Keywords: Mad Men
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Andrew Hamilton
- 12 November 2015
8 Comments
In recent reflection on the future path of Australia the common good has made a welcome return. At the same time the Turnbull Government has transferred responsibility for water resources, including the Murray-Darling Basin, from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Trade. The two things seem to be unrelated. But the concept of the common good has been embodied robustly in the Murray-Darling Basin plan and survives in the midst of continuing conflict.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michele Madigan
- 10 November 2015
18 Comments
The budget for the 2015 Indigenous Advancement Strategy funded South Australian Aboriginal communities less than ten per cent of what they required, and some received nothing at all. So with the prospect mooted of the state hosting a depository for the world's high-level radioactive waste, it's a very relevant concern that some communities might be enticed to offer themselves as a site. This is not only a justice issue for those communities; the environmental implications are far-reaching.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- B. N. Oakman
- 10 November 2015
7 Comments
I'd never met a Vietnamese, couldn't figure what we had against them. But we were raised in shadow of returned men, the shimmer of lapelled bronze, a presumption we in our turn would go when ordered ... Most of us dodged gap years of sweat and khaki, missing madness, maiming, napalm, agent orange, learning how to kill and to piss ourselves out of fear. Instead we were granted head starts with women, front marks in the greasy pole dash, a less congested clamber to unremarkable lives.
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AUSTRALIA
- Gabriela D'Souza
- 09 November 2015
10 Comments
George Megalogenis describes a protest rally in 1849 organised by residents of Sydney against arrivals of more convict boats. Workers who 'wanted to maintain their high-wage society' made 'the first of countless calls that would be made against migrants who threatened to undercut their standard of living'. It is a familiar refrain today. In a world where three-fifths of a person's income is determined by their place of birth, it defies logic that we place restrictions on people's movement to preserve our standard living.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 28 October 2015
7 Comments
There are two broader implications arising from Joe Hockey's valedictory speech. The first is that his failure to reflect on the weaknesses of the Abbott government may be widely shared by his Coalition colleagues. They still don't understand the causes of the predicament they have made for themselves. The second is that if Malcolm Turnbull accepts Hockey's diagnosis then his government will be largely about better communication and more effective politics rather than refurbished policies.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Patti Miller
- 14 October 2015
13 Comments
I have always felt guilty about an inability to commit to any belief system. So when Montaigne said 'Only fools have made up their mind', I felt an enormous sense of relief. He knew that those who are certain are the ones to shut down newspapers, lop off heads, blow up planes, burn books. There is a thread throughout his essays, too, of him finding sex undignified and therefore unfitting for grown men and women. It is one of his many contradictions and confronts me with my own contradictory attitude.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Bronwyn Lay
- 28 September 2015
16 Comments
When refugees walked into Europe, away from distant distress sites, their presence made the global issue visceral for Europeans. Australia doesn't have asylum seekers walking en masse through ordinary streets. Our border is one of established hatred. 'Stop the boats' policy denies ordinary Australians their compassionate impulse, and creates a history that our children will face judgement upon. It denies humanity's collective memory after World War II.
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AUSTRALIA
- Jeff Sparrow
- 08 September 2015
5 Comments
The recent National Reform Summit was lauded as an attempt to 'rediscover the art of reform that in the past generation helped to drive high living standards and made Australia the envy among smart nations'. Yet the urgency with which Australian pundits demand 'reform' corresponds with a peculiar opacity about what the term actually means, with its past association with the socialist movement but more recent appropriation as a neoliberal mantra.
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ECONOMICS
- Lucas Smith
- 14 August 2015
4 Comments
G. K. Chesterton said that 'too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists'. In our young century, we have lost capitalists, and wealth has coagulated to a seemingly smaller and smaller number of financiers, oligarchs and corporations. The stock market is where entrenched wealth is kept and made. An industry-shattering share-trading app is set to help deepen our pool of capitalists.
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RELIGION
- Philomena van Rijswijk
- 12 August 2015
12 Comments
Our family life was fraught with conflict, centred on our parents' inability to cope with my father's serious mental illness. During the early years of her childhood, my sister was made my mother's intimate confidante. This was a time of anguish for Mum, about both her marriage and a series of tragic miscarriages. My sister left home when she was 14, and entered the juniorate on the way to becoming a nun.
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AUSTRALIA
A Russian investigative committee continues to claim that MH17 was most likely to have been downed by an air-to-air missile that was not Russian-made. For their part, Western commentators became increasingly impatient and scornful of Russian ‘conspiracy theories’ on who downed MH17. Whether the identity of who actually shot down MH17 becomes known in the fullness of time could depend upon the extent to which our political leaders can resist using MH17 to prosecute their Cold War enmities.
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INTERNATIONAL
In an impressive demonstration of how the revocation of citizenship can be made to work to defend the national reputation and lifestyle of a country against those who would wish it harm, five of the country's seven opposition MPs (in a 19 member Parliament) have had their passports cancelled for 'damaging the reputation and development of the country'. In Australia, at least for the moment, damaging of Government property will still be required for the Minister of Immigration and Border Protection to revoke citizenship under the new anti-terror provisions in s.35A of the Citizenship Act.
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