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Keywords: Hardship

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Attacks on the arts miss their value

    • Leya Reid
    • 13 October 2020
    49 Comments

    A common argument is that publicly-funded artists take unnecessarily from the ‘average Australian’. In the current international crisis, this argument fails to recognise that artists and arts workers are just as deeply impacted financially by COVID-19 as the ‘average Australian’ in other industries.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Father shows best

    • Barry Gittins
    • 03 September 2020
    7 Comments

    I have been thinking for several months about fathering and wisdom. To my surprise, I found some of Marcus Aurelius’ truisms to be reflected, if erratically, by the pronouncements of my own pater familias, Kenneth Hugh Gittins.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Accountability, responsibility and the blame game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 August 2020
    7 Comments

    I would like here to reflect on the relationship between accountability and other essential aspects of public life: reflection, responsibility, and praise or blame with their attendant punishment and reward. The order and priorities within these need to be respected both in government action and in public comment.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reimagining our housing

    • Cristy Clark
    • 02 July 2020
    5 Comments

    The significance of having a sanctuary has been heightened during the last months of living with the threat of COVID-19, which starkly highlights the experience of those Australians who do not have a sanctuary, who do not have a home to shelter in.

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  • RELIGION

    Ecumenical history offers lessons

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 June 2020
    19 Comments

    With churches closed throughout much of the world, many events and dedicated weeks have passed us by. One of those weeks was the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Catholics who paid attention to Pope Francis’ engagements may have noticed it through his references to the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul’s Encyclical on Christian Unity, Ut Unum Sint.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    There's no place like home

    • Kate Galloway
    • 13 May 2020
    2 Comments

    Over the weekend in most Australian states, rules requiring people to stay home were relaxed somewhat. The country has commenced its easing of the significant restrictions on venturing out in public. As we begin to reacquaint ourselves with life outside, it is useful to reflect on the new resonance of ‘home’ — but also on its inherent limits.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Keeping an eye on police powers

    • Bree Alexander
    • 18 April 2020
    5 Comments

    Most people would agree that certain measures are necessary to both protect those who face the greatest health risks and so that our health systems don’t get overwhelmed. However, these astronomical limitations on civil liberties raise concerns.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Resilience and trust, in crisis

    • Deborah Singerman
    • 15 March 2020
    2 Comments

    I still mainly look back. The bushfire legacy lives on. It acts as a benchmark for assessing tragedy and hope. I cannot get the searing images out of my head of red, angry skies, of flames raging frighteningly, embers flying, and firefighters miraculously persevering against the odds.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    A view from Africa of Australia burning

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 14 November 2019
    10 Comments

    As fires obliterated large swathes of Australia, I was largely oblivious to the news — though tenuously connected to events as I travelled through oven-hot, tinder-dry national parks in Southern Africa. It was only when I reached the airport in Johannesburg that the extent of the catastrophe became apparent to me.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    First trip to red earth

    • Bernard Appassamy
    • 18 April 2019
    2 Comments

    The isolation is familiar — like the Mauritius I grew up in, but these swans also capture a different Australia to the one I have known until now. What appears spectacular to a tourist travelling in an air conditioned car remains brutal for the locals, as evidenced by the drought and near ghost towns forced to reinvent themselves through tourism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Budget 2019-20 and the way forward for welfare

    • Joe Zabar
    • 08 April 2019
    6 Comments

    A proposal to take decisions around welfare payments out of politicians' hands is the best way forward. If the major parties are going to put supporting the most vulnerable in the 'too hard' basket, let an independent commission determine the rates at which various welfare payments can allow people to live a dignified life.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Banks remain protected species

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 February 2019
    10 Comments

    Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial sector has named, shamed and excoriated banks, regulators, insurance companies and other financial services businesses to the extent that you would think they are now extremely vulnerable and universally unloved. That would be a mistake.

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