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Keywords: Wealth

  • AUSTRALIA

    Four preconditions for supporting marriage equality

    • Frank Brennan
    • 12 August 2015
    142 Comments

    I readily accept that the Commonwealth Parliament will legislate for same sex marriage in the foreseeable future. When Parliament does, I will be fully accepting of that decision. If asked by politicians how they should exercise their conscience vote, there is no way that I would say that they should not support civil recognition of same sex marriage. But neither would I say that they must support it NOW. If I were a member of parliament, I would want four assurances before I voted for same sex marriage.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Political donations reform is not so easy

    • Jack Maxwell
    • 29 July 2015
    5 Comments

    Political donations give privileged access to powerful public officials to those who are wealthy. But public funding does little to reduce parties’ reliance on private money and radical control measures can fall foul of the Constitution. A 2013 High Court judgment finding that a ban on donations infringed the constitutional freedom of political communication.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Zen and the art of wealth amassment

    • Ellena Savage
    • 17 July 2015
    4 Comments

    There is a suburban myth about migrant families. The first generation toil, the second become professionals, and the third artists. Like all dynasties, the Rineharts are destined to one day represent the crusty relics of former glory. That's fine. I mean, why would the beneficiaries of other people's obsessive toils and struggle work, if they didn't have to?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Carefully burning Scientology

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 09 July 2015
    12 Comments

    If you're going to apply a blowtorch to an institution as wealthy and litigious as the Church of Scientology, you might best be advised to first apply a magnifying glass. Alex Gibney details the dark side of the movement: its dubious tax-exempt status; allegations of psychological and physical abuse of current members and harassment of former members. But he is equally interested in unpacking the nature of belief in Scientology: what draws people to it, and also what drives them away.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Understanding Pope Francis' hard line against population control

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 June 2015
    23 Comments

    In his recent encyclical, Pope Francis demands that, in addressing the needs of the environment, wealthy nations must reform an economic system that perpetuates poverty in the underdeveloped world. In seeking a conversion of heart on the part of those who are wealthy, he sees imposing artificial population control on the world's poor as a thoroughly unfair and unconverted attitude. The real problem is the greed of the rich, not the inability of the poor to control their fertility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Speaking for others in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 June 2015
    4 Comments

    Walking towards the courthouse, I heard a cry, 'Hey, Father Frank, over here! You've got to support us mob.' I was torn. I was chairing a national consultation at the request of the Commonwealth Government. I did not want to politicise our presence in town.   But then again, I did not want to abandon Ben and his colleagues in their hour of need. They all stood in front of an Aboriginal flag.  Some were crying out for justice for their deceased loved one.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dubious revolutionary Russell Brand takes it to the banks

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 June 2015
    3 Comments

    Few would deny the comedian and self-styled revolutionary has fire in his belly. He wonders why, in the wake of recent financial crises, more bankers have not gone to prison. These are salient questions, and Brand doesn't baulk. But there is a touch of Bono about Brand: wealthy and egotistical, you have to wonder how much of his invective against 'the one per cent' is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fossil fuel divestment economics in line with morality

    • Michael Mullins
    • 01 June 2015
    3 Comments

    The Norwegian Parliament has just ordered its $A1.15 trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund to divest from coal. This represents the largest single divestment from fossil fuels in human history, and our biggest sign yet that the age of coal is over and the financial case for investing in fossil fuels is likely to disintegrate. Australia will crash and burn both economically and morally if we do not follow suit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Education with higher expectations

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 May 2015
    7 Comments

    Tony Abbott's evocation of 'the tyranny of low expectations' invites more general reflection on education and public life. I believe that the Australian approach to education does indeed impose a tyranny of low expectations in the sense that the expectations are defined by economic achievement and its attendant wealth and status, and the goal for schools is success in enabling students to participate economically.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My personal climate change bind

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 May 2015
    16 Comments

    Most people think that the effects of climate change as dire but far off. I don't have that comfort. My seafarer father plays a role in generating wealth for miners who then use it as a means to influence politicians - coal, industrial salt, iron ore. I am deeply aware that my government is committed to doing as little as possible to address climate change and its lack of a coherent, internationalist policy in Australia costs countries that are climate change-vulnerable, including where my family lives back in the Philippines.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pope Francis' public shaming strategy

    • Michael Mullins
    • 13 April 2015
    10 Comments

    Francis is always ready to criticise unbridled capitalism, but he makes a point of not shaming particular tax dodgers or profiteers. Targeting individuals has become a thing in the age of social media, but those who are left alone are more likely to come forward and join the public conversation. Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest persons, did this when he declared that he paid less tax than his employees, and that he and his wealthy friends have been 'coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress'.

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  • The questionable good that our public policy serves

    • Elenie Poulos
    • 02 April 2015
    4 Comments

    Humans have always pursued wealth and the power it affords, but only relatively recently has the world itself become organised around the service of that wealth. The systems and structures which define the way our world works are financial, geared to the making of profit. They are global and buoyed by governments whose domestic and foreign policies ensure their support. ‘Social good’ and the ‘common good’ are assumed to be economic neoliberalism, and what’s in the ‘public interest’ is whatever advances the neoliberal economic agenda.  

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