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An intense and often ugly battle over marine resources has been unfolding between State authorities and Aboriginal people along the NSW coast. At the heart of the conflict is the NSW government’s refusal to acknowledge the right to cultural fishing by Aboriginal people, unlike other states and the federal Native Title Act (1993).
In the late 1970s, two Mercy sisters answered a call to work with Aboriginal people, and they chose a place in the Pilbara region of Western Australia that had a notorious reputation. Sisters Bernadette Kennedy and Bernadine Daly arrived in the largely Aboriginal town of Roebourne in Australia’s north-west in mid-1978 to see if they were needed. They quickly discovered that in a town ‘awash with alcohol’ there was great need.
As Australia and East Timor met overnight at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Britain-Norway settlement of the 1960s provides an instructive case study of how to resolve the dispute over oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea. Norway had feared its big neighbour would exploit a deep trench near its coastline and push the boundary beyond halfway. Instead, the Norwegian negotiators were stunned when Britain offered the median line as the starting point for negotiations.
Hundreds of Timorese men and boys served alongide Australian fighters in an amazing guerilla campaign throughout 1942 that tied up several thousand Japanese troops while the battle for New Guinea was underway. Australia has made at best half-hearted efforts to acknowledge this debt.
Kevin Rudd's failure to embrace the Timor legend with more imagination and substance was a missed opportunity to connect with Labor's Second World War legacy. Wartime Prime Minister John Curtin saw the guerilla war in Timor as a unique and significant part of turning back the Japanese tide.
The first feature length film about Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the deaths of six Australian journalists fails to inform the audience of the diplomatic dirty tricks, and Australian and American complicity.
When East Timor was struggling to get a fair deal in negotiations over Timor Sea oil, Kenneally rallied his mates to fight. Appearing on national television, he told Prime Minister Howard: 'I'd rather you did not come to my ANZAC Day parade.'
A potentially unstable coalition government with few detailed policies and weak administrative ability is now certain to emerge following the fragmented result in the recent election. But grounds for hope remain.
The vote in East Timor's presidential election has unified the nation, and given democracy a second change, after the fractious violence of 2006. It underscores the depth of the antipathy towards the Fretilin government after it badly managed the country’s post-independence development and sparked renewed violence last year.
Paul Cleary worked for East Timor Prime Minister Alkatiri as a consultant on a World Bank-funded project from 2003 to 2005. His book on the Timor Sea oil dispute will be published in June by Allen&Unwin.
Claims of irregularities in last week's presidential election speak volumes about the state of East Timor’s democracy. The elections are also a crucial test for building democracy in post-conflict countries.
In 2006, the East Timorese government’s inept handling of a dispute in the army involving soldiers from the western region of East Timor put the young nation on the brink of civil war. Now Jose Ramos Horta has been installed as Prime Minister, but will it make a difference?
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