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Keywords: National Human Rights Consultation

  • RELIGION

    Patient autonomy and the doctor's conscience

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2009
    4 Comments

    In Life and Death: How do we honour the Patient's Autonomy and the Doctor's Conscience? Frank Brennan's Sandra David Oration at St Vincent's Clinic, Darlinghurst, Sydney, 17 September 2009.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What Indigenous Australians really need

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 07 September 2009
    3 Comments

    Like many Aboriginal communities, the Western Desert communities of WA's Pilabara are dealing with many pressing local issues. If plans for a national representative body can address some of these without introducing cumbersome structures that will inevitably fail, it will have achieved much.

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  • RELIGION

    Right to lifers miss the point

    • Frank Brennan
    • 19 August 2009
    31 Comments

    Last week a Supreme Court judge gave a sensible decision regarding the case of a quadriplegic man who wants his carers to discontinue feeding him. 'Right to life' and 'right to die' advocates have had a field day. You'd think they had not read the judgment.

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  • RELIGION

    Stradbroke Island homily

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 August 2009
    1 Comment

    Before the mission was established here, the local Aboriginal community of 200 persons was forced to host 1000 convicts from the mainland for eight years. I daresay not all the convicts were easy-going beachcombers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Bill of Rights power struggle

    • Jonathan Campton
    • 03 July 2009
    1 Comment

    While day one of the National Human Rights Consultation hearing ended with a growing hope for the rights of the oppressed, day two, dominated by politicians and lawyers, diluted this hope in legalism, fear and falsehoods.

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  • RELIGION

    In honour of Indigenous agitators

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 May 2009
    2 Comments

    Good intentions are not enough. Gone should be the days when Aboriginals are marginal to the corridors of power. Perhaps it will not be until we have seen the first Aboriginal Prime Minister that agitators for Indigenous justice will be vindicated.

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  • RELIGION

    Vilification laws fuel disharmony

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 May 2009
    2 Comments

    While it is inherently racist for a person to claim membership of the best race, it is no bad thing for a religious person to claim membership of the one true religion. That is what religious people do.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    What Frank did

    • Frank Brennan
    • 21 April 2009
    4 Comments

    Frank Costigan was a man of such moral authority that you would not need to speak to him, just think,  'What would Frank do?' When Frank was being wheeled in for surgery, he completed reading the morning papers, then waved to his children.

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  • RELIGION

    Sex and power in the church

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 April 2009
    4 Comments

    Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's book is an invitation to put fear behind us. Given the treatment it has received by people who should have known better, it has become an icon; a call to conversation without fear.

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  • RELIGION

    Bikies have rights too

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 April 2009
    3 Comments

    We need to be on our guard against laws and policies enacted in the name of the public interest but with insufficient consideration for the human rights of the minority.

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  • RELIGION

    St Mary's, Bishop Robinson and the value of dialogue

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 March 2009
    42 Comments

    Bishop Bathersby and Fr Kennedy are pastoral, down to earth men. If there had been more dialogue between them, and between Cardinal Pell and Bishop Robinson, the Catholic Church would be more the Church Jesus would want it to be.

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  • RELIGION

    Human rights without God

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 February 2009
    3 Comments

    Professor Martha Nussbaum's recent book Liberty of Conscience provides a rich textured treatment of the place of religion in the public square. If God is taken out of the picture, it may be difficult to maintain a human rights commitment to the weakest and most despised in society.

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