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Keywords: Liberty

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

  • RELIGION

    Religion and human rights

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 July 2018
    4 Comments

    'I voted 'yes' in last year's ABS survey on same sex marriage. As a priest, I was prepared to explain why I was voting 'yes' during the campaign. I voted 'yes', in part because I thought that the outcome was inevitable. But also, I thought that full civil recognition of such relationships was an idea whose time had come.' — Frank Brennan, 2018 Castan Centre Human Rights Conference

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parents, it's time to spike the spank

    • Barry Gittins
    • 19 June 2018
    4 Comments

    If you are inclined to discount expert opinion from medicos, lawyers and criminologists, you could consider the evidence of your own eyes. Observe the body language around you if a parent hits their kid in public. A hush descends and tension increases. Post-Royal Commission, violence against kids is more and more on the nose.

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  • RELIGION

    A stringent critique of financial abuse

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 30 May 2018
    5 Comments

    The Vatican has launched a stringent critique of abuses in global economies, abuses that are driving astonishing inequality and threatening ecological sustainability. 'Oeconomicae et pecuniariae questiones' reiterates the call for an urgent dialogue between politics and economics to advance human life and wellbeing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The rise of Iran's feminist resistance

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 02 February 2018
    1 Comment

    Yasmin opens the book and runs a lacquered fingernail down its table of contents. 'How we can seduce a man and not fall in love,' she reads. Then: 'How we can learn to keep secrets from men.' Is the government okay with this? 'What can you do?' Yasmin shrugs. 'Everybody knows people fall in love, have sex. This is how life works.'

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  • RELIGION

    Same sex marriage and freedom of religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 November 2017
    28 Comments

    Wednesday will be a day of celebration for those wanting a 'Yes' vote. It should also be a day when we Australians recommit ourselves to respect for all citizens, especially those whose beliefs differ from our own. Our politicians led us into this divisive campaign. Now they need to lead us out of it.

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  • RELIGION

    Seeking a true new start for all job seekers and workers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2017

    'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ

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  • MEDIA

    There is no such thing as capitalism

    • David James
    • 27 October 2017
    14 Comments

    In literary studies, one of the most important requirements is the need to define one's terms accurately. It has always come as a shock to me that economics is almost completely devoid of such precision. Much of the terminology of the 'discipline' of economics is either nonsense, or thinly disguised tautologies.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Rights are a luxury in the age of national security

    • Justin Glyn
    • 06 October 2017
    7 Comments

    In this time of austerity I am pleased and proud that Our Glorious Leader has decided to curtail the luxuries which we had formerly enjoyed ... for our own good, of course. I refer, of course, to our rapidly diminishing pool of civil liberties.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholics and the marriage equality plebiscite

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 September 2017
    7 Comments

    It is important for us to understand that a Catholic could vote 'yes' or 'no' in the forthcoming survey. It is not for me as a priest or for any bishop to tell you how to vote. I have been happy to tell people how I will be voting, but I have no interest in campaigning and urging my fellow Catholics or even my fellow citizens to vote a particular way. As with most public controversies arguments appealing to Catholics of good will can be made for either side in the dispute — as to what constitutes the common good, and as how best to respect the rights and entitlements of all persons, including children.

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  • RELIGION

    Citizenship and the Common Good

    • Frank Brennan
    • 30 August 2017
    6 Comments

    'There was one controversy in which Lionel Bowen was involved that does provide good lessons for the contemporary Catholic considering the desirable law or social policy on a contested issue - lessons for the citizen weighing what is for the common good. Back in 1979 there was debate in the Parliament on a motion which was framed to stop Medicare funding of abortions. Bowen, a strict Catholic, was strongly opposed to the motion. He did not think the motion was about abortion. He thought it was about money.' Frank Brennan's 2017 Lionel Bowen Lecture

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  • ECONOMICS

    Outlawing smoking for the young is a social responsibility

    • Collince Adienge
    • 31 July 2017
    7 Comments

    When limitations are placed on an individual’s liberty some people will call it bureaucracy or tyranny; others will say that they have been denied an opportunity to make decisions. The common sense middle position is typically that freedoms should be protected if they do not infringe on other peoples’ rights. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Where is money headed?

    • David James
    • 30 July 2017
    2 Comments

    The daily fluctuations of financial markets and the fractious debates over economic policy are concealing something deeper and much more disturbing. The future of money itself is in question. A decade after world banking almost collapsed in the global financial crisis, the questions raised have not been answered.

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