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Keywords: Policy

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

  • ECONOMICS

    Towards an economy that works for all

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 October 2017
    10 Comments

    The promise of riches from the trickle-down effect is at best patchy for many Australians, and non-existent for others. Continuing with the same economic and social policy settings will exacerbate the already growing divide between the rich and the poor and eventually damage the economy to such an extent that it has a detrimental effect on everyone.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The violence in making America great again

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 October 2017
    11 Comments

    Terrorism has its loaded associations, a distinct demonology. To suggest that a US citizen might be a terrorist hardly accords with the project of Making America Great Again. Paddock was not a Muslim, which would have been a useful alibi for the restrictive policy on arrivals from specific Islamic countries.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beware the business of same-sex marriage

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 20 September 2017
    10 Comments

    Some quick research can reveal whether a company has a good track record with LGBTI and other human rights. Do they donate to LGBTI charities? Do they have an inclusion and diversity policy on their website? It doesn't benefit equality in the long run if we allow businesses to brand themselves pro-same sex marriage when their support for human rights runs only as deep as a rainbow poster.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Medicare-for-all an idea whose time has come?

    • Lesley Russell
    • 18 September 2017
    1 Comment

    Medicare-for-all is best seen as aspirational: it is shorthand for policy ideals and papers over political realities. With Republicans in control of Congress, there is obviously no immediate chance of Sanders's bill becoming law any time soon. But with Republicans and the President viewed as ineffectual in implementing their healthcare commitments and uncaring about voters' concerns, it is advantageous for Democrats to be seen to have solutions to the problems that confront their constituents.

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  • RELIGION

    Child protection, compliance and conversion

    • John Honner
    • 07 September 2017
    5 Comments

    In the Christian gospels the child is the exemplar, par excellence, of what God's world is meant to look like. In social policy, on the other hand, the child tends to be portrayed as a powerless innocent. In recent years, the Catholic Church has failed the standards of both gospel and society: on the one hand by discounting the importance of children and not listening to children, and on the other hand by not having appropriate practices and policies to ensure the safety of 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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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bi-partisanship shame of refugee policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 August 2017
    29 Comments

    What possessed Filippo Grandi, the relatively new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to go public last week, having a go at Australia for our government’s treatment of unvisaed asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat? He repeated UNHCR’s demand that Australia terminate offshore processing of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island and that we not outsource our responsibilities to others.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Petty political class is stunting Australia's growth

    • Fatima Measham
    • 21 June 2017
    15 Comments

    In the latest Essential poll, the primary vote for Pauline Hanson's One Nation lifted to 11 per cent. It does not bode well when competence is no longer the baseline; though in a leadership vacuum, 'someone else' holds a natural appeal. In any case, there can be worse things than incompetence. There is timidity. Mediocrity. Running up the cost of doing nothing at all. In so many ways, the Australian political class is holding us back. That is the crux of nearly every policy impasse over the past several years.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The origins and incoherence of Australia's asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 June 2017
    7 Comments

    I am resigned to the boats from Indonesia being stopped and staying stopped. But it is high time to stop the cruel treatment of the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island, and provide a permanent solution for the asylum seekers waiting inordinately in the Australian community. Their treatment is separable from the stopping of future boats setting out from Indonesia. The Commonwealth's $90 million settlement of the claim brought by asylum seekers on Manus Island should be a wake-up call to us all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unsocial budget fails health test

    • Amy Coopes
    • 15 May 2017
    3 Comments

    Next year marks four decades since promulgation of the seminal Declaration of Alma Ata, which declared health to be a fundamental human right and laid the foundations for what are now widely championed as the social determinants of health. Without action on the social determinants, health policy can be a little like that joke about the cyclopean orthopod who, when confronted with a patient suffering fatal internal bleeding, is interested only in fixing their broken leg. So it is with last week's Budget.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate change is the elephant in the budget room

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 11 May 2017
    7 Comments

    When Scott Morrison announced the 2017-18 Budget this week there was one phrase he didn't dare to utter in his meticulously written and rehearsed speech. It's just two short words, climate change, but when used together they conjure a public debate even our minister for the environment gets tongued tied over. Morrison's omission of climate change in the federal budget has set a tone of ignorance to improving energy policy in a meaningful way.

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