Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Liberty

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Border control shake-up takes us into dangerous waters

    • Tony Kevin
    • 13 May 2014
    46 Comments

    Scott Morrison has announced the formation of a powerful new paramilitary force with its own ideology, training and rank structure, answerable only to an immigration minister. There is a disturbing comparison that may be drawn between this new agency, apparently with no legal or constitutional checks and balances outside itself, and the Schutzstaffel security service established by Hitler and answerable only to him as leader.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Whose liberty matters as Dickensian budget looms?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 May 2014
    16 Comments

    French economist Thomas Piketty argues that current conditions have set us on track for a return to 19th century-levels of inequality. The Commission of Audit proposals suggest that the auditors and the Government are keen to expedite this neo-Dickensian era. It's all done in the name of 'incentives' toward 'personal responsibility', but this cannot remain coherent in the face of those who will be hit hard by the proposed suite of cuts and co-payments.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The peacemaker pope

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 24 April 2014
    7 Comments

    Quite striking is the similarity between the warm response to Pope John XXIII half a century ago and to Pope Francis today. Both broke through the gilded cage of outdated conventions and stereotyped expectations. Both stepped over barriers of ideology or religion to evoke bonds of a common humanity committed to promoting the wellbeing of all people, especially the poor and marginalised. The contexts were of course quite different.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Racial hatred laws 20 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    5 Comments

    In 1994, a year before the Parliament enacted the present section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, I wrote in Eureka Street: 'At this time, in this part of the world, thought-police armed with criminal sanctions are not the answer' to racial discrimination. Senator Brandis has now circulated a proposal to amend the existing provisions. What he has produced is the racial hatred law you have when you don't want a racial hatred law.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Human Rights, the national interest and the will of the people

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    1 Comment

    'Whether or not we have a bill of rights, much of our human rights jurisprudence remains partial, failing to extend rights equally to all. Once we investigate much of the contemporary discussion about human rights, we find that often the intended recipients of rights do not include all human beings but only those with certain capacities or those who share sufficient common attributes with the decision makers. It is always at the edges that there is real work for human rights discourse to do.' Frank Brennan's Blackfriars Lecture

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Punk's holy fools still putting it to Putin

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 11 April 2014

    Journalist Masha Gessen describes the members of Pussy Riot as 'Putin's ideal enemies'. In recent months, their nemesis has hosted the Olympics, taken control of Crimea and clamped down on media. For a group born out of 'the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power against basic human rights', Pussy Riot still has much to roar about, even if its signature 'punk prayer' sounds more than ever like a plea.

    READ MORE
  • CARTOON

    Give me your tired, your poor, your muddled thinking

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 26 March 2014
    6 Comments

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

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Free speech! Well, sort of

    • Ellena Savage
    • 21 March 2014
    13 Comments

    Andrew Bolt's response to Q&A's airing of accusations of racism was surprising. While no human is immune to emotional distress, it seems excessive for a man whose career has taken him to the edge of defamation laws to publicly wither under his opponents' attacks. This matter brings to light the discord between Australian conservatives' rhetoric about liberty and free speech, and the reality their policies and opinions impose.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Too little law in Newman's Queensland

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 February 2014
    5 Comments

    'Three decades on, Queensland once again has a premier who finds some political advantage in skewing the balance between law and order, impugning the integrity and vocation of the legal profession. He has described defence lawyers as hired guns.' Professor Frank Brennan SJ addresses the Queensland Law Society Dinner, 30 years on from his book Too Much Order with Too Little Law.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Advancing human rights in the market

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 February 2014
    1 Comment

    'The market for disability services will need to be underpinned with a strong and robust internal risk management framework. There will be an increasing number of for-profit operators in the sector. Hopefully the not-for-profit operators will make the necessary adaptations competing in the market and providing the ethos for the market to deliver services in a dignified, fair and transparent manner.' Frank Brennan's Leading the Way Seminar for the National Disability Service

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Passion has a place in border protection's age of reason

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 07 February 2014
    24 Comments

    In the Australian migration debate, 'passion' is construed as opposed to 'reason'. But the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said that 'passion' in its classical (ancient or biblical) sense, is not opposed to reason (being attuned to the world), but rather to 'peace' or 'harmony'. Therefore 'passionate' language — alongside practical proposals — can unsettle uncritical pictures of the issue.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Colonial garden party

    • Barry Gittins, Michael Sharkey and Chris Wallace-Crabbe
    • 02 December 2013
    3 Comments

    The diggers' catchcry, liberty, saw fascism a'yawning/ enfranchisement followed suit, with racism adorning/ its streamlined passions for the cause — White Australia Policy a'borning.

    READ MORE