Keywords: John Falzon Is Chief Executive Officer Of The St Vincent De Paul Society
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 16 January 2014
1 Comment
Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 17 December 2013
13 Comments
Recently Pope Francis blasted the so-called trickle-down economic theories in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Some will scorn his message as naive at best and dangerous at worst, while others will regard it as an urgent enkindling of hope in the face of degradation and despair. The Christmas story hints that another kind of world is possible.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 19 August 2013
24 Comments
Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.
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AUSTRALIA
Recent ABS data reveals NT has both the highest rate of people experiencing homelessness and the highest imprisonment rate of any Australian state. Former Spanish PM Zapatero said 'a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members'. Successive Australian governments have systematically humiliated citizens on the basis of cultural background or health or social status.
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AUSTRALIA
You don't build someone up by putting them down. You don't help someone into employment by pushing them into poverty. By keeping the unemployment benefit low, successive governments have deliberately humiliated people rather than improving their chances.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
They're hooked, no longer hear the church's gong, the stories or the insights that beget it, Real need for intimacy drives them on, a bare heartbeat from chaste religious song.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 21 December 2012
17 Comments
The greatest power for progressive social change lies with the forming of connections between the excluded. This Christmas I invite you to join me in saluting the people who experience exclusion and who are best placed to teach all of us how best to change society for the better.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 16 October 2012
39 Comments
Last week we witnessed one of the most powerful articulations of gender equality by any prime minister. Sadly on the same day the Government and Opposition pushed through legislation to force 140,000 sole parents onto the inadequate Newstart Allowance. Gender analysis is mainstream; it is time for class analysis to become so too.
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AUSTRALIA
• We passed this law in the night time of your mourning. We listened but you said nothing. We watched but you did nothing for yourselves.• Today we are crying but today and tomorrow, we are ready to take back the future you stole from us. But not with all the love in our bodies and our skies will weever be able to take away the shame from you.
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AUSTRALIA
The words spoken by the people forced to the edges of Australian society are born from a strong and positive vision for Australia. They speak with authority and their message emerges from their collective wisdom and experience. None of us can learn what is right if we fail to listen to what is wrong.
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AUSTRALIA
The Budget confirms one thing that both sides of politics agree on, and that's their belief in the existence of an undeserving poor. There's nothing wrong with bringing home the bacon for middle Australia. But the people living at the rough end of Struggle Street are trying to get by on baked beans.
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RELIGION
- John Falzon
- 06 April 2012
10 Comments
The Easter motif of suffering and resurrection comes alive in movements of social change, when people who have been treated as nothing proclaim by their collective dreaming we are everything. For those who hunger for justice it is a sin to be disorganised, when the misery we confront is well organised.
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