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Keywords: Uluru

  • AUSTRALIA

    On Aboriginal land: seeking a place at the table

    • Frank Brennan
    • 31 May 2017
    6 Comments

    Indigenous leaders this last week have called for the creation of two new legal entities. They want a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution, and a Makarrata Commission set up by legislation. The Makarrata Commission would supervise agreement making between governments and First Nations and engage in truth telling about history. The envisaged destination is a national Makarrata (or treaty). So the immediate constitutional issue is the creation of the First Nations Voice. There is no point in proceeding with a referendum on a question which fails to win the approval of Indigenous Australia. Neither is there any point in proceeding with a referendum which is unlikely to win the approval of the voting public.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Uluru Statement has lit a fuse that cannot go out

    • Kate Galloway
    • 30 May 2017
    10 Comments

    Political response has been ambivalent at best, and ambivalence sounds a death knell for mainstream engagement by a tentative public. Turnbull pointed out that any claim must be acceptable to the general public to succeed. In the next breath he discussed the success of the 1967 Referendum. This was disingenuous given the political reality of 67, where there was no case presented for a no vote. After the Uluru Statement, it is now not possible to ignore substantive constitutional reform, or treaty.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politicians' cognitive dissonance over blaming the system

    • Fatima Measham
    • 11 August 2015
    12 Comments

    Words like rorter, bludger and leaner only ever seem to apply to those who apply for welfare. A politician who draws down unreasonably on entitlements or a banker who earns stratospheric bonuses are seen as passive beneficiaries of the system. It seems the case that only those with power or capital are allowed to blame systems. The rest of us get to be individuals who make choices.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rock's radical Australia Day message

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 23 January 2013
    14 Comments

    As a social and political activist since my teens, people ask me what motivated me early on. A few factors shaped my values, including my Irish Catholic background and my public housing upbringing by a widowed mother on welfare. But it was a rock song that brought it all together. 'Someone lied,' it declares: 'Genocide.' 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to re-imagine the Australian flag

    • Philip Harvey
    • 11 May 2012
    50 Comments

    The readiness of Australians to design a flag that is agreed to and honoured ought to be on the agenda of any forward-looking party. Otherwise a day will come when a design will be foisted on us that no one likes and has no distinctive meaning. One only has to listen to the national anthem to know Australians are capable of embracing second best.

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  • RELIGION

    The Pope in Alice: 25 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 November 2011
    19 Comments

    Protocol dictated that he could not wear Aboriginal colours. But local custom won out when he donned a black, red and yellow stole given to him on the track. His speech put strong challenges to the Church, but offered too optimistic a reading of the prospects of Aboriginal Australians taking their rightful place in it.

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Indigenous Australia in 2031

    • Lea McInerney
    • 20 July 2011
    6 Comments

    In 2012, the settler people of Australia finally made their peace with their Indigenous brothers and sisters. With this came the discovery of what had been lost, what was missing, what needed to be restored. There was much work to be done and together they made a plan.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Wattle Day should be our national day

    • Paul W. Newbury
    • 23 January 2011
    37 Comments

    Indigenous antipathy to Australia Day is deeply entrenched. Wattle as a symbol offers an alternative because it is native to this place, and it is not a memorial of our ties with Great Britain. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Oprah and Australia's 'socialist' health care

    • Susan Biggar
    • 16 December 2010
    18 Comments

    Were she to suffer a broken leg or burst appendix and find herself a customer on the doorstep of our excellent and equitable healthcare system, America's best-known mouth might go home peddling a message that could change her society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The trouble with free speech

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 March 2009
    2 Comments

    A French satirical paper was sued for portraying Muslims as terrorists and labelling them 'jerks'. The editors would have us believe it's a case of free speech versus censorship. But there's more to it than that.

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  • RELIGION

    WYD mass crosses cultures

    • Carmel Pilcher
    • 18 July 2008
    17 Comments

    The organisers of the WYD opening mass did not attempt to integrate Australian elements into the mass, but included them as added extras. The ritual structure of the mass requires creativity to make it connect with different audiences.

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