Keywords: Social Inclusion
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 10 July 2024
How do you respond, when members of your own tribe share their distaste towards those who rub them up the wrong way? Do you ‘unfollow’? Do you engage? And if you vent against those who who offend with their own dearth of tolerance, are you guilty of doing the same?
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 05 July 2024
There is no doubt that laws for determining refugee status and onshore protection are complex. The cases of NZYQ and ASF17 demonstrate that when laws regarding asylum and protection intersect with laws regarding character and protection of the community, the results can be extremely messy.
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AUSTRALIA
- Joe Zabar
- 31 January 2023
1 Comment
A welcome development in the Albanese government's reform agenda is the newly established Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee to examine the obligation placed upon governments to provide employment. While the principle of a job guarantee is essential to any social security reform, so too is the attitude we hold towards those who access welfare.
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ECONOMICS
- Andrew Hamilton
- 20 September 2016
4 Comments
It is a welcome change to see budgets spoken of in moral terms. The government recently insisted on a moral responsibility to future generations to fix the deficit. And the Australian Catholic bishops welcomed on moral grounds the compromise that saw dropped from the budget measures which would further disadvantage vulnerable people. The difference was that the government's argument was focused on the budget, whereas the bishops' focused on particular groups of people.
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AUSTRALIA
- 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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RELIGION
- Marcelle Mogg
- 17 December 2014
11 Comments
In his Mid Year Financial Economic Outlook statements this week, Treasurer Joe Hockey construed 'The Economy' as a rare prized orchid, requiring careful nurturing. The orchid is to be admired, and the gardener more so for the skill, expertise and craft that gives rise to such a beautiful creation. The trouble with treating The Economy like a prized bloom is that we fail to recognise that the it exists to serve people.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Steve Sinn
- 10 December 2014
26 Comments
Sue will always be for me flesh and blood, her trust I will forever cherish. Hers was a wretched life from the beginning to the end. But for some reason I feel impelled to lift her name out of the anonymity narrative that includes the vast numbers of people who have gone before us.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 04 December 2014
23 Comments
Pope Francis' recent reflections on Europe apply also to Australia. He points to the cult of economic growth that exists at the expense of human values and the relationships that shape our humanity. His critique suggests the challenge facing our Government is not to make its policies appear more palatable when they're not, but to offer policies that are in themselves enriching.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 20 November 2014
29 Comments
Last week the Pope's almsgiver installed showers in St Peter's Square, for people who are homeless. This followed his meeting a homeless man, discovering it was his 50th birthday, and inviting him to dinner in a local restaurant, only for the man to decline on the grounds he smelled. The gesture was seen to have Pope Francis’ finger prints all over it, and it illuminates the differences of perspective between him and other church leaders.
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AUSTRALIA
- Moira Rayner
- 31 October 2014
11 Comments
Affordable housing ought to be a hot election issue. Sadly it’s not a government priority, with ordinary people being taught to be entitled to look to capital growth in bricks and mortar as the best path to financial security. That is producing a housing price bubble and public housing is being squeezed. As a result, an increasing number of Australians can’t afford to put a roof over their head.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 16 October 2014
19 Comments
Ultimately people will be prepared to accept responsibility for those who are poor only if they know them as persons and not as media fodder. If we do not have some personal acquaintance with the lives of people who are disadvantaged we shall come to see them as an abstraction or a problem to be solved.
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MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD
- Harry Maher
- 20 August 2014
14 Comments
Inequality is dangerous. And inequality is at a near all-time high. At its core, the Government’s recent budget not only engenders but actively exults in the creation and maintenance of inequality, a phenomenon rapidly expanding not just in Australia, but around the world.
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