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Keywords: Influence

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Australian Christian Lobby will not go away

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 November 2014
    14 Comments

    The ACL's recent national conference was held in Canberra and featured Opposition Leader Bill Shorten as keynote speaker. Appearances at the lobby's conferences have become something of a political rite of passage in recent years. Despite serious academic criticism from Professor Rodney Smith of the University of Sydney questioning its claims to political influence, it is now established in the top echelon of lobbying groups.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rise of the corporate cowboys

    • Tony Smith
    • 29 September 2014
    7 Comments

    Unfortunately, when people pin their hopes for a just and fair society to a corporation, they can be sadly disappointed. A spate of deaths around the country suggests that many corporations have plenty of power to influence governments to produce policies and legislation convenient for their operations, but fail to take responsibility for their bad outcomes, which include deaths in workplaces.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott's Australia beds American Calvinism

    • Lawrence Cross
    • 27 June 2014
    30 Comments

    While a number of Cabinet ministers are Christian, their policies seem to lack any Christian emphasis on caring for the poor and disadvantaged. America's interpretation of Christianity is heavily influenced by the doctrine of the theologian John Calvin, according to whom the rich who work hard for their wealth are preparing themselves for heaven, while the poor not only deserve their plight, but may well be abandoned by God.

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  • CARTOON

    How to tell fibs and influence people

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 18 June 2014

    View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

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  • RELIGION

    Who cares if Abbott and Hockey are Catholic?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 May 2014
    31 Comments

    Talk about politicians' faith is a trivial indulgence that diverts attention from more important questions. To conclude that a politician is influenced by their faith or is unfaithful to it may give satisfaction to the person who makes the judgment, but it does nothing for those affected by unfair policies. Nor is this kind of judgment one that Christians may make if they wish to be consistent.

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  • MEDIA

    Turnbull's bone for the News Corp behemoth

    • Ray Cassin
    • 24 March 2014
    17 Comments

    Malcolm Turnbull is unusual among Australian politicians in having a keen regard for the role of journalism in a democracy. That makes his blithe disregard of the prospect of handing Rupert Murdoch even greater influence over Australian politics all the more puzzling. It is unsurprising that some observers see the foreshadowed change to media ownership laws as a pay-off for News Corp's support of the Coalition in the 2013 election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The dawning of the Age of Unpleasantness

    • Brian Matthews
    • 28 February 2014
    7 Comments

    Joe Hockey's idea of an age of entitlement is shallow and facile. Announcing the end of an 'age' is just another way of obscuring the truth that you haven't the faintest idea what the hell is going on, or that you suspect what's going on but not how to influence, redirect or stop it. So you fall back on this persuasive notion of a great shift in the times. The next 'age' for those whose entitlement is disappearing will be marked by unpleasantness.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bushfires demand response-ability

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 23 October 2013
    5 Comments

    Human land practices and increasing temperatures alter the earth, and are influenced by politics, law, philosophy and economics. In Lisbon, Western philosophy sought to sever God from nature; now we pretend that the fusion of humans and nature doesn't exist. The term natural disaster shouldn't be trusted. It is superstitious to think humans and nature aren't locked in a reciprocal relationship with political and ethical responsibility.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Don't bet on the Australian dollar

    • David James
    • 08 February 2013
    4 Comments

    This week the Australian dollar reached its lowest point in three months. Tangible factors such as interest rates and trade with China influence its strength. But what really determines the direction of our currency is the whim of the currency traders. In that sense, the Aussie is is arguably the most 'unreal', or virtual currency in the world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NSW Labor's diseased ethics

    • Tony Smith
    • 06 February 2013
    11 Comments

    The Labor Party's ethical problems are deep seated. Once it adopted pragmatism as its first principle, policy debates lost meaning. The ideological vacuum was filled by enslavement to poll driven politics and media images. The Left struggled to retain its influence and Labor's heart vanished. We should expect much more from our politicians.

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  • RELIGION

    US bishops' contraception conundrum

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 March 2012
    39 Comments

    To maintain moral influence, the US Catholic bishops' fastidiousness about indirect cooperation with government on contraception would need to be matched by an equal fastidiousness in cooperating indirectly with government in the abuses associated with military, penal and immigration policy.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Aboriginal community ditched by church and state

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 November 2011
    8 Comments

    The remote community of Toomelah was a state-run Aboriginal mission with a strong church presence. A raft of social problems have emerged in place of the traditional culture that was usurped by these influences. Cultural extinction is perhaps the biggest issue facing such communities.

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