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Keywords: Stolen Generations

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia complicit in PNG's Bougainville blight

    • Ellena Savage
    • 02 August 2013
    1 Comment

    Even more disturbing than PNG's poverty and gender-based violence is its military and police human rights record. Evidence of abuses in the form of a military blockade, massacres, rape and torture during the Bougainville Crisis of the 1990s are well-documented. The history of this crisis reveals PNG as incapable of caring for its most vulnerable citizens due to systemic corruption.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rudd's shifting moral high ground

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 July 2013
    22 Comments

    Kevin Rudd told colleagues during the week that he would not 'lurch to the left' on asylum seekers. Foreign minister Bob Carr was on message when he said there's been a change and most boat arrivals are now economic migrants rather than genuine asylum seekers. He is boldly asserting that the Rudd Government's moral credentials are intact by framing boat arrivals as a law and order matter and not a moral issue.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Catholic Church's toll on Aboriginal Australia

    • Mike Bowden
    • 25 June 2013
    33 Comments

    Present members of missionary orders, when writing up the story of their predecessors, tend to present these pioneer missionaries as enlightened men and women suffering hardship to spread the gospel. The destructive effect of the approaches taken by some missionaries does not negate the good work of many others. But it is part of the story and should be told.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconciliation balances guilt and hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 May 2013
    6 Comments

    To lead to reconciliation, each group must make space in their imagination for a realistic view of the terrible events that divided them and of who was responsible. They must also make space for a realistic view of the enduring consequences of these actions, and share a hopeful vision of what reconciliation might mean for their society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Paul Keating and Sorry Day's indulgence with a purpose

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 May 2013
    3 Comments

    The most memorable lines of Paul Keating's 1992 Redfern Speech are not about Indigenous Australians at all, but Europeans who stole their land, their children and their dignity. A number of commemorative days focus on the needs and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but Sorry Day is not one of them.

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  • RELIGION

    Inspirational Abbott's Indigenous aspiration

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 February 2013
    15 Comments

    Let's not underestimate the significance of John Howard's successor giving credit to Paul Keating for his Redfern speech, before invoking New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi and calling for atonement. Still there is plenty of work to be done to attain proper constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconciliation in Australia and East Timor

    • Mark Green
    • 14 February 2013
    4 Comments

    I was in Dili on Apology Day 2008, and wept as I listened on the radio to the Apology offered by Kevin Rudd. The previous year, I had arrived in Dili to take up a post with an aid and development program, and was accosted by a very angry young man. 'What are you doing here? Have you come to make us like your Aboriginal people?'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thoughts on the Apology from a Stolen Generations child

    • Melissa Brickell
    • 13 February 2013
    14 Comments

    When Kevin Rudd delivered the Apology five years ago today, the Stolen Generations and their supporters wept. But we should not dwell on the Apology while there is much to be done. The denial of natural justice through compensation for genocide is a selfish decision with moral implications.

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  • RELIGION

    Mabo 20 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 October 2012

    'Though land rights and self-determination provide no utopia for the contemporary indigenous Australian community, they have belatedly put right an ancient wrong. The cost and inconvenience are unavoidable. Terra nullius is no longer an option.' Full text is from Fr Frank Brennan's keynote speech at the Central Queensland Law Association Conference, Mercure Capricorn Resort, Yeppoon, 27 October 2012.

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  • RELIGION

    Advancing human rights in Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2012
    1 Comment

    Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Advancing human rights in Australia — lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation' at the 'Human Rights Matters!' conference marking Anti-Poverty Week 2012. 17 October 2012, Cardinal Knox Centre, St Patricks Cathedral, Melbourne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Families only a means to an end

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 October 2012
    8 Comments

    Family life  holds no value in itself but is an often fruitful means to a morally good life. There are other means for those who do not marry, such as voluntary work, single-minded dedication to a profession, or caring for ageing parents. Why, then, do the Catholic Bishops, and indeed governments, go to so much trouble to support the family?

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  • RELIGION

    Six challenges for Indigenous researchers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 21 August 2012

    Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's opening keynote address at the Higher Degree Research Retreat, Rydges Eaglehawk, Canberra, 4 August 2012.

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