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Author: Cristy Clark

  • AUSTRALIA

    Rock the boat

    • Cristy Clark
    • 08 February 2022
    22 Comments

    Avoiding discomfort is a privilege only enjoyed by those who benefit from the status quo, and civility policing is fundamentally about protecting both that privilege and the status quo itself. Confronting the reality of injustice in both our past and our present should be uncomfortable, and no one is entitled to immunity.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Best of 2021: Not just climate adaptation, but genuine transformation

    • Cristy Clark
    • 11 January 2022
    3 Comments

    On a superficial level, it makes no sense to commit so strongly to managing the impacts of climate change (adaptation) on the one hand while refusing to significantly reduce emissions (mitigation) on the other. On the other hand, when you start to unpack the logic of so much adaptation policy, this contradiction fades away.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    There will be a next time. We must do better.

    • Cristy Clark
    • 16 December 2021
    3 Comments

    Under Victoria’s Border Directions after 23 July, people in NSW, including Victorian residents, were effectively prevented from entering the state. Their only option was to request an exemption for a number of specified reasons including ‘attending a funeral or end of life event or returning home for health, wellbeing, care or compassionate reasons or for any other reason under a general discretion’.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why our defamation laws are no longer fit for purpose

    • Cristy Clark
    • 10 November 2021
    9 Comments

    Peter Dutton has recently argued that funds for defamation actions should be a ‘workplace entitlement’ for Members of Parliament (MPs). I’d like to repeat that another way: the Honorable Peter Dutton, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, would like the taxpayer to fund MPs to sue members of the Australian public for defamation.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The right to a healthy environment

    • Cristy Clark
    • 21 October 2021
    7 Comments

    On 8 October, at its 48th session, the United Nations Human Rights Council formally adopted a resolution recognising the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It emphasises that ‘environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to enjoy human rights, including the right to life’.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Children don’t need counselling for climate anxiety, they need climate action

    • Cristy Clark
    • 13 September 2021
    7 Comments

    It was reported recently that Coalition MPs have been calling for an expansion of the government’s school chaplaincy program in order to reduce the mental health impacts of climate change ‘activism and alarmism’ on children. Yes, that’s right, they want to address the mental health impact of activism, not the impact of the actual, visible effects of climate change itself, or the very real threat that it poses to children’s futures.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don’t be distracted by the individual blame game, focus on the system

    • Cristy Clark
    • 13 July 2021
    16 Comments

    Although there has been a reasonable level of attention paid to governance issues — such as the incredibly slow vaccine roll out, the ongoing problems with hotel quarantine, and the timing of the lockdown itself — Sydney’s current lockdown has also been marked by an unhelpful focus on individual actions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Zoomkwondo and other lessons from the pandemic

    • Cristy Clark
    • 17 June 2021
    2 Comments

    About 1 in 6 Australians (18 per cent) live with disability, and many of these 4.4 million people face daily barriers to their full inclusion in education, work, services, activities, etc, not because of their disability, but because access has been structured around the needs, capacities and preferences of people who do not live with disability. Exclusion has always been a choice, but the pandemic has laid this reality bare.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Are we finally seeing action on Aboriginal water justice?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 15 April 2021
    4 Comments

    Recent research has documented some of the historical causes of the ongoing absence of water justice. When the land rights agenda emerged towards the end of the 20th century, deliberate decisions were made to restrict access mostly to land without water rights.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose rule of law?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 11 March 2021
    34 Comments

    The events of the last few weeks have provided a devastatingly clear illustration of how far we are from upholding a substantive version of the rule of law in Australia.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Not just climate adaptation, but genuine transformation

    • Cristy Clark
    • 10 February 2021
    4 Comments

    On a superficial level, it makes no sense to commit so strongly to managing the impacts of climate change (adaptation) on the one hand while refusing to significantly reduce emissions (mitigation) on the other. On the other hand, when you start to unpack the logic of so much adaptation policy, this contradiction fades away.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Are we respecting our elders?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 26 November 2020
    5 Comments

    This past weekend, I visited my grandparents in their residential aged care home. As usual, it was both lovely and utterly heartbreaking. Lovely, because I feel so lucky to be able to spend time with them, that they are still alive, their home is accepting visitors, and they still remember who I am. But, also, heartbreaking, because aging is tough, and living in residential aged care is tougher still, and this year, well, this year has made it all so much harder.

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