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Keywords: Values

  • AUSTRALIA

    African gangs myth shows fear is winning

    • Troy Pittaway
    • 12 January 2018
    20 Comments

    I have been working with Sudanese youth for over eight years and never encountered anything like the gangs of youths that are being talked about. To try and distill an entire culture, with various sub-cultures and values, into a media soundbite about hordes of African gangs, insults not only the Sudanese community, but every Australian.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On being a good Australian and a bad migrant

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 02 November 2017
    9 Comments

    The bill ramps up the difficulty of becoming an Australian citizen, and one element depends on 'proof' of Australian values or integration that is open to contestation. Aside from the many critiques around definitions of Australian identities or values, does being able to say you're a good Australian mean you are a good Australian?

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  • MEDIA

    ABC devalues religion reporting at its peril

    • Rohan Salmond
    • 01 June 2017
    28 Comments

    Reports that the ABC will no longer require the head of the religion unit to be a religion specialist are more than a little surprising. The ABC has a commitment in its charter to 'reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community'. Without religion reporting from people with specialist journalistic backgrounds, the ABC jeopardises its ability to fulfil its ongoing functions and responsibilities. Like it or not, religion still plays a huge part in public life in Australia, which affects the lives of everyone.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic citizens needed within the Church

    • John Warhurst
    • 23 May 2017
    54 Comments

    Catholics have a proud record of exercising their democratic rights within Australian democracy as voters, members of political parties and lobby groups, and as elected representatives. But within their own church they have been taught to leave their democratic rights at the door. Now is the time to challenge that norm in parishes, dioceses and the wider church. In responding to the royal commission the church needs an infusion of democratic values, including transparency and accountability.

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  • RELIGION

    Australian bishops gather in the light of the royal commission

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 May 2017
    51 Comments

    The government and the Catholic Church both face difficulties when commending values. The difficulties will dog events during the next week in which both institutions are on public display: the bringing down of the budget and the meeting of the Australian Catholics bishops. The question Australians ask is whether the bishops and other public representatives of the Catholic Church have the stomach for the changes in governance needed to address the factors that led to child abuse.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Citizenship changes make a new enemy of the migrant

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 24 April 2017
    16 Comments

    Australia has long had a successful migration program, and the country's economic success is proof of this. So when Turnbull calls a press conference to impart the news that 'membership of the Australian family is a privilege and should be afforded to those who support our values, respect our laws and want to work hard by integrating and contributing to an even better Australia', he is making a redundant point. The vast majority of migrants and new citizens already do this.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Rule of law' furore reveals real thugs

    • Fatima Measham
    • 16 March 2017
    18 Comments

    A new round of anti-union chest-thumping is underway, following ACTU secretary Sally McManus' remarks that 'I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair ... But when it's unjust, I don't think there's a problem with breaking it.' If any other person had said this in the context of civil and political rights, the words might not be so incendiary. Laws are not as neutral as we imagine them to be. They are constructed by individuals of immense power, with their own set of values and connections.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Cultural ownership and responsibility is not just a fad

    • Esther Anatolitis
    • 04 October 2016
    10 Comments

    Who owns a cultural object? Who has the right to determine cultural values? And how can public institutions exercise cultural responsibility? It's a timely set of questions as we consider the implications of the National Gallery of Australia's return of ancient Indian sculptures, the British Museum's refusal to return Indigenous objects, or Lionel Shriver's rejection of minority cultural identities. Each of these unleashes complex, painful consequences that can undermine cultural value or cultural safety.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mixed loyalties don't negate Australianness

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 25 January 2016
    11 Comments

    I arrived in Australia at the ripe old age of five months. I learned Australian values by a process of gentle osmosis. Many Indigenous Australians learned these values in a less gentle fashion. Today, many Australian Jews show a strong loyalty to the world's only Jewish state. Others combine loyalties with other ancestral homelands. Australian Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists and Hindus have similar broadened loyalties. Exactly how such loyalties make them any less Australian beats me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose Australia Day?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 22 January 2016
    18 Comments

    Last November I was on a panel at the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters Council conference, musing about postmodern identities, whether 'ethnics' were mainstream and not peripheral, and whether 'Aussie values' are in fact universal. I enjoyed the discussion, but part of me felt worn. It seemed to me that black and brown folks like us are less concerned about what it means to be Australian than how Australian we would have to be, to be as Australian as everyone else.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Refugee crisis demands and defies sustained reflection

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 January 2016
    7 Comments

    In our response to the forced movement of peoples we must recognise that our national identity is not built primarily on uniformity of religion and race but on adherence to the values that are enshrined in our social institutions. We must also recognise the way in which our own prejudices and fears affect the judgments and proposals we make, and exercise a proper scepticism about making quick judgments and drawing universal conclusions from particular events such as those in Cologne.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gospel stories of the security state

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 December 2015
    19 Comments

    The pastel coloured domesticity of the images of Jesus' birth does not do justice to its context. Herod's sending out first his spies to find where the Messiah was to be born, and then his soldiers to eradicate the threat the child posed to national security, may not appear on Christmas cards, but they frame the story of Jesus' birth. The disjunction between the tenderness of the Christmas stories and the brutality of their public context is mirrored in the conflict between the humane values of the Gospel and the harsh instrumental values of the public world in any age.

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