments
If the Church is to be a school for holiness it must reassure Catholics above all that it is a safe school. In schools, this normally demands a change of culture to shift focus from reputation and power to the dignity, growth and empowerment of students. In the Church it will mean dealing decisively with the abuse of power by clergy.
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AUSTRALIA

Peer pressure could save the military
- Evan Ellis
- 28 November 2012
9 Comments
The pack mentality that led military personnel to ingore instances of rape seemed also to be at play on the Melbourne bus where a French woman suffered a tirade of abuse while most passengers sat silently by. An American journalist has argued that a peer group's creation of a social norm of human kindness could be the most effective way to encourage defiance to an immoral order.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Sex, addicts and religious cults
- Tim Kroenert
- 01 November 2012
4 Comments
I've never been a member of a cult, but I do have limited fringe experience of one fervent pentecostal church. The Master's portrayal of cult life chimes disturbingly with that experience. The cult members are attracted not just to the promise of meaning and belonging, but also to the eerie comfort of having someone else do their thinking.
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RELIGION

Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings
- Frank Brennan
- 12 October 2012
2 Comments
Fr Frank Brennan SJ's paper 'Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings' presented at the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Australians Against Capital Punishment Dinner, Red Hill, Brisbane, 12 October 2012, Commemorating the 10th World Day Against the Death Penalty.
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Keywords: Dissent