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Keywords: Questions

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

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Workplace safety issues in South Korean ferry disaster

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 April 2014
    6 Comments

    It would be unfeeling and presumptuous to speculate on the causes of the disaster. But it may be helpful to enumerate the questions that have been asked, as they disclose a pattern. In travel by ship, as in many other enterprises, there are two sets of interests: the operational interests of those who provide the service, and the interests of those who benefit from the service. Companies ideally take both seriously, but they stand in tension.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A plague of killer robots

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 April 2014
    6 Comments

    Killer robots — drones in an advanced stage of development — are now a daytime reality. They will be autonomous in their operation, able to identify targets, track them down, work out the best way to destroy them, and learn from their failures, all without the need for human direction. These qualities raise serious ethical questions. Obama's use of just war theory to defend such drones was misguided at best, pernicious at worst.

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  • RELIGION

    Asylum seeker ethics is simple

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 March 2014
    28 Comments

    Asked whether they think the government's treatment of asylum seekers is right, some people will withhold judgment, arguing that the question is ethically complex; asylum seeker policy must take into account many issues, and an ethical judgment must await consideration of all these factors. This position is mistaken. The ethical questions are quite simple. The complexities and confusions arise only after we have answered them.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Coal hard facts for religious investors

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 11 February 2014
    12 Comments

    The international movement to divest from investment in fossil fuels is gathering momentum. Investors are starting to realise that as governments act to restrain fossil fuel consumption, fossil fuel companies will find their assets being written down. This is particularly pertinent to Australia, the second largest coal exporter. And it raises questions for Australian religious bodies about the prudent and moral use of their resources.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pilger's cheap shots won't ease Indigenous oppression

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 February 2014
    13 Comments

    Rabble-rousing Australian journalist John Pilger is prone to hyperbole. He refers to a 'concentration camp' located on Rottnest Island and proceeds to denounce the atrocities that occurred there. He conducts a vox pop amid flag-waving Australia Day revellers, goading them with questions about the white invasion with predictably cringe-worthy results. He may have good intentions, but he's not doing Aboriginal Australia any favours.

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  • MEDIA

    Journalistic ethics in transgender tragedy

    • Ellena Savage
    • 24 January 2014
    4 Comments

    Last week a troubling story broke on sports journalism site Grantland. While investigating the background of Dr V., an avowed physicist who had invented a revolutionary golf putter, journalist Caleb Hannan discovered that Dr V. was a trans-woman. In the course of the investigation, Dr V. committed suicide. This tragic case raises questions about journalistic ethics, not least of which is if journalism is, by its very nature, unethical.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Celebrating diversity on Australia Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 January 2014
    20 Comments

    This week began with Australia Day and ends with the Chinese New Year. The juxtaposition suggests pertinent questions about Australian identity, especially the ways in which Australians have alternately included and excluded those seen as outsiders. This is most evident in the relationship between Australian settlers' attitudes to Indigenous Australians, but it is also seen in Australian attitudes to Chinese and other Asian peoples.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2013: Sex and power in football and politics

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 10 January 2014

    A young writer has crash tackled the ugly questions of non-consensual sex, coercion and the male privilege and misuse of power that can flow from sporting success. Yet when it comes to our football codes — let alone our political arena — a conversation needs to move beyond gender name-calling or the 'us and them' polemic.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mythologising family history

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 September 2013

    Polley approaches the subject with great patience, like an anthropologist who has a deep love for those whom she is studying. In the beginning she instructs her interviewees simply to start from the start and tell it how it was. She no doubt hopes to find clues in the detail, but she also dignifies each participant by allowing them to have a voice. She is self-effacing, yet the questions she asks are bound up in her very existence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The politics of disgust

    • Ellena Savage
    • 30 August 2013
    6 Comments

    The moral questions presented in this election demand rational action, and not responses based on aversion to 'illegal' boat arrivals, gay men kissing or the idea of giving hard earned money to government programs in the form of tax. As long as both major parties are vying for ‘politics of disgust’ votes on the backs of vulnerable people, we can’t expect a better nation. 

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  • MEDIA

    Election coverage you can trust

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 06 August 2013
    15 Comments

    One of the things we expect from our media is that they will ask the hard questions on an election trail. Today's editorial from the Daily Telegraph makes it clear that they believe only one party is worthy of your trust. If the mainstream media can no longer be trusted to ask the serious questions of both parties, perhaps it's time for the game to move elsewhere.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex and power in football and politics

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 28 June 2013
    5 Comments

    A young writer has crash tackled the ugly questions of non-consensual sex, coercion and the male privilege and misuse of power that can flow from sporting success. Yet when it comes to our football codes — let alone our political arena — a conversation needs to move beyond gender name-calling or the 'us and them' polemic.

    READ MORE