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Keywords: Brendan Byrne

  • RELIGION

    Handing on a tradition

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 October 2021
    44 Comments

    One of the challenges facing churches today has to do with tradition. Tradition is a sometimes charged word, but it refers to an everyday social need. It has to do with how a community passes on its way of life and its understanding of authoritative writings that shape it. The word itself can refer both to what is passed on and to the process of passing it on. The challenge of passing on a tradition is perennial. Both ways of living and writings reflect the culture of their own time and so need to be translated into the changing languages of later cultures.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History taints Turnbull's fight against corruption

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 01 May 2018
    10 Comments

    While it is a matter of public record the Turnbull government blocked attempts to establish a royal commission into the financial services sector on multiple occasions, the question as to why, especially when it expeditiously facilitated a similar inquiry into corruption within the union movement, is of more than academic interest.

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  • RELIGION

    The Protestant Reformation 500 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 October 2017
    9 Comments

    The first thing to note about this 500th anniversary of the Reformation is that it is the first centenary celebration or commemoration that we have been able to share together and without rancour.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'War on business' rhetoric echoes '07 union bashing

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 27 June 2016
    15 Comments

    Whether or not the person in the now notorious 'fake tradie' ad is or isn't a 'real' tradie is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is a primary example of the co-option of the language of class struggle and economic justice that has so thoroughly poisoned economic debate in the industrialised West. Implicit within it is a patronising view of the working class that dismisses them as gullible dupes who can be made to entrench the privilege of the few in return for the paltry crumbs of consumer hedonism.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The eloquence of God

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 04 July 2012
    2 Comments

    'And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory, full of grace and truth' (John 1:1, 14). In the second-last conversation I had with Peter, we agreed that that text should be the Gospel for his Requiem. There is a sense, I’m sure, in which every poem that Peter wrote was an instance of the Word becoming flesh.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    To exhilarate their minds

    • Peter Steele
    • 03 July 2012
    5 Comments

    Here's the mint still on my hands. A wreath, so Pliny thought was 'good for students, to exhilarate their minds'. Late in the course, I’ll settle for a sprig or two.

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  • MEDIA

    Abbott's budgie-smuggler blues

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 19 August 2011
    12 Comments

    Politicians are always pitilessly represented in cartoons. Just ask Kevin 'Tintin' Rudd and Julia 'Nose' (or 'Bottom') Gillard. Portrayals of Tony Abbott in Speedos are not part of a plot to undermine him. The public is able to recognise cartoons as exaggerated political commentary.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Andrew Hamilton and Peter Steele: boys with writing in their blood

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 December 2010

    As I reflect back now, I can see the difference between Peter's urge to write and my own. My hero was the master of terseness, Tacitus. But Peter wanted to find words, and ways of putting words together, that could unfold the shape of what lay beyond words.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The wild mind of Peter Steele

    • Morag Fraser
    • 28 May 2010
    8 Comments

    When I met Peter Steele I noticed a spark, a shimmer of wit that almost subverted his serious courtesy. There was a wild mind at work and play, and I would have to run prodigiously fast even to catch at its stirrups. So it has proved: it's been a long, vigorous, and exultantly grateful following.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Union officials victimised by fear campaign

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 31 October 2007
    13 Comments

    The Coalition's election campaign portrays union officials as industrial thugs. But far too often, they are the only support mechanism standing between stressed Australian workers and human tragedy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Value your vote: values and Election 07

    • Staff
    • 25 October 2007

    Eureka Street's ongoing analysis of the Federal Election race, helping you discern your vote at the ballot in November.

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  • RELIGION

    Australia's ageing theological workforce

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 03 October 2007
    9 Comments

    In the past, Australia has produced a number of theologians and biblical scholars of international standing. But the future is bleak, with 37 per cent intending to retire within five years. Structural rationalisation must start now.

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