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Keywords: Security

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hugo Weaving's grief and healing

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 May 2014

    Weaving's latest character is inspired by a real-life minimum-security prison officer whose daughter had died. This man helped develop a program for rehabilitating injured raptors, that would be overseen by prisoners as part of their own rehabilitation. 'The program encapsulated the positive side,' says Weaving, 'of someone trying to deal with their own grief, and healing himself by setting up a kind of living memorial to his daughter.'

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    China syndrome haunts Abbott's Japanese jaunt

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 09 April 2014
    3 Comments

    The two powers in Asia on whom our economy and security depend, Japan and China, have reached an impasse. That should not constrain Australia from reaching out to both on the basis of mutual interest and shared values. China has a keen appreciation of the former and an abiding suspicion of appeals to the latter. Distinguishing one from the other and acting accordingly is the first great test of Abbott's statecraft.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    West wasting breath huffing and puffing over Crimea

    • Tony Kevin
    • 05 March 2014
    18 Comments

    Tony Abbott's 'We warn the Czar' statements were ludicrously over-the-top, though clearly he was responding to a Washington appeal to friendly allies to say something. I hope Australia will not continue to overplay its hand in the Security Council. There is no point in gratuitously offending Moscow on an issue that is outside our strategic area of interest and raises no human rights concerns whatsoever.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Morrison's law of intended consequences

    • Tony Kevin
    • 21 February 2014
    36 Comments

    Manus is not subject to Australian law and public accountability safeguards, or only very imperfectly. Cover-up of atrocity is a lot easier in Manus than it would be in an Australian detention centre. And this of course is what was intended. Manus is part of the asylum-seeker deterrent system. The fear of death at sea, and the fear of death by security force brutalisation at Manus, are intended to deter asylum-seeker voyages. To stop the boats.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bleeding hearts alone won't save asylum seekers

    • Fatima Measham
    • 28 January 2014
    21 Comments

    Those who campaign for more humane treatment of asylum seekers cannot keep assuming that the elements of the debate that matter to them most are the most persuasive. The hardest thing to accept may be that the socioeconomic anxieties for which immigration serves as proxy, as well as the insecurity and resentment generated by state impotence and political opportunism, do not necessarily make for 'bad' people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coalition's car kill is crazy

    • Tony Kevin
    • 08 November 2013
    23 Comments

    The Coalition's impending destruction of the Australian car industry by calculated public stalling of decisions on government assistance is shaping up as its most disastrous high-visibility policy blunder. This industry — but none other — is to be wilfully abandoned as a victim of rigid free-market economic ideologies. It does not make sense, in economic, social or national security terms. This is Australia's version of US Tea Party budget brinkmanship.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Africa and US worry the frayed edges of international criminal justice

    • Nik Tan
    • 06 November 2013
    2 Comments

    The African Union has asked the United Nations Security Council to suspend the trials of sittings Kenyan heads of state. Meanwhile Amnesty International has claimed that any killing of civilians by United States' drones violates the laws of war. Both cases call into question whether the International Criminal Court can end impunity for the most serious international crimes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human stories of criminal monsters

    • Joe Caddy
    • 25 October 2013
    19 Comments

    For 11 years I worked as a chaplain in a maximum security prison. I would meet inmates who were accused of serious crimes that had shocked the community. In coming to know those who stood accused I came to see that they too had a story. More often than not it included enormous deprivation and sadness. They had relationships that they cherished, and I never met anyone who in their heart did not want their circumstances to be better.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Dissecting Syria turbulence

    • John Langmore
    • 19 September 2013
    8 Comments

    This has been a turbulent two weeks. One's attitudes have oscillated through anger and despair to a glimpse of hope and ended with renewed confidence in Obama's values and intentions. What a time for Australia to be chairing the Security Council! My impression is that our diplomats are working with professional skill, commitment to the rule of law and to peaceful conflict resolution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Border protection transparency under Abbott

    • Tony Kevin
    • 11 September 2013
    13 Comments

    Labor's humanitarian achievements included routinely distributing media releases announcing every boat interception and every incident of assistance to boats in difficulty at sea. It would be tragic if under Operation Sovereign Borders the Coalition abandoned the present degree of public transparency and accountability for deaths in border protection operations on the spurious pretext that these are matters of national security.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    International law cannot justify attack on Syria

    • Justin Glyn
    • 30 August 2013
    7 Comments

    For the second time in a little over ten years, the US and its allies seem about to launch hostilities against an Arab country on the basis of the possession or use of chemical weapons. They have made clear that while they may seek a Security Council resolution, they do not consider themselves bound by it. This is worrying.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When punishment fails

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 August 2013
    10 Comments

    ABC employee Jill Meagher was murdered by a man who had been granted parole while serving his sentence for a previous violent sexual crime. The largest threat to the security of the community comes from a view that sees punishment entirely in retributive terms. Unless the human development of prisoners is seen as central, imprisonment simply begets further risk. 

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