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Keywords: Poverty

  • INTERNATIONAL

    The problem with prosperous Australia

    • John Falzon
    • 18 October 2010
    5 Comments

    There's something disquieting about quietness imposed from above in the heart of a democracy. Anti-Poverty Week is a good time to reflect on how, as a nation, can hear the revolutionary stories of the oppressed and abandoned in our midst.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The boy who thought he was Jesus

    • Morag Fraser
    • 17 September 2010
    3 Comments

    Part memoir, part travelogue, and part apologia, Exposure is also the diary of a young man suffering from a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder which manifests in excruciating symptoms. More interesting, and more agonising, is his driven response to poverty and to suffering when he encounters it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    World Cup bid looks to Australia's self-serving aid program

    • Evan Ellis
    • 05 July 2010
    14 Comments

    We assume aid is 'helping people'. But the 2006 White Paper on Australian Aid specified its purpose to help countries 'reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia’s national interest'. We'd be mortified if a church agency came out with such a self-serving clause.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anti poverty protesters miss the language of justice

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 29 June 2010
    16 Comments

    The latest G8 meeting sparked new protests at the failure of rich countries to honour their promises to increase aid. The protest pointed not only to the failures of the G8 governments, but also to the limitations of the mantras 'make poverty history' and 'an end to poverty'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beating poverty is up to the Government

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 07 May 2010
    1 Comment

    'Poverty alleviation is a national goal that should be financed by the national government,' argues the Henry report. This sentence cuts through years of evasion and obfuscation. Poverty is back on the agenda, and it's the Federal Government's responsibility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making poverty personal

    • Simon Moyle
    • 05 May 2010
    7 Comments

    Last week the world was shocked by CCTV footage of people walking past a homeless man as he died of stab wounds on a New York pavement. People on the streets know violence, but cold indifference hurts more than targeted physical attack.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Super size fees lead to retirement poverty

    • Michael Mullins
    • 29 March 2010
    1 Comment

    The complexity of superannuation products prompts many to choose easy options that attract high fees. Higher fees mount up over many years and significantly affect the quality of life workers are able to enjoy when they retire.

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  • RELIGION

    Poverty and plenty: where do Christians stand?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 March 2010
    2 Comments

    Text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's presentation Poverty and Plenty: Where Do or Should Christians Stand? at the Centre for an Ethical Society as part of the 2010 Series Forum at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 17 March 2010.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Real stories betray Abbott's homelessness untruth

    • John Falzon
    • 18 February 2010
    22 Comments

    Everyone has a story, and they don't happen in limbo. Tony Abbott's comments about homelessness mimic the paternalistic attitude pushed by Margaret Thatcher, where the focus is on supposed individual deficits rather than structural deficits.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Immersed in India's light and shade

    • Anne Doyle
    • 17 February 2010
    3 Comments

    Before long we come upon an open stone building — the meeting room. We enter to find 60 weathered women seated on mats on the dirt floor. Their saris fill the enclosure with colour. Their faces tell the poignant stories of their lives.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2009: The homeless poet

    • John Falzon
    • 15 January 2010
    3 Comments

    A Japanese homeless man was sending the most exquisite poems to a popular newspaper. There is nothing extraordinary about a person experiencing homelessness producing great poetry. Yet the scenario was regarded with astonishment. October 2009

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Let's redistribute hope

    • John Falzon
    • 11 December 2009
    7 Comments

    Aside from a few fanatical poverty-deniers, there is a broad consensus that we have a serious problem. Frantz Fanon reminded us nearly 50 years ago that we need a redistribution of wealth. 'Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it.' We have been shaken to pieces.

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