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Keywords: Shame

  • AUSTRALIA

    Building constitutional bridges: In conversation with Frank Brennan

    • David Halliday
    • 28 June 2024

    It's been eight months since the Voice referendum, and people are starting to grapple with what its defeat means for Australia. There are few voices in Australia as qualified to conduct a postmortem of the outcome of the Voice referendum campaign as Frank Brennan. We examine what lessons can be learned and crucually, whether there’s reason for hope for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sins of the fathers

    • Ken Haley
    • 29 March 2024
    2 Comments

    Recent years have made clerical child sexual abuse a badge of shame within Australia’s Catholic hierarchy, and rightly so. But Anne Manne’s new book, Sins of the fathers, will give pause to those who blame these offences on the rule of hieratic celibacy.

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  • MEDIA

    The whole truth?

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 18 January 2024
    6 Comments

    Once upon a time it was fairly easy to distinguish fact from fiction, but now journalists in particular regularly merge the two. We are now forced to cope with notions such as alternative facts and the post-truth era. I, for one, cope badly with both, with this twisting of what I would like to be an essential and straightforward matter.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Robodebt and the human cost

    • Joe Zabar
    • 14 February 2023
    2 Comments

    The Robodebt Scheme promised billions in savings, but became a $1.8 billion failure labeled as 'a shameful chapter in public administration' by the Federal Court. The government was forced to settle a class action and wipe the debts of 381,000 people. Beyond the human cost, these failures point to a welfare system due for an upgrade. 

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  • RELIGION

    I am unashamedly pro-life, but let me tell you what that means

    • Beth Doherty
    • 19 May 2022
    10 Comments

    I have always considered myself pro-life. It’s not something I’ve felt a need to wear as a badge of honour, rather it has always been a default position. But terminology matters. Indeed, frequently, calling myself pro-life has drawn the derision or raised eyebrows of people around me, nuns and priests and radical ratbags alike, it has connotations.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A tale of two webs: A strengths-based approach to place-based disadvantage

    • Sally Cowling
    • 14 December 2021
    4 Comments

    In developing an understanding of place-based disadvantage, shame and stigma are transmitted between generations within the small number of communities we collectively fail. And yet no matter the number of indicators of place-based disadvantage, each community possesses some unique strengths. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    First Nations communities continue to be left behind

    • Michele Madigan
    • 22 April 2020
    8 Comments

    This huge, rarely mentioned and ongoing deeply shameful situation regarding the health and housing of First Nations people comes into unbearably sharp relief by the present crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Devils in the details of 'optimistic' jobs report

    • Kate Galloway
    • 21 June 2019
    4 Comments

    Inevitably, employers will use the report to counter calls by casual employees for more secure work. It is a shame therefore that the report does not pay greater attention to identifying the gaps in work security and the risk that this poses not only to individuals, but to society more broadly.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politics of shame

    • John Falzon
    • 16 May 2019
    8 Comments

    I do not believe that most people do accept these violations of dignity, these instigations of shame. But the fact that we as a nation have tolerated these settings for so long makes it look like neoliberalism has crept into our souls, that we accept the institutionalisation of fear and shame.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Banks remain protected species

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 February 2019
    10 Comments

    Kenneth Hayne's royal commission into the financial sector has named, shamed and excoriated banks, regulators, insurance companies and other financial services businesses to the extent that you would think they are now extremely vulnerable and universally unloved. That would be a mistake.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A Christmas carol for a divided world

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 December 2018
    2 Comments

    In this season, I usually re-read A Christmas Carol, that timeless tour de force of the Dickensian imagination. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to the shops, where the former restores good humour to squabbling delivery boys. For, they said, it was a shame to quarrel on Christmas Day.

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  • RELIGION

    What religions really say about suicide

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 15 June 2018
    14 Comments

    Amid the shock and grief for Anthony Bourdain's death, one blue-tick Twitterer attempted to capture five minutes of shameful fame, declaring that religious people believe hell or purgatory is his afterworld destination. While all the great religious traditions generally proscribe suicide, they also contain nuanced views of the suicide's fate.

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