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Keywords: Poverty

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Poverty's skanky tarts

    • Barry Gittins
    • 06 June 2012
    11 Comments

    Poverty is the unpaid rent of 200 years of colonisation. Poverty leaves a kid to her own solitary devices in the corner of a one-bedroom unit. It is pensioners eating canned excuses for a decent meal. Poverty is what happens when I don't care about you and you don't give a toss about me.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greek peasant's faithful fatalism

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 March 2012
    7 Comments

    Maria was born into poverty and did not have much luck in escaping it. Yet she was an unchallenged believer, who would say regularly, Oti thelei o Theos: Whatever God wants. This, while I would huff and puff and mutter that God helps those who help themselves. But part of me envied Maria her certainties.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thatcher's blame game

    • Michael Mullins
    • 16 January 2012
    9 Comments

    It is arguable that, because she was one of the architects of the free market financial system that lacked protection for ordinary citizens, Margaret Thatcher shares responsibility for the widespread public harm caused by the GFC and the eurozone crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Christmas challenge for a nonviolent Australia

    • John Dear
    • 22 December 2011
    9 Comments

    The nonviolent Jesus was born into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire. Two thousand years later, the world remains stuck in the same cycle. America's military presence in Australia could mark the beginning of the end for that hallowed land.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unemployment angels and demons

    • John Falzon
    • 19 October 2011
    8 Comments

    Recently I received an email from a young man in Queensland. He was writing to thank the St Vincent de Paul Society for the stance it takes on the side of people who are demonised for being unemployed. He told me his story. Here are some bits of it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Love, the Northern Territory Intervention's missing ingredient

    • Andrew Chalk
    • 11 October 2011
    5 Comments

    Many Australians have reached a point of believing that the difficulties afflicting Aboriginal communities demand the heavy handed, and often humiliating, approach. But the Philppine grassroots Gawad Kalinga model, based on 'the giving of care', offers a realistic alternative.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Super concessions rob the poor to pay the rich

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 04 October 2011
    11 Comments

    A third of taxpayer-funded superannuation concessions — around $10 billion a year — are directed to the top 5 per cent of income earners. People living on or below the poverty line get no such support. This week's Tax Forum must ask: Are we proud of how we redistribute our national wealth?

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  • RELIGION

    Simple answers to economic blues

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 September 2011
    13 Comments

    The weak August retail sales have disturbed market watchers. The more ideologically inclined have blamed lefties who look down on shopping and consuming. Throughout history simplicity, thrift and voluntary poverty have been valued highly by many philosophies and religions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Revisiting South Africa

    • Duncan Maclaren
    • 31 August 2011
    2 Comments

    My last visit to South Africa was in 1989 when apartheid was in its death throes. The only difference between then and now in the gap between the poor (mostly black and so-called coloureds) and rich is that some blacks have become the 'nouveaux riches' of the new South Africa.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The virtuous circle of Gillard's climate tax

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 11 July 2011
    22 Comments

    The Government has crafted a historic package of reforms: driving long-run reductions in carbon pollution, simplifying personal tax and making it fairer, and reducing poverty traps and barriers to work. It's exactly the kind of smart and gutsy approach we want to see from this Government. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Remember Sudan

    • Jack De Groot
    • 04 February 2011
    5 Comments

    Sudan's fate may appear sealed, and with tensions erupting in neighbouring Egypt it is easy to turn our gaze away. But with poverty and prosperity hanging precariously in the balance, there could not be a worse time to forget Sudan.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A plan to overcome poverty

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 11 November 2010
    9 Comments

    Currently, we have national plans for such things as defence, conservation and management of sharks, national broadband, combating pollution of the sea, and recovery of the south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo. It's time we had a national plan to overcome poverty.

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