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Pope Francis' Holy Thursday expedition to the juvenile justice centre to wash the feet of young people, male and female, Christian and Muslim, breached liturgical rules. But he was right to do so. Church and state laws are securely grounded only when there is a shared sense of the importance of human flourishing.
The ad hoc nature of arrangements for asylum seekers in Nauru and PNG reveal that priorities are being determined by election dates rather than respect for human dignity and international human rights laws. The latest Coalition idea to interdict boats from Sri Lanka outside our territorial waters and send them back is particularly ill-considered.
Last week the political leaders were brawling over assistance payments for middle-class Australians, with Tony Abbott claiming to be promoting 'tax justice for families'. A new Human Rights Commission report has shown how our super and tax systems fail unpaid carers, who are needed to sustain many families. But not the ones whose votes matter most.
Anti-discrimination acts are meant to protect vulnerable people, not corporations or dominant ideologies. The employers I represent reap the benefits of understanding that diversity and inclusion are brilliant for business and productivity. The Government's new human rights consolidation bill has missed simple opportunities for real improvement.
Money is not like water, that 'flows' around the world, reaching 'equilibrium', or experiencing 'volatility'. It is transactions between people, based on trust. It enables the cooperation that forms the basis of social life. Human beings should be at the centre. Yet that is the opposite of what is happening. Monday 27 August
On Saturday Scott Morrison's border asylum meter registered the arrival of the 150th boat since Julia Gillard's announcement of the Pacific Solution Mark II in August. If the 'no advantage' principle is coherent and workable, the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers and Gillard have very different understandings of its operation.
Paul Keating this month reflected on his determination as Prime Minister 'to establish a new and durable' relationship with Indonesia' and lamented the Australian media and his predecessors' preoccupation with human rights abuses in East Timor. It'd be churlish to question these reflections if the current Foreign Minister were not on the cusp of making a similar mistake regarding Papua.
Two principal conclusions can be drawn from the East Timor experience. First, a victim-friendly process is desirable, achievable and productive. If East Timor after decades of war and devastation could do it, Australia certainly can. But victims should not take for granted that the high level of public and political support the Royal Commission currently enjoys will translate into action.
To say, as Aung San Suu Kyi did, that both the Muslim Rohingya and the Buddhist Arakanese had breached human rights laws in the current conflict is akin to saying that whites as well as blacks violated human rights in apartheid South Africa. The Australian Government, in its treatment of asylum seekers, has lost the moral legitimacy to speak up for oppressed groups such as the Rohingya.
Last week the UN declared access to contraception a universal human right. The Philippines Church's opposition to reproductive health legislation is hollow because it is doesn't address identified social problems. Many conscientious Catholics are arriving at the conclusion that they can support the bill without having to renounce their faith.
Abortion seems to be an inherently insoluble moral and human rights conundrum. The ethical debate consists of grappling with many untenable positions. The best course may be to face this complexity rather than seek to reduce it to a final solution.
'Even without the political static which is drowning us all out down there in Canberra, there is real doubt whether the Gillard bluff 'Don't get on a boat because you might end up in Nauru' can do what the Howard bluff could not deliver.' Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's Law and Justice Oration at the Law and Justice Foundation 2012 Justice Awards Dinner, Parliament House, Sydney.
181-192 out of 200 results.