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Keywords: Pressure

  • ECONOMICS

    Rich retirees may need the aged pension

    • David James
    • 31 July 2015
    6 Comments

    There has been great pressure on both of the major political parties to stop giving so-called rich retirees partial pension income. The conventional view has become that retired millionaires should not be feeding off the public teat. But in terms of income, many of those 'rich retirees' would actually be better off on the pension.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The pace of Muslim integration into Australian society

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 July 2015
    18 Comments

    Against the background of Australia's migration history, we can see the importance of Muslim groups maintaining their own praying community and culture including the use of their native language of worship. This will inevitably change with successive generations, but the pace of this is a matter for the communities themselves. The most harmful thing native born Australians can do is to pressure migrants to abandon their cultural roots in order to fit our expectations and to placate our fears.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The death of bullying victim Vangelis Giakoumakis

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 April 2015
    7 Comments

    Here in Greece, a 20 year old youth was subjected to concentrated and constant bullying, and eventually he could bear no more. Who knows, really, what triggers bullying? Except that bullies, who are always cowards, invariably select as victims people who seem weaker and thus vulnerable to pressure, both physical and psychological. Vangelis seems to have been the sort who could not or would not fight back.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Triumph over forced adoption practice

    • Kate Howarth
    • 30 March 2015
    12 Comments

    I was sent to St Margaret's Home for Unwed Girls, and when I didn’t buckle to pressure to surrender my son for adoption, I was tossed onto the street. I went from rock bottom to rise to the top of my field, only to have everything pulled from underneath me. I managed to get back up again and realise my childhood dream of one day becoming a writer, lending a voice to tens of thousands of young women who lost their children in what is now known as 'forced adoption'.   

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    US health care a sick joke that’s coming to Australia

    • Ellena Savage
    • 23 January 2015
    9 Comments

    America's iniquitous health care system is often portrayed with dark humour in popular culture such as the 2007 Michael Moore film Sicko. Our own Federal Government has been putting constant pressure on our system of universal health care as it pursues a course of action that presents class warfare as fiscal responsibility. It raises questions about the vested interests behind dismantling health care protections for poor people.   

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bad Christmases are nothing new

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 December 2014
    16 Comments

    Shady family members who turn up uninvited, unresolved sibling rivalries, end of working year pressures. In a way they recall the organisational disarray of the first Christmas... A rocky engagement, the man discovering that his fiancée was pregnant with a child that was not his, a long march to fill in tax forms, having to give birth in a paddock and suffer an invasion from disreputable shepherds and odd foreigners.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Who will feel better after Medibank privatisation?

    • David James
    • 13 October 2014
    7 Comments

    Federal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann announced 'the scoping study found no evidence that premiums would increase as a result of the sale' of Medibank Private. But the sale is being presented as a way to make the fund more efficient. If successful, Medibank Private will become even more dominant than it is at present and there will be pressure to raise premiums to achieve its purpose of keeping shareholders happy.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's delayed GFC

    • David James
    • 08 September 2014
    7 Comments

    What is only now starting to come into focus is the extent to which the whole economy is in hock to house prices. A sharp fall in the housing market will put intense pressure on our major lending institutions, leading to a deeply depressing effect on all parts of the economy. The regulators, as ever, are taking a hands-off approach.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    'Forgotten' Tiananmen's shadow on modern China

    • Evan Ellis
    • 04 June 2014
    8 Comments

    Twenty-five years ago the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. One eyewitness kept a tally of the dead that reached 2600 before hospitals went mum due to pressure from above. If China is to overcome the challenges it will face in the decades ahead, it must draw upon the great reserve of strength, the spirit of solidarity that was on display among the protesters that spring. Instead there remains a concerted effort to forget.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Quiet rage against Saudi sexist cycle

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 March 2014

    Wadjda is innately political. It is the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first to be made by a female Saudi director, and concerns itself with the pressures women experience in this rigidly patriarchal society. But it is primarily a film not about politics but about humanity. Its characters find self-empowerment and connection not in rabble-rousing but in small acts of rebellion against oppressive social norms.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fence-sitters key to asylum seeker success

    • Fatima Measham
    • 10 March 2014
    19 Comments

    After more than a decade of refugee advocacy, campaigns still cater to small 'l' liberals and progressives. They are of course critical to consolidating support for asylum seekers and sustaining political pressure. Yet the debate has become so polarised that it would seem as if the left has a monopoly on compassion. This is a serious campaign problem because it alienates those who might otherwise be allies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2013: Australia's disgusting politics

    • Moira Rayner
    • 07 January 2014
    9 Comments

    Gillard is the most prominent woman in our country. She has been repeatedly humiliated, disparaged and ridiculed for that very reason. We may criticise her decisions, but always aware of the context in which they were made, which is dangerously toxic. Her courage under pressure is astonishing, but we ought to despair at her party which is willing itself into annihilation by adding more poison.

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