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Keywords: Lockdown

  • RELIGION

    Valuing human life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 September 2021
    24 Comments

    In recent weeks the value of human life has become a topic of public conversation in different contexts. Proposed legislation on abortion and assisted dying has continued to focus attention on it. Debate about loosening COVID restrictions has also balanced the risk of death from the disease with risks to health and economic welfare from lockdowns. In Afghanistan the victory of the Taliban has again raised questions about the morality of the war and the killing involved by both sides.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coming out of Coronavirus  

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 September 2021
    11 Comments

    As restrictions drag on and the number of infections rises, more Australians are asking when lockdowns can cease. Federal politicians and business leaders have argued the case for a quick ending while claiming the authority of scientists. Science being science, the relevant questions have been tied to numbers. They have asked: how few cases should there be in the community before leaving lockdown? What percentage of the community must be vaccinated before the lifting of restrictions? What number of deaths should be tolerated for the gains of opening the economy? And when precisely should the opening of Australia take place?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The plight of the sandwich generation

    • Kate Moriarty
    • 02 August 2021
    5 Comments

    Once stereotyped as the MTV generation, a gang of apathetic, disaffected ‘latchkey kids’, Gen X has grown to middle age. We are now the sandwich generation. Many of us care for young children at home. Many care for our ageing parents. Many do both at the same time.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why we need to think communally in lockdown

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 29 July 2021
    6 Comments

    The despair induced by daily infection and death tallies would be, in normal times, ameliorated to some extent by one’s workaday routine. And the crisis would be borne in togetherness — an impossible response, since the pandemic calls on us to withdraw into ourselves rather than draw together.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ebbtide of responsibility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 July 2021
    9 Comments

    The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don’t be distracted by the individual blame game, focus on the system

    • Cristy Clark
    • 13 July 2021
    16 Comments

    Although there has been a reasonable level of attention paid to governance issues — such as the incredibly slow vaccine roll out, the ongoing problems with hotel quarantine, and the timing of the lockdown itself — Sydney’s current lockdown has also been marked by an unhelpful focus on individual actions.

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  • CARTOON

    And the winner is...

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 30 June 2021

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Recognising the human value of work

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 June 2021
    9 Comments

    In Victoria the latest lockdown has prompted fresh questioning of the business-as-before approach to life after COVID-19. In particular it urges renewed reflection on the connection between the remuneration of work and its importance to society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living with lockdown

    • Julian Butler
    • 18 February 2021
    7 Comments

    Each of us has our own experience of the first COVID year. We do all share some of the best results in supressing the virus anywhere in the world. Talk, though, of social cohesion and government competency is loaded here in Melbourne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The continuum of spatial justice in Australia

    • Cristy Clark
    • 22 October 2020
    4 Comments

    It would be really easy to ‘both-sides’ these debates, but that would present a false equivalence. Surely, if we have learned anything from this year’s lockdowns, we should have gained a far greater appreciation of the importance of community access to outdoor space — and, therefore, of spatial justice?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human rights and pandemic lockdowns

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2020
    11 Comments

    The Buhler arrest stirred a range of responses from across the political divide, many troubled. Legal representatives and human rights advocates were similarly disturbed by what they regarded as a lack of proportion and restraint in police action.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living in a gendered pandemic

    • Fernanda Fain-Binda
    • 27 August 2020

    When I read Jess Hill’s piece in The Monthly which calls the coronavirus lockdown a ‘gendered pandemic’, I felt heard. I wanted everyone to read this article, to understand that feminist wins were being erased in the name of a national emergency, and that women were stepping up to the now larger domestic workload with a career cost further down the line.

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