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Despite claims to the contrary, the decision in Love and Thoms affirms the standing of the common law, including the unassailable power of the Australian State to make and enforce law. It upholds the centuries-long common law principle of accommodation of Indigenous laws in a colonial context.
At its heart, the question was whether an Indigenous Australian who was eligible for citizenship but had never formalised it could be regarded as an alien and therefore subject to removal. In a landmark judgment, a 4:3 majority of the Court found that Indigenous Australians were not aliens, even if they were not citizens.
In the Apology to the Stolen Generations the Australian Government spoke on behalf of all Australians in recognising that it acted wrongly in removing Indigenous children from their parents. It recognised also that the reason for the removal was the disrespectful claim that its targets were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their race. This disrespect caused lasting damage to the children and families.
Growing up I cringed at Asian representation in film and television. More often than not we were cast as nerds, martial artists or second to the plot. We had little depth to our characters, which continuously perpetuated racial stereotypes — stereotypes that still exist today.
Australia Day would be wasted if it were devoted simply to self-congratulation. In the wake of the catastrophic fires we need to ask questions about how Indigenous Australians before settlement managed the land and how our agricultural and economic practices have contributed to the perilous situation in which we now find ourselves.
There are so many details about these unprecedented bushfires that I have no idea how to process. But nothing — including the ever-present shroud of acrid smoke that has blanketed my city since November — has brought home the scale of this tragedy quite like the estimation that one billion native animals have been killed.
In a turn of events predicted since he announced his candidacy for President, Donald Trump has been impeached. But this impeachment, and even Trump's removal from office, will do nothing to quell the reality that the world is actively electing aggressively oppressive candidates, not only despite their violence, but also because of it.
Whiteness — some days it's like a light mist constantly hanging around yet going mainly unnoticed as it stealthily seeps into one's pores. Other days, it hits you like a cascade, or a tsunami of whiteness. Tuesday, observing the news, felt more like one of the latter.
Obituarists sharpened their quills in 2014 when word had it the death of Clive James was imminent. Since then we have witnessed a late flowering of poetry, reviews and articles tinged with mortality that revealed to the last his Twainian flair for journalistic self-promotion, albeit in the internet age. Now the quills are out in earnest.
Hopkins' words highlight how difficult it is for poets or lesser human beings to focus consistently on the particularity of each human being, let alone of each being in the world. Yet this is a necessary condition for recognising the claim that each person and the world make on us. It is no wonder that we sometimes falter in our commitment.
Any Australian who believes in four seasons is engaged in a form of climate denial. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are colonial constructs, not an objective truth. I recently visited a school which has the largest Indigenous student population in Melbourne. The kids made a mural depicting the eight seasons of greater Melbourne.
If government is concerned for citizens' wellbeing, it should properly resource services — drug and alcohol support, parenting support, subsidised childcare, education and so on. Instead, it is generating a system of social credit: rewarding those who toe the line and punishing those whose 'score' falls below that of the 'good citizen'.
145-156 out of 200 results.