Keywords: Homelessness Week
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AUSTRALIA
- Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
- 06 June 2019
17 Comments
The recent federal election showed us that refugees and people seeking asylum do not need to be instrumentalised for votes. Perhaps refugee policymaking could be separated from politics. Perhaps it could be evidence-based and humane. Alas, the prevailing frames and politics of border protection quickly came to the fore post-election.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 03 April 2019
13 Comments
The much trumpeted projected budget surplus is built on the backs of people who are left out and often made to feel that they are left over, surplus to the economy: people on low pay or no pay, young people, sole parents, people experiencing homelessness, people living with a disability.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Rachel Kurzyp
- 06 March 2019
1 Comment
I pull the blanket over my head and will sleep to return. If it won't, I'll seek comfort in my blanket-cocoon. The world can't find me here. But I hear the bedroom door handle release and the smell of coffee slips through. 'Wakey, Wakey,' he announces to the twisted blankets as he comes to a standstill by the bed.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Carolina Gottardo, Nishadh Rego, Lars Stenger
- 21 February 2019
8 Comments
On 7 February in Manado, Sulawesi, Sajjad, a 24 year old man who had just finished a degree in IT, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He died six days later. On the day of his death, Australians woke to the government's claim the passage of the Medevac Bill would restart boats from Indonesia and weaken Australia's borders.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 01 October 2018
3 Comments
Frank Brennan's keynote address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Assembly entitled: 'Strong Faith. Strong Youth. Strong Future — Walking Together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. 1 October 2018, Technology Park — Bentley, Perth
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AUSTRALIA
- Julie Edwards
- 10 May 2018
6 Comments
The budget includes a range of tax cuts for many Australian workers and some funding for education and early childhood services but fails to address the ever-growing inequality across the country. Simply put, it is those in the greatest need of support who have yet again been left behind.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 15 March 2018
3 Comments
Politicians like to talk family. They talk about their own during campaigns, to establish their credential as human beings. They talk about ours, the 'working families' and 'family values' upon which socio-economies rest. There is even a party called Family First. But let's get real. We wreck families all the time.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 08 February 2018
14 Comments
Keeping foreign billionaires and foreign governments out of Australia's elections can be done without keeping churches and charities out of routine advocacy for the poor and marginalised.
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AUSTRALIA
- Danusia Kaska
- 20 June 2017
9 Comments
The first thing I noticed was his Mercedes. Then I saw he was also wearing an expensive-looking suit. We don't see the likes of guys like 'John' coming to our soup vans every day. When you've been serving food to many of the city's hungry, lonely and dispossessed for a couple of decades you do get used to seeing the same old faces. But John reminded me of an important lesson. That homelessness hasn't got a 'look', and 'homeless' never describes the person, only their circumstance.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 08 May 2017
1 Comment
Our Church is presently a strained, outdated social institution with an exclusively male hierarchy and clergy. But it is also the privileged locus for us to be called to the banquet of the Lord sharing theology and sacrament which have sustained the hearts and minds of similar pilgrims for two millennia. Thank God for Pope Francis who is showing us the way, helping us to find meaning in our changing and chaotic world, putting a fresh spring in the step of all those Catholics holding in tension the prophetic and the practical, the theological and the humanist, the tradition and the contemporary reality.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 09 March 2017
27 Comments
We often find ourselves invited to respond to people who ask us for money on the street - beggars, homeless people and so on. We can respond in different ways: give them something, decline as a matter of course, decline as a matter of principle, or not notice them. Last week Pope Francis recommended that we always give coins. To many this will seem to be too categorical. However as has so often been the case, Francis' throwaway lines illuminate much larger social issues.
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AUSTRALIA
- Daniel Nicholson
- 24 February 2017
9 Comments
In the footage of one violence protest, I was shocked to see a handful of my homeless clients, draped in Australian flags, engaged in street battles with anti-racists. These young men had experienced alienation, exploitation and poverty - all the things the Left is supposed to fight against. Long, uncomfortable conversations don't make for good social media content, yet if Australia is to stare down the threat of a rising alt-right it won't be done by yelling at right wing fringe groups across a police barricade.
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